Moving Abroad Ain't Easy

For 8 years, I taught English to immigrants in a Georgia high school, but looking back, maybe my most important task was helping my students adjust to the culture. Regularly, new kids would burst into tears, saying how much they hated America, how much they missed their native country, and much they wanted to leave.

I did my best to offer comfort, reassuring them that learning English and learning a new culture takes a lot of patience and a whole lot of time. Inwardly, I knew that once a few months had passed most of the kids would be fine and would eventually embrace their adopted home. Now, I'm the one who sometimes feels like bursting into tears.

These emotions have caught me a bit off guard. After all, I'm the Traveling Teacher. I'm the guy who's been to 37 countries. I'm the guy who lived in Guatemala. I shouldn't have any trouble acclimating to Singapore, especially since English is one of the official languages.

To make matters more confusing, unlike my students, who often arrived in America with nothing, I'm a mature, financially-secure adult who had a great job lined up and even had someone waiting to pick him up at the airport. Yes, I know the acclimation process takes time, but it shouldn't take that long for an experienced traveler like me with such a fantastic opportunity.

I didn't want to share my malaise with my colleagues, many of whom have taught abroad for years and all seemingly thriving in Singapore. At times, I assumed I made a terrible mistake coming here. Things just weren't unfolding as I expected.

And then this week I met Rosanne Woodmansee, a fiery Australian woman who's a relocation expert. Her job is to help expatriates settle into life in Singapore. She visited my high school as part of the lengthy, teacher orientation program. When I first looked at the schedule of speakers stretching out over six weeks, I thought it odd that the administration waited so long for her presentation. Now it all makes sense.

While we were waiting for other new teachers to arrive, Rosanne asked three of us how things were going. The other two said something to the effect of "great" or "fine." I said, "pretty good," to which she replied, "just pretty good?"
 
Hmmm.....I knew then that her session was going to be more than just a perfunctory list of suggestions.

"It's O.K. I often tell my clients to list the three things they hate most about Singapore," she laughed.

Rosanne began her talk with a picture of a boat on the shore of a beach, but the rest of the landscape was blank. She told us from this moment forward we'd have to leave all of our previous expectations and assumptions of Singapore behind and paint in our new reality. "It's up to you to determine what that reality will be," she added.

It made me realize that part of my angst might be due to my expectations, or even my hidden expectations, clashing with the reality of what I've found so far in Singapore. 

But it was her next illustration that really impacted me. Rosanne told us we should think of ourselves as trees, trees that had been lopped off and uprooted and that it was going to take at least six months for us to grow back and begin to feel normal again - all of us, even veteran travelers and even veteran, overseas teachers.

Since then, I've been thinking just how much uprooting I've experienced over the past three months.

• Handed in resignation in May
• Finished teaching in America the beginning of June
• Spent the rest of June filling out forms for Singapore, packing up apartment, giving away possessions, and saying goodbye to loved ones and friends
• Flew 26 hours to Singapore at the end of June
• Rushed to find a new apartment and furnish it
• Set up utilities, internet and cable, cell phone plan, banking account
• Began teaching July 21st
• Learning intricacies of transportation routes
• Adapting to new Singaporean culture and new school culture
• Deciphering British English. For example, this punctuation mark "." is not called a period. It is called a full stop.

When I put it all into perspective, of course, I would feel unsettled. Who wouldn't.

I think it, again, comes back to the notion of expectations. Like many people, I assume that I should be able to rise above situations that slow others down, which in this case was moving abroad, avoiding feelings of frustration, loneliness, or depression. It's completely unrealistic for me to believe that I'm somehow superhuman, but I still fall victim to the fallacy over and over again.

I also fall victim to what I call "the deficit paradigm." It goes something like this. An executive delivers a moving oration but stumbles once or twice and considers the speech a failure. A cook prepares a culinary masterpiece, but one of the guests doesn't ask for seconds, so she assumes she must be a lousy cook.

I see it all the time in our students. Singapore is a place that revers academic achievement, meaning the pressure is intense. A child will get a "b" on a difficult project and be ready to quit school because he didn't get an "a."

As part of my job, I work with both special education students and kids learning English as a second language. I find it incredible that immigrant children who've been here eight months with, in some cases, little to no English background have managed to thrive, let alone keep up, with a demanding academic load, but some of those same students feel that they're losers because they aren't yet bilingual.

Every day I tell the kids to give themselves a break. It's so painfully obvious why they should, but I still have a hard time accepting it myself.

I don't want to give the impression that I'm miserable because I'm not. I still have many more good days than bad, but I'm finally beginning to acknowledge that I'm being pruned like everyone else.

While my roots are regrowing, I look for small victories to keep me moving forward. I received a big one earlier in the week.

One of the first students my school asked me to work with is an expatriate boy who's been struggling to learn English since he arrived in January. As a result,"Chao" is falling behind in many of his classes.

I'm certainly not surprised. In addition to trying to learn English, the teenager is going through his own cultural adjustment. I've done a lot of one-on-one work with Chao, and I think I'm seeing some progress, but, again, I fall victim to the deficit paradigm, so I'm not sure.

A few days ago an administrator, who also teaches, sent me a message saying he was pleased because he'd noticed a big improvement in Chao's work and his level of enthusiasm for school. If for that reason alone, I'll stay in Singapore to see Chao master English.

I'm a big believer in the power of a few kind words. Unfortunately, we don't seem to take enough time to share positive comments, only negative ones. I wish we did because the content of that administrator's short e-mail will stay with me for months, maybe forever.

And I received another encourager - I'm not the only teacher struggling to adapt to Singapore. On Thursday, I chatted with a veteran teacher, a teacher who's also taught abroad for years, who revealed that he, too, is facing challenges here.

It's reassuring to be reminded that we're all human. We're all flawed, fallible beings, and we're all much more alike than different. Maybe we'd all be a lot happier if we shared our universal struggles more often.