Since becoming a teacher, I have found myself in a number of situations that none of my college education courses prepared me for. For example, what to do if you and your class of fifth grade students are trapped behind a locked classroom door? And what if the key to this door is at the bottom of a bucket of keys the school cleaners pull out in situations such as this? Here is what you do: Just talk louder and with more hand gestures about figurative language in a Dickinson poem while your principal kicks the door in a la Chuck Norris style.
Turns out that’s what you do.
What about when you are summoned for an interview with the local governing authorities of the country you just moved to and only knew existed six months prior?
Please do not do what I did.
It was a Tuesday morning, and I was teaching a poetry lesson. I’m not saying that something bad happened every time I tried to teach my students about similes, but every time something bad happened it was while I was trying to teach about similes. We had read Emily Dickinson’s I’m Nobody! Who are you?
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
“How is she comparing a frog and being public?”
“Miss, A frog is an animal.”
“Yes. Is she saying being public is a good or bad thing?”
“Miss, Who is Bog?”
“We’ll get to that in a minute. But back to the frog.”
“Miss, Can I go to the toilet?”
Young e.e. cummings. All of them.
My principal appeared in the doorway. The door was not locked shut because it never shut again after he kicked it in, so I wondered why he was there. Every teacher was summoned to the front of the building.
“Okay. Just keep…thinking about the frog.”
Trusting they would all be enlightened to similies when I returned, I followed the other teachers out the school doors to another building.
Silently, we sat down on metal benches mouthing “Sorry!” for every squeak, unsure of what authority or camera may be offended by our noise. We waited. We watched the British school teachers come in and out of a room with cushy chairs.
Someone was brave enough to squeak and ask one of the Brits why we were here.
“It’s just an interview, love.”
A job interview? For the job we had? This was confusing because I thought I was already hired. I had been talking about frogs and similes with children for a few months now.
As if I was waiting for a dental procedure, my name was called and I entered the cushy chair room. If they asked me about similes I was totally prepared. If they asked about metaphors I was less prepared. We had never made it past the frog bit of the poem.
I sat across the table from an emirati man and another man in a suit. Suit-man looked like he would rather be in the middle of a dental procedure than this conversation.
“Hello. So, do you let children do art?”
This had just taken a different, more art-centered turn than I thought.
“In art class? Yes.”
“You don’t teach art??”
“No? Not on purpose?”
“You have a Bachelor of Arts. But you don’t teach art?”
“Well, yeah, okay. Technically no.”
Why did it say Bachelor of Arts? What does that even mean? I tried to think of a simile.
“It’s like a category. Or a box. And there are many types of degrees under Arts. So I am trained to be a history and english teacher.”
“You got this degree from a box?”
Suit-man grew impatient, and we moved on to UAE trivia.
For these responses, I’ve added an international equivalent for reference.
What’s the largest emirate in the UAE?
What is the largest country in the world?
“Umm Al Quwain”
Is it China? No, the Vatican.
Who is the President of the UAE?
Who is the current president of the United States?
“Sheik Zayed”
George Washington
What is the capital of the UAE?
Where is the White House located?
“Ajman”
Florida.
“Since you teach art, what kind of national art do you see in the emirates?”
Name a national treasure.
“I think I see lots of weaving.”
beat -boxing.
Suit-man looks over my resume.
“You taught in Budapest. What is the weather like there?”
“It’s very nice.”
Suit-man looked like his root canal had just started.
“I mean, it’s just okay.”
“Okay. Khallas.”
Like a molar being yanked out of a rotten gum, suit-man stood up and escorted me back to the hallway.
My fellow teachers and I returned to our classrooms. We were fairly confident we still had our jobs.
A few weeks later we heard back from the government official. None of us were fired. More than that, we all continued to be hired. But all the teachers in my emirate had to take an Emirates Education course teaching and testing us on basic UAE facts. I don’t want to say it was only because of my answers, but I would like to take a lot of the credit.
Classrooms and teachers can’t prepare you for every life situation, which is why I have hope that my former fifth grade students figured out what a simile was before their first job interview.
Busy Nothings 