Budapest and Baltimore

One of the biggest perks of Jason's job (aside from the whole living in Bordeaux thing) is that he has a handful of all-expenses paid conferences around the world every year. Some of the destinations are a bit underwhelming (Galveston, TX? I'll pass.) but more often than not, he gets to travel to some pretty awesome places. This year alone he has conferences in Boston, San Francisco, Naples/the Amalfi coast and, most recently in Budapest. When I learned that I happened to have a few days off right around the time that he would be there, I bought up some tickets, booked a flight and packed my bags. Eastward bound!

What up, Alps??

That same week, I learned of yet another young black man losing his life due to police misconduct and this time, it hit particularly hard because it happened in Baltimore. Freddie Gray could have easily been one of my students and my students could have easily been Freddie Gray. Every time this happens, I see my brothers, my cousins, my friends, my FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS that did not deserve to die. When the protests started in Baltimore, I was worried for the safety of my former students, their families and my friends who still live there, but mostly, I was proud that my city was speaking out. This type of police brutality will not stand! Our voices will be heard! And then the violence started. A handful of isolated incidents, to be sure, but burning buildings and broken windows draw more viewers than peaceful marches so that's all that we saw on the news.

The ignorant were in top form, showing their racist colors all over social media and I couldn't stand it anymore. In the grand scheme of things, a frustrated Facebook post doesn't do much to help the cause but it's the best I could do when I live on the other side of the ocean. How can we condemn the reaction of a group of citizens that has been systematically neglected and abused for decades when one of their own is murdered by the very people meant to protect him? Why is it that outsiders didn't seem to care when a young man was killed in police custody but everyone is suddenly up in arms when property is damaged? They care more about buildings than black lives and this was never more apparent than this week. A small minority of black people react with violence when they actually have something to be angry about and it's a riot. Hundreds of white people flipping and burning cop cars, looting and tearing streetlights out of the ground after the big game, and it's just some sports fans celebrating a win! The hypocrisy was killing me.

The last person I expected to get into a Facebook feud with was my 1st grade teacher, who recently friended me. In response to my post, she jumped right on the white supremacy bandwagon, calling the protesters thugs and shaming them for destroying their own communities. "I can't condone violence! They should remain peaceful if they want people to listen to them!" I wanted to tell her that her racist comments were not welcome on my wall. I wanted to tell her to shut her stupid mouth if she didn't have anything nice to say. Isn't that what they teach you in 1st grade? I wanted to call her an ignorant asshole who didn't know the first thing about suffering. Instead, I destroyed every single one of her bullshit comments with carefully researched statistics and evidence. I was patient and polite, but I was definitely not letting her get away with being an idiot. It was an epic battle but in the end, it seemed like she almost started to understand how outrageously racist every word out of her mouth was. I felt good about standing up for my students and the community that shaped who I am today. It was a small act, but one that may have opened a few eyes and certainly showed whose side I was on.

I spent all of my time in the airport dealing with her foolishness and by the time I landed in Budapest, I was nearly out of battery on my phone. I got out of the subway in the right neighborhood but the map I had was not helping me get to my hotel. I used my last 2% and some international phone charges to call the hotel owner to come and get me.

Agnes showed me to our INCREDIBLE hotel, right in the heart of the city, and I was settled in by 7:30pm. Jason was staying across town for the conference but would join me later that evening. He had a dinner cruise to attend but we planned to meet up at his hotel afterward, around 9. By the time I got done being a social media warrior, it was around 8:45 so I figured I should find something to eat myself. I enjoyed a quick and quiet dinner for one at a little pizza place up the road and texted Jason to let him know that I was on my way to him. I didn't get a response but since we had a plan, I didn't think much of it.

When I arrived at the hotel, I had them call his room but he didn't pick up. I sent text after text with no response. I even called his cell (more international charges) with no success. I finally got a very curt message from him: "At ruin bar. Come meet us." Where? How? Which bar? "It's a bit of a walk." In which direction? Do I need to get a cab? Is it safe?

I asked the front desk staff if they had any idea what he might be talking about and they gave me a map of the city with some suggestions of where he probably was. Let us keep in mind that I have just arrived in Budapest, a city I know literally nothing about. As a young woman, walking alone in a new city at night, with only a rough idea of where I was supposed to be going, you can imagine why I was a little anxious. I was texting and calling non-stop and getting NOTHING from Jason. Not cool.

When I finally found the "bar", it was actually a large beer garden of sorts, with several bars in a long row, and there were literally hundreds of people milling about in the streets. I'm supposed to find you in this?!?? You've got to be kidding. I had flown across the continent to come see him, and he blew me off to go drinking with his buddies, without giving me so much as a heads up. I went from being slightly on edge to being downright livid.

I finally found him in the crowd and he acts as if everything is all good. I made it very clear that I was pissed and he could not for the life if him figure out why! You ditched me. You didn't call. You left me to wander around by myself in the middle of the night in a place I've never been. You don't understand why this is a big deal. To be fair, I was already a little riled up after my Facebook fight (21st century problems), and he was certainly not helping. I asked him to get me a beer and he came back with one for his buddy, one that he had already half drunk himself and none for me. I was thisclose to just heading back to the hotel.

Of course, Jason had about a million excuses for why he was so inconsiderate and tried to put it all right back on me. I should have been at the hotel earlier (even though he had confirmed it was okay that I was about 15 minutes late). He had to stay with the group or he would have lost them (even though everyone had a phone and he could have just texted them to figure out where they had gone.) His phone wasn't working (even though it was working perfectly fine before). I had nothing to worry about while walking around by myself because everyone told him Budapest is really safe. (because I would know that after just getting off the plane...) No apology at all. I was floored. I spent the rest of the night talking to everyone but him.

Even though the conference was over, Jason had work to do the next day so I was left to explore on my own. I walked everywhere and saw some really stunning parts of the city up close and personal. The fisherman's bastion was definitely my favorite. So intricate and colorful!

The view of Budapest from Gellert Hill

St. Stephen's Basilica. There was a beautiful wedding going on inside!

Matthias Church

The Fisherman's Bastion

Parliament Building

Some old friends were also in town so we arranged to get dinner with them later. In another miscommunication, Jason told them the wrong restaurant and didn't even realize it until we had been sitting by ourselves for 20 minutes. When they finally arrived, he was full of apologies, couldn't say sorry enough for the confusion and moderate inconvenience, even offering to buy the first bottle of wine. I was still waiting for so much as a "my bad." (Spoiler alert: I never got it.)

The next day, we were supposed to do some more exploring together but Jason's work took longer than expected and he spent another day in the hotel writing a paper and I spent another day wandering on my own. I do love a nice day to myself from time to time but I had very much been looking forward to a romantic weekend that never really came to be. These things happen, I suppose. He met me later in the evening for a walk up to the parliament building and dinner at a nice restaurant before meeting up with some folks for a beer or two.

Don't these dudes looks like they just saw a fine lady walk by?
"I hate to see you go but i LOVE to watch you leave"

On the banks of the Danube

The only picture of the two of us from the whole weekend.

On our last day, we went to the Rudas Turkish bath house and enjoyed a very relaxing soak in some ultra-old pools of varying temperatures. There were also several saunas that were hot enough to bake your back fat off if you sat there long enough. I lasted all of 20 seconds before finding a bucket of cold water to dump over my head. Refreshing!

We didn't do much touristy stuff on this trip but I found the history really interesting. While many parts of Budapest look old, a lot of the buildings are actually reconstructions. After WWI, the Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed and Hungary lost half of their citizens to the surrounding countries. Revolutions sprung up in the wake of the war, stagnating economic growth or recovery, and not long after, Budapest became a front line city in WWII, suffering intense damage as a result. The war was followed by several years of Soviet occupation that left the city economically disadvantaged. The Hungarians finally regained control in 1989, having spent 70 years in turmoil.

One of the most powerful monuments in the whole city is a sculpture called "Shoes on the Danube." When the Nazis took over, they would go on nightly raids to round up Jews and execute them on the banks of the river. They made them take off their shoes and stand on the edge so that when they fell, their bodies would be washed down the river. The sculpture is a truly humbling tribute to those that lost their lives and a constant reminder of that tragic period in Europe's history.

It was an emotionally charged weekend, to be sure. From a more-serious-than-normal spat with my husband, to grieving the loss of another black man at the hands of the police, to the senseless death of Jews during the Holocaust, I will always remember Budapest with a heavy heart. But perhaps, one full of hope for the future, as well...

Teacher Appreciation Week: Chapter 5

Chapter 5: The End and the Beginning

It was a happy coincidence that Jason was accepted into the lab in Bordeaux just as I was at my wits' end in Baltimore. I couldn't have done another year at that school so the timing was perfect. The five months between the end of school and moving to France were no walk in the park, though. I was going insane with boredom and was just so anxious to get OUT of the city that had completely sapped my soul but Jason was not ready to go yet. He had a great thing at his lab, with lots of friends in town and I wanted him to end it all and move to another country where he didn't know the language or the people or anything. You can see why he was reluctant to pack his bags and give it all up. This certainly caused some tension between us which is a lot of the reason I ended up moving first. I had to leave.

The scars left by those final years in Baltimore have been slow to heal. There were times when I doubted that I wanted to continue teaching. This is saying something coming from the girl who dreamed of doing nothing but teaching since the day she was born. There were times when I felt like nothing and nobody was ever going to be able to fix the problems facing Baltimore City Schools. I felt like I had failed and if I had all that love and all that skill and all that passion and I still couldn't do it, then how can we expect our students to succeed, knowing how many obstacles face them?

Yet, with this distance, both physical and emotional, that I have been afforded by my time in France, I am starting to feel tiny twinges of hope again. Hope that there are schools that are leading students to academic success. That there are principals who will take responsibility for their school's culture and be the stewards even of a sinking ship. That there are schools where teachers are trusted to do their jobs well. That there are districts where everyone is held accountable, from the school board to the school nurse. I have hope that I will be better when I go back into the classroom and continue that dream that I dreamed so long ago.

In the meantime, I want to extend my appreciation to all the teachers who are still fighting the good fight back home and probably have similar stories to share. Your struggles, no matter how big or small, are real but you have to power to solve them. If your school keeps you from doing your job, find another school that will nurture your talents and respect you as a professional. You are doing the most important work in the world. Even though you don't always see the results of this work immediately (or ever), you have to trust that you have made an impact. Regardless of whether you have known since you were little that teaching was your calling or you just stumbled into it, you are changing lives. I hope the gravity of that truth moves you to be better, be stronger, and to be the educator that your students deserve.

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week.

Teacher Appreciation Week: Chapter 4

Chapter 4: When It's Gone, It's Gone

In my fourth year, there was a very tangible shift. It started with the staff. We had a lot of our core members move on to bigger and better things, mostly for personal reasons. No hard feelings, of course, but it was never quite the same after they left. Despite growing student enrollment, we didn't take on many new staff members. For the ones we did, we never really took the time to get them on board with the mission or the model of the school, so some of the elements of what was once a very strict code of conduct started to loosen up and fall away due simply to a lack of consistent enforcement.

At the same time, there most recent AYP numbers were not looking good and someone was going to have to answer for them. There were a lot of finger-pointing policies that came down from the superintendent and since no one was interested in taking the blame for the failing district, it was placed squarely on the shoulders of the teachers. We were the easiest scapegoat, of course, because if the children aren't passing the tests and graduating, then it must be because the teachers aren't teaching them well enough! It couldn't possibly be any of these things that are COMPLETELY out of a teacher's control:
-student absenteeism
-malnutrition
-trauma (abuse, neglect, exposure to/participation in violence)
-poorly crafted district-mandated curricula
-malaligned standardized tests
-devalued diplomas
-ineffective school/district leaders
-allure of gang lifestyle
-lack of discipline at home (absent parents, lack of parenting skills)
-lack of prerequisite skills for high school achievement
-lack of resources (for students to complete assigned tasks)
-lack of resources (for teachers to give effective instruction)
-lack of faith in the education system in general

Yet, sadly, these were all of the things that were somehow my fault and if I just taught my classes better, it would solve everything! Kids would leave the gangs, come in off the streets, quit the jobs that they needed to support their younger siblings/junkie parents/children of their own, and come join me in Spanish 1 because that seems like something that is going to have an immediate positive effect on their lives!

And when the attendance police pick the students up and dump them in a chair in my classroom, you can bet your bottom dollar that they are going to be ready to learn, bright eyed from that night they spent sleeping on a park bench because they got evicted. They will certainly be prepared to participate after missing the first 75% of the course while they were busy selling drugs on the corner. On test day, I'm sure they had a balanced breakfast of Hot Cheetos and grape soda at 10:30am when they finally decided to roll into the school with no uniform, no books, nothing to write with, nothing to write on, and a chip on their shoulder because somebody looked at them funny on their way in the building.

Around this same time when teachers were being blamed for all of the fallout of Baltimore's societal ills, our administration also sold our collective souls for a little extra cash. Since having special education students gets you more district funding, we decided to take on the PRIDE Program for students with emotional disabilities. I can't even begin to explain how completely unprepared we were to admit this group of students. We didn't have the staff, we didn't have the training, we didn't have the resources or the structure or anything that was required to give these students the services they needed so they really could get an education. We just saw dollar signs for each kid who was on the list. Shame on us for our selfishness and greed. We certainly paid for it later.

When you have students with emotional disabilities, a simple request like, "Please take a seat" becomes a personal attack. "You don't own me, bitch! Shut the fuck up! I do what I want. Can't nobody tell me nothing. Niggas think they run this shit. I run this shit!"

What do you do in a situation like that? Do you start screaming obscenities right back at them? Do you raise your fists and prepare to fight? Do you throw something? Or do you see that behind all that rage is a 14 year old child that has seen more hurt and pain that you will ever see in your privileged life? Do you know that his reaction has NOTHING to do with you and everything to do with a life of frustration and disappointment and struggle? Do you know that this is the only way he's been taught to speak to authority figures?

So you say, "I need you to step outside and come back to class when you are calm enough to learn. I'll be here when you're ready." Sometimes they never come back. Sometimes they are forced to come back and they sit in the corner with their heads down, listening to their iPods, refusing to even try. Sometimes they come back and apologize. You never know. But what you can guarantee will happen is that your general ed students will take note that this kid just punked you and nothing was done about it. They see that he doesn't have to wear a uniform like everyone else. They see that there are new limits and they are going to try to find just how far they can push those limits before everything snaps.

He said "I run this shit," and he was right. Control slipped away from the teachers into the waiting hands of the students and there was no coming back from it. The little details like having your shirt tucked in or wearing the right color shoes were completely forgotten because it was a victory just getting kids into a classroom, regardless of what they looked like or how they acted.

The district decided that suspensions were no longer an option for disciplining students except in "extreme circumstances" (read: bloodshed) so we had no option for students who were way out of line (throwing/kicking desks, cursing at teachers, making violent threats, sexual harassment, etc.) but didn't, say, stab anyone. I don't think kids should be wantonly kicked out of school either, but then you need better "in house" consequences and behavior management tactics so that you don't need to even think about suspension. We had none of those and a whole lot of situations got unnecessarily bad, but not quite bad enough, so there was nothing we could do about it.

How do you run a school where "just show up" is the standard and the expectation? Our principal must have asked himself the same question and was at a loss for a solution so he gave up, too. What was clearly a school culture issue was branded as teachers just not working hard enough. Instead of supporting us and trusting our expertise to create engaging lessons, we were scrutinized and docked points on our evaluations for inconsequential omissions like not having enough words on our Word Walls.

Trust and love were replaced with blame and bitterness. The once quiet, orderly hallways were now 24-hour party zones. The focus used to be on student achievement and now it was simply on covering your ass so they couldn't find a reason to fire you. There was no collaborative spirit anymore, no sense of family. It was us, the teachers, versus them, the administration, the district, the students and the parents and no one was going down without a fight.

Our school motto was "Excellence is the expectation," and when I first arrived at the school, the students repeated this slogan to each other, to themselves, to their parents... They believed it. I believed it. At the end of my tenure there, it was virtually forgotten, or worse, dripping with sarcasm and disdain. The only expectation was that you would end up a nobody going nowhere, just like all your friends, and all your relatives and everyone you've ever known because that's the only thing this city is really good at.

There were some positive moments in those last two years: I had another great semester with some of my students in the class of 2011. They were always such a pleasure to teach and it helped that I had their class last period because they could erase an entire day's worth of frustration with 90 minutes of awesome. They were the reason I came to work everyday.

I also go to teach AP psychology in my 5th year. Our principal had been "teaching it"for two years but more often than not, that meant leaving the kids in a room by themselves (which happened to be my room during my planning period) to read their textbooks and answer sample exam questions. Finally, I got fed up and offered to take the class over myself. It was wonderful getting to try something different and to push the students to the next level but the fact of the matter is that none of them were quite ready to make that leap yet. Due to scheduling conflicts, I only got a semester where the principal had the class all year and I feel like I could have done so much more with a little more time.

One of the best experiences was participating in the Chill program, sponsored by Burton. My friend Heather had been the coordinator for the three years she was at the school and I picked up the slack when she left. It's a program that teaches life lessons such as patience, persistence, courage and pride, through snowboarding. Six weeks, one night a week, everything paid for and in the end, you come out a better person who also knows how to snowboard. If you work with underserved or at-risk youth, see if there is a Chill program near you. It's the only thing that got me through my last year.

That year was filled with disappointment and when it was over, I tried to be happy for the seniors but I mostly felt angry that so few of them even deserved to be on that stage. I was angry about how many had cheated and lied and complained their way to a 60% and had the nerve to be proud of it. I was angry that my principal had sold us out. I was angry that my friends had left when things were still good. Most of all I was angry at myself for being so defeated.

When I think back to what my school was and what it became, it breaks my heart. I was so proud of my school, of my students, of my fellow staff members. Maybe it was being young and maybe it was being optimistic but I really believed we were something special. I truly believed that teachers could make a difference, despite all the odds working against us. In five years, that faith was stripped away and a cold sense of helplessness was all that remained. I thought I could change the world but I turned out to be just another teacher who got eaten by the system.

Teacher Appreciation Week: Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Get Into the Groove

Year 2 came faster than I expected. For various reasons, I didn't quite have the productive summer I was hoping for but in retrospect, it was probably better I just took the time to unwind. I had earned it! School was always on my mind, though, and by August I had a much clearer picture of what I needed to do and the systems I could put in place to work smarter, not harder. Plus, I was returning to a staff I already knew and trusted as well as students with whom I had formed some pretty solid relationships. I was excited to get back into the classroom and prove I wasn't a total n00b anymore.

We had our first senior class in my second year. Teaching the 12th grade is simultaneously the best and worst grade to teach. They are the oldest and (usually) most mature students in the building. The other students look up to them and with good reason. These seniors had built our school from the ground up and they had an infectious sense of pride about it. They weren't necessarily the brightest bunch but they cared about each other, which is a lot harder to teach.

Unfortunately, the typical symptoms of senioritis, which we had in spades that year, were aggravated by district-wide pressure to graduate everyone. This was a strange concept to me. How can you graduate a kid if they haven't done the work to pass their classes? Enter: "the make-up work packet." Teachers were expected to put together a stack of worksheets for students to complete in lieu of the assigned work from the semester. That way, if a student was absent all semester, for whatever reason (usually not a good one), they could still get their credit for the class by doing the packet.

Unbelievably, there was a similar system invented for the standardized state tests that all students were required to pass. If you failed them twice, you were eligible for a series of "projects," the number of which was determined by how badly you failed the tests. The projects were completed with the aid of teacher "project monitors" who were supposed to "coach" the students through the projects so that the projects would be accepted.

These last minute scrambles to give kids credit were all due to the stipulations of No Child Left Behind, which basically stated that all students must meet state standards for graduation (passing their classes and any required tests) or their schools would lose their funding. Of course, none of these alternative methods actually proved that students had learned anything. No self-respecting teacher would say that a semester's worth of work could be made up by a series of take home worksheets and zero class time but what choice did we have? If your school loses funding, you lose your job. So what do you do? You make up a bunch of stupid worksheets, you give a kid a D-, you do their projects for them. All of this at the request of your administrators.

Watching the first class graduate was bittersweet. Some of the students had overcome so many personal obstacles and worked so hard and it was such a great feeling to have helped in some way along their journey to this milestone. Others had slacked off until the very last moment, gotten their teachers or friends to do all their work for them and somehow still thought they were going to make it in college. Also, literally half the senior class had at least one child before graduation. It was a bit surreal.

Though it wasn't always pretty, we loved those kids anyway. They were our first graduates and with one class under our belts, we were better prepared to take on the next one. Okay, Class of 2010. Bring it on.

***

In the third year, I felt like I really hit my stride. I had solid curricula for both Spanish 1 and 2 and I was overflowing with cool ideas to jazz up my lessons. My Spanish 2 students were a little less interested in learning and working than I would have preferred but it wasn't just in my class so I didn't feel too bad. The Spanish 1 classes were amazing. I had my dream class, where every student was incredibly motivated and ready to learn. They pushed each other and they pushed me. It was a joy to teach them. I remember saying to myself after teaching a class with them, "I finally understand how people can do this job forever."

You're thinking, "What?!? In an inner city school in Baltimore?" but yeah, they were that good. They were my class, the ones that came in when I did so we had a special bond, which certainly helped my classroom management, but more importantly they seemed to care about learning and they tried hard. That may seem like a given in other school districts but it certainly was not the case in mine and it made all the difference. My problems no longer centered on what to teach, but how to make sure every student understood it. It was a big shift and one that meant I could really stretch my wings as an educator and do whatever it took to get them there. INVIGORATING.

The spring was wrought with the same issues we faced with the class of 2009, but I was so eager to have my '11s again in the fall that I didn't even really care. 2010 had a few shining stars but overall, we were all pretty happy to be done with them. I must admit, my "why I teach" moment came from a student from the class of 2010:

One of my favorite students of all time, Parquita, was looking a map in my classroom with stars indicating all the places I had traveled in the world. I had been around thanks to my semester in Spain and having summers off so there were quite a few stars. It has always been a topic of conversation with my students since many of them have never left Baltimore.

With wonder in her eyes she turned to me and said, "Is it really possible?"
"Is what really possible?"
"To be a teacher and to go all those places. I want to see the world. I always thought about becoming a teacher but I didn't know if I would make enough money to support my family and travel some."
"It's definitely possible," I said. "I'm always going somewhere. It's good to get away and you definitely have the time to do it as a teacher."
"Then that settles it, Ms. Stich. I think I want to become a teacher. And when I come back and see you in a couple years, just you wait. I'm gonna have some stars on my map, too."

CRYING

Teacher Appreciation Week: Chapter 2

Chapter 2: The First Year

To be fair, I don't think I had a very typical Teach For America experience. You hear these horror stories of people feeling completely underprepared and they get eaten alive on the first day of school. The children can smell fresh blood and they know exactly how to draw some more if you aren't ready to deal with them from the get go.

Thanks to my teaching degree and a really great content specialist at the TFA summer institute, I was a few steps ahead of the 80 other corps members that joined along with me. I already knew how to lesson plan, I had some classroom management strategies, I knew several instructional methods to get kids engaged and, most of all, I knew my content inside and out. I got some practice during my student teaching and at institute, so I knew what teaching Spanish was supposed to look like.

The next big challenge I was told to expect was a disengaged staff at my placement school. Incompetent administrators, ornery old teachers who forgot long ago why they ever went into teaching and were now simply collecting a paycheck, secretaries who wouldn't help you unless you bribed them... I was steeling my nerves for the worst, but my colleagues turned out to be amazing. Young, passionate, talented individuals who were eager to get their hands chalky and several seasoned veterans that still had the love of teaching in their hearts. I was very lucky. Sure, there were a few folks that I didn't agree with, but I knew I still had a lot to learn so I shut my mouth and opened my ears.

It was hard not to fall in love with my school. The halls were bright and inviting, with gold-yellow walls and burgundy lockers, the school colors. Since it was still a new high school, we only had grades 9, 10 and 11 my first year, and total enrollment was around 200. Class sizes were fairly small for a city school; no more than 25 students in each class and usually a lot less than that.

The biggest difference between my school and most other schools in Baltimore was that we were modeled after another successful charter school network in Chicago. We had a very strict code of conduct that outlined consequences for positive and negative behavior, the dress code, and the emphasis on the culture of achievement above all else.

In that first year, I wholeheartedly believed that my school was a place where everyone was focused on learning. My administration supported me and teachers were empowered to do what was needed to do their jobs well. My colleagues were my best friends. The students spoke about being a family and we were. At times dysfunctional, but what family isn't? If nothing else, we had love and it was apparent in everything we did. Teachers loved working there, kids loved going to school there and I truly felt like I was making a positive difference in the lives of children who needed it most. I couldn't have imagined a better place to be.

Certainly the first year was not without incident. I learned very quickly that race and, to a greater extent, class are still huge barriers to academic success in our country. I discovered the very real power of learned helplessness. It seemed like every student in the school had personal experience with violence, drug abuse, gangs, sexual assault, and the death of a young friend or family member and these traumas would manifest in the classroom from time to time. It was shocking and gut-wrenching and depressing and it filled me with rage every single day but I knew that's why I needed to be there.

I wasn't exactly the miracle worker that I thought I would be. For all my prior knowledge about teaching, I still had no idea how to plan a curriculum or how to develop a meaningful end of year goal to strive for. We had no texts or planning resources and so everything we did was created by yours truly. I had so many ideas but no systems to implement them. I think my saving grace was that it was the first year that the students were offered Spanish and they were just as excited as I was to be there. It was a challenge every day but at least I felt like we were all learning, myself more than anyone.

Teaching Dream Team

Teacher Appreciation Week: Chapter 1

In the spirit of Teacher Appreciation Week, I'd like to share my story of teaching in Baltimore. It spanned five years and covered pretty much the gamut of human emotion, so instead of making it one insanely long post, I have broken it into five chapters. I hope you'll join me in my trip down memory lane...

Chapter 1: It Was All A Dream

Teaching is the only thing I ever wanted to do. While other kids were playing House or Barbies or GI Joes, I was playing Teacher. In 7th grade, we got to start learning a foreign language and I chose Spanish. It was love at first sound. The gently rolled Rs, the rhyming melodies of adjective agreement, the softness and purity of the vowels... In an otherwise cloudy and confusing time, 12-year-old me had found clarity.

From that moment on, everything I did was to become a Spanish teacher. I spent the summer before I turned 17 at the Universidad de Salamanca in Spain so I could really start improving my language skills. I only looked into colleges that offered teaching certification programs in Spanish. I did my semester abroad in Seville. My student teaching and all my classroom observation hours were with other Spanish teachers. When I was approached by Teach For America about applying to the program, and I learned that they placed Spanish teachers, I knew this was my great opportunity to make my dreams a reality.

I am often asked why I opted for Teach For America as opposed to a "normal" teaching job if I already had the training and the certification to work at a "good" school. I like to say something really romanticized like, "I wanted to make the most significant impact" or "Because I knew that fate would find me a place where I was truly needed." It's bullshit. In all honesty, it was because I was scared to go out and hunt for a job on my own. I had never failed at anything in my life and I was terrified of putting myself out there, only to be rejected. At the same time, I had this completely unfounded confidence that I could go anywhere in the country and be awesome, right from the start. I had received some fairly positive feedback from my collaborating teachers and my professors so I naturally thought I was God's gift to the teaching profession. Oh, and remember, I had never failed at anything in my life so of course I was going to be great at this. Throw me to the wolves! I will tame the wild beasts with nothing but passion and sass!

Ah, to be young and naïve.

I was placed in Baltimore, I place I only knew from watching the first episode of The Wire and that one time we stopped at the Inner Harbor for lunch on our way to Annapolis for a band competition in 12th grade. People in Baltimore have boats. How bad could it be?

I packed the few worldly possessions I had amassed throughout college, loaded them into Jenna's Honda Civic and we were on the road to my new future. Sure, I was nervous but I felt ready. I felt like I could take on the world. I was 22, I had my first real job and I was going to change the world. I just knew it...

Confession

I'm terrible at keeping secrets, especially big ones, so I have to come clean about something:

Jason and I are married.

In fact, we've been married for over a year. Over the holidays, we decided to confess to our family and friends back home, who had no idea, and since I can't tell everyone in person, I guess this is the best I can do for now.

You're probably wondering how and why we would get married and not tell anyone, even our parents, for a whole year. That's fair. Here's the story. (This was originally much longer but if you want the director's cut, call me. I am happy to tell you all the gory details!)

After a couple months in France, it seemed like life really would be easier as a married couple so I pitched the idea to Jason in December 2012, right before I was was coming home for the break. He was more or less in agreement, and even though it was just the formality before our big wedding post-France, we wanted to invite our parents. There didn't seem to be a good day/location that was mutually convenient and both my mom and Jason's dad insisted that more people should be invited so it seemed that we weren't going to do it after all. DISAPPOINTED.

I was flying out of Baltimore on Saturday, January 5, and that Wednesday, Jason and I were heading back from the airport where I was trying to get my flight changed. We were chatting about the whole wedding thing again and I finally said, "I think we should just do it. No parents, no siblings, we don't tell anyone. We just go and do it. Just the two of us." So instead of going to the mall, we rushed to the courthouse in the 10 minutes before they were closing and applied for our marriage certificate. In Maryland, you have to wait 48 hours after you get your certificate to have the ceremony. Since the courthouse was only open on weekdays, it was literally now or never. We chose now.

On Friday, January 4, 2013 at 10am, I got out my little white dress (that my mother cajoled me into buying three months before we were even engaged), Jason put on a suit and we rolled over to the courthouse in the Green Lantern. We got Paul, Ama and Chuck, the people most responsible for our relationship (and most available to get off work in the morning), to be our witnesses. Ama even went so far as to put together some flowers so the guys could have boutonnieres and I could have a bouquet. It was all over in about 10 minutes (15 if you count posing for a few pictures, which are still on Ama's camera somewhere) and we went out for lunch at AleWife afterward. There was even champagne!

That night was officially billed as my goodbye party but it secretly doubled as our wedding reception with all of our closest Baltimore buddies, unknowingly celebrating our marriage. GOTCHA!

There were no limos, no matching dresses, no linens, no speeches, no favors, no cake and it was perfect. It was just us and our love and our commitment to each other. We didn't have to worry about accommodating anyone else. We did exactly what we wanted and what was best for us and I am so glad we decided to just go for it.

So now you know. I hope you're not mad. (Josh was a little mad.) Everyone else has been really cool about it and they are mostly just happy that we're happy, which is nice.

Why did we wait so long to confess? Many reasons, the main ones being 1) we weren't going to say anything until our big wedding but it was becoming harder to keep it a secret and I didn't want to have to lie to anyone, 2) we didn't know how people (our families, mostly) would react after not being there for it and 3) we really wanted to tell everyone in person. The first time we were both back in the US in the same place at the same time was this past holiday season.

How I am allowed to live in France without my own visa? Married couples get special privileges and I am basically Jason's +1 for the length of his contract. Our recent trip to Paris? It was to celebrate our first anniversary, which is probably why the guy at the hotel was so nice to us and we got free champagne at the restaurant. It all makes sense now!

Moral of the story: If you're moving to another country with your fiancé(e), just get secretly married before you go. Life is better together.

Unpacking Biases

It's about to get real up in here.

This story requires you to know some more about me. My mother is black and my father is white. I grew up in a quiet suburban/rural area and attended a mostly white school district. I had no concept of my race until about middle school when a friend brought it to my attention that my hair was really different from everyone else's. And my nose and lips and skin, for that matter. She brought up an interesting point but I didn't give it much thought.

My family was very well "blended," if you will, and I was part of a racially diverse group of friends, despite the school demographic at large. Aside from having slightly different colored skin, everyone in my life was pretty much the same: well-educated, middle-class, average in every way. No one lived in the ghetto or a trailer park. No one lived in a mansion. We didn't talk about race because it just wasn't an issue.

I went to a private college in the north-east and the majority of students there were white. To me, this was no big deal because it was just like my high school. I hardly even noticed. But there was a distinct difference between the humble, small-town folks I grew up with and the majority of the students at Ithaca: Money. 

With money comes privilege and, as I was quickly learning, privilege meant not having to interact with brown people. Brown people might come to clean their houses or manicure their lawns. Brown people might repair their BMWs or bus their tables after their five-star restaurant dinner. But they were not friends with brown people. They didn't talk to brown people. They were maybe even a little afraid of brown people. So afraid they wouldn't even talk about it at full volume. Why did you just whisper black to describe the guy we were hanging out with yesterday?

This seemed odd to me because my understanding of black was almost exclusively isolated to my experience with my friends and my mom's family and this was not the same image I had of minorities. They weren't super rich but they were doing well for themselves. They were articulate and worldly. Progressive. How could it be that I had this notion of black people and theirs was so different?

And then I moved to Baltimore. 

Talk about the other end of the spectrum. I went from a predominantly white college, where the average student was paying $38K/year out of pocket because it was well within mommy and daddy's budget, to a city comprised mostly of black people, the majority of which live in poverty. And these were not the black people I knew and loved. They were aggressive, they were ignorant, they were angry. They were in gangs and carried weapons. They were scary. 

(The difference between the black people I knew and the black people in Baltimore? Money. But I'll save my rant on socioeconomic status for another day.)

Am I exaggerating? Perhaps a bit. Am I generalizing? Certainly. But keep in mind my frame of reference. My experience to this point had not prepared me to deal with what was happening in this city. Try as they might, the diversity seminars at the TFA institute did not really help me understand what I was getting into.

You're waiting for the happy ending. You're expecting me to say that I left that city culturally competent and realizing the stereotypes are all wrong. I wish I could say it, but it would be a lie. 

Until then, I thought being black was something to be proud of. It was strength and unity. It was beautiful and unique. It was a rich though tortured history that proved the resilience of the human spirit. It was making the impossible possible by working together.

In Baltimore, I learned that being black means that you trust no one. It means that you look for someone to blame for your problems. It means violence is the solution to every conflict and if you choose to turn the other cheek, you're a "faggie." It means hopelessness: you are going to be stuck in this cycle of misery forever and it's because you're black.

Were there people that didn't fit this mold? Yes, obviously. Were there times when I saw teamwork, compassion, ingenuity? Of course. But what leaves a bad taste in my mouth and a pit in my stomach is that my time in Baltimore made me less hopeful and more disappointed. Less proud and more frustrated. Less tolerant and more biased.

Case and point: On my way to band practice today, I saw two black guys with braids à la Coolio, dressed in black hoodies, dark jeans, and Timberland boots. They looked like every corner kid that dropped out of school because trappin' was a lot easier than trigonometry. They looked just like the guys that leered at me as I walked down McCulloh Ave, telling me my ass was looking too fine in dat skirt. They were the spitting image of the inked up weed-smoking, 40-drinking thugs that have five or six baby-mommas and just caught their fifth or sixth charge. I wish I had some pepper spray. What is he holding? Is that a gun???

I put on my "Don't fuck with me" face and tried not to make eye contact. I rang the doorbell to Hunter's place, hoping that he'd buzz me in quickly and I could get away from these sketchballs. Why are they lurking around here anyway. The one with the gun turned to me and asked, "Est-ce que tu es ici pour le jam? Le groupe de musique avec Louis?"

It wasn't a gun. It was a flute. 

And I was ashamed.

New Beginnings

Greetings from Bordeaux! Yes, here I am. One of those Americans who moves abroad and starts a blog about the trials and tribulations of being an expat. I know it's a bit silly and super cliché but hear me out. I have several motivations for writing about my experiences: Firstly, I spent a long time preparing for this epic journey by reading blogs from other Americans who quit their normal lives for something more European and I can only hope that I may be of such service to someone else in the same position someday. Secondly, I am here by myself for at least another two months so I need something to pass the time when I am not involved in baguette-eating or wine-drinking (which is a surprisingly significant amount of time at the moment, especially for those of you who know of my love for all things bread and booze).  Finally, and probably least flattering, it is out of sheer laziness that I am chronicling my adventures so that I just don't have to repeat myself every time someone asks me what I'm up to these days. "Yes, I am living in Bordeaux now. Yes, they really do eat a ton of cheese. No, I haven't seen a lot of armpit hair but it is November so maybe it's just lurking beneath all the sweaters and scarves." Instead I can simply reply, "Things are great! You should check out my blog!" and I don't come off as the girl who is constantly bragging about her fancy new life in fancy-ass France. I'm already annoyed just thinking about me.

Bragging online is 100% acceptable, though, through the pseudo-anonymity of Internet, and I will forewarn you that it may occur from time to time.

So let's get right to it, shall we? Here's a quick recap of my life for those of you who, like me, are suckers for context and back-story.

I'm Nicole. I grew up in a small town outside of Rochester, NY with my parents and two brothers. When I was 16, I got my first taste of international travel through a four-week summer program at the Universidad de Salamanca in Spain. I learned more Spanish is four weeks than I had in four years of studying at my school back home and my life was forever changed. After high school, I majored in Spanish Teaching at Ithaca College, spent the spring semester of my junior year in Seville, Spain and graduated in 2007. Because of my perceived aptitude for teaching and for lack of a better option, I applied to the Teach For America program and was accepted to teach in Baltimore starting in the fall of 2007. I spent five of the most [insert any adjective here: frustrating? beautiful? terrifying? inspirational?] years of my life working at a public high school in the heart of Baltimore City, teaching Spanish to juniors who often struggled to locate Spain on a map and seniors who would profess "But I do my work!" upon receipt of a failing progress report, in spite the fact they had not completed a single assignment to date. (For the record, I love my students with all of my soul and being. The problem here is not my kids. It is a system that allows, dare I say encourages students to perform at the lowest level possible so that no one, teachers, parents, students, and administrators, don't have to work that hard. But that's another story for another day...)

While living in Baltimore, I met Jason, also known as the love of my life, and we have been together for almost three years. About a year ago, Jason mentioned that he was nearing the end of his PhD in biomedical engineering at Hopkins and he started investigating next steps. When a post-doc research position in Bordeaux came up, we decided it was too good an opportunity to pass up and began making plans to move. After a long summer or researching ways to get me into the country for a year or two, and an even longer fall of paper work and trips to the French consulte, I was granted a student visa and was scheduled to begin my studies of the French language in November.

And so here I am. Just another expat, living life, now with 100% more French!

Next time: The logistics of moving to France