Psycho Dancer

For two weeks I’ve been anxiously waiting to write an entry called “Psycho Dancer” - ever since I first stumbled upon the course “psicodanza” on the university website. The mere title of the course intrigued me so deeply that I paid my $160 for the semester (an unbelievable bargain by U.S. standards, right?) without any further information. There was no description of the class, no bio of the professor, no testimonials from past students. Just the one word: psicodanza - apparently a registered trademark. Was that really necessary I wonder? Registered trademark? Is there a lot of competition for that name? I haven’t been able to tell anyone about it with a straight face. And frankly I bet the name scares off way more people than it attracts. Psico + danza = the opportunity to delve into painful, embarrassing, and scary parts of ourselves + the possibility to look utterly foolish while doing it. That’s not my perspective, of course. To me, psico + danza = jumping, screaming, and hitting the floor (while imaging one of my co-workers), and calling it dance. That’s what I was hoping for anyway.

The class was partly what I had imagined. I did scream and hit the floor. However, the ratio of "psico" to "danza" was pretty high. We cooperatively recreated a supernova explosion and individually re-enacted our births while the rest of the group sat in a circle and watched. And the teacher talked and told us what she saw. She critiqued our births, told one student she was trying too hard and another that she wasn’t trying hard enough. I guess it’s a good thing that our mothers did most of the work for us or we’d all still be stuck in wombs somewhere. It’s no wonder really that we struggled so much in birthing ourselves. If I have a choice between the womb and a makeshift dance floor in a rundown gym in one of the most polluted cities in the world, I’m choosing the womb. Better get another dancer to play doctor and drag me out of here because I’m not coming willingly.

Julia, the teacher, claims to be eighty years old, and, while her physical appearance makes the claim seem dubious, her resume is so long that, if she’s only eighty, she can’t have slept a night in her life or ever taken a vacation or even once called in sick. The resume reading was a highlight of the class. Julia, presumably to preserve her modesty, did not read the two page document herself but rather passed it to the woman to her left. The woman in the brown corduroy zip-up onesie (which was a tail short of a halloween costume and footies short of pajamas) delivered the information with a reverence and solemn intensity that made me feel underdressed in my little blue shorts and my “May the Forest Be With You” t-shirt. The proceedings were interrupted often by Julia cutting across her sycophant to correct a typo or a mispronunciation, which were frequent as Julia has worked with some of the greatest unpronounceable names in the world.

Julia then asked us to introduce ourselves, which immediately divided the room into two categories: those for whom a self-introduction would suffice, and Julia. It went something like this: we told her who we think we are and then she told us who she thinks we are. My introduction was too short, insufficient. “How are you feeling right now? A bit of nostalgia? It looks like you might be missing home, no? Is this your first time outside your country?” She asked all at once. “Oh no,” I answered. Like a sandwich that needed to be cut in halves if not quarters, her question was too big to even know where to begin, but I knew that the answer was basically, in a word, “no”. “I lived in Santiago de Chile for five months and I’ve spent much of this year traveling in Spain, Chile, and Peru before coming here.” She needed to know more before she could make her proclamation, her decision, her diagnosis.

“And what did you do in Spain?” I had noticed the golden crucifix around her neck, so I took a smug pause to build suspense for an answer I expected would please her, “I walked for two weeks.” I watched a smile form and let her have the satisfaction of saying, “ah, el Camino de Santiago.” I nodded. Still she asked, “And what did you do in Chile?” Given that I had lived there, I thought this needed no explanation. “Well, I have friends there.” With the exasperation of explaining something incredibly obvious to a child, she said, “yes, but what did you do there? How did you fill the hours of the day?” I tried again, “I wrote.” That was the answer. “Ah, you’re a writer.” She said it as if she had been the one who had known this all along and was, in fact, telling me.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m a writer. Not a published writer yet.” She wanted to know what I write. “I write about my life.” It sounded awful, too small, too self-interested. “I mean, I write about life, from my perspective.” Ah, that’s better. All the difference in the world. Life from my perspective. I loved the sound of that. I was busy turning the phrase over in my head to make sure it was as brilliant as it first seemed, and to store it for later use, when Julia interrupted my self-satisfaction by declaring, “You think ‘I’m young, I’m good looking, I’m writing.’ Do it. Write something already. What are you waiting for? To be eighty?” I broke like a dam. My self-importance spilled onto the floor around me, leaving behind nothing but a red face. Julia asked me about my blushing. I blushed so many times during the three hour class that she began to call me “my red-faced friend”. It was endearing in a way but also a vicious cycle because I blushed every time she said it. By the end of the class, my body felt great but I had developed a headache from all the blood coming and going.

I’m afraid that in my attempt to exploit the humor in the situation I may be giving the impression that psicodanza is dreadful. Yes, there were uncomfortable moments, frustrating moments, and “you want me to do what?!” moments. But I actually enjoyed it. If I try not to label the emotions or experiences as “good” or “bad”, and instead simply ask myself whether I felt more or less alive at the end of the class than I did at the beginning, the answer is clearly more alive at the end. I’ve been complaining and blaming a lot recently, and - as recently as Wednesday - checking expedia.com for the price of a one-way ticket out of Mexico. The fantasy of going home appeals because Mexico is hard and I like home, and because fantasy is, well, fantasy. The home of my expedia.com daydreams is not so much better because it’s not here but because I’m not there. To break the power of the fantasy, I now consciously choose to be here every morning. I can choose. I could leave tomorrow if I wanted to. So I let myself choose. Not fantasy but a real choice. Do I want to be here today? If the answer is yes, then I can’t very well complain about being here, can I? I’m not a victim; I’m here of my own free will. I wasn’t dragged out of the womb and onto the floor of the Mexico City airport. I signed up for this psycho dance.

Don't Worry

At 12:12 pm on July 21st, I received the e-mail that confirmed my hiring and my subsequent move to Mexico. At 12:13 I began a daunting “to do” list of everything that would need to happen before my flight on August 24th. I’d need to sell my Subaru, cancel my cell phone service, get out of jury duty on December 17th, purchase international health insurance, plan a 7th & 8th grade drama curriculum from scratch, find a place to live in Mexico City, purchase plane tickets, obtain an FM3 work visa, say goodbye to friends and family, pack my life, and then the scary part: do all the stuff that I didn’t even know to put on the list. It was the vast expanse of unknown that really worried me. My “to do” list was Columbus’ map to India.

I expressed these concerns in an e-mail, which I hoped would come off as proactive and professional, rather than paranoid. “Mary” (to protect the true identity of my boss) answered my 463 word missive with a mere 86. Apparently I had come off closer to paranoid because the gist of the message was don’t worry; “I have lots of work to do before the teachers training week start, but do not worry I have asked the Kindergarden Headteacher to look for an apartment near the school,and tomorrow I will ask our lawyer about the visa and the contract.” This quickly became the overriding tone of our online communication. On July 23rd, “I forgot to tell you that someone will be at the airport, don't worry.” On July 30th, “I have asked our lawyer, he says you can come to México,using a tourist visa,and here, the school would do what it is necessary. Do not worry. We are looking for the apartment.” On August 14th, “Do not worry, we had to do some changes due a teacher who resigned. As soon as you arrived, we´ll let you know, exactly, which grades you´ll be teaching.”

Being told “not to worry” again and again and again produced quite the opposite effect. In fact, her relentless insistence that I not worry served as my first clue that I ought to be very worried indeed. As if the complete denial of worry weren’t enough to freak me out, there was the news that a teacher had resigned before the start of classes, and that I could no longer cling to even the illusion of an idea of what I might be teaching. What if I got to Mexico and the school had not found me an apartment? What if they asked me to teach quantum physics in Spanish? What if I too wanted to resign after one week? What if I packed in such a hurry that I forgot all of my pants? There were so many “what ifs”, so many disastrous futures to imagine, so many ways to be unprepared. So I worried. And a little validation would have been nice. Where was the e-mail that said, “You should be worried. Your worry tells me that you understand the magnitude of the challenge you are undertaking. Your anxiety speaks highly of your sanity. Clearly you take your responsibility as an educator seriously. In fact, that’s why we hired you.” I never received that e-mail.

Instead, my worries have been validated by my experience. The school has not put me an ideal position for success. We don't have or use textbooks because text books are the old paradigm, which promotes top-down knowledge and rote memorization. We don't have photocopies because it's a green school. There is one photocopier in the library which I can use, if I can find paper. To discourage photocopying, the paper is kept locked in an office on another floor on the other side of the building where one must first stun the troll who stands guard, then whistle the Mexican national anthem - perfectly pitched - to open the door, then present a requisition signed by the Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources. So without textbooks, without photocopies, we've got the computers. The MacBooks are our primary (and only) pedagogical tool. And if the system were fully operational, that might be enough.

Unfortunately, students - and their parents - demanded that they receive their computers immediately; preparedness be damned. One day, when “Remote Desktop” is ready, we will be able to monitor the use of the computers in the classroom and efficiently deliver assignments and educational resources. In the meantime, I spend most of my time and energy asking the students to close the computers, remove their headphones, and look this way, please. If I’m lucky enough to find a dry erase marker, whose scarcity makes paper seem abundant by comparison, I write a note on the board, “Class will begin when your computers are closed”, and I wait.

Frustrated, I wrote an e-mail to Mary. I bemoaned the lack of foresight required to distribute computers before having any means to put them to productive use. And she told me, “Don’t worry.” Don’t worry? I’m not worried. I am upset. Worry is what I felt a month ago when I lived in an imagined hell. Now I walk into a very real classroom, where the only things imaginary are paper, makers, and the much heralded “platform”, which will convert these sleek, white weapons of distraction into laboratories of self-discovery (in the words of a co-worker, “so that the monitor is no longer just a monitor but a mirror that reflects how each student thinks.”) Somebody please pinch me because I seem to be stuck in Steve Jobs’ wet dream. But maybe I should have more faith in the school. All of the worries that afflicted me a month ago were quickly resolved. They did meet me at the airport, they did find me an apartment, and they did inform me which grades I’d be teaching on my very first day at school. So why should I doubt that a month from now, I’ll be able to teach something?

Independence Day

Why do we celebrate Independence Day? The cynical - ok, very cynical - answer is that we love beer, burgers, and sales events. Have you ever noticed the size of the flags flown by car dealerships? If it weren’t illegal for the star-spangled banner to brush the ground, you could drape one of them over a Hummer and make it disappear. In fact, this might be the perfect celebration of America: buy a Hummer on credit, cover it with an enormous flag, and drive it blindly into traffic - daring everything to get out of your way. Sometimes, with our vision obstructed by the stars and stripes covering our windshield, we forget that we USers are not the only Americans. The Americans of the United States of Mexico celebrate their independence on September 16th, and, as I walked to school today, I passed a luxury car dealership and discovered how very much we have in common. The showroom was full of Hummers and Cadillac Escalades wearing enormous sombreros with the words “Viva Mexico” painted in red across the brims. Apparently, buying American cars is patriotic in Mexico too. Somehow this doesn’t make me feel any closer to home.

And home is, for me, central to Independence Day. I have never celebrated the fourth of July by imaging all the ways my life would be worse if I were a subject of the British Empire, instead of a citizen of the United States. But I do try often - and not only on the fourth of July - to remember all the reasons for which I am grateful to call my country home. Twelve days ago I unpacked my suitcases in this new apartment, and nearly every item I pulled out brought a fresh wave of tears because each belonged to some other place, some place that was home, and to bring them into this foreign space of bare lightbulbs and not-quite-dry carpet felt wrong.

The photographs Jamie took of my M.A.S.K. figures belonged both to the apartment in Macy where the prints first hung and to the duplex in Newark, Delaware where I first watched the cartoon that inspired the toys. The lavender-scented eye pillow belonged to the hardwood floors and high ceilings of Green River Yoga studio where my tired body, mind, and eyes escaped the adolescent hum of Eaglebrook for an hour and a half on Thursday nights. The boxy black sunglasses belonged to 91 Sanderson Street and Greenfield Middle School. The first pair of sunglasses that I purchased with the intention of making myself cooler, they are only cool if you wear them with an air that says “I know how ugly these are and I don't care”. Confidence is cool. That is not how I wore them in sixth grade. The point is that every item I pulled out my suitcase was a memory that reminded me of what I'd given up to be where I was standing, in a box of thin white walls daring me to make it home, while cars that didn't care drove past and beeped because they were in a hurry to get to houses where people and pets and food might be waiting for them.

Today I moved in. For nearly two weeks, I've been sleeping in this bed because Felipe Villanueva 12a is the door my keys open, and I'm exhausted at the end of the day. Today I decided to live here by choice. I hung Jamie's prints in the kitchen. I hung the water color of 146 Buffalo Bay over the toilet. I taped “Peace: it does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.” to the mirror. There's food in the fridge and dish-soap by the sink, and there are things in this apartment that have never known any other home – the French press that will help me survive mornings that start in the dark, the lamps that dull the edges of my bedroom with soft light, and the teapot that ends each day with chopped ginger, honey, and boiling water. A year from now or five or ten, I'll pull something out of a box, hold it to my chest, and remember when Mexico was home.

Building Character

Do you ever have that dream where you show up for the first day of school, and the teacher gives you the final exam. And somehow no one else is even fazed by this; all of the other students reach calmly into their backpacks and pull out recently sharpened number two pencils. This dream is my life in Mexico, except that those sitting in the chairs around me are equally clueless and unprepared. My Belgian friend, Dominick, for example, found out upon arriving at teacher training that he had been hired not to teach English – as he had thought – but to teach in English. He had already resigned from his English position at another school when he discovered that he would be teaching history, math, and science – all foreign subjects – not English language.

I was hired by e-mail. After missing three weeks of teacher training and a week of classes due to non-negotiable commitments, I arrived at the Mexico City airport where I found a man in a tan suede jacket, his jet black hair slicked back, looking for “Myke Sweeny”. I figured that meant me. I had never referred to myself as Mike – nor Myke - in my negotiations with the school, and, as far as I'm aware, I'd never misspelled my last name either. Considering that we'd been in touch almost exclusively via e-mail and my address is michael.e.sweeney, it struck me as unimpressive bordering on suspicious that the name scribbled on a ripped out piece of notebook paper only vaguely resembled mine. Of course, when I told friends that I'd been hired by e-mail and didn't yet have a contract, they suggested that I bring the ransom money with me to expedite the whole process. So I did wonder for a moment if perhaps a telephone call regarding my pickup at the airport had been intercepted by a kidnapping outfit. I gave the man a firm handshake and a big smile; I hoped that he'd see the likeness of God in me and turn away from his criminal past, or that he actually was an employee of the school. Fortunately for my safety but unfortunately for new professional life, the latter turned out to be true. As we climbed into a metallic beige SUV with black leather interior, Sergio explained that he was glad that my flight had been delayed because he had just received the call to pick me up about an hour ago. As Scooby would say, “Ruh-roh”. Bad sign, right? They almost forgot I was coming?! I immediately had to wonder what degree of chaos could cause a school to forget a new faculty member showing up four weeks late. I would soon find out.

I had assumed that I would not be teaching anything on my first day in Mexico. My request to spend the first day getting acquainted with the school, staff, and students seemed reasonable and had been well-received. My teaching duties would begin on Tuesday then. I quickly found, however, that a body with a pulse in its wrist and a tie around its neck will teach classes no matter how recently it was a passenger on an international flight. It started out as “observation”; that's how they got me into the classroom. There was no turning back. Maricarmen, who had also missed most of the teacher training because she insisted on giving two weeks notice at her former position rather than leaving immediately as the school had proposed, was more than happy to let me get some experience under my belt. You could introduce yourself, she suggested. And then tell them a little bit about where you're from. And then maybe they'll want to ask some questions. And then hopefully the class will be over, I could almost hear her thinking. For a few minutes I was a novelty, interesting enough to distract the students from their cell phones, nail polish, and rubber bands with paper bullets. But fifty minutes can be a long time. In Terry's class, he suggested – as we walked through the door – that we reduce the entirety of a movie to a two or three minute dialogue that we could perform for the amusement of the class. Did I have any ideas? He wanted to know. Yes, I did. If I leave Mexico right now, I bet I´ll be home in time for dinner.

But I stayed. And thank goodness, because if I had left right then, I would have missed out on the best reason for leaving: the faculty meetings. I'd estimate that I spent about ten hours of the first week in faculty meetings, but that's only a rough approximation because my internal clock shut down at least once or twice out of boredom and so I lost all sense of time. I was revived by the words of Veronica, teacher of civic and ethical formation, who urged us to end the last class of every day 5 minutes early to straighten up the room a little and to be certain that students not leave any possessions in the classroom. At that point the meeting was over two hours old and I was ready to stand up and cheer for the first sensible words that I'd heard. The disastrous state of the classrooms had already begun to alarm me as this excerpt from an e-mail I wrote last week clearly illustrates:

"As wonderful as the facility is in some ways - they didn't spare any expense here - it's not... organic, if that makes sense. Nothing is natural. No trees, no plants, no life - nothing that even looks like a derivative of life - no wood, no brick, no stone (I know that bricks and stones were never alive but they somehow feel more alive to me, warmer, more real). I love the school's emphasis on the environment and recycling (the printer paper is 100% recycled, it looks practically homemade which is cool), this space doesn't do anything (in my opinion) to foster a "sense of place", a meaningful connection to the earth. We're spending hours in a parking garage with classrooms and computers. Who wants to take care of a parking garage? People piss on the walls in parking garages and throw their gum on the ground. That's how the kids treat the classrooms here. It's embarrassing to see the custodial staff in their red and blue jump suits scrubbing the classrooms at the end of the day. The floors are just covered with pencils, pens, erasers, shredded notebook paper, wrappers, food scraps. It looks like some animals have been collecting scraps to build a nest. But I don't blame the students. This is the building we've got and our philosophy is apparently that the custodial staff take care of the classrooms because we're too busy saving the world. That's why saving the world sucks. It's a great idea, but it's too big. Let's start with the goddamn classrooms."

I was greatly encouraged to think that in Veronica I had found a partner in my crusade. We get each other, I thought. We'll make posters that say, “Think globally, clean your goddamn classroom.” Then, however, she continued to explain that while most of the custodial staff is probably quite trustworthy, leaving valuable possessions like jackets and markers in the classroom presents an unnecessary temptation. So... we need to take care of our things and our space, not because it's the right thing to do, not because it will help the custodial staff, but because, if we don't, they'll probably steal all our stuff? Huh. I mentioned that she teaches civic and ethical formation, right?

The highlight of the weekend – amidst stiff competition – was Friday, which turned out to be parents' day. I came here to teach drama. If only my students could have seen me on Friday – alas they stay home on parents' day – they would have learned more than I could possibly hope to teach them in ten months. I'll let you all know when the Mexican Oscars – that'd be the Óscares – are broadcast because I'm pretty sure I'll be up for one. Without having my final teaching schedule yet – it's tricky to coordinate because I'll be teaching 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th graders and they have different class lengths and times – I introduced myself to the parents and presented my plan for turning their children into daytime television stars. Then, knowing full well there'd be no question I could answer nor any concern I could alleviate, I boldly asked if any parent had questions or concerns. I still don't know what I'll be teaching to whom, nor when I'll be doing it, and I offered to answer their questions. I smiled my biggest, most American, native English speaker smile, and composed myself with a mantra - “butt, belly, breath” - my massage therapist taught me. I stood solidly on my feet, with my hands resting confidently at my side, and my elegant tie in a perfect knot. Look at me. I am competent, confident, and capable. Ask me a question. I dare you.

A few parents dared. Most asked simple questions, presumably to hear more of my gringo accent, but one mother wanted to know why we did not rearrange the English classes based on skill. Sitting in a chair, she gave the impression of being in a great hurry without moving at all, and her eyes said, “There is no right answer. Nothing you can say will satisfy me. But you must try, oh yes, because I am paying lots of money to send my son here. I own you, gringo.” It was somewhere in the middle of my meandering and meaningless answer that my boss snuck into the classroom behind me and interrupted me. While I was grateful to be off the spot, the defensiveness with which my boss said, “He's a great teacher. You'll see. He's very qualified.” did not improve the situation. Though I doubt she did it intentionally, Lucia had shifted the focus, the problem from the schools' placement practices to my ability to teach, which had not previously been in question. I took solace in a daydream that has supported me all week – the image of Calvin's father patting me on shoulder and saying, “Don't worry, Michael. You're building character.”