Here’s a new promotional video for the American Embassy School in New Delhi. We are so lucky to work here!
Tag Archives: American Embassy School
A Taste of Diwali
Hindus and others across the city are gearing up for one of the most important festivals of the year – Diwali. The five-day celebration officially kicks off on Oct. 24, but we got our first taste of the festivities on Saturday. Organized by Saheliya – a group of Indian parents at our school, Diwali Night featured a dinner buffet, traditional dance performances, loud DJ music, endless colorful lights and fireworks.
Flower petals lined the path to the event, and drummers greeted us as we passed this “rangoli.”
Approaching the event, which took place on the sports field.
We hadn’t even passed through the entrance before this little band of entertainers encouraged us to “dance, dance!”
Hard to resist.
Stilt walkers paraded around with someone’s kid.
Tony in his kurta and me in my lehenga. I love playing dress up!
So festive!
Ground-level explosions were followed by fireworks shot from the elementary school building’s roof.
A “kids corner” offered crafts and other diversions for the children. This young lady seemed a bit surly about my request for “mehendi.” I don’t speak Hindi, but there was no mistaking the eyeroll she shared with her friend. Translation: “Seriously? This is supposed to be for kids. How annoying.” She clearly wasn’t at the top of her game.
Even the little Japanese girl who was next in line could see it was a pathetic job.
Me and my ladies!
Here’s a little tidbit about Diwali, according to diwalifestival.org:
Diwali is celebrated on a nation-wide scale on Amavasya – the 15th day of the dark fortnight of the Hindu month of Ashwin, (October/November) every year. It symbolizes that age-old culture of India which teaches to vanquish ignorance that subdues humanity and to drive away darkness that engulfs the light of knowledge. Diwali, the festival of lights even to-day in this modern world projects the rich and glorious past of India.
These are the (boring) days of our lives
This post is for those of you who keep insisting that Tony and I are SO brave to live overseas and SO adventurous to immerse ourselves in a different culture.
It’s true, every day really IS an adventure, full of small but interesting experiences. Our morning taxi ride to school, for example, is a bumpy, swervy, death-defying experience full of cow-dodging, speed-bump-soaring, pothole-pounding, horn-honking lunacy that we hardly even notice anymore. And it’s true that we have interesting cultural opportunities on the weekends and over school breaks. However, our days are generally filled with mundane tasks and routines, not unlike those of teachers in the States.
Here’s a typical “day in the life” of Sharon and Tony …
6:32 a.m. – Kapoor pulls up in his taxi to drive us to school.
6:46 a.m. – We greet the American Embassy School gate guards and walk to our respective buildings.
8:30 a.m. to 3:35 p.m. – Tony sometimes gets breakfast (and frequently gets snacks) at Open Hand Café, which is just inside the gate on campus. He teaches grades 9 and 12 on alternate days, attends meetings, works in the English Office and meets with students during his breaks and lunch.
I work with third-grade English learners in three different grade-level classrooms every day, teach World Language English to eight third-graders every other day, attend lots of meetings, and try to eat lunch outside whenever possible.
One thing I DON’T have for the first time in my teaching career is playground supervision responsibilities! It IS a nice playground, though.
After school – Tony often has more meetings and/or piles of papers to grade after school, but he occasionally drags himself to the fitness room for a jog on the treadmill. I go to Hot Yoga on Mondays, play rehearsals for “Beauty and the Beast” on Wednesdays, and technology workshops followed by Zumba on Thursdays. Because the work day includes little down time and because many after-school activities take place on campus or at the American Embassy across the street, I often stay late at school to catch up on emails and plan lessons.
If there’s nothing going on after school, we catch a taxi outside the school gate for the 20-minute ride home. The longer we stay at school, the worse the traffic gets.
Evenings – Thanks god our housekeeper, Raji, makes dinner most nights because it’s not unusual for us to stumble through the door after 8 p.m. Our evening excitement typically includes watching TV till about 9 and then heading to bed.
So that’s it. Jealous? Ha!
One week down, 37 to go
Today we wrapped up our first week at the American Embassy School in New Delhi, India. Although we’re inundated with information about our new school, students, apartment, neighborhood, city and country, we also feel an overwhelming sense of belonging.
On August 1, the new and returning teachers finally met each other for the first time. We were introduced at an all-faculty presentation in the gym, where administrators read a short biography for each new teacher, and we received a garland of fragrant flowers and a red smear of paint between the eyebrows to symbolize the third eye.
That’s Tony with Jan (who we knew in China) and new friend Becky.
Our new teacher cohort – the “newbies” – received a warm welcome yesterday at a party thrown by the “two-bies,” teachers who were new to AES last year. They sympathized with our newness and offered reassurances that we would soon feel settled and confident. We have attended several other functions designed to merge AES old-timers with the new group of teachers, and it’s amazing how seamlessly it happens.
In addition to the outpouring of kindness, the administration has modeled a spirit of balance and caring that permeates the whole school. When Director Bob Hetzel met with new teachers to discuss the school’s mission statement, he shared anecdotes about the power of collaboration and shared values, saying, “We have a commitment to making the world a better place.”
We have yet to hear a negative word or bitter comment from anyone about the school’s leadership. In fact, teachers repeatedly note how the director and principals somehow motivate everyone to raise the bar and cultivate creativity without undue pressure or stress.
That doesn’t mean we don’t create our own stress. My department, English as a Second Language, is undergoing major changes, so I can’t count on returning teachers to show me the ropes. We’re all learning as we go, which can be unsettling. I hope next year at this time (when I will be a “two-bie”), I will tell the “newbies” how brilliantly we developed a new immersion program at AES with the insights and shared wisdom of all elementary teachers.
Bring on week two.
International educators shock everyone, score awesome jobs
‘Tis the season for deck-the-halls, family reunions, holiday-making and recruitment fairs for international teachers.
Unlike other professions, in which you find a new job before resigning from your present one, international teachers often have to announce their plans for the following school year before they head off for Christmas vacation. In our case, the deadline was Dec. 15. At that point, we either had to sign a contract to stay another year at Vientiane International School in Laos … or not sign it. An unsigned contract meant the school director could start advertising to fill our teaching positions, which meant we would be unemployed for the 2011-12 school year with no real prospects.
After NOT signing the contracts on Dec. 15, Tony and I promptly had a mental breakdown that segued into weeks of unpredictable fireworks of stress, second-guessing and desperation. With two mortgages and a 20-foot container worth of household goods to move from Laos, we needed to land not just any old job, but jobs with a substantial compensation package. The pressure was on.
We registered with two recruitment organizations: International Schools Services and Search Associates, which provide online databases to match schools and teachers. Many schools contact teachers via email or Skype, conduct interviews and hire for the following school year before Christmas. Most schools also attend job fairs, which take place all over the world starting in January and give teachers and recruiters the opportunity to meet face-to-face.
I checked the job postings every day, emailed schools with openings in ESL and English, cried every time I got no response (which was most of the time), and rejoiced with every automated “Thanks for your application. We’ll be in touch.” email that came back. My complete confidence that we would get hired before the job fairs slowly waned, and I reluctantly registered for both the ISS and Search fairs, scheduled to take place in Bangkok Jan. 4-12.
As we were packing for Bangkok on Jan. 3, Tony and I felt glum. Our goal was to find positions at a big, high-caliber international school with an excellent reputation. According to the databases, there were exactly TWO with jobs in our teaching fields: one in Saudi Arabia and one in Shanghai. Knowing competition for those positions would be fierce, and knowing that schools often look for hard-to-fill subject area teachers first (chemistry, math, middle school specialists, and for some reason this year – P.E.), we feared some other couple would sashay into the fair with their Chemistry-ESL or Math-English credentials and steal our jobs.
Tuesday morning, we checked in to the ISS job fair at the Shangri-La Hotel in Bangkok. On Wednesday, teachers lined up nervously in the hall outside the ballroom, where recruiters from around 175 schools sat in alphabetical order by country at tables lining the perimeter of the room. At 8 a.m. sharp, the doors opened, and we all filed in like cattle, quickly dashing to find the schools that had advertised jobs in our subject areas. Right off the bat, we discovered the Saudi school had already filled its ESL position. We sprinted to the Shanghai school, which signed us up for an interview later that day.
As we stood in line for a school in Indonesia, I wistfully glanced at the table for the American Embassy School in New Delhi, India, one of my dream schools. They had positions posted for ESL and English weeks ago but filled their English job early. The day they pulled the English job off the database was a day of many tears and hopeless resignation on my part. Imagine my surprise when I saw their job list at the sign-up session included a position for high school English! I quickly hopped out of the Indonesia line and knocked a few people out of the way to cut to the front of the AES line. Shrieking with excitement, I greeted Elementary School Principal Susan Young. She and her husband, High School Principal Tim Boyer, have stellar reputations in the international community as mindful, fair, progressive administrators. Susan took a quick peek at our CV and then summoned Tim to schedule an interview with us.
Finally, we sauntered over to chat with the folks from Shanghai American School, where we had worked for four fantastic years. “We’re here to grovel for our old jobs back,” I said to Jeff Rosen, a friend and now middle school principal. He laughed and said he didn’t have positions for us at the Pudong campus but referred us to the administrators from the Puxi campus. Alan Knoblach, the assistant superintendent for Puxi, sighed, showed us his schedule (which was packed with back-to-back interviews from 10:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.) and said he could meet with us right after the sign-up session.
By the end of the interview sign-up session, we had registered to meet with recruiters from five schools: Shanghai AS, AES in New Delhi, Shanghai Community International School, Xiamen International School (a small school in southern China), and Saudi Aramco Schools (a huge school district created for children of the Aramco oil company in Saudi Arabia). Things were looking up, but we were certainly not ready to celebrate.
Interviews take place in the recruiters’ hotel rooms, which feels a little weird at first. Fortunately, Shangri-La rooms have a nice little lounge space with a sofa and a couple chairs.
We met with Alan from Shanghai AS first, and he asked some good questions. At the end, it was clear he really wanted a middle school ESL teacher. I know I could do it, but the fact is I really prefer to teach the little guys in elementary. We appreciated that he threw us a bone and sacrificed his short break to meet with us, and it was good practice for the rest of the day.
All of our interviews went well, and we were genuinely impressed with all the recruiters and their schools. There was nothing to rival the weird experience we had two years ago when we interviewed with a recruiter from Kuwait while his wife slept in the bed! Halfway through our interview, he woke her up so she could sleepily show us her gold jewelry (which he must have thought was a selling point for his host country).
The AES (New Delhi) recruiters interviewed Tony and me separately, and I had probably the best interview of my life with Susan Young. She started by spelling out the school’s philosophy on classroom management and conflict resolution, based on the work of William Glasser. She described a learning environment where children are encouraged to make good choices and take responsibility for their actions, and all teachers are trained how to promote this behavior. She shared anecdotes that demonstrated the school’s commitment to collaboration and caring (including an initiative by a group of fourth-graders, who researched the health benefits of having recess before lunch and succeeded in getting the school’s schedule changed to do just that!). We discussed current research on language acquisition, homework and the value of play. She described professional learning communities, in which teachers explore issues they care about and make recommendations to administration. It became clear that this was a school that didn’t just talk the talk.
Later we received a note from AES Superintendent Bob Hetzel, who said he wanted to schedule a follow-up interview. We tried to call him, but got no answer. As I stood in the Shangri-La lobby with the house phone in my hand, he stepped out of the elevator.
“I was just calling you to set up a meeting!” I said and then joked, “How about now?”
“OK, now is good,” he said. We sat at a table in the lobby and had a nice chat about AES and our professional experiences. He asked what we loved best about teaching and seemed pleased with our answers. Before parting ways, he mentioned that he was checking our references, and we set up another meeting for the next morning. Fingers crossed!
By the end of the day, we were exhausted. We barely had time to come back to our hotel, shower, rest a bit and return to Shangri-La for the cocktail party. Despite the anxiety imposed by unemployment and uncertainty, we had a great time catching up with friends and colleagues from our years in Turkey and China, and we enjoyed getting to know other teachers and hearing about their lives in various parts of the world. It’s a great opportunity to meet administrators who may not have jobs for us this year but could be good connections in the future. As we left the party, the Shanghai Community International School recruiter said, “Check your mailbox downstairs. I left something for you.”
A contract! We were so thrilled and relieved to know we had jobs at a great school for next year. However, my heart was set on AES, and we decided to wait until after our follow-up meeting with them in the morning before committing to anything.
So, this morning we put on our dress-up clothes and trekked back to Shangri-La, where we ran into the AES administrators in the hallway an hour before our scheduled meeting.
“We’ll just wait for you in the lobby,” I said.
“Or we could just meet now,” said Superintendent Bob Hetzel. So once again, we had an impromptu meeting at some nearby sofas.
“We want you to come to AES,” said Bob, handing us a letter of intent and some other paperwork.
Tony and I both clapped and said, “Yay!” which led Bob, Susan and Tim to respond with claps and cheers of their own. Such an affirming moment! Asked if we had any questions, Tony and I were both a little too giddy to think straight. We said we would read over the paperwork and come back to attend their promotional presentation in the afternoon. We took the elevator to the rooms of the Shanghai AS and Shanghai ICS recruiters to thank them and tell them we had accepted the AES offer. We had already said thanks-but-no-thanks to XIS and received a thanks-but-no-thanks note from Saudi Aramco.
And now Tony’s at the pool and I’m writing and reliving this crazy experience.
For more about the American Embassy School in New Delhi, check out the website: http://aes.ac.in/splash.php
Here we are with our new employers. From left, High School Principal Tim Boyer, Elementary School Principal Susan Young, me, Director Robert Hetzel, Tony, Middle School Principal Barbara Sirotin.
The only bad news they gave us was the starting date for new teachers: July 26. Ugh, it’s going to be a short summer.
Of course, I’m ecstatic about the travel opportunities in India, too, and can hardly wait to get started. I can’t stop watching the Incredible India commercials, such as this one:
Time to go join Tony at the pool and relax for the first time in months!