On the door of the school counselor, there are no flashy quotes or grand sayings, and no pictures of symbols of authority or anything like that.
On her door, there are three words, and they are the heart of the educational approach at this school, a middle school (which here is simply called “Middle School,” and as someone who grew up as a middle child I can’t help but love this simple name, it’s a middle school after all).
So in short—on the counselor’s door, it simply says
“TRY SOMETHING NEW.”
This is a simple and very accurate approach to life here, in a place that is like the central bus station of the world, and the most prominent feature of it is that there is constant movement, inward and outward. There are many layers and complexities of identity, and I must admit that despite this being one of the features that troubled me most before we arrived here, now it’s actually one of the things that fascinates me the most and is most captivating and intriguing to the kids.
They have friends who have already lived on three different continents.
The basic assumption in schools, from elementary through to high school, is that everything isn’t fixed. Even if your family never moves from the house you were born in: still, every year, everything is new, classes and groups are mixed, and the teacher is replaced (or rather, the teacher is an expert in their field, and everyone rotates around them; that’s how expertise is built; a 3rd-grade teacher will always stay with 3rd grade, and the kids change).
Starting from middle school through high school, learning is done in small and changing groups, and there is no homeroom, except for brief lessons dealing with current events and emotional and social topics, which take place in what’s called the “advisory group.”
This is to create, in any case, something small, stable, and more intimate that isn’t just related to learning.
It’s a fixed group for a few years, usually also guided by the same educator.
So, in all of this, everything is quite new, and everyone is new to everyone and to themselves, and there is a lot of variety and choice. As you grow, there is more and more. Every year, you can reinvent and find yourself anew.
My sweet middle child, the one who goes to middle school, decided to apply this motto, and alongside the activities he started back home (which also have a place here—he plays drums in the school band), he decided to join the Drama Club as a producer and graphic designer for various elements in the production.
They take things very seriously here. In order to participate in this club—two weeks into the school year—he had to stand before a professional committee (in his case: the drama teacher, who is the director, the art teacher who is responsible for the visual elements of the production, and other teachers who gave their opinions) and defend his ideas, in English, after reading the play and forming an artistic stance. I don’t know if I could do it myself, honestly. But he succeeded, was accepted, and for two months, he worked very hard, did something new, produced, participated, and learned aspects of production he had never imagined, including planning the post-premiere cast party, ordering and designing t-shirts, comparing prices from different suppliers, and more. And when the fall production ended after four performances in a packed auditorium, he woke up in the morning feeling a kind of emptiness, the kind you feel after doing something big and creative that’s finished, and he already said he would soon try to join the spring production, which they’re already starting to roll out now to make sure they’re ready.
And I’m still trying to take in these extremes, sitting in an auditorium like this where behind the professional control of sound, lighting, and stage management, all managed by excited and super-professional kids with headsets and walkie-talkies. And behind that control, behind my thoughts or above them, I can’t help but think of the alternative, how kids live here and how life looks, and why it’s impossible to get used to, and why it is. And what a sense of value, a feeling that he is worthy and respected, there is for a child who dares to engage in culture, try something new, and receives all the conditions to succeed, things that are possible only when there is a stable basic sense of security.
Pride, satisfaction, and sorrow mix together and are experienced in the same breath. And also thoughts about what’s new for me, and trying to understand what I came here to do and what I will dare to become and how I will succeed, and what success means for me in this situation and in these days. And what helps me feel that I am still me.
