Tag: Texas

The Accidental Teacher: An Essay and Memoir (Part 1)

In the fall of 1986 my life took a turn. I’m in a pretty good mood today, so I won’t say it was a turn for the worse. Ask me tomorrow, though, and I might describe it as a swerve that took me right up to the precipice. It’s all a matter of perspective.

In the fall of 1986, I became a new graduate student in the Department of English at Texas A&M University. The head of the department met with me in person, shortly before sending my acceptance letter, and told me he found my academic performance, as an undergrad, praiseworthy. As a way of demonstrating how impressed he was, he offered me the job of “Graduate Teaching Assistant”—or GAT, which rhymes with GNAT, an interesting similarity given that both are located quite far down on their respective food chains. This meant I would be both a student and a teacher. Of course, I said yes to the offer.

The department then handed me a textbook and a syllabus and pointed me in the direction of my classroom. The assignment I’d gladly accepted—but began to feel less and less confident about as the start of the semester neared—consisted of teaching two sections of a course called “Introduction to Freshman Writing,” or something very similar to that.

In truth, I was scared shitless about the whole teaching thing but was happy to have the job. That’s because they promised to pay me almost nine hundred dollars per month. Today, that sounds like nothing—and it is—but to a poor student—one so underfed that the outline of his ribcage routinely showed through his shirt—the sum promised groceries in the fridge and thus three squares a day.

The day before my teaching job was to begin, I tried hard to imagine what it would be like having so many faces staring at me from so many rows of desks. Then the actual first class happened and it was even more traumatic than I’d ever dreamed possible. The expressions on the faces of my students suggested that they expected me to say important things and give them helpful guidance. This meant that they actually thought of me as a real instructor with knowledge and ability and such. This fact scared the hell out of me and made me question all sorts of things, including the sanity of those who’d hired me.

Needless to say, I was terrible during that first term. What I did in the classroom should in no way, using the most liberal definitions available to us, be called “teaching.”

Here I am, these great many years later, still in the classroom and still wondering if I’m good enough. (Evidence suggests that I’m a hell of a lot better than I was when I first started.)

The following blogs will tell the story of the teacher who never should have been a teacher and will chronicle my growth in the profession.  They’ll also be about the foreign places my teaching career has taken me and the insights I’ve gained while doing this work. I hope those who read the blogs will find them interesting, humorous, and maybe even a bit thought-provoking.

Waking Up

on the riverwalk

It’s been really hard to shake the feeling that I’ve just woken up from a really long sleep. That’s because these recent weeks seem so dreamlike, so unreal, or perhaps, even surreal.

Just about eleven weeks ago to the day, I got word that a company that hires civilian contractors for the US military was interested in employing me to do educational work of an intercultural sort. This news came suddenly, while I was visiting my sick grandmother in West Texas. The job offer came with one stipulation—that my wife and I relocate to San Antonio, Texas, within a matter of days.

So we packed up, quickly. We were only able to take with us the few things we could fit into our Subaru. I managed to get online and was able to reserve a room in a place called Studio 6 Extended Stay—an old Motel 6 facility that had decked out a number of its rooms with kitchens and cooking utensils.

We moved into the place, bought groceries to fill up our fridge. The following day, I started one of the most intense orientation and training programs—along with seven other trainees—ever devised by human beings. I arrived at my new workplace a few minutes after 6 a.m. each morning. Our days were filled with “briefings” and then we did all sorts of practice teaching that was observed by a large number of people who wrote up reports on what they’d seen us do. We were like lab rats sent running through mazes in search of chunks of cheese. Not all of us passed these early tests. It was boot camp for teachers and some of us were let go before the real work even got started.

I find it incredibly hard to believe that it’s been a touch less than three months since we arrived in San Antonio. In some ways, it seems like a year or more has gone by. In other ways, it seems like mere days.

I’ve been mostly exhausted since all this got started. Finally, though, I’m beginning to catch my breath. I’ve even started to wake up from this dream-state I’ve been in. I’ve mostly been in survival mode, just doing those basic things that each day required of me, but now I’m beginning to think about writing. The old creative juices are beginning to flow again. This means more blogging—of a regular sort—is in the offing.

The photo I’ve included, at the outset of this piece, is a nice one and full of symbolism. It was one of the earliest ones I took in San Antonio—on one of our visits to the city’s famed Riverwalk, downtown. In it, Azza and I have just stepped across a threshold and a dome-shaped ceiling can be seen overhead. Behind us is a wall, a waterfall, and the past. We are wearing shades as we are looking forward, toward the camera, into a bright future. We are smiling and wearing expressions of expectation. Something about us in the photo suggests that we are travelers or explorers, embarking on a sojourn that will provide plenty of wonderful surprises.

 

Several Thousand Tasty Words

I’m adjusting very well to living in America again. I say this because I keep having these moments where I look around and think, “I feel so wonderfully contented!” Such an experience occurred yesterday as Azza and I were sitting on the front porch and watching a cold summertime rain fall. After a particularly bright flash of lightning and then the delayed rumble of faraway thunder, I shuddered and felt completely overwhelmed by the beauty of my surroundings. I didn’t ruin it by trying to verbally express what I was feeling. I just sighed and quietly enjoyed the moment.

I’d like to share a bit more good news but of a different sort. It looks like I’ve landed a job, but I can’t write about it here because Azza would be very mad if I did because the contract is being prepared (as I write this) and thus I haven’t signed it yet. She believes it’s really bad luck to share good news prematurely. So, in a bow to her and her superstitions, I’ll just say that things are about to look up on the money front.

This past weekend, Janie, my stepmother, suggested that we drive over to a place called the Oscar Store, in what’s left of Oscar, Texas, to eat lunch. So we loaded up in the KIA and drove north and a bit east on Highway 95, with Georgetown as our starting point. This route took us through beautiful farmland—of a rolling-hills sort—and a handful of little Central Texas hamlets with names like Weir, Granger, Bartlett, Holland, Sparks, Little River-Academy, and Heidenheimer.

Route of Our Trip
Route of Our Trip

After about forty-five minutes or so, we pulled onto a little off-the-beaten-path road and into a grove of huge oak and pecan trees. Nestled amongst those mammoths was a sprawling structure made of repurposed barn lumber and tin. (There’s no telling how many rickety structures gave their lives so that the “store” could be born.) Actually, this page gives a bit of history on how and when the place came to be.

To make a long story short, we entered the eatery, took seats, looked at menus, ordered food, scarfed it down, paid our bill, bemoaned our bloated conditions, and then took off. We also wandered around, took a few photos, including some of a helicopter that was parked nearby; well-to-do patrons had used it to fly in to the restaurant. Because a picture really is worth a thousand words, I’ve included a few photos here.

The Oscar Store Interior
A Group Selfie at Oscar
In the Parking Lot
A Little Kuntry Kitsch at Oscar
The Oscar Store Interior
The Oscar Store Interior
Wipe Your Mouth!
The Sign Outside
On Our Way to the Oscar Store
The National Beer of Texas

One of the Weirdest Experiences of My Life

My life has undergone a radical transformation since the last time I posted here. I left Egypt, my home for the past seven years, flew back to Georgetown, Texas, and then moved in with my family. All this in an attempt to restart my life in the United States.

For a bit more than a month, I had to live apart from Azza, my Egyptian wife, while she awaited her green card interview with a bureaucrat in the American embassy in downtown Cairo. Federal law requires the authorities to do a face-to-face chat with potential new immigrants to see if they harbor any criminal aspirations or political ill will toward the land about to accept them into its fold. Azza did her interview with her usual aplomb and charmed the person she spoke with, proving, in the process, that America had nothing to fear if she packed her bags and moved there. (Her gift of gab is only surpassed by her skills in the kitchen.) As a result, the American government made her the proud owner of a permanent resident visa.

Azza and I now share a guest bedroom in Georgetown, and I’m busily looking for work. When I’m not sending out résumés and pounding the proverbial pavement, my wife and I spend our days going to thrift shops and rummaging around at garage and estate sales. The buys we’ve been making are meant to supplement the shipment we having coming in from overseas. Said container of personal items consists of forty-two boxes, some of them nearly the size of an old-fashioned Volkswagen Bug.

This brings me to the subject of this blog. This past weekend we drove to an estate sale located in a part of Georgetown I was totally unfamiliar with. We parked, walked up to the front door, and entered, only to find a domicile full of people pawing over the contents of the place. Azza and I separated and I headed toward one of the back bedrooms which was mostly filled with all sorts of Christmas stuff—Santa Clauses, tree ornaments, and the like, all piled up on card tables. I moved deeper into the room and found myself standing in front of a closet with its door open. I looked into it, and my eyes were immediately drawn toward a stuffed animal—a “plush” as collectors and pickers like to say—in the shape of Snoopy of Charlie Brown fame.

The Snoopy was completely covered with writing. As I looked closer, I could see that the toy had been autographed by dozens of people. I was shocked to see names I remembered from my elementary school days—I grew up in Georgetown before moving off to college and then farther afield. I then noticed, to my shocked amazement, my own name amongst the others and nearly had an out-of-body experience as soon as I made the discovery.

I took the plush in hand and carried it to the woman sitting at the cash register located near the front door. “Who lived in this house?” I asked her.

“The Simmons family, long-time residents of Georgetown,” she told me.

“Wow!” I said, and then I showed her Snoopy and my own signature on the dog’s head.

When I was in fifth or sixth grade, a classmate named Barry Simmons was burned in a house fire. His injuries were horrific, and he missed months of school while he was recovering. During his absence, our class bought a stuffed animal—the Snoopy I found and purchased at the estate sale—signed it, and gave it to him as a way of showing that he was in our thoughts. So, for the price of two dollars, I now own a little piece of my boyhood history.

This blog is my latest telling of this story. Everyone who hears it finds it as unlikely as I do.

I’m not a superstitious sort, but I’m hoping that the finding of Snoopy is some kind of sign, one suggesting that Azza and I are about to begin a period of many wonderful occurrences and good fortune.