Everywhere

Yesterday was Gay Pride Sunday in San Francisco, a day embraced with the same level of near-universal enthusiasm as St. Patrick's Day in Dublin or Cinco de Mayo in Mexico City. The rainbow flag flies from every lamp post up and down Market Street, from the staid Financial District all the way to the heart of the Castro. A large pink triangle is painted at the top of Twin Peaks, and it day-gloes over town for a weekend of celebration that displays nearly as much civic cohesion these days as LGBT pride.

Things have changed quite a lot since the Stonewall Riots of 1969, which pride parades across the country commemorate on the last Sunday of June. This year's Pride marked the 40th anniversary of this watershed event, which is retold every year to remind us that there was a time when, instead of sponsoring huge public events, cities sent their police forces to raid gay bars and arrest the patrons. Instead of the full-color photos, chipper headlines and heartfelt interviews of today, newspapers would print the names and addresses of everyone arrested to encourage public 'decency' by guaranteeing public shame. Rather than mugging for the camera in outrageous outfits or calling for equal rights, gays and lesbians of the pre-Stonewall era, thus shamed, would often lose their jobs, be rejected by their families or, in far too many cases, take their own lives. Until the people of the Stonewall Inn rose up and defied the police, being gay was about as far from a public celebration as anything could get.

Being in San Francisco on Gay Pride weekend makes it easy to forget that a huge wide world exists outside the confines of the Bay Area and a growing number of islands of acceptance around large urban areas and progressive college towns. I was reminded of this while sitting in Grace Cathedral listening to the sermon yesterday. The preacher stood in the great stone pulpit and praised the ongoing struggle against oppression by many marginalized groups and related those struggles to the people of faith in Biblical times. He called for tolerance and assured listeners that God is firmly on the side of everyone seeking to live with integrity, wisdom and love. It was a classic progressive interpretation of the Gospels, one I agree with wholeheartedly.

But then I started thinking about the people sitting around me. Grace Cathedral, in addition to being a bastion of liberal theology is also a tourist destination. People come from all over the country and the world to admire the soaring stained-glass windows and attend a service. I don't know at which point in the sermon I became aware that there would surely be people in the pews who didn't come to church expecting to hear this particular message; who, in fact, might attend church desiring a very different point of view. This led me to remember the legions of churches, towns and communities out there (including, alas, the ex-pat community of Abu Dhabi) where gays and lesbians remain invisible or subject to discrimination, suspicion, social rejection or violent hatred.

The thing about being a minority is that, well, there just aren't that many of you around. I attended the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York City in 1994 as a young college student, fresh out of the closet. What sticks in my mind most is the sheer number of homos on the streets of Manhattan. For one weekend, I experienced what it would be like if most people were gay. I don't know if this is a case of selective memory, or if straight people really did clear out of town. But I remember whole subway stations, sidewalks, stores and restaurants, well outside of the Village, packed with gay people. This was post-Don't Ask, Don't Tell and pre-"Ellen" and "Will and Grace." It was the early years of the Clinton era, and there was a palpable sense that change was possible, though the battle was far from won. For two days, I soaked up the gay world of New York, a very powerful experience. I internalized that vision and took it with me when I left. Not because I think the whole world should be gay, but to remind me of the feeling of belonging, a feeling I transferred to the communities where I later lived, a sense of a world where there was no fear of slamming doors, snide remarks or swampy conversational ignorance to wade through.

It's hard to tell now, if the anti-gay rights backlash of Prop 8 in California, among other states, is the last gasp of traditionalists or a potent force to be reckoned with. You can't hold back the ocean, mused one of my older gay friends. Although people seem to want to try. It's hard to believe that kids growing up now are going to become bigots. Even if they don't know the story of the obscure gay bar that fought us all into the history books, they watch TV, see movies, know gay family members and live in the modern world, a world that now wholeheartedly prefers newspaper photos of rainbow boas and dykes on bikes to stark lists of public shame. Thank you, Stonewall.

Common ground

I challenge any of you to find a more wholesome way to spend time than hanging out at a national park. You won't be able to. You might say "church camp" if you didn't already know they are hotbeds of intrigue and sexual frustration. You might say "preschool graduation" if you didn't care to analyze the inaccessibility of high-quality preschool to much of the citizenry. Perhaps "senior citizen picnic on the 4th of July" may quality (though see the church camp sentence for possible issues). But the 4th of July is only one day of the American year. What are you going do the remaining 364?

Answer: visit national parks.

Though I'm sure Rush Limbaugh could think of something, there is nothing a sane person can say against the national park system. It is affordable, accessible, democratic, reliable and stunningly gorgeous. In fact, if you're 62 or older (as my mom is), $10 will buy you a Forever Card that will get you (and whoever else is in your car) into any national park free for the rest of your life! National parks are among the only things left that take the very, very best of something (in this case, the natural environment) and reserve it for everyone. At any time (weather and work permitting), we can go see our redwoods, our reliable geysers, our glaciers, our erupting volcanoes, our old-growth forest, our rugged coastline, red-rock vistas and dizzying canyons. While corporations have fully colonized the spacious skies and the fruited plain, most of the purple mountains majesty still belong to all of us. They are packed with campgrounds, ranger stations, free art classes, intimate museums, interpretive films, well-marked trails (some even wheelchair accessible) and evening campfire programs given in brown-benched amphitheaters under a dazzling carpet of stars.

I spent two days admiring our granite cliff faces, meandering rivers and plunging waterfalls in Yosemite Valley, the centerpiece of Yosemite National Park. I can report that a battalion of college-age workers is taking good care of our meadows and that our wildflowers are particularly lovely this year. My mom and I stayed in Curry Village, an old-fashioned camp (est. 1899) complete with tent cabins, a historic dining hall, an array of low-key snack bars and, of course, a campfire amphitheater. Back in the day, it had a bowling alley and a soda fountain. Today, it has a pizza patio and a latte machine, but not much else has changed. It's still a place people come from all over the country (and the world) to take in a ranger program, rent a bike or raft, walk a trail or climb a rock. The tent cabins are rustic, but you have a metal-framed cot instead of sleeping on the floor, and a shiny green bear-proof box right outside in which to store food and toothpaste. Like a traditional campground, you share the bathroom with your fellow campers. Unlike a tent campground, you have a light bulb in your tent for reading.

My fellow campers were truly a cross-section of America, from retirees in matching t-shirts to earnest church groups and boisterous family reunions. There was a rainbow nation of little kids running and biking and teenagers parading in outfits that screamed "Just because I'm camping doesn't mean I have to let myself go." Moms also tended to move in packs, collectively herding their offspring who were loudly debating whether to go swimming or play freeze tag, while the dads hovered or hauled the stuff.

One popular pastime was renting a raft and floating down the Merced River from Camp Curry to a point about four miles downstream. My mom and I did this and floated through some of the best scenery the valley has to offer. We didn't have to do much more than steer and look around at Half Dome behind us and Yosemite Falls, upper and lower, tumbling to our right. The valley was formed (as most are) from millions of years of tectonic movement and erosion, but what's really cool is that the granite towering over our little raft was originally under the prehistoric ground. It was only after all the sediment was washed away that the granite emerged. (This according to the Yosemite museum, and I'm sure I'm butchering it, but that's what I came away with.) It's mind-boggling to think of the time it must have taken for El Capitan (pictured below) to form and then grow out of the ground (so to speak), as it was gradually exposed by eons of rainfall, earthquakes and glacial melting. Whoa.

The abundance of good family fun and the laws of earth science aside, what makes Yosemite (and other national parks) so wholesome is the absence of the daily static of American life. In national parks, there are no billboards, no hard sell, no concern about your children turning on the TV to who-knows-what craziness. There are no honking horns, squealing brakes or traffic to speak of (Yosemite asks people to park then ferries them around in hybrid shuttle buses). There's no blaring music (it scares our wildlife) and no walking off trail (you could smoosh our native plants). Littering hurts us all, our landscape as well as our ability to enjoy a pleasant vacation.

This focus on preserving the natural environment removes a certain me-ness from even the most myopic vacationer, and, at the same time, keeping our national parks beautiful is one of the most self-serving things an American can do. After all, why would you mess up your own parks? Especially when they are so easy to love.

Cover up

President Sarkozy of France has been on my mind today, along with the politics of showing yourself in public. I realized this week that I'm still conscious of the amount of skin I display at any given time, even here in the Bay Area where pretty much anything goes. It makes me wonder if I've lost (or just misplaced temporarily) my chill West Coast attitude toward dress as I hitch up low-cut tops, change out of perfectly reasonable outfits and keep my knees covered, even at yoga. Sometimes I catch myself strategically placing my book over a v-neck while in conversation with the bank teller or grocery store checker and force myself to lower my Californian arms and proudly expose a small wedge of my upper chest to the world. In my culture, it is OK to show a little skin.

Which brings me to President Sarkozy, who made world news today by banging a metaphorical shoe (perhaps an alluring stiletto?) on the table of cultural uppitiness and declaring burqas "unwelcome" in France. Burqas, as you all know, are full-coverage, sheet-like robes a small percentage of Muslim women wear. Often blue or black, they look much like last-minute Halloween ghost costumes: shapeless and billowy with a mesh eye hole. They are intended to disguise a woman's shape and skin from the eyes of male strangers. Sarkozy didn't ban them, but took a break from the strain of governing long enough to lambast them, and their wearers, calling burqas "a symbol of servitude and humiliation" and "a problem of liberty and dignity for women." (This according to The Irish Times, which was the first newspaper to pop up on Google.)

Now Sarkozy, being French, would no doubt like all women to run around in Chanel couture or Riveria bikinis. The man is on his third wife, and second former fashion model, this one 12 years his junior. These relevant details aside, imagine what it would be like for a woman who has worn a burqa all her life to be "liberated" by the likes of Sarkozy? I, a native Californian with no history of modesty, have become conscious of my dress after a year in a fairly liberal Muslim state. My choice to be respectful of the cultural practices of the UAE while a guest in the country has changed what I choose to wear in public, at least for now. Imagine how a woman who covers all of her body all of the time would feel? Even if she welcomes the change (some women would, some wouldn't), it is quite a step from a roomy bedsheet to a v-neck and skinny jeans.

Given the cultural context in which a burqa is worn (and only a few hundred women in France do, according to the same article), publically denouncing it is more than French snobbery. It's xenophobia, straight up. And lest you think I have lost all my feminist verve, many women choose to veil or wear abeyyas or a burqa. And many women are forced to by male relatives protecting cultural values that are foreign and distasteful to me, Sarkozy and probably most of you. Of course, I don't want women to hide behind a mesh peephole when they could be showing their lovely selves to the world, speaking for themselves, choosing their own life paths. But Sarkozy's comments are no more than polarizing bluster in a society where it is almost impossible to tell who wears what by choice and who is forced to. And--more likely--who is caught in that huge gray area called "cultural expectations," otherwise known as what people expect to see when they look at you, before you even open your mouth.

The politics of fashion are rarely analyzed, but Sarkozy has gone there, so let's go with him. My culture tells me what to wear, too. Does it force me at gunpoint? No. Does it force me under pain of ostracization? Of course. That's what cultural expectations about clothing do--and if Sarkozy wants to tackle those huge bugaboos, he'd have my vote. But, that's not what he's about, as we all know. He might not even know that he himself, along with you and I and (I would argue) many burqa girls are caught up in that choice/no choice every morning when we walk to the closet. We, too, follow rules of propriety and certain imposed standards. Here in the 'non-oppressive' world, our dads and brothers don't protect our sartorial honor, we do it ourselves, with the help of magazines, TV shows, the "right" stores, and the newest colors and styles. If it's uncomfortable or weird looking (like ties or panty hoes--and don't get me started on those pointy-toed shoes), we do it anyway. We spend money and time, feed multiple industries to meet those expectations, and we certainly notice (perhaps with less vehemence than the French government) when people don't fall into line. We can catagorize them in any number of ways, including 'poor' or 'clueless' or 'alternative.' But it would be recognized as discrimination without a doubt if we called the media and ranted about how "unwelcome" torn clothes or embroidered peasant blouses are. A burqa labels someone as a conservative Muslim. People who wear burqas know this, especially if they are wearing them in France. They are making a statement, much like I would if I walked around in a leisure suit or a t-shirt that said "Those pointy-toed shoes...WTF!" Far from being oppressed, these women and/or their male relatives are sending a very conscious message of who they are. The thing is Mr. Sarkozy doesn't like the statement they are making. He sees it as menacing, even scary. It is too foreign, too different. (This cartoon makes my point so much better...)

The thing is, it's not if you take a deep breath and think about it. When you are in an environment where the cultural expectations are different, you change. It might take awhile to adjust (or readjust) because when you do one thing the same way for a long time, it becomes part of who you are. I would argue that wearing a burqa in France is no more menacing than me replacing a tank top with a t-shirt. Again, only a few hundred women in France even wear a burqa (and the number would probably drop faster if the government would shut up about it). Many have already adapted to their host country's norms. Trying to change few who remain will just make them hold on all the more. They are probably wearing Chanel under those billowy tents anyway. Or maybe even a Riveria bikini. Sarkozy will never know...

Holding children. Together.

We held a child together.

This phrase has two meanings as it is written. One meaning implies that a child was somehow falling apart and you and another person kept the child from coming undone. The second meaning indicates that you and another person held a child at the same time, in a united act of love and care. Both senses of this phrase contain powerful imagery. But it is the second sense that I want to talk about here. I think it's best written like this: We held a child. Together.

There is a powerful bond created among teachers who hold the same children. I have been searching for a way to describe this relationship for years, and here it is. The act of holding a child, literally or figuratively, is what a teacher does. And I don't mean hold as in hug. I mean hold as in stabilize, hold steady, hold on to. A teacher provides a base, a safe haven from which to explore the many pathways to growth and knowledge; a reliable hand in time of need; or even a tug in the right direction. Teachers who share in this act of holding with other teachers create an even stronger structure of support, for both the kids and each other. These bonds are powerful and build an architecture of relationship with a different texture and deeper cohesion than that of congenial friendship among colleagues.

I first heard this phrase (hold a child. together) from my former principal, who is stepping down after six incredible years at the school she founded. This is the same principal who hired me fresh out of ed school to be the first English teacher at her school. It is safe to say that no one has had more of an impact on me as an educator. Not usually given to flights of metaphorical fancy, she uttered this phrase in response to an incident in which she literally held on to the t-shirt of a child in distress with another colleague. But for this same colleague, relating the incident at the principal's going away party this week, the literal grasp to bring a child back from the brink was the moment when she truly understood what being a part of a school is about. It is about holding children together. Together. One t-shirt or one field trip or one parent meeting or one lesson at a time.

I could go on forever about how much I love this principal as a person and as a leader of teachers and kids. But what I want to say here (related to my previous post below and a lot of the pondering I've been doing this year) is that there is so much power in holding kids together that a school feels empty when this isn't the case. Because in order to hold kids, you have to reach out, no matter what kind of kids you teach or where you teach them. And I cannot believe that sustainability or finding a work-life balance involves keeping your hands at your sides, literally or figuratively.

I know it's summer, but I welcome your thoughts...

Ways of winding down

I started this post a few days ago, and it was very different. I was in a cranky mood and was tempted to blame other people (select colleagues, administrators--the typical teacher bugaboos) for my angst. In truth, it wasn't their fault. All I wanted to do was share some reflections of my first school year here, now that it is winding down. What happened was that I started acting like one of my students. I'll call him Joe.

Like many 6th graders, Joe wants things done The Right Way. You follow the rules (classroom and social). You do what you're supposed to. And you act normal, as defined by 12-year-old sensibilities. The thing with Joe is that when kids step off what he considers the "right" path, he has something to say about it, usually clever and mean. The clever part makes him popular with his classmates. The mean part gets him called to the carpet by his teachers.

The latest incident was about a month ago. Joe was swearing in his native language at other kids behind my and Ocanada's back. (Multiple languages add a special wrinkle to discipline at an international school.) When we called him on it, he 'fessed up immediately. The closest thing he offered to an excuse was this, "But so-and-so wasn't doing anything right. I had to say something."

Basically, the kid was annoying Joe because he was being a goofball. The thing was, Goofball wasn't actively messing with Joe. The kid was just being goofy in Joe's general vicinity. (Said kid is often goofy--it's part of his charm.) But Joe was impatient because Goofball wasn't following the "rules" so Joe took it upon himself to "punish" him the way kids punish each other.

Of course, Ocanada and I explained that cursing was a no-no in this case (and, really, in all cases). We understood his feelings, and he was welcome to have them, but he couldn't just go around swearing in the language/dialect of his choice at every goofball out there, especially when the goofball was just being himself. After all, everyone has a right to be his/herself without fear of being oppressed or cursed at.

Joe has curbed his tongue (both native and in English) ever since. I, on the other hand, started writing my end-of-the-year post and realized I was in a situation much like Joe's. I had A LOT to say about people I've experienced as world-class goofballs (or worse) this school year. But when I thought about it, they were just being themselves. I was just annoyed because their Right Way wasn't the same as mine.

And I expected it to be! That was my mistake! That's what caused the bulk of the vitriol of the now-discarded post. It sounds utterly ridiculous to put it into words, but I honestly thought that all teachers had the same Right Way. When I arrived last August, I was eager to learn how to tone this Way down a bit before it turned me into a column of ash. I wanted to find teachers who had learned how to live with our Way in peace and harmony.

I never expected to find other Ways. Lots and lots of other Ways, but not many that matched my own. I looked high and low. I listened and took notes. I even attempted to sit at the metaphorical knee of a few colleagues, hungry for advice. But I couldn't find anyone who had what I was looking for. Here in Abu Dhabi, only K shares my Way. Ocanada and I connect in some Ways, but not in others. Almost everyone else is on a different path, perhaps in a different teaching solar system. That's how I've felt sometimes this year. Like a stray comet with a now-whacked out orbit sling-shotting around an alien teaching sun. It's no one's fault but my own. My colleagues are nice people. My students are precious pumpkins. My school pursues best practices, serves the kids it has and does its best for teachers. Everything I've said about it all year is true. And yet, with one more day left, I have finally realized that my principal and colleagues aren't going to start acting normal (as defined by my educational sensibilities) and it's time for me to stop expecting that they will. For awhile this made me crazy with frustration. But being cranky is not going to help me any more than Joe's cursing helped him.

What will help is taking a deep breath (a cure all frequently suggested by my college chaplain) and examining my Way on my own. Even if I don't have many fellow travelers, I am blessed with much more time. There may be lots I can learn once I stop grinding my teeth at what I'm not seeing.

One thing that hasn't occurred to me is to abandon my Way. This might sound pigheaded to you non-teachers, especially since I'm talking about how nice my colleagues are. Why not be more adaptable? Who do I think I am? But I'm not talking about techniques and lesson ideas here. I have learned a ton about unit planning and using computers in the classroom at this school. But that's not part of my teaching Way. A teaching Way is a fundamental orientation toward kids, curriculum and the work of educating.

Example of a Way #1: Teachers should do what they say they are going to do.

Example of a Way #2: The job of a teacher is to teach, so if a kid comes into class without a skill they "should know by now," it's my job to help them get there.

Example of a Way #3 (and this is a big one): All kids have the potential to shine and should not be defined by past performance. There are no "C students" or "A students."

These are three things I'm not going to change about the way I teach, but they are not Ways all teachers share, as I have discovered this year.

So where does this leave me? 1) I will stop mourning that my Way is not totally supported at my current school by cattily predicting how long some of my colleagues would last at my former school (The record is one day. The average is 5 minutes.) My former school fully supported what I believe most about teaching, but didn't leave much time to figure out how to walk that Way in a survivable manner. There is still work to do. 2) I will do my best to live my Way next year, being more understanding that others have a different Way and 3) I will look forward to landing once again in a more familiar solar system.

Small town living

Being in "The Music Man" has me thinking about small town life in more ways than one. Of course, the whole show takes place in an archetypal Midwestern town where shared triumphs and shameless back-biting are par for the course. As one song puts it, "But we'll give you our shirt. And the back to go with it, if your crops should happen to die." Which is immediately followed by, "But what the heck, you're welcome. Glad to have you with us. Even though we may not ever mention it again." The message is loud and clear: living in a place where people know you well is both a blessing and a curse. But never as idyllic as the picket fences and clapboard shutters make it appear.

There are no picket fences in Abu Dhabi. The place is low on clapboard, too, and big on apartment buildings between six and 15 stories that line almost every street in town. The park across the street from my place is one of the few green spaces in the city. The rest is nothing but concrete and glass hives full of people, each in their anonymous niche. But that's part of the reason people move to cities, right? To break free of the ancestral pressures and penetrating stares in a dense sea of strangers. Abu Dhabi, home of two million people on an island no larger than San Francisco, should be the antithesis of River City, Iowa, the mythical town in "The Music Man." Right?

Wrong. Abu Dhabi is a very small town, and it has gotten smaller since my circle of acquaintences expanded to include the cast of the musical. Understand, this is a new phenomenon for me. I taught in San Francisco for five years. Most of my students and I lived less than a mile from school--and I ran into a kid maybe three times the entire time I taught there. Three times. In five years. In a big city you simply do not run into people you know very often. In Abu Dhabi, I see kids, parents and colleagues almost every time I go to the grocery store. I run into them in restaurants, bookstores, and Ikea. And for every child I see, there are those I don't see, but who see me, and announce the fact at school the next day. "Ms. R, I saw you buying a Krispy Kreme/looking at lingerie/picking your nose." Well, maybe not that bad. But these kids are everywhere. It reminds me of my childhood in small-town California. Even then, though, I can remember running into teachers only a few times. I lived across the street from my 4th grade teacher and hardly saw the woman! (That was the year half the kids on the block were in her class, so I don't blame her. But still...)

On the surface, there is an easy explanation, but I think it's too easy. It goes like this: in Abu Dhabi, people go to malls. It's what they do. If there are a limited number of malls in town, I can expect to see people I know if I, too, am at the mall. Not only that, but many restaurants are located in malls. Not just food court places but actual sit-down restaurants. Furthermore, Westerners tend to congregate in familiar places (like the malls) where 1) the customs and norms align most closely to their own and 2) the air conditioning functions beautifully. If I choose to frequent those places, then I have no one but myself to blame for bumping into half the faculty and most of the student body on a regular basis. (An artsy rendition of the mall near my apartment building. It doesn't twinkle like this, even at night...)

But it's not that simple. It can't be. Abu Dhabi has 2 million people. San Francisco has less than a million. San Francisco has two malls. Abu Dhabi has three big ones. True, I'm at the mall a lot more in Abu Dhabi than I was in SF because the grocery store is there, but I run into people while not at the mall as well. Not only that, I know by sight (ie: to wave and say Hi to) about 50% fewer people in Abu Dhabi than I know in San Francisco. Maybe even 60% fewer. I've lived in Abu Dhabi about 10 months. I lived in San Francisco about 10 years. As a San Francisco resident, I never left the house expecting to run into someone I knew. Occasionally, I would bump into someone, but I never expected it. When I leave the house in Abu Dhabi, I actually think about who I may run into. It's closer to the mentality I had living in Batie, my village in Cameroon, where I would avoid high-traffic times if I was feeling especially introverted. Batie had about 600 families. Abu Dhabi has about 600,000.

But maybe that's what Abu Dhabi is, a huge village made up of little villages where people, unbeknownst to even themselves, establish orbits around their culturally chosen "town squares" and congregate there whether they plan to or not. The closest grocery store to my apartment is frequented by Abu Dhabi's rainbow nation. It's truly not a Westerners-only joint, as one look at the produce section will prove. Yet maybe it is part of the Western expat orbit I've somehow gravitated into without being aware of it. It makes me curious about the other villages in town I'm unaware of. Maybe next year I'll try to break out. I'll know it's working if I suddenly stop seeing my students everywhere I look, and start feeling as though I'm truly living in the big city.