Sabbatical

It’s Sunday morning, 14 February 2010, and I haven’t really thought about it being Valentine’s Day until just now as I typed in the date. As I write, I hear church bells ringing. The wind is blowing through all my open windows and I even have the door open (but the screen door locked) to let the breeze come through. It looks like there may be a storm, but it’s hard to tell here. I’ve managed to drag myself out of bed and shower off all the sweat from a long day in Soweto with Ben. Clothes are in the wash, pre-breakfast dishes are draining while my breakfast mess is awaiting my attention. I’m enjoying my pot of tea and my little white tea set that is part of the household set up here. And I’m thinking about the importance of Sabbath/sabbatical rest.

Saturday was one of those fun and busy days. After a week of meetings and trying to figure out my place in my new department, sending Ben off for a home stay in Soweto, and then dealing with frustrations related to editing, loading, and posting videos, I was ready for a break. My frequent texts to Ben as to how many people from his family might join us appeared to be ignored and my calls were met with his voice mail. By the time I got into the car and was heading out of town, Ben started texting and then calling. Try to picture me driving to Soweto for the first time (that means getting onto the N14/N1 freeway), changing gears with my left hand and driving in the left lane with people passing me with speeds of at least 20-30 km over the posted speed limit. With each text ring or phone call, my anxiety level rose until I finally pulled into the Engen station (a petrol station) near Ben’s home. I bought a diet soda and a bottle of water and waited with one of the women who works at Engen until Ben and his mom and a friend of hers arrived.

During the wait, this friendly service attendant asked why I was there and where I stayed. When I told her that I was staying in Pretoria, she said, “I’d like to go over to that side to get a job. Working here is not nice, especially at night. People are loud and get drunk and fight.” It was hard to disagree with that! She left to attend to a customer and I saw Ben, Cena, and Cena’s friend coming towards the station so we headed off for our personal Soweto tour of the Hector Pieterson Museum, Mandela’s Soweto house, the Regina Mundi cathedral, and then Ben’s bungee jumping experience. Keep in mind that it was in the ‘80’s and there is no air conditioning anywhere. By the time Ben and I got home from the bungee jumping (Cena refused to stay because she has an incredible fear of heights), it was after 4:30 in the afternoon. I tried to rehydrate with Cena and her daughter while Ben played basketball with the kids in the neighborhood. Her home was much cooler and the juice she offered came straight from the fridge. We started comparing notes on our children and our work as teachers and the challenges that she faces in her school with her grade 5-7 learners. For most of her students, their only meals are the breakfast porridge and lunchtime samp (a bean and corn dish) that are provided through the government’s feeding scheme. The government also provides all the books and covers some of the costs that school fees might provide so that students are only responsible for their uniforms and stationary.

By 5:00 I knew I needed to head back home so I wasn’t driving in the dark so I said my goodbyes and headed home. An episode of the car morphing into a rabbit nearly scared me to death, but it settled down and I made it almost to Pretoria when I missed a left exit. As soon as I drove past, I knew I had probably made a mistake, but the N1 takes you right into the city, so I kept going until a street name sounded familiar and took that exit. Of course that wasn’t quite right, but it pointed in the direction of something familiar, but that still didn’t quite get me where I thought I should be so I turned on yet another road that sounded familiar and sure enough, it got me to more familiar streets and intersections and I made it home safe and sound!

Once home, I texted Nkidi to let her know I was back in town, downed some more water, and then decided to relax with some wine and skype. I managed to finally connect with Suzanne for a lovely chat. Then Abbey came on with brief visits from Rebecca, and then I headed to bed completely exhausted.

So today is a day of rest with me and the computer and time to work on NVivo software tutorials. It’s something I’ve wanted to spend time doing and just never quite got around to it. And that leads me to my wonderings this morning on the idea of Sabbath/sabbaticals, because in the quiet of my very own space with only myself for company, I realize how tired I am. It’s more than just the stress of driving in unfamiliar places or the heat. It’s partly the stress of new adventures, lots of goodbyes and lots of hellos. It’s discovering what I can do and what I know and how I feel about all those things and about myself. With all of those things going on, this day is an opportunity to breathe and this sabbatical is an opportunity to rest.

In the resting from my American life, I’m catching glimpses of what is important and what can be let go. For example, I live in 3 rooms. That is certainly enough room for me, myself, and I! With Ben here, there’s still plenty of room for the two of us without our running into each other. Of course, it helps that he lives on the evening shift and I live on the morning shift and our time together is when I’m winding down from work and he’s gearing up for some activity. I keep looking around at my flat, thinking about buying some throw pillows to make the couch more comfortable and picking up some duvets because our bedspreads are dull and boring. Having just watched Oprah’s show on hoarding this week, I keep reminding myself to think about the purchases I make as ways to bring people together rather than as things to fill up holes. So, the 2 chairs and the table that I bought reflect choices that Ben and I made together for our space. The little table is one that he uses all the time when he’s on the computer and I’ve found that I use it to prop my feet. The chairs give us a little more seating if we need it and we really just liked them! The paintings that I purchased capture what I love about South Africa better than any photos I’ve taken, so they really bless my need for something beautiful in my living space.

A second aspect of my sabbatical is the increasing clarity I have in the research questions I want to examine more clearly. While I’m still refining the questions around teaching and learning, I have the time to look at video data that friends are sharing with me and starting to think about the answers that are there in the data. The process is so time consuming that trying to do this just to meet a publish-or-perish mandate is untenable during the regular academic year. However, I think that trying to understand what happens in the space between teacher and learner is incredibly important and worth the commitment of time, energy, and space.

That commitment of resources frequently means that something else has to go. What can I give up to create the space for research that I believe is important for myself as a teacher scholar, for the professional community in which I work, and for the broader community in which people live. A striking theme has emerged in conversations and emails with educators. Cena said it best yesterday when she said, “I don’ t like this anymore. I was trained to be a teacher, to teach my learners, to watch them, to help them learn. But this is only paperwork. This system is just about filling in reports and sending them off for someone to read. What difference does this make? How does this help them?” My UP colleagues are much like my JMU colleagues in that they are very fine teachers and that is what they love to do. In just the few classes I’ve visited, their commitment to the principles of high quality early childhood teacher education is evident. In meetings to talk about program revisions that come from mandates at a higher level, they remain committed to do maintaining a philosophical orientation that is child-centered. Yet they spend so much time on program revisions. What I’m trying to understand is how they manage their own resources of time with their teaching schedules and large numbers of students. Where do they have the space to give up some of what they are doing in teaching to create space for their own scholarly activity? Like my JMU colleagues, they are sitting on mounds of data that actually build the case for quality learning experiences in teacher education and in primary schools, but they are challenged by how to prioritize their time so that they can actually produce their scholarly work. In their system, they can apply for paid study leave and that is certainly something that I want to learn more about. Mary just left on study leave to write up her dissertation and will be gone for the remainder of this semester. How does the JMU College of Education create spaces that allow a “study leave” or “sabbatical” so that faculty can get refresh and renew? Even within the department, do we think that we could reorganize teaching schedules so that some classes met on the block so that faculty could have some “study leave” during another block?

All the paperwork that Cena referred to is real. I’ve seen the many meetings and forms that teachers and administrators in the schools must complete as part of their evidence of policy compliance. Yet, in talking with teachers and principals, few see the connection between what they complete and submit as having relevance for their teaching or serve to support their learners. Reading emails from home, I’m aware that data is necessary to maintain or demonstrate adherence to standards, particularly accreditation standards. But by the time we get to data collection and management at the faculty level, it ceases to feel connected to the work that we who are teaching students actually do. Part of that may stem from the challenges of implementing new systems of doing things. Certainly, trying to create a new routine of living here has been a challenge. Yet establishing routines to make life flow more smoothly has been purposeful and I know what to do so that I can get out the door to face the morning traffic with my wits about me. When I think about entering scores for key assessments into a database that is used by someone else to make decisions that don’t seem to connect back to what I do as a teacher educator, then I feel resistant to be part of any discussion around anything related to accreditation.

This sabbatical Sabbath has also given me a chance to remember that the relationships I have with my family and friends are critical to my well-being. I look forward to opening emails to hear from people. Skyping to see the people with whom I speak is such a gift! Ben told me yesterday that he was ready to go home. He missed his friends (and maybe his American family) and I can understand how he feels. We’re deeply connected to the people we left behind and it’s good to learn that as a young person and be reminded of that again and again.

So at one month into my sabbatical, I appreciate the relationships I have with so many wonderful people in two countries. I’m thrilled to be warm, and sometimes even hot, rather than face a cold snowy winter. I’ve faced some new fears about getting around in a new place and remained challenged by differences in technology and understandings about time. There’s still quite a lot of “resting” yet to do. In fact, I feel like a nap!