As one door closes another opens

Just so you know, this picture is not taken in Sweden.  My daughter sent it to me, from camping in Big Sur, California last weekend. Look at those gorgeous poppies, blue sky and the Pacific Ocean!

I will be there soon and am very excited to see my three "children" again. I have missed them since I last saw them at Christmas.  In the meantime I have been seeing 280 children per week in my teaching job in Norrköping. It is with very mixed feelings that I enter the last few weeks in that job. It has been super challenging and also incredibly enriching. The students and staff are really to be admired in my opinion. 90% of the student body are first generation immigrants in Sweden, born elsewhere.  Most come from Syria, Iraq, or Somalia. Some are from Albania, Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia. Many different native languages are spoken, predominantly Arabic and Syrian. I have been really challenged by all the names, they are very hard for me to remember and I can only apologize to my students, who of course deserve to have teachers who know all their names. I just hope each student has benefited in some small way by having me as their art and / or English teacher this term.

The ninth graders have painted their own interpretations of van Gogh's "Wheat Field with Cypresses," 1889, with acrylic paint. They have also written an analysis of the painting and shared their experiences of making their own version. They have drawn abstract patterns and shapes, an exercise called "Kringelikrokar" by Anna Karolina Larsson, whose book "Skaparglädje" inspired me. The eighth graders have been making stop-motion animation films using clay figures they made themselves, scripts they wrote themselves, backgrounds they painted themselves, and iPads. This has been done with the help of Christian Tidebrink from Cnema, paid for with grant funding from Skapande Skolan.

The seventh graders deserve their own paragraph.  I realized today just how productive they have been. They have been the most challenging to teach because they are absolutely full of energy and very, very loud. When I was organizing their work and preparing to grade them I realized they have definitely been the most high-yielding as well as the most high-needing classes. We started with charcoal drawings and they created portraits of each other and light-study drawings of empty bowls. Then they made "Zentangle Hands," "Kringelikrokar," and Aboriginal dot paintings inspired by the native art of Australia and bronze-age Swedish rock carvings or "hällristningar."

My original plan was to return to California for one week only, to see my children and attend the oral defense of my PhD dissertation at Pacifica Graduate Institute on the 30th April. Then I was coming back to finish out the semester of teaching. However, two weeks ago I was so exhausted from teaching alone for a month, after the assistant position in my classroom was cut at the beginning of March, that I handed in my month's notice. I didn't want to risk burnout, much as I did want to do a good job by the students and the staff.

No sooner had I handed in my notice than things started happening in California. A homeopath friend invited me that same weekend to fill the last remaining space on a 10-woman retreat in Mount Shasta in mid-May. I realized if I was going to that I may as well attend my own graduation in Santa Barbara on May 25th. That would bring me within 3 weeks of my daughter's graduation at UCSC on the 15th June. Events seemed to conspire to keep me in California for longer than a week. But if I was staying for a full two months, the whole of May and June, where would I stay? and what about Monty?

These two questions were also answered within the space of a few days. A dear friend offered me the master suite in her comfortable condo in Lompoc. Not just me either, "why don't you bring Monty?" she asked. I called the airline and he's coming too!

The week after I handed in my notice was lovely at work. The school Principal found another teaching assistant to help me with some of the classes and checked in with me several times during the week, suggesting we meet the following Monday to see if anything had changed. By the time of our meeting so much had fallen into place in California that I had to stick to my guns even though I felt very sad about the prospect of leaving the school.

So here I am, nearly at the end of this chapter of my life. I have learned and accomplished so much in three months at Klingsborgsskolan. I know what's expected of students in art in 7th, 8th and 9th grades in Swedish schools. The "knowledge demands," Kunskapskraven, are hard, especially for students from cultures other than Sweden, with native languages other than Swedish. I have organized a logo competition and experienced the school expanding into beautiful, newly renovated buildings including a large, bright dining room where delicious food is cooked fresh on the premises every day. I have worked with stop-motion animation for the first time in my life. I have drunk more coffee than is healthy.

Most of all I have worked together with dedicated, knowledgeable and talented teachers, caretakers, counselor and Principals. I have taught children who have already experienced much worse than most anything they are likely to face growing up in Sweden. I have realized that teaching middle school is probably not my forte and that I do better with individuals and smaller groups, or with older students. I am grateful to have had this experience and responsibility, and wouldn't trade it for the world. Tomorrow I am taking half of one of the eighth grade classes on an art walk. Yes, you can walk from our school to Norrköpings konstmuseum through a pleasant neighborhood and a beautiful sculpture park behind the museum. My successor, a local artist who will take over teaching art on April 29th, will come with us. As one door closes, another opens...