At the first meeting of my photography club this week one of the students that joined handed me a note from another student who had signed up but was not in attendance. The note read:

“Ms. Alis(s)a,

I am sorry, but I won’t be joining Photography Club. My parents won’t let me since I can’t use the photos in any of my classes and it’s “a waste of time.”

However, I will still be part of RAVE Magazine (since my parents don’t know about it). 
I hope to see you in RAVE meetings. : )”

I had heard and had gotten hints of the idea that the arts are not important to parents at our school, but this was my first solid piece of evidence to support this stance. My mind started filling with choice things I would like to say to these parents about letting kids be kids, and giving them the right to follow their interests. The art advocate inside me woke alert and ready to fight again. See, unlike other subjects, art teachers not only get to do all the tasks expected of the profession, but we are also constantly defending the right to do what we were are passionate about and were in fact hired to do. We must save the arts from budget cuts and continue to defend it’s right to be in our schools. Sadly, it has become a part of the job description to be ready to stand up for our programs to administration, school boards, communities, other teachers, and parents.

Although I have been a bold advocate for my art programs in my previous position to get them outside of the art room, I am lucky to have had constant support from all stakeholders in the school I used to work at. Of course we are in completely different water now.

Unlike many other international schools who have a wide variety of students from all different backgrounds, ISM is an international school with 95% local students. The students that we teach are from the wealthiest of families in Myanmar. Their parents are business people, doctors, lawyers, real estate owners, etc. mainly the people who have worked hard to get way ahead in this difficult country and are now reaping the benefits. As all parents do, ISM parents want their children to have “better” lives than they did. That means the best schools and a ‘no excuses’ policy for not achieving the very highest. For all of the rigger the parents push on the students they expect to see finite results in the forms of high grades, the best scores, taking the most advanced classes, and winning awards. There is a strange energy in the school where students strive to take AP (advanced placement) classes as soon as they are allowed to because they are constantly aware of the effects their choices can have not on their lives but on their transcripts.

Of course it is uplifting to be in a high school where students strive for excellence and take their education seriously but it almost to a point of detriment, where it is hurting the students more than helping them. They are constantly searching for ways they can look better on their college applications, be it a contest, community service (1/2 of our students are involved in a community service group), or a high grade in an advanced class. This is also reprehensive of the cultural divide and the class differences. I grew up in an environment where you were encouraged to make your own life decisions based on your interests and what makes you happy – so perhaps I am bias.

Just in the past couple years have students begun to branch out from the usual career paths when leaving ISM. The previous art teacher made a bit of headway by helping artistic students get into architecture colleges – parents seem to be okay with this since it is a somewhat prestigious career. There is just still so far to go in helping these parents (and students) understand that what is says on their transcript is not who they are.

And because I can't leave this post without showing how incredibly talented my students are, here are a few captures from one of their recent homework assignments (yes, a HOMEWORK assignment)!

Our second weekend in Myanmar was just as busy as the first. Bright and early Saturday morning we met with the other new teachers to get a personal walking tour of the downtown area from Zoe and a few other long-term ISMers. Read all about it and see the very cool pictures I captured here: Downtown Yangon Walking Tour

Sunday we finally had our first full day to relax and settle in, we slept in, went grocery shopping, hung up photos, and had general time to just be. 

The first day of school came quick and ready or not, Monday morning the students bursted through the doors. Even though a small part of me was saying "yeah, you got this, you've done this plenty before" the rest of me was anticipating the unexpected that came with teaching a new grade level (from elementary to high school), a new school level (from public to private), a new school culture (from government run to international, for-profit), a new set of societal expectations (from rural Maine to urban Myanmar), and of course just a new set of students all together. 

I had heard in my research that the students here had a higher regard for their education and I was thrilled to find out that this was true. I told many people when I took this position that there was no way I would be able to teach High School in the States because of the attitude towards education (not being respected, taken for granted, etc.). I am very happy to say that it is different here for many reasons including the fact that this is a private school so parents are paying for their kids to come here and as we all know if you have to pay for something you appreciate it more. Also because teachers in this culture are respected just as monks, doctors, and government officials are. I had been very much looking forward to finally be respected for the career I chose instead of just being passed along and given the bare necessities that so many teachers are. 

And the first week of school did not disappoint. The students were eager and welcoming, their skill levels were far exceeding my expectations, and they were attentive in the way that showed me they were actually interested in being there. We started right off into exploring the element of line in my Art 1 (Art Foundations) class. I hope to soon post the unit in its entirety but here are a few photos of my classrooms and the students creating.

ISM is an all english speaking school that teaches an American Standards-Based Curriculum to prepare students for American (western) colleges. What that means is that I am teaching the same curriculum here as I would if I were teaching at a high school back in the States. 95% of the student population are from local families who are very (VERY) wealthy. The other 5% are children of the teachers here. We have a "normal" school schedule that starts at 8:15 and goes until 3:00 every Monday - Friday with a good amount of holidays/vacation days off throughout the August - May. (Note: we do start the school year about 4 weeks earlier than in the States but we also get out about 3 weeks earlier. We have 190 contact days compared to 185 for schools in the States). The high school works on a block schedule where we have the same classes every other day, but they move around the periods within the day so we don't always have the same class in the morning/afternoon. It can be a bit confusing but I really like it for the most part. 

I teach 3 sections of Art 1 (Art foundations) that is the first art class that every student in school "must" take for their graduation requirements therefore this class consists of mostly freshmen. I also teach 2 sections of AP 2D Design which is an Advanced Placement course where students are working on building a portfolio to submit to the College Board at the end of the year. If they do well on this they can get college credits for the course. Although AP 2D Design can be taught as more of a studio arts course where you do anything from drawing to painting to collage and so forth, ISM asked me to teach it more as a digital arts course. This is very exciting because that means I can finally teach Photography and Digital Editing - two of my strong points as an artist! I am beyond happy to finally be able to share my photography knowledge with young artists. 

To kick off my AP 2D class we dove right into digital photography in my unit called "Beyond Auto" where we learn about the different camera settings and how to fully control our photographs. Again, more to come on this but for now here are a few photos of the students practicing and learning.

For food this week I had a combination of eating on the street at the stalls near school and eating in the cafiteria. Wherever I decide to go it is usually the same types of choices: white rice, fried rice, or noodles - a handful of different meats in oily, often times spicy, sauce (chicken with the bones, beef, mutton, or pork) - and a variety of various veggie dishes, again usually in an oily sauce. These are some of the meals I had this week:

Luckily I have a phenomenal wife who is a phenomenal chef and cooks us equally phenomenal food from home. Kim has been struggling  for the past week or so in terms of trying to find the basic ingredients that she is used to like sugar, flour, brown sugar, pepper, and so forth. Recently, after many trips to different grocery stores, she has realized that they do in fact have such ingredients but they are all named different things or are just in different languages. She is very happy to finally be building up our supply of kitchen goods that she is used to. 

The interesting thing is that it is significantly cheeper to eat out than to cook ourselves. We can go out and get a meal for $1-$2. The downside is that it is always rice or noodles or noodles or rice and that has gotten old pretty fast. So it is wonderful to come home to Kim's home cooking. Here is one dish she made this week:

Thursday night we were walking back from getting a few things from the supermarket and decided to go for a drink. On the way down to the market we had seen a couple buildings with flashy lights coming from the inside and big signs at the entrance saying things like "DJ" "Spy Wine" "Club" etc. So, silly us, we thought they must be dance clubs. Heading up to the doorway we passed a half a dozen security, which you think would have been our first clue that something was a little off, but the thing is here businesses tend to have a large amount of employees that are just for directing parking. However, when we arrived at the front door there was just a small lobby that looked strange. So we asked the security guy who opened the door for us "Beer?" and his response was priceless: "Yes, yes, bootie bootie." Without skipping a beat we turned and walked back out to the main road. Our laughter lasted all the way to the next building where we decided to play it safe and ask one of the security guards (you think we would have learned by now) hanging around the entrance to the parking lot. Kim: "Beer?"   Guard proceeding to do a foul hand gesture "Titty Bar."

At this point we gave up all hopes at finding beer and just headed back home before we found anything worse. On the way we saw two other ISM teachers having a beer at a nice local establishment and decided that must mean it was safe. After we got our cold drinks we decided to order some fried chicken and what came was probably one of the worst meals I have been served since being here. We got a plate of what Kim calls "fried assholes" because it was a plate of bones from the worst part of the chicken with barley any meat on them. It was pretty ridiculous - even more so when they charged us $4 for them! I know that doesn't seem like a lot but when I can eat a full lunch for less than $1, four is quite a lot for a plate of deep fried bones. At least the drinks were cold. And that was our Thursday night Titty Bar experience. 

To celebrate finishing my first week of school and being in Myanmar for two weeks, Friday night we met up with Shelly and Luis (two new ISM teachers) and grabbed a taxi over to the famous 19th street. 19th Street is well known in town, and in the guidebooks, as a place where the locals come to drink late into the evenings. There are a series of locally owned drinking establishments spilling out into the street with their miniature plastic chairs and tables wet from recent rain. The word was that this was the place to come for a night of drinking festivities on the cheap.

It was a drizzly evening, which made the others that were going to join us decide otherwise, but the four of us decided to make a go for it and I’m glad we did. Because of the rain, some of the places were closed – or at least not as busy as I imagine they usually are – but most had a fair amount of customers with beers in their hands. We walked down to the end of the street, out to the hustle and bustle of a busy main road lined with street carts and vendors in every direction. This may not be an up-all-night kind of place (like Bangkok) but it certainly wasn’t the “everyone is in bed by 8 pm” city that I had read about before coming.

After walking back down to the end of the road we started on, we decided to kick back at one of the places towards the end of the “strip.” Kim and Luis got a draft beer as Shelly and I sipped some wine coolers. Conversations were warm and flowing in strange languages all around us (from other expats and locals alike), our talk revolved around where we call “home,” hopes and dreams for Myanmar, and our beginning impressions of this strange new land. Drinks were cold and smiles were large.

All of a sudden I felt sick to my stomach. Sure that I was going to hurl I excused myself to the bathroom, but before I got there I got so dizzy that I blacked out a bit and half sat/half fell on to a set of steps. I knew that there was almost certainty that I would get sick in the first few weeks of being here but the urgency of which it came didn’t seem to fit that of food poising or the like. Taking a couple minutes to  I then recalled feeling these symptoms before. A couple other times in the past 10 or so years I had these indicators of stomach sickness and sudden dizziness. The relating cause of this, I quickly learned after having a full-fledged fainting spell when I was 15, was the heat. Although I feel like I have a great immune system and I rarely get ill, I don’t even get motion sickness, but something about intense heat makes my body start shutting down. I regained my sight enough to stand up and help myself outside where I sat (on a miniature plastic stool) in the rain, peeling my shirt off to reveal only a skin colored tank top undershirt. The locals stared (they usually don’t show their shoulders, let alone something so low cut) but I didn’t care, I just needed to cool off.

A couple minutes of sitting in the breeze and rain later I was feeling a bit better as we decided to hop on over to another little place just next door. The rest of the evening faded away with $0.80 mojitos and men broke into a dance as a trolley with loud American hip hop music rolled through. 

It was Amanda's 20th Birthday on Friday so after dinner with my co-workers, Kim and I went over to her place to spend some quality time with her, Josh, Samantha, and India. Happiest days Amanda : )

Saturday I set off to Portland with Amanda, Samantha, India, and Rosie for Bridesmaids Dress Shopping. Andrea and Autumn met us at David's Bridal for our first round of dress trying-on. Amanda is getting married in October of this year on a beach in Kennebunk, Maine. Kim and I are hoping to make the trip back over for the wedding if it is possible with school schedules and finances, but either way I am happy to be a part of the wedding planning process. It was a long day with many options to take into consideration and we walked away without a winner but I'm sure we will find one soon. Here are some photos of the contestants. 

Father's Day was on Sunday so after dress shopping we headed straight up to Kim's parents house to spend the night with them. We had lobster and clams, drinks and a fire. Sunday we went over to my Dad's house where the family gathered for a noon time brunch. After we dug out the old photo albums and Dad shared stories with us of the old days. Kim and I are both so happy to be able to spend time with both of our families and very grateful to have two amazing Dads in our lives. 

Old family pics:

Monday was my very last day of school. After the sixth grade "Step-up Breakfast" I was able to finish up a project I have been working on with the kids. Each year the 6th graders at Rowe leave their mark on the school via the 6th Grade "Tiles" Project. I give each student a square on the wall to paint to represent themselves and what they want future Rowe students to know about them. I love how unique each and every square turned out. 

It was very strange watching the students walking out of the school, mainly because it felt like every other day but at the same time I knew that this was the last time I will most likely see them. After a staff brunch, hugs, and goodbyes, I locked up my room for the last time. On Tuesday I met up with the new art teacher. Sarah is a very kind person who has been working in the school system for some time but has never had the opportunity to have an art classroom of her own. I was able to give her a tour of the room and school and fill her in on all of the amazing things that have been happening in the world of Art at Rowe. I hope that she is able to continue on some of my traditions (like the end-of-the-year art club lock-in) and start some fantastic ones of her own. I grabbed the few boxes I had packed up of my teacher things, passed on my keys, and walked out of Rowe for the last time. 

Wednesday brought one of my very least favorite things, going to see the dentist. I'm not sure why or when but at some point in my life I developed an intense, irrational fear of the dentist. Just talking about it, or hearing someone else's dentist story will bring tears to my eyes. Unfortunately I did have some work that I needed to get done on my teeth and I knew it needed to happen before I left so off I went to Falmouth Dental Arts. Luckily I found a group of very understanding and patient dental folks that worked with me to develop a plan that I could handle. I was able to be under conscious sedation for the procedure which left a lovely amnesia effect. I am so happy to know that my teeth are up to par for our leave and mainly happy to know that I will not have to go back for (hopefully) some time.

The rest of the week involved swimming, lunch dates with Meg, going to the movies, and of course PACKING!!! 

We had to make a very big and difficult decision this week, one we have been fighting for months now. Ellie, our golden retriever will be staying here while we go to Burma. If you don't know us well you might be thinking "It is just a dog, not a big sacrifice for an amazing life experience," but that is not even close. Ellie is a part of our family, she makes us laugh, gives us comfort, and depends on us as her pack. I shed more than a couple tears over this but in the end know that it will probably be for the best. This is how we came about to our choice.

On Saturday Ellie and Macy were scheduled to have a vet appointment to get a check-up, their necessary shots, and a rabies antibody blood test, all necessary for them to travel with us. To get ready I called the airline on Wednesday to confirm that this was everything we needed. The very fast speaking representative went over all of the information with me and everything was looking good. In informed him that Ellie would be flying as an Emotional Support Animal (ESA) and asked him to double check the requirements for this to be sure we had everything in order. He agreed that we in fact had everything we needed to get her out of the country but then proceeded to tell me that she would not be considered an ESA at our layover in Soel, Korea. Once there she would need to ride underneath the plane in the cargo area. I was blown away that this fact never came up in any other conversation with the airline. Finishing our conversation I researched for some time with the Air Carrier Access Act and other airlines to find out if this was the norm. I also, emailed the airline to get a second opinion on the topic. 

Unfortunately all of the information came out being in line with what the representative had said. Ellie would only be recognized as an ESA on a flight to or from the US, as soon as we step off the first plane she is just any other animal. Kim and I had been doing all of this work because we have heard the horror stories of animals not making it to their destination. Many animals die in the cargo area due to the extreme heat that is unavoidable on the tarmac (while the plane is waiting to take off or waiting to unload). With even a small chance that Ellie would not make it to Burma it was not even a choice for us to take her over with us. 

Not being able to have our whole family with us has really been tearing us apart and began to sour us to the move. This is really unfortunate because until now we have only had one emotion: excited! Luckily we have an amazing family and Ellie will be staying with Kim's parents while we are gone. We are very grateful to have a home for her where we know she will be just as adored as she is with us.

The weekend started out with celebrating my little brother, Drew's 14th birthday. Every year I let him pick an activity to do on his birthday and this year he decided to go to an amusement park. So off we headed to Six Flags New England for a day of thrills. After the four hour drive we were beyond excited to get on some rides. We got our jitters out on some small rides before we headed for one of the roller-coasters. Little did we know that Drew is afraid of roller-coasters. Yep. But that didn't stop us from having a blast jumping on and off different rides and hitting the water park. It was a great day and we were exhausted after. That didn't stop us from waking up early and heading to the beach to meet up with the family. The day was filled with grilling, ice cream cake, ocean exploring, and laughing. Although we decided to leave our phones and camera in the car at Six Flags we have plenty of photos from the beach. 

On Sunday Kim and I headed to one of our favorite festivals in Maine, the annual Old Port Fest. One Sunday a year they close down all of the streets in the Old Port (downtown Portland) and fill it up to the brim with vendors, stages with live music, Maine craftspeople, and lots of food! We spent the sunny, sunny afternoon seeing the sights and tasting the treats.

I joined an old frisbee teammate to photograph her and her fiancé for their upcoming wedding. We met up on the Eastern Prom then headed to Portland Headlight to splash in the Andrew Wyeth-like waves. 

On Monday Kim had to go to the dentist to get some work done on her teeth. It was not fun but we are very glad to get it taken care of before we go. She was also able to get her very last round of shots done which means we are all vaccinated!!! 

Kim and I were able to join my family in watching Drew graduate from 8th grade. I simply cannot believe that he is going to be in High School next year eeeeeeeeeekk. I don't know what those HS teachers and administrators are going to do with him.

June 10th came on Tuesday and with it our 4 year anniversary of when we met as well as our 1 month anniversary of our wedding. This past month has flown by but we could not be happier. We decided on an easy night of dinner out and visiting one of our most favorite lookout spots where we have had many dates. It was a lovely night to take a break and just enjoy being with each other.

And a photo from just a couple months after we met : )

Before we knew it, it was Wednesday and we were back at it. It was Field Day at school which meant children running around having a blast all day. It is always fun to see kids be kids. Here is our annual Rainbow picture before the start of the day. I'm sitting on the playground. 

Thursday and Friday flew by and before I knew it I was watching my West Paris students walk out of the building for the last time and, arms loaded, I shortly followed. My last week of teaching elementary Art in Maine (at least for the next couple years). Still as I am writing this it doesn't seem real. I'm not sure when it will hit me, the fact that I will most likely never see any of the students that I have worked so closely with again. The students that I have laughed with, been inspired by, shared my passion with, the first children that I have truly called students of my own. I have been getting ready for this for a while now and there were times when it didn't feel like it was ever going to come but alas, it has ended. This is a letter I received from one of my dearest students:

In each of my last classes I shared with the students where we will be headed. I put together this presentation to give them a bit of a feel for Myanmar and then I gave them time to ask whatever questions they had for me. These questions ranged from "When are you leaving?" to "Do they eat bugs?" - from "How are you getting there?" to "Are you afraid?" - from "Who is going with you?" to "How long will you be there?" It was a great time to be personal with the students who have challenged me and inspired me daily for the past two years. This is the presentation I shared with them:

To end what was a very surreal and emotional week, my co-workers took Kim and me out to dinner on Friday night. In an echo of our many after-work drink dates, it was simply the perfect way to cap my time at Rowe. I'm going to miss my Rowe family, the students and fellow teachers who made my time at Rowe so meaningful.