A Full Day of Learning

Today was a day of learning and communicating. My morning was packed with unfinished business regarding the High School Banquet that is scheduled for this Saturday.  During the early morning, I prepared some contracts and documents that needed to be ready for the afternoon, (more details further down). 

During my middle school homeroom time, we discussed and debriefed about an assembly that we lead the day before.  We came up with a topic, Bible verse, speaker, and game, and the students led it all, in front of the entire middle school.  It went fairly well, although these 6^th and 7^th grade girls were very nervous, especially about praying in the microphone with everyone listening. During the debrief time, they all thought it was awful and could have been better, however, I thought our topic on “Serving God with our Talents” was very clearly communicated and I thought they did much better than other groups. :)  But, I love these girls dearly, so maybe I’m biased!

At 11:30, my student services team left the school campus for a work lunch/coffee.  We drove to a Hong Kong restaurant, where we “weren’t allowed to talk about work.”  So we had fun discussing family and summer plans. 

Let me tell you a bit about our team: Student services consists of 4 other staff besides myself.  Damian is the head of our department, an unorganized but brilliant Australian.  He’s lived in China for 10 years, has wife with 3 young kids, one of them is adopted from China.  Bean (real name is Larry, but no one calls him that) is our college counselor who is a corky American who has lived in China for several years and before that lived and taught in Israel with his wife.  They have 3 adult children.  Patrick is the middle school counselor.  He’s got a sensitive spirit and a great sense of humor. He and his wife are from Hong Kong and they have 2 young children.  Mimi is our elementary counselor.  She and her husband are Korean-American and have taught/done ministry in L.A., California for a number of years.  They’ve been in China for around 6 years and have 2 girls in middle school and 1 boy in elementary school. 

After “not talking about work” during an amazing lunch, we hopped over to a Starbucks, took over a large table, and hammered out some documents about creating a culture of transition in our school.  Because of the international community that we teach, there is always transition, and our school is just starting to understand how to support, help, and provide resources for these students and families that experience so much change.  We worked hard for 4 hours in that Starbucks and I think we now have a much better idea of the next couple steps our department can take in this area. 

Afterwards, Damian and I drove to the hotel where the High School Banquet will be held this Saturday.  The traffic was getting pretty bad by this point in the evening, so we had a while to chat. I asked about the similarities/differences of Australia to the U.S., to which his answer was basically that we have the same “mono-cultural” view of the world, the same arrogance and individual ideas, but Australians are more vocal about it. :)

We got to the hotel and had a quick, but rather frustrating meeting with the event coordinating staff about the contract we were to sign regarding using their services and facility for our banquet.  Sometimes things get lost in translation, or important needs are ignored altogether.   There, I watched Damian tread the line of being clear, straight-forward, and borderline rude in order to get what we were paying for.  I’m still learning this culture, whereas sketchy contracts would never fly in the States.

So today, through working with my homeroom, my team, my boss, and a Chinese hotel, I was able to learn more about myself, other cultures, and about being a professional in our school.  This was a day well spent!  Plus, I got a free lunch and coffee!!