A Smaller World, All Around

It is often difficult to know how others around the world feel about events which touch them and affect their lives.  This past week, I have had the honor and the pleasure to interact with intelligent, educated and very dedicated people who teach English all over the world.  Most of them do not have English as their mother tongue, and many followed this line of work when and where it might have even endangered their futures or their very lives.  I am so proud to know each of them.

I attended the GLOBELT 2016 Conference in Antalya, Turkey and was privileged to hear some very amazing academic work, but also to converse outside of the presentations with some truly incredible and awe-inspiring people who I know will be lifelong friends and colleagues in this far-too-competitive field.  Collegial respect and collaboration is truly what the conference was about and I am constantly reminded that we are not in that business in the U.S. education system for the most part, which is entirely unfortunate.

Of course, at a conference in Turkey, there would be presenters from Turkey, but there were also presenters from Iran, Palestine, Iraq, Kurdistan, Dubai, Libya, the United States, Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Ireland, United Kingdom, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Austria, Taiwan, Latvia, Slovakia, Spain, the Netherlands, Cyprus, Australia, Egypt and Canada.  And, although the professional atmosphere was incredible and collaborative, what was so immensely valuable to me was getting to know everyone and hearing their stories and walking in their shoes for just a while.  The world was all of a sudden the size of a dining hall or cocktail party and I did not ever want for it to end.  People and places and events that, here in America, we only hear about in the news, are things in which these people live, work, breathe and worry.  Several of the presenters live and work in Ankara, where there recently was an attack at a bus station which one of the presenters uses every day for her commute.  She could have been there.  I do not want to use her name without her permission, but she confided in us how attacks change how people go about their lives and make their decisions about the future.

A presenter from Libya and I spoke at length about a longstanding Libyan leader and his grip on not only his country, but on many others, and how he had held many in fear over the years.  And we spoke about how her homeland is now a bit chaotic as the leader's followers dispersed and show no connection to the land or her people.  Simply knowing this woman put a face on all of the pain of the Libyan people all of these years and has made me feel like my small job in my small town is nothing at all compared to the suffering around the world.

An attendee from the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in Northern Iraq spoke about what it is like in his land now that Daesh has been pushed out, and I spoke with him about how proud the Peshmerga must be to have been able to protect many of their families and futures from people who spend all of their time and energy to slander the ideas and reputations of millions of respectable and loving Muslims in this world.  A presenter from Cairo talked to us about why Egypt had declined into chaos after the Arab Spring and how things have improved greatly, even though the news rarely reports the positives.

My goal of opening a multicultural and linguistically global school was reinforced and I realized that there are many others around the world that also want to shrink what comes between us and keeps us at bay.  There are many of us in many places and, together, it is up to us to make a smaller world, all around.

I hope that each of you will read this and know that I am speaking of each of you that has changed my life in very profound ways.  I love each one of you and look forward to seeing each of you again.