Endings and Beginnings

Today, I bid farewell to my home away from home for the past six years.

When I first moved away from New York, I had shed all doubts that the teaching career was for me. I knew that learning and exploring were important elements of a meaningful existence on this planet, both for me and my students. I knew that few things were more satisfying than spending time with good people around plates of food. I knew that not knowing the local language or the location of the nearest supermarket was a cause for excitement, not fear. Purposely putting one’s self into situations with unknown outcomes is not a reckless act. It is precisely these challenges that define and refine who we are so that we are better prepared for those events that we do not expect.

I knew these things already. And yet, I leave China today as a changed teacher. I met students from all around the world. I made connections not just with new people in the same building as me, but with teachers in many distributed time zones. People that I respected and admired for their ideas humbled me as they invited me to join in their conversations and explore ideas with me. I found opportunities to present at conferences and get to know others that had also fallen in love with the international teaching lifestyle. I started this blog, and surprisingly, had people read it with thoughts of their own to share.

I also learned to accept the reality that life continues in twenty four time zones. News from home made it seem more foreign and paradoxically more connected to my own experiences here. When opening my eyes and my various devices in the morning to see what had happened while I slept, I again never knew what to expect. I lost family members both suddenly and over stretches of time. Kids grew up. Our parents sold their houses and apartments. Friends put prestigious letters at the end of their names.

Our world changed as well. We added new countries to our passports and got lost in cities that refused to abide by a grid system. We fell in love with our dog and his aggressive sneezing at harmless bystanders. We tried to address the life and work balance through weeknight dinners and mini vacations. We repeatedly overcommitted to traveling during our summers off and time went too quickly. We became parents.

I write this not because anything I’m saying is especially new. The ‘time marches on’ canon is well established. That does not invalidate the reality that we’re all experiencing life and its passage for the first time ourselves. This is the magic that we, as teachers, witness between the end of one year and the beginning of the next. We tweak our lessons from the previous year with the hope that they prompt more questions and productive confusion on the next iteration. Our students do experience some of the ideas we introduce for the first time in our classrooms, and it is unique that we get to design those experiences ourselves. 

The best way to understand the rich range of emotions that our students experience while in our care is to live deeply and richly in our own lives. We need to learn to know and love others, explore and make mistakes, and be ready to move forward even when the future is uncertain. My time abroad thus far has given me numerous journeys through these human experiences. I would not give them up for the world, and luckily, I do not have to do so.

I’ll write more about my next move in a future post. 
Until then, I wish you all a summer full of good times with good people.