Blog

June, 2020

After 32 years of teaching in Roseville, I decided to retire. I qualified for my pension and decided that now was the time to explore the world. My sons are now 19 and 25 and having their own lives, and I have always wanted to travel and see more of the world. So I got a job teaching kindergarten in Abuja, Nigeria, at the American International School of Abuja (AISA).

How do you get an overseas teaching job you ask? You start by attending an international teacher job fair. There are several organizations that help schools and teachers find each other. I joined ISS but also signed up for the job fair at the University of Northern Iowa. I headed to Iowa on January 31, 2020. And oh, my gosh, what an amazing experience that was!

The morning of February 1 (my birthday, incidentally) my mom and Tyler dropped me off at the event center. The morning is called a round table, and essentially teachers go from table to table where different schools are set up. Schools have seen your materials ahead of time, and they might have already given you an invitation in your mailbox to stop by and arrange an interview. Each school has a board listing what positions they are hiring for, and that information is also in the printed material they give you. To my delight, I had several invitations in my mailbox. All together, I signed up for 11 different interviews. The interviews began at 12:30 and each one lasted 20-30 minutes. I was offered a job on the spot at my first interview, and it just kept getting more fun by the moment. I LOVED interviewing at this stage of my career. There wasn’t a question that I got asked that I couldn’t answer, with details and examples. It got kind of funny after a while. I would be in an interview and my email would ping, with an offer from the school I had just talked with. By the end of the day I had 9 different job offers to consider. When I think back on my early days of trying to get a job, I never in my wildest dreams would have thought I would be so sought after. It was an incredible experience.

That night after a fun dinner out for my birthday, I thought about the details of each school, what they were offering, and what the actual job and living situation would be like. I chose Abuja for these reasons. I really liked the principal when I interviewed with her-and her name is Julie too! I’ve never been to Africa, and it will be fun to explore. It’s warm all the time there, and I like warm! The faculty housing is a 2 minute walk from campus and apparently is a fairly new building. Abuja is a very international city, with lots of expats from around the world living there. Once we are allowed to travel more freely, it is fairly easy to get from Abuja to other parts of the world. And the salary was very competitive-in fact better than most of the other offers. So I gladly accepted the offer and began to plan.

July 27, 2020

It’s been such a wonderful summer. I’ve had extra time with my friends, my family, my dog Buddy and my sons. I’ve had time to slowly prepare my house to be rented, including doing a lot of house projects. It’s empowering for me to be managing a house on my own, making all of the decisions and putting in the sweat equity to keep it repaired and maintained. I have someone who will help me rent my house when the time comes. We’ve taken pictures of the house (which by the way has never been so tidy….) in preparation for listing it.

COVID has changed everything about what I was anticipating would happen. I would be arriving in Abuja today if things were ‘normal’. But here I am in Minnesota with no idea as of yet when I might leave. We are all learning to live in limbo with this pandemic. Most of the details around this job are completely beyond my control, so I’ve been hanging out at home, taking Buddy the Wonder Dog to the park and on walks, relaxing and playing with friends and just accepting that things will work out as they are intended to, and I just need to react to what is right in front of me.

August 2, 2020

The school asked for paperwork so they can start paying me, which is fabulous. They have decided to use a distance learning model for the start of the school year, and that is all I know up to now. They are paying me beginning August 1, so I expect to be involved in faculty meetings and planning sessions soon. They also are still hoping to have faculty on campus in August, so they asked that staff be flexible and ready to go at a moment’s notice, essentially. I’ve been planning and preparing, and should be able to go when they say it’s time. I’m doing things like making sure all of my business and confidential correspondence gets delivered electronically rather than through the US Mail. I don’t want bank statements, for example, coming to the house when I have renters living here. I’ve been steadily going through closets and boxing up what I don’t want to leave out for renters. I’ve been gathering craft materials to bring with me. Yarn, watercolor paint, embroidery floss-lots of the things I like to do when I have some quiet time. Whenever I land in country I can expect to be quarantined for 2 weeks, so I need to have some things to do! I’m glad that the public library has such a robust collection of Ebooks. My medical needs are all taken care of. I got all of the needed shots early in March, right before everything came crashing to a halt.

People ask me if I’m getting excited to go. Not yet, because when you don’t know for sure when that is you are leaving it’s hard to get too excited about things. I have moments of nervousness, of course. There are so many unknowns for me. I worry about leaving my family, and worry about what it will be like if something happens here to someone I love. The spring has taught all of us that we can enjoy video visits with each other, and I’m glad that we all are getting used to a video format such as Zoom to stay in touch.

Here is the thing about teachers and schools. Teachers are teachers are teachers the world over, and I expect to find friends and a community that I will love. I will be entering a world that is unfamiliar, but yet, it’s an American school with many things I expect to be immediately comfortable for me. Kids are also kids the world over, and I know how to hang out with 5 year olds!! The things I am grappling with are the same things Minnesota teachers are going to have to figure out. How do I start a kindergarten year with distance learning? How do you build community with a group of students over a screen? It’s going to be an interesting ride.

August 2, 2020

So I just published this blog and am figuring out how to use it from my end. Last summer I stumbled across the book Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-ZInn. I know it’s been around a while, but it was meaningful for me to read. I reflected a lot about how I was always thinking about my life as either a series of tasks to be gotten through, or about moments/days/events that I was waiting to happen. But life is about what is happening RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE. It’s been a powerful moment for me to start thinking of each separate moment of my days as the life I am living, and really working to be present in each of those moments. It’s been transformative for me and how I approach life.

Follow My Blog

Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.