So long sheepdog hair and other disjointed ramblings

Hmmmm...I'm beginning to see a family resemblance...

Walking into school the morning after a dramatic haircut is sometimes a foreboding experience. As most of you know, middle school kids tend to lack the ability to give a proper compliment, so this morning I heard a healthy sprinkling of declarative statements along the lines of “you cut your hair” or just a fragment of a thought, as in “so short.” Notice how these comments are devoid of those adjectives that we really like to hear, the ones that let us know that we do not look like a freak or an alien (eg. great, beautiful, nice—hell, I’d even take better). I guess those neutral statements are more polite than the student who told me I look like a man (that was a teachable moment—if I looked like a man, it would be a man suffering from some serious hormonal imbalances, if you know what I mean). Another one of my students looked at me with a puzzled, exaggeratedly frightened look and said, “Who are you?” Meet the new and improved Michelle Stillwell.

On a totally unrelated note…

Last weekend I went to the beach, a local beach, not one of the big, fancy-schmancy, white, sandy beaches with multi-million dollar hotels and obnoxious foreigners. No, Bang Saen is about half an hour away by bus and it is a very Thai beach. I tagged along with Sunny (she did all the leg work for the trip) and her son Daylin for the trip. It was crazy cheap and just a nice getaway for the weekend.

Besides the ocean breeze and the sound of the water lapping on the sand (a welcome trade for the smoggy blast of exhaust fumes and the roar of the skytrain), what I enjoyed most was seeing how the Thai people relax. The beach and boardwalk were packed full of Thai families—from the nearly-newborn to the octogenarian grandparents and everyone in between. I’ve been to crowded beaches before, but there was a different feel to this one, perhaps because instead of the measly triangles of fabric that may or may not cover various body parts stateside, the beach go-ers in Bang Saen were swimming in their clothes. Fully decked out in shirts, shorts, and all the necessary underclothes, soaked from head to toe. The modesty lent a kind of Coney Island circa 1920s air to it all.

Along the boardwalk, vendors were selling more fresh seafood than I’ve ever seen in one place before. Who knew that horseshoe crabs are edible? I watched people digging for clams which were later sold by the bucketful. Sea urchins, star fish, mussels, and crabs were scattered along the shoreline, too. I was collecting sea shells with Daylin, and we had to be careful as to not collect any of the shells that were currently occupied.

Little nests of chairs, tables and umbrellas were set up along the whole length of the boardwalk. Rainbow-colored chairs, the kind that sit low to the ground and recline into a perfect nap-taking position, were arranged back-to-back in groups of four with a table in between them. Beach umbrellas created a solid canopy over the endless rows of chairs, a virtual tunnel by the beach in which to sit under, shielded from the tropical sun, but still romanced by the ocean breeze. Needless to say, I parked myself in one of those chairs and didn’t move for hours at a time. Reading, sipping my rum and coke (rum and whiskey are sold by the bottle all along the boardwalk), and watching the festivities. Every now and then, people would walk by offering massages. They had a kit slung over their shoulders with the necessary massage tools. I figured the people were just offering foot massages, but one lady carried around a mat for customers to sprawl out on and get the works—butt massage and all—right there on the boardwalk. Only in Thailand.

I was up early on Sunday so I witnessed the families coming in droves to the sea side. There were coolers, rice cookers, little pots in which to build a fire, and a large straw mat for everyone to sit on. It was almost like camping or like traveling anywhere with the Kalaskas family. The thing I noticed the most was that none of the Thais did anything special to relax. I read. Daylin collected shells. Sunny read and had a two hour massage. The Thai people, on the other hand, just sat and talked to each other, played with their kids, ate and drank. No card playing or flipping through glossy magazines. No mind diverting activities that seem essential to relaxing in America. They were clearly happy to just be around their friends and family, to just sit and enjoy the day. That is pretty remarkable to me.

Fast forward to the following weekend…

My mind has taken a couple of days to settle down from the information overload of the past weekend. I spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday at the annual meeting of the East Asia Regional Conference of Overseas Schools. There were thousands of teachers there from all over Asia. Our school was closed for two days so that teachers could attend all the workshops. The theme was One World: One Future. We had three key note speakers; Jean-Francois Rischard (author of High Noon), Ian Jukes, and Mechai Viravaidya (Thai philanthropist who is behind Cabbages and Condoms). Sometimes these events can be dreadfully boring but luckily, this was not the case last weekend.

I went to nearly a dozen different workshops and learned all sorts of useful information, from teaching vocabulary effectively to how to be a global citizen to using blogs in the classroom. My favorite speaker was Jack Gantos, author of the Joey Pigza and Jack Henry books. He was more or less a stand up comedian (I had many laugh-out-loud moments) but also very informative in passing on information on how to get kids excited about writing. I went to two of his workshops because he was so entertaining. He has published several books, from picture books to young adult fiction to general adult fiction. I schemed momentarily to figure out how I could possibly brush shoulders with him, maybe have some of his ambition and brilliance rub off on me. The great thing about Gantos is that he writes about normal everyday stuff, the same things I think about writing but then think, no that will be too boring. He does it and he makes it work. There is hope.

An over-arching theme to the whole weekend was the importance of global citizenship. Three international high school students (all three female) gave speeches addressing global citizenship. We also listened to J. F. Rischard talk about twenty issues that need to be dealt with in the next twenty years (which is what his book High Noon is about). In his speech, he mentioned “An Inconvenient Truth” (if you haven’t seen it yet, rent it—very important and accessible information about global warming for everyone; it’s unbelievable). We heard Dr. Mechai talk about the importance of thinking outside of the box to solve problems (like having a vascectomy van travel around and give the little snip snip in order to help population control).

The part that really hit home for me was what Ian Jukes said. A very animated and energetic speaker, Jukes shared with us the idea that the current generation of students is what he calls “digital as a first language speakers” and that their teachers are “digital as a second language speakers.” One of his main points is that teachers are slow learners if we keep trying to teach kids by using the same methods that were used to teach us. He stressed that our brains work differently from the students today. There were MRIs and all sorts of other data to prove his point; not that it needed much proving. You only need to say take out your textbook to a class of students and you can see all traces of enthusiasm drain away from their faces. He said we need to speak the same language as our students. If we don’t know anything about skype, youtube, wiki, mp3, ipod, podcasts, myspace, mtvn, and blogs, then as a teacher, we need to catch up with the times. For me, that’s a whole lot of catching up to do. Maybe I should just ask my students for a tutorial.