I teach. What is your superpower?

Today is the third day of test week and I am watching my students work and think harder than I have ever seen most of them do in my regular class. I hear the loaded rustling of pages, the scratching of pens on paper, and I am sure I hear their brains whirring. None of them are breaking a sweat, but their brains will sure need a rest after this test. As I sit here at my desk behind the growing pile of test papers, I am overcome by a sudden wave of emotions.

Fellow teachers will recognize that a teacher’s job can be at times fun, exhausting, but that reward is sometimes a few years in the future. It’s fun, because we get to be creative and interact with young minds, and it’s exhausting, because it’s work on a lot of different levels with not always a direct result. The reward comes from seeing progress and growth in the future (thank you social media) and for that you have to be able to view the student as was, as can be and as is. As a teacher I do my best to really ‘see’ each student, to acknowledge their identity and make them feel welcome and valued. And you cannot but be touched along the way.

Fellow teachers might recognize some of these type of students. Maybe, hopefully, some of my former students can recognize themselves here and tell me how they’ve grown.

I see the student who always, diligently, works hard and thorough, stays for questions and participates in class trying so hard to understand the initially confounding poems through the questions I pose in the paper. I also see him succeeding, judging by the excited tapping of his foot and I feel a sense of achievement for him.

I see the insecure student for she is constantly getting bad grades, yet she equally tries hard. She used to give up more easily for lack of self-confidence, but has learned to persevere more and I feel sad that I can’t make her feel better about herself in this subject.

I see the secretly ambitious student who has overcome test anxiety and is now resting his tired hand for all the writing he has done and I feel hopeful of a good grade for him.

I see the forever insecure student for he is told over and over again how lazy he is, with his head on the table. Yet he is the one who consistently connects all the right dots. He can allow himself to be lazy, for a minimal effort on his part still gets him a passing mark. He reminds me of myself to be honest, and I feel like giving him a hug and telling him to trust his instincts. Not that he would listen.

I see the smart, hardworking student confidently scribbling away in that neat and clean handwriting of hers and I feel assured of yet another good grade on her list.

I also see the student who has lost all faith in his abilities and fate, because of the hardship he has had to face in his short little life. He is digging into a difficult question he totally knows the answer to. He’s scratching away at his paper with his pen as fast as it will go, frustrated he can’t write down this answer as fast as it’s formulating in his head. I feel proud of him to have at least this sensation of passion and achievement, even if it’s only for one question.

Then there’s the expat student who revels in her newness and loves to show off the exposure she’s benefitted from in her previous school. I am grateful for her being here to share with the other students what the level can be outside of this tiny community.

I see the student who has fooled himself (and used to fool his teachers) into thinking that he’s working hard, being confronted by deficiencies in his vocabulary and frustrated he can’t express himself clearly on paper and I feel the smallest hint of justification for making sections of this paper hard.

I see the top-of-the-class student who sometimes pretends not to know an answer so as to make himself more likeable to the rest of the class. He needs more of a challenge and is insecure about himself because of how easy everything seems to be for him. He is thinking “This can’t be right, there must be some deeper answer to this question,” that he is overlooking something, that this is too easy. I feel for him, because he is not exposed enough to the optimal learning environment he needs.

I see the student battling health issues and pent-up anger still trying to achieve good grades despite her missing a lot of school and I feel frustrated there’s no way I can help her more with that. She has to work out that for herself.

So there. One class, only ten students, each with his or her own struggles and skills. All of them are unique, all of their personalities have touched me in some way. That’s where to find the reward: knowing that I have impacted them in their young lives. I sure hope to somehow have an impact on their development, their futures and dreams.

I hope they will also go through the emotions they elicit in me. I wish them all the pride, justification, achievement, hope, confidence, affection, sadness, frustration, sympathy and gratitude they make me feel.

Teaching on Saba explained in six paradoxes

For the past 7 years I’ve been a high school teacher on this beautiful island called Saba in the Dutch Caribbean. This blog post, as such, has been 7 years in the making. I’ve been struggling to write a blog post about teaching here that explains the complexities of education on this intricate little island without it being a tedious read or stepping on any toes, while honouring the many, many factors at play. I just couldn’t for the life of me come up with an angle until I came up with this one: it’s all one big paradox! No wait, it’s more than one! The following six paradoxes make teaching here so complex yet rewarding. Allow me take you on a personal teaching journey through Saba.

Paradox #1: It’s difficult to define identity

Saba, this gorgeous green volcano in the Northeastern part of the Caribbean, is one of the best kept secrets in the region. It is peaceful and small (only 2000 inhabitants); big enough to warrant strong local pride, but too small to be independent. In recent years a cacophony of influences from The Netherlands, Colombia, other Caribbean islands, Philippines, Canada and the United States is changing the demographic, causing some cultural tensions, though overall people here are still very friendly and open.

The most paradoxal element is that, though Saba is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and issues its residents Dutch passports, English is the language of day-to-day life and our currency is the US dollar. To make matters more complicated, the lower school follows a Canadian curriculum, and our high school follows the British Caribbean curriculum from the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC). So that means that our students, who watch American TV, have to read texts about Jamaican Patois or Creole and learn about countries like Barbados and Trinidad, but don’t learn about the culture, history and government on Saba, St. Eustatius or Bonaire. Our students, some of whom have never left this island, have never seen any typical West-Indian sports like track and field or cricket (there’s hardly enough flat land on Saba to allow for an airstrip, let alone a cricket pitch), don’t learn about the Dutch monarchy, or World War II.

No wonder the students don’t identify as Dutch! Yet the Dutch examination system won’t work either, because that is in Dutch and presupposes certain cultural familiarity and hardly relates to our Caribbean students’ world. They wouldn’t know of a proudly national ice-skating race of 200+ kilometers (124+ mile, case in point) called ‘de Elfstedentocht’ (11-cities ride), but it could just be used in an exam to calculate speed or distance. We would like to see them go study in the Netherlands where they can get a decent university education for $3000 a year and receive student financing from the government, whereas US college fees are…, well, what they are. But not many of them want to go Dutch for reasons mentioned above. It’s a vicious cycle.

These differing systems on the island and their cultures also lead to all sorts of confusion in everyday life. We’ve got letter-sized paper, but also A4-size. We measure in inches and pounds, but also in centimeters and kilos and we talk about Fahrenheit, but also Celsius. So before being able to understand each other fully, we constantly need to establish which system we’re using. Are we a five square mile island or a 13 square kilometer island? If you want to talk about identity that can be quite an important question.

Paradox (or not?) #2: Early literacy instruction present yet expressive skills absent

Another paradox of teaching on Saba is that literacy is treated as important from a very young age, but despite this the result is not as evident. In my high school classroom I see a lot of children struggling to use language to express their thoughts and feelings. There are some students who still have trouble writing full sentences just using correct punctuation and capitals even when they’re fifteen or sixteen. There will always be a margin of these kinds of students wherever you teach, but in my classes, I’ve observed this to be 3 or 4 out of 10. There are still teenagers who consistently write the days of the week and months with a lower case letter, or even worse, their own name. Then there’s also the need for instant gratification, which I think is a generational thing, that complicates gaining any long-term results. What about those other 6 or 7 out of 10 who do perform? There are of course also students who do well and that makes it challenging for the teacher to cater to every students’ needs. Never a dull day in a teacher’s life.

Paradox #3: Heaps of homework given, but horrendous homework ethic

My three-year-olds were given homework. My three. Year. Olds. These are kids who can’t even explain coherently what happened that same morning. I have to figure out if the “birthday” was for a classmate or on TV, if it happened that day or some other day or if my kid just dreamed it or played it. Homework? Oh please. You’d expect that the kids would get used to doing homework, since they’re starting so young, leading to excellent homework ethic, right? Wrong!

Giving kids homework only creates a bigger divide between socio-economic classes. The children whose parents are already involved will do well, but it’s the children whose parents are incapable of helping with homework that suffer. Students of for example single parents who work three jobs or who don’t have the facilities or faculty to help, will always feel inadequate and low confidence leads to less learning [1][2], increasing the divide even more. Don’t get me wrong, I take my hat off to any single mom out there. I know all of them want the best for their kids. That’s why it’s so important to NOT give homework. How do you recognize good education? When students can be successful no matter what socio-economic background they come from. That’s what we need to work on, especially here. 

Paradox #4: They don’t dislike you, it just looks that way

One other paradox of teaching on Saba is that students are kind and sweet (though there is such a thing as a mob-mind, for true), but non-verbal behaviour is absolutely atrocious. Most, not all, will roll their eyes, sigh, suck their teeth, talk back, hang in their seats, shrug their shoulders, give you attitude, turn their back on you, even give you The Look. Seriously, one fifteen-year-old gave me The Look on several occasions trying to get me to give in. Saban students are totally oblivious to the effect this behaviour has on people outside of Saba. I can’t really blame them, because more often than not that is the norm. Why would you know how to introduce yourself if all the people you ever meet are people you already know? They are totally unaware that this behaviour is not normal, so if you try to correct them, they misinterpret what the problem is (they’ll think it’s personal), which will lead to more attitude. Trust me, as a new teacher on Saba, this behaviour takes the most getting used to.

However, the toughest looking students are the ones hanging by the side of the road, but when you walk past them, their chests swell, their eyes light up and their smiles shine out. ‘Hi, miss!’, they wave like the kid they are. The students also write you cute notes thanking you for being their teacher, give you hugs when they see you, are genuinely interested in your life, invite you to get-togethers, tell you happily when they saw you somewhere over the weekend, pet your hair (nope, somehow that doesn’t get weird until they reach like form 3 / grade 10) and the greatest compliment of all: tell you what’s really on their minds. You learn not take their non-verbal behaviour at face value and hope that your presence can show them that positivity, openness and  kindness can also be strengths.

Paradox #5: To plan, or not to plan? That is the question 

One not so paradoxal paradox is that nobody follows the school calendar, and yet some teachers complain about the lack of homework ethic in our students. Every year there will be events planned that never materialise. Every year there will be days in which no teaching can take place that were not in the planning, though could have been. So, teachers plan loosely and leave room for unexpected events. Remember, you’re in the Caribbean, so might as well pour yourself a rum and play some reggae or soca. Then again, maybe leave the rum out of the classroom…

Paradox #6: It’s bittersweet to say goodbye, but it’s bad to say it too often

People come and go. American or Canadian medical students and their spouses stay around two years. Policy workers for the government stay from six months up to two years. Colombian cleaning ladies come for a few years to make money to send  home to their kids. After hurricanes Irma and Maria we harboured refugees from nearby islands. There’s no telling how long people will stay. Saban graduates study in the Netherlands or the US and return or they don’t; there’s not always a job for them here. Saying goodbye here is a fact of life that kids grow up with from a young age. The small community of Saba feels the effects of this more than a big city or even a town would.

Despite this continuous saying goodbye, we still want students to leave the island, to experience a reality outside Saba for themselves. It is almost always for the better for the student. Though sometimes when they do leave, it’s not for reasons we’d like to see. I’ve seen students being deported because of troublesome home situations or passed around between family members to other islands like a Netflix subscription. It upsets the small community of students (we have around a 100 in the Entire. High. School) and influences class atmosphere and learning.

And it’s not just students leaving. Teachers leave all the time too and students have to adjust just as much as teachers do. It  gets tiresome and I can’t blame the kids being apprehensive every time a new teacher comes in. Bets will be placed how long this one is going to last, though when someone actually wins that bet, everybody loses. I get it, almost everybody gets “Island Fever”, when you just want to get off the island and be anonymous for a few days in for example neighbouring Sint-Maarten, but don’t mistake island fever for a reason to abandon the island altogether.

One benefit from all this leaving is, however, that Sabans have a network all over the world. Once they know you ‘from Saba’, you’re in their good book. It’s a matter of course. People sometimes drop by unannounced because they had a cousin’s friend’s sister who was from Saba and that’s okay, it goes without saying.

Perceptible progress

Regardless of these paradoxes, getting to know the island and the students really is the highlight of teaching here. That’s why I tell every new teacher to at least give it until Christmas to adjust. Open your mind and open your heart and revel in the good you can do here. The students need it, the island craves it and you will love it once you are synced to the island. Just Give. It. Time. It’s a bit like cleaning a pile of really dirty dishes. At first you are overwhelmed and don’t know where to start, but the reward is peace of mind. Your work is apparent instantly. That’s where the greatest paradox lies: we want our students to need less instant gratification, but the beauty of teaching here lies in the gratification teachers get. One thing that is NOT a paradox is that Saba is unique.

[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110404105901.htm

[2] https://visible-learning.org/hattie-ranking-influences-effect-sizes-learning-achievement/

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Vo-ca-tion: ”A strong feeling of suitability for a particular career or occupation”.

My students ask me sometimes why I chose to become a teacher. Their intonation and their posture hints at a different phrase: “Why in Heaven’s Name would Anybody want to consider becoming a Teacher?!” And boy, do I understand where they are coming from. When I was their age I couldn’t dare imagine teaching a bunch of disinterested, unmotivated, know-it-all adolescents like myself. “You should become a teacher,” somebody said to me then, and that remark alone made me want to walk away indignantly huffing.

So why did I? After an internship in the Royal Netherlands Institute of Sciences in my third year in linguistics, I found out that linguistics is practiced inside a room, thinking. A linguist could sit inside a room thinking about language structures all day, because the object of his study is his own language faculty. Sometimes linguists do fieldwork, but usually they have minions do the fieldwork for them, while the linguists are cooped up, crunching data. Data that could possibly lead to stunning results, but were more likely to generate a need for more data. Suffice to say, after three months of social isolation in the name of science, I craved another human being to talk to so much that I changed my career plan.

This still doesn’t answer the question of why I became a teacher, now does it? Call it serendipity, fate, chance or providence, this last minute change of career was not easy. The only course that was still available in my major was in education and I needed the credit. I was assigned to an absolutely wonderful school for my first practical internship with the best teacher coach anybody could ever wish for. I had only taught three full lessons, but my path in life was set when she wrote the words ‘Rhiannon is a natural and we would love to welcome her back when she finishes her studies’. It turned out I was good at making contact and motivating students.

So far, no regrets. This job has literally taken me from East to West and enriched me in ways I couldn’t have imagined. Over the years, teaching has brought me great pleasure, but also heart break and head ache. It is heartbreaking to see that weak student try so hard and still fail. And everybody will understand the frustration of that one particular student you just can’t reach. It is, however, immensely satisfying to see students thrive under your watchful eye and to see them grasp important themes such as ‘the power of knowledge’ or ‘the importance of freedom of speech’. The most rewarding moment in any teacher’s life is that moment when you can almost see the penny drop; the student’s eyes widen, the index finger goes up, she gasps and exclaims, “Oh, so that is why …!”

Interestingly enough, though, it wasn’t a conscious choice that initially led me to a career in teaching. I just followed the path laid out for me. Something brought me on here for whatever reason. Something was spelling it out for me, “Follow this yellow brick road”, with a big flashing arrow hovering over my head. I believe that if the signs are that obvious, you better do what they tell you to. And I was right. Whatever that something was that put me on this path, I am grateful.

The word vocation comes from Latin ‘vocare’, which means ‘to call’. I was called to this job and I wouldn’t want to change it for all the careers in the world.