Why This Academy? Why Me? Why You?

This academy has been twenty-five years in the making. I’d like to tell you a bit about my past so that you understand my logic and passion for this mission. I will try to keep it brief, but as I will be asking you to explain yourselves and open up to me, I need to do the same (if some parts are slow or boring, skip them :).
By the time I finished high school, I had attended 17 schools. My parents had a lot of problems, so they moved when they got in trouble. I left home when I was 17 and never went back. I was a terrible student, I never tried or studied. I just wanted to be left alone. I was good at sports though, and that is the only reason I stayed in school. After high school, I went to college to play American football, and I was so unprepared for the academics. I struggled my first two years, then a strange thing happened: I got less interested in sports and more interested in teaching. By the time I graduated with my BA in History Education, I no longer wanted to play or coach sports – I wanted to be a teacher!
Right after college, I joined the US Peace Corps, an agency that sends American volunteers to many countries to teach and do other projects for two years (Jordan has a Peace Corps program now!) and I went to Jamaica. I was supposed to teach Educational Psychology at a Teachers College, but it was closed when I got there. After a few weeks, the administration couldn’t find me a job so they let me go to Montego Bay to look for one. When I got there, I saw this really neat sign that said “The Jamaican Movement for the Advancement of Literacy” and I went into the office to check it out. Once inside, I met the most engaging man I had ever met, and he eventually became my first mentor. He explained the adult literacy program to me then asked me if I wanted to come back that night to see a class. I was excited and I agreed.
When I returned that night, he took me up a mountain in an old Land Rover. When we got to the peak, I saw a small shack with light coming out from between the old boards. I got out of the vehicle and walked up to the door of the building. My guide was behind me and he told me to go on in. I stepped into the small room lit with lanterns, and realized it was very, very crowded – it seemed there were Jamaicans everywhere; at desks, in the roof rafters, on the floor, everywhere. I could barely squeeze in and I went to the opposite side of the room facing the door waiting for my new friend to follow me. I was standing there at the front of the class feeling very naked. I looked out in the darkness for him and instead heard a voice say “teach them something, I will be back in two hours.” A piece of chalk came flying in and I caught it and turned to look at the class. They were all smiling patiently as I tried not to panic. I turned to the blackboard (just the front wall painted black) and began to write the only words I could think of: “run, leave, flee, depart, take off, escape.” I did settle down and had the time of my life. The two hours flew by, and I had found my calling.
I taught adult literacy there for two years, and I realized how ill-prepared I had been to teach. Even though I had a degree in teaching, I hadn’t learned the things I really needed to learn. I began to read more theory, and to try to apply it to my practice. Two years later, I went off again, this time to Yemen to work in a refugee camp teaching EFL. I would find out I was not prepared for that experience either. The difference was this time I would see people suffer and die, and I could do very little about it. I knew then that I had to have a better sense of who I was, what I was doing, and who I was serving. I knew that teaching was my life, so I had better figure it out before I failed anyone else.
We had terrible problems with hygiene and heat in the camp, and we lost many babies to disease and dehydration. I tried to teach them some basic skills like rehydration therapy, but I wasn’t very successful. We did make some improvements, but it could have been so much better if I would have known how to reach and teach the mothers in the camp. I knew what to say , but not how to say it in ways that would make them trust me. I learned then that knowledge wasn’t enough, there was more to educating people.
Since those early experiences, I have worked and taught all over the world, in places like Tanzania, Jordan, England, Oregon, West Virginia, and Ohio. And as I continued to teach, I worked hard at learning all the aspects of my craft, not just the basic information of the subjects I taught. I was also lucky to start working on different retention projects at my college in Ohio. I started to think about a lot of new things – knowing my students lives’ better, their goals, their interests, etc. And finally, I started to question my own philosophy about all these things, and I started again from scratch. All the while, I remembered how unprepared I had been before, and I wanted to create a program for other teachers so that they wouldn’t have to spend as much time learning how to be great teachers as I did (I am still not great by the way, but I am getting there).
The last piece of the puzzle for me was attending a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning seminar with Dr. Tom Angelo, a world-famous educator. We were so blessed when he came to our school and started this academy (such things are not very old in America). The experience allowed me to bring everything together so that I could articulate what I did to others. This idea of sharing my teaching was the most profound element of all – I was finally ready to “operationalize my intuition.” By this I mean I can show students “how to learn” not just what to learn. I can show them how to study instead of telling them to study harder. I can teach them how to remember things before I tell to remember things. And so on……
It has been my dream to be able to do this type of academy for a long time. I have done many of the pieces of it all over the world, but I am just now doing the full version. I chose Jordan for one of the first academy sites because of the tremendous respect I have for the teachers there. You all work very hard, are very intelligent, and you want to be better teachers in order to help your students. A perfect place! And selfishly, it is so wonderful to work in a Muslim country with Muslim teachers – most of my work here in the US is in isolation, I do not get to experience that bond of faith at work. Yes Jordan is perfect for me, where else would I go?