Finding Time and Balance, Far from Home
Friday marked the end of the second week of my 18th year in the classroom. Things are in full swing here in the Dhabs and it feels good to have some routines in my life again. But I’d be lying if I said I’m not a tad jealous of folks in the states enjoying the waning days of summer.
This week, someone who follows both the newsletter and the podcast asked a few questions about my school here and it hit me that I don’t talk much about my work life in Abu Dhabi. Consequently folks don't know much about my gig and why I dig it.
So, I want to talk through that a bit. First off, I really enjoy the work situation I have. I think my school does many things well and believe some of the practices in place here should be embraced elsewhere. Secondly, from time to time, a teacher, usually a teacher of color, reaches out online to ask about life teaching overseas. I never pass up the opportunity to have these conversations—I relish them. I get to tell folks who are often feeling some-type-of-way about their lives in the States about the reality of life outside of the country and some of the tradeoffs that entails. Lastly, I want to dispel some of the assumptions and misapprehensions I’ve heard people express about the region. When people comment about my life here I can tell some of y’all think I live on a guarded oil compound like in the movie The Kingdom or that I live in a remote desert, taking a camel out for errands (that would be kinda cool, honestly). Instead, we live in a dense, walkable neighborhood—filled with restaurants, grocers, and a neighborhood pub. I’m a city guy but this is my first time living in an environment this dense and I’m into it.
This is my fifth year at the American Community School of Abu Dhabi. ACS was founded in 1972, which is ancient for international schools in the region, and is the only not-for-profit school in Abu Dhabi. This is a big deal. Many of the schools in the international teaching game are for-profit businesses and that creates all sorts of complications and competing interests around student admissions, support services provided for students, and salary & benefits for educators. In general, not-for-profit schools are in the business of educating children rather than the education business. Hope and I make less than we would make in the States working here (because unions in Washington are amazing and everyone should have one) but here we have a more reasonable work-life balance and smaller classes—my largest is nineteen.
Our school is about a 6 minute walk from home. We’re a stone’s throw from the waterfront promenade, in Arabic, al Corniche, and 2.8km from the Presidential Palace, Qasr al Hosn. However, our school is preparing to relocate.
In fact, one of the reasons we're in school right now is that we’re moving over winter break. We started school early, the school will then take an extended winter break, and we’ll use that period to transition to our new campus. It’s located in Saadiyat, an island community outside the city. The school has outgrown the current campus and the move is part of a campaign of de-gentrification the government is pursuing that involves encouraging expatriates like myself and most of my students to live in the suburbs of the city.
According to the school bylaws and agreements with the embassy, a minimum of 60% of the students enrolled at ACS are required to be US citizens. Consequently, I have more students from DMV (DC, Maryland, and Virginia) than almost anywhere and more kids from Texas than from here in UAE. That said, we have a small population of Emirati students; I generally have three or four assigned to me each year. Beyond that, our school has a fascinating mix of students, with over fifty nationalities represented this school year, covering everywhere from Sierra Leone to Singapore.
At school my classes are basically what I taught in the US. I teach two AP Government courses (one section of US Government and two sections of Comparative Government). I started teaching US Government back in Washington and have over a decade of experience with the class—it’s a well oiled machine at this point. I added Comparative Government in my second year here, so this is my fourth run through it. This year, I also teach a World History course that I co-designed with my colleague [redacted], leaning on my friends at OER. I’ve taught grade nine every year since my first year at Lincoln. It’s a fun grade to work with developmentally.
As far as the daily grind, I feel like I’m more set up to be successful with our schedule and planning time. In the States, we had a standard six period school day, where I had one planning period per day. Here we have an eight period A/B block rotation (Periods 1-4 on A Days, 5-8 on B Days). In this rotation, I have three planning periods split over the two days. So rather than getting 275 minutes of planning each week (55 minutes x 5 days), we receive 225 minutes every two days. This has been a game changer for me, allowing me to collaborate more intentionally with colleagues and to provide more detailed and meaningful feedback to students. This is probably the biggest structural difference between teaching here and in Washington. I take far less work home and for the first time, can largely complete my job during the workday.
This has done wonders for my quality of life and longevity in the classroom.
Like I said at the top, this is our fifth year here in the Gulf. As is common at international schools, our initial contract was for two years. We are now year to year with a renewal decision to be made in the early winter.
Being 7,500 miles from almost everyone you love is a trigger for periods of personal reflection. I realized this fall that teaching is more an ingrained part of my identity than a given geographic location. Put differently, I am more wedded to the idea of working in an enjoyable sustainable environment, doing what I love, than I’m wedded to being in the US (or anywhere else in particular for that matter). In 2018, I was honestly thinking about hanging up my cardigan and clipboard for good. Given the change in climate, the cardigans had to go but this teaching thing ain’t done with me yet.
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