Introduction
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xxviii Introduction We have chosen this chapter by Sandra Lima Argo to begin our book. This chapter is different from those that follow and complete the book. You will find in this chapter many questions. These questions can inspire, prepare, and question why you might consider taking your educational expertise to another land. You will find in this chapter examples of others’ travels and how the author used those to inform herself. You will also find in this chapter a detailed focus on students’ needs and how those needs might be best met by educators who are globally competent and using curricula prepared for 21st Century learners. We believe this chapter sets the stage for the learning that will follow. Subsequent chapters will answer many of the questions posed by Argo and will provide examples from educators around the world who have moved and been moved by their personal experiences as educators outside their native countries. Enjoy the journey! WHAT MOVES YOU? Love brought me here. Love took me to many places. The love for life, for exploring, for discovering, for learning, for trying new things, and for growing personally and professionally moved me from one place to another. The definition of the noun form of the word “move”, according to the Merriam- Webster Dictionary, is “a step taken to gain an objective, the action of moving from a motionless position, or a change of residence or location. As a verb, “to move” means “to go from one place to another, to set in motion, to cause to act, to affect the feelings of, to change position.” Both definitions are applicable for this context. Before each of my moves, as a teacher with the DNA formed by molecules of charts and spreadsheets, I had to dedicate time to plan a safe move. I had to assess all aspects of life and how each of them would be impacted. There was the structural assessment and planning, where I have spent hours to fill up the 5W2H form with reasonable items listed under the columns what, where, when, who, why, how, and how much. Considering that there would be brand new circumstances, each item in my planning had a sub-division: Plan A and Plan B, but depending on the complexity of the item, as a good planner, I tried to have more options in my planning, from A Introduction to, maybe, Z. The structural plan was always flexible and it was the easiest part of the planning to manage. The emotional assessment, however, was more difficult. In each move, the uncertainty and the unknown held hands, invaded my personal space, and resided with me for undetermined time. They brought with them new feelings that I could not list and plan for in response. Some of these feelings I had not felt before while some of them were predictable, yet their intensity was beyond measure. How could I plan what I would feel and what I would do with my emotions? Would I stop a move in my life because I could not control what would come and how I would feel? I have learned very early that planning does not guarantee safety in all areas of your life and that you cannot predict what will really happen. There is much more to be lived and to be learned than what you can see, imagine, and plan. I have found that extraordinary people who have lived wholeheartedly go through the same process: most of the time, they plan a move in their lives and when they are living it, new circumstances and feelings can arise in unpredictable ways. Do those people stop a move in their lives because of what could be unpredictable? What are the required skills to make decisions when living an unpredictable circumstance? What moves them? Amyr Klink, a Brazilian explorer and sailor, was the first man to row solo the South Atlantic from Namibia, in Africa, to Brazil in 1984. In his book, Cem dias entre céu e mar – 100 days between sea and sky (out of print in English), Amyr narrates his journey, his feelings, his struggles, and his perspective of living that challenge. He worked two years planning this journey to be accomplished in one hundred days by himself, rowing a small boat from one continent to another. In the beginning of his journey, when he was trying to leave the offshore of Africa, he lost one of his paddles. Fortunately, he had a spare one. While facing forty-five minutes of “fight with the waves and the wind” to get ahold of the paddle, which was going away quickly because of the strong winds, he said: I was ready to the worse. As part of a long period in the sea, it would be impossible, eventually, to avoid the worse. So, why not to leave? Ultimately, my journey will depend on my efforts and dedication, on my decisions and not someone’s else, and I was feeling sufficiently capable to solve all problems that would arise, and that I would find a way out of any circumstances that I would put myself in. If I was afraid? Whiter than the sea foam, I was pale, completely afraid. But when I noticed I was alone, just me and myself, I suddenly felt calm. I had to start working harder to leave Africa behind, and that was exactly what I was doing. I had to xxix Introduction conquer the fear, my greatest fear in the journey, I conquered there, in that moment, in the middle of that chaos: it was my fear of never leaving. Undeniably, that was the biggest risk I have taken: the risk of not leaving. The book says that when Amyr was standing at the Luderitz Harbor, which is in the South of Namibia’s bay, he looked to the sea and he felt “tense, nervous and anxious.” Probably, he thought his fear was the journey, or the vast sea, or even that he might not survive the journey. After he crossed the bay, his last chance to dock was Dias Point, the last part of land in the extreme edge of the African continent in that area. After that, it was just “sea and sky.” Amyr Klink discovered his “greatest fear” while having a chaotic situation, losing a paddle in the offshore. He conquered his greatest fear in that moment, “the fear of never leaving.” He left on his journey and spent exactly one hundred days between sea and sky. In his book, Amyr shares how much he learned about himself, as a professional sailor, about his equipment, the weather, the nature, but especially about himself and his life. While love tried to move me, fear tried to stop me. Like Amyr Klink, once I looked to the vast “sea,” I had to face my first fear, to make the decision to move (and I had to make that decision several times in my life for different types of moves). However later, when I was living a difficult or more complex situation, I would find out which were my real fears. Each time, revealing my real fears to myself gave me a better perspective of who I am and in which direction I am conducting my life personally and professionally. Another extraordinary person who chose to make an extraordinary move in her life was Emma Rowena “Grandma” Gatewood. Gramma Gatewood’s move impacted not only her simple way of living but also brought national attention to an important natural asset in her country, the United States of America. She was a sixty-seven- year-old mother of eleven and grandmother of twenty-three from Ohio, who, in 1954, read an article in the National Geographic Magazine. The article published in 1949 presented the journey of the first man who walked the longest hiking-only footpath in the world, ranging from Maine to Georgia – The Appalachian Trail. Grandma was living alone at that time. Her kids were grown and she had divorced her abusive husband years ago. In the book Grandma Gatewood Ohio’s Legendary Hiker (2012), Kelly Boyer Sagert and Bette Lou Higgins captured some of the impressions that had been written in her diary. Grandma said, “It was funny and I kept thinking no woman had ever hiked the trail by herself before. Why not me? Why couldn’t I be the one? I walked places in my life. How hard could it be?” In 1954, Grandma Gatewood tried for the first time to hike the Appalachian Trail but not far from where she started, she almost fell, broke her glasses, and noticed that she had taken too much weight. She went back home and spent the next year planning her trip without telling her family. This time, she worked a plan to not fail. In 1955, she tried it again, but this time she did it! xxx Introduction In his book, Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail (2014), Ben Montgomery tells us, when introducing the book for an audience: Emma Gatewood told her family she was going for a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than two hundred dollars. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, at the top of Maine’s Mount Katahdin, she sang the first verse of ‘America, the Beautiful’ and proclaimed, ‘I said I’ll do it and I’ve done it.’ Grandma Gatewood, as the reporters called her, became the first woman to hike the entire Appalachian Trail alone, as well as the first person – man or woman – to walk it twice and three times.