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?