The healing power of travel.
As much as I loved my time in Morocco, there was one big challenge that nearly sullied my experience. I suppose every teacher eventually comes across their nemesis. I met mine in Marrakech. If you know me personally, you’ve already heard the stories. In the interest of painting a picture for those who don’t already know but still remaining professional, I’ll just toss out a few snippets: pushing over a teacher (not me), standing/jumping on desks, drawing blood from classmates, and peeing on a classmate’s personal property. So… yeah. It was a rough year in the teaching department. Finally, in the spring when it became apparent that the school was not willing to make any real changes that would improve the situation, I decided to do the only thing I could think of to maintain my mental health. I booked a trip to Italy.
I dubbed the trip my “Farewell to *Student’s Name*” tour and tried to focus on my big reward during every stressful interaction, meeting, or student meltdown. It really helped. I felt like if no one (my amazing colleagues aside) was going to recognize my Oscar worthy performance with this kid, I might as well congratulate myself.
A few days after school let out, I hopped a flight to Pisa. I arrived in late afternoon and walked over to the tower from my hostel. If you are in town just to check out the tower, Hostel Pisa Tower is a great location at a nice price point. I approached the tower at golden hour, the perfect time to see it aglow. The leaning tower is such an iconic landmark that half of the fun is watching other visitors pose for and snap their photos. Everyone is smiling and feeling silly.
After getting my fill of the tower, I walked down through town to the train station to book a morning train to Florence. Unfortunately, I also used a sketchy ATM that skimmed my card number*. Super not fun to find out your debit card is being canceled while you’re (alone) overseas.
And thus begins the “Farewell to *Student’s Name*” tour.
xo, jill
*At least I think this is where it happened. It also could have been at the train station kiosk buying tickets there.
ugggggh!!!! that sounds HORRIBLE! (the student, not Italy!) we have a pretty non-supportive administration this year but not that bad I’m sure. but I can totally believe the “farewell to _______!” I can still remember students from 8 years ago that would be in that boat! travel is so great. I am so jealous. and thankful you’re not at that school anymore
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Isn’t it crazy the effect that just one difficult student can have on the class environment/teacher’s sanity? After this particular student was absent for a longer stretch of time, a colleague came into my empty room and stopped short. She said she could tell that the energy of the room had completely changed with this kid gone. So nuts!! Maybe I should have been burning sage… 😉