Pothole Pep Talk

This past Wednesday, the day before school started, I had an all-day math training scheduled as well as a Q & A lunch with the other "newbie" teachers and administrators. For those of you who are educators, you know how busy that day feels and just is. I went into the day knowing that I was going to have to roll with it and figured it would just be a late night. Well, it was but the whole day unwound into something so much better than I expected.

The Q & A luncheon had been scheduled the previous week but been cancelled due to some changes in our schedules. As I walked to the canteen to get my lunch, I again was going through the self-talk..."you'll get everything completed," "be patient," "relax and just enjoy things." I got my lunch and walked down to our new student center. I arrived to a beautifully decorated table just for the newbies and administrators. As I sat down, Craig shared that the jars on the table were filled with mango chutney that Lisa, our co-HR director and Craig's wife, had made (it's delicious by the way). I started feeling guilty right away but was reminded this is probably what I need amongst all the chaos.

We began by just catching up on how the day was going, newbie life, etc and once all arrived, Craig asked us for our questions. Now, I had already generated a question for our original lunch but waited to see what everyone else was going to ask. Lots of great questions related to our EAB, daily life, apartments all which were answered by our administrators.

Then Craig looked down toward my end of the table. He asked a couple people near me for questions and then we made eye contact. My question was much more uh, well, about the bigger picture and it felt out of place but I decided to "suck it up" as my dad likes to say and ask it anyway.

"I need to preface this question with saying that I'm from the Midwest, so please bear with me. So, most of us here are new to international teaching and all of us are new to EAB and I'm wondering what are the potholes that you can help us to avoid? What potholes have you seen newbies fall into?"

Each of the administrators spoke, shared stories and gave us a great list of the potholes we need to be weary of at EAB and in Brazil. Here's their pothole list:

• Think before you speak. - With languages and cultures being different, be aware of what you say. Avoid sarcasm. What you say and what you wanted your message to convey may not be interpreted in that way.
• Listen - Spend some time to really listen to your new colleagues, families and students. You'll learn much more about your new home from them and have a deeper understanding by doing so.
• Reserve Judgement - Instead of complaining about how a line was incredibly long, ask someone to explain the system to you. You can ask, "Could you please tell me a little more about how the federal police system works?"
• Communicate - Craig's says you can never have too much communication with a family. Be honest, open and do it early and often.

I've been using their advice everyday since then...at school and out socially with my new friends and colleagues. There have honstly been several situations where I've thought back to this conversation and it's saved me. Their advice can apply to any person, at any time in any location. But when everything is new, sometimes our common sense is one of the things that gets lost.

So, this luncheon that I went into thinking would be just a time together when I could be working, was one of the most beneficial parts of our new teacher orientation. And not only for the pothole advice but also because I needed to slow down on Wednesday and gain some perspective. Sometimes, those bigger questions are what we need and we don't always realize it at the time.

A final note about potholes... On Wednesday afternoon at 3:45, all of the staff met in our auditorium to have a final pep talk before school began. We learned all about H1N1 (a big deal here since our kids travel so much) and about our first all-staff TGIF -a boat cruise on the lake (I'll make a post of that one too once I get pics from friends here ). Craig opened this by sharing a few stories from the past few days. One of the stories he shared was from our lunch together. He said, "Today I had lunch with all of the new teachers. It was a Q & A session where they could ask whatever they wanted. I want to share what one teacher asked." Guess whose question he shared? Mine. He shared the pothole advice with everyone. He reminded us that we all, no matter our position, should be taking these into account.

I felt pretty humbled that he chose to share my question with the entire staff but I now that I think about it, since we've arrived at EAB, Craig's been giving this same advice all along. Maybe I just hadn't connected to something I could hang onto and potholes were my hook. Regardless, I'm glad I know how to avoid them here.

And in case you were wondering the word potholes doesn't quite translate to Portuguese because someone asked but they do have potholes here so the message was still understood.