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This week

• Monday, 01 December we learned that a dear friend of Jeremy’s had died suddenly and tragically.
• Tuesday, 02 December attended our last Norwegian language class for the term. I have learned a lot of Norwegian!
• Wednesday, 03 December dropped off Jeremy at the airport to return Stateside.
• Thursday, 04 December learned that the mom of the friend who died on Monday passed away in her sleep. She had been in hospice for several months, but still sad. My own mom slipped on the ice while walking my dog and dislocated her wrist. Will likely require surgery. Conducted a 10th grade workshop at Steinerskolen i Moss on What it Means to Be American? To Be Norwegian? Had dinner with a couple other Rovers and spent the night in Oslo.
• Friday, 05 December Rover check-in at the Norsk Maritimt Museum. Got a bowl of ramen after our check-in and traveled back to Halden. 

I promise this post isn’t as bleak as the title makes out. 

I have been asking myself for a few weeks what my role is as a teacher in Norway. Is it to help students and teachers understand the United States with more complexity? To showcase some teaching methods Norwegian teachers might try out in their classrooms? To help people meet an American? To help me consider my own teaching? To investigate questions I have about teaching and learning? To “turn nations into people” and be an ambassador of the United States in an unofficial capacity? To rest? To listen? To observe? To let go?

Especially this week where I feel like there was a major tragedy every day, I found myself asking this question almost every hour: What am I even doing here? Should I be going home to make sure everyone and everything is okay? How can I help from so far away? Is my job here even that important? 

I was sitting in Norwegian class on Tuesday after getting very little sleep, but didn’t feel like I could just be at home staring at the ceiling. So I went to class. I hadn’t done one portion of the homework that I knew we were going to review in class; I hadn’t done it because our Thursday teacher hadn’t given us the worksheet. And I could have looked in my workbook and done the homework but I was kind of lazy about it. When we corrected the homework in class I told our Tuesday teacher that our Thursday teacher didn’t give us the worksheet (sorry, didn’t mean to throw you under the bus Thursday teacher), but that I would try to answer the questions. It was fine. But also I kind of didn’t want her to call on me at all. I kind of didn’t even want her to look at me. I just wanted to be in class because I didn’t want to not be in class but I also didn’t want anyone to notice that I was in class. I was lowkey glad I was going to the Tuesday section of class instead of the Thursday section I regularly go to—I have become the emotional support for one of my classmates who’s seeing a new guy and I could only get it together for myself in that moment. I wondered, what am I even doing here? In class? I should go home. But to do what? Jeremy was asleep when I left and I figured he’d still be asleep when I returned. I needed some semblance of routine, of purpose. It made me think about all the times when students tell me that they are distracted because of something way more important than our class going on. A super studious student I really like working with from the Tuesday class finally showed up and I was so relieved because I knew he would be so focused on the work when we had to do partner stuff. When we had completed a speaking exercise and it was kind of quiet, he said, oh I know! Let’s review and ask each other some questions to practice. It was a relief to just nerd out over Norwegian with this kid. 

I think part of my question about what I am even doing here comes from the contrast I feel with my work in the States. As part of my agreement to take leave for a year I retained my advisees, so I have one undergraduate I am advising on her honors thesis and two masters students: one who hopes to graduate in the spring and the other for not a couple of semesters yet. I’ve got a couple other committees for student work I sit on, but they don’t require my regular meeting. So I meet with the undergrad and two masters students semi-regularly. Part of my negotiations also entailed calling into English Education committee meetings once a month, so I’ve been doing that and they keep me abreast of decisions that will affect the long-term running of the English Education undergraduate and graduate programs. I’m torn about these commitments. On the one hand, they connect me to my life in Colorado and that life in Colorado is filled with unquestioned purpose about what I do and why I do it. I want to contribute to the building of a more justice-oriented and equitable educational system in the United States. Period. The end. That’s all there is to it. I know exactly what I want to do, and my research, teaching, and service are all working toward this purpose. It’s relatively easy for me to move through my work in Colorado because I have a very bright and shining North Star. 

But I find myself unmoored in Norway. There are so many things I have learned here that I am anxious to try back home. I want to do more with building teachers’ content knowledge. I want to do more teaching of secondary students alongside our partner teachers so that preservice teachers have multiple models for teaching, especially a model of what I am literally teaching them to do in their own classrooms. I want to explore ways our cultural backgrounds and cultural kairotic moments shape us as teachers, our knowledge, and the kind of teaching that we do. 

When things are hard back home I feel a real desire to go back, even if just for a couple of weeks. To check in. To ground myself. To make sure everything with my family is okay.

But perhaps another reason I am here right now is because maybe my purpose can simply be helping teachers and students develop more nuanced pictures of the United States and the people who live there. That’s important too, right? Building relationships with teachers and students, even if just the kind of shallow ones (not in a bad way) because we spent some time together in a classroom. One of the reasons why I didn’t cancel the student workshop on Thursday was because students are my most favorite type of people to be around and I knew it would do me good to interact with them. 

I was talking with a good Rover friend this week and I asked, maybe that’s just it. He reminded me that maybe my purpose here is to just “make nations into people,” to turn the United States from the caricature that it is to something human. To help dispel stereotypes. To help them put a face—my face—on the United States. 

Another reason I think I’m here, like on this Earth, is to learn how to love others and to learn how to receive the love of others. This week, losing our friend James and having Jeremy return to the United States has made me think a lot about how I offer and receive love. I keep asking Jeremy if I should come home, at least for the holidays. My parents and brother are supposed to fly out in about 10 days for us to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s together. Those plans have to be slightly modified with my mom’s potential surgery. So I keep asking if I should come home. And Jeremy keeps insisting that he and my brother can take care of my parents. Can take care of the house. Can take care of the pets. This is one way that they are showing love to me. But I can’t help but be worried. Perhaps this is another way to learn how to allow others to take care of me, to trust that all will be taken care of. 

Perhaps another reason for me being here is to learn how to let go. I have been frustrated on more than one occasion that teachers here seem to either downplay or misunderstand the relationship between theory and practice when it comes to teaching. I take pride in my own research and teaching that attempts to distill theory as a framework for our praxis. Others here aren’t so into that combination. And you know what? That’s okay. Which is not something I’d say back home. Perhaps I’m here to learn how to let go.

Coach Chris Bennett, my running coach on my Nike Running App (my half-marathon is on Sunday, 07 December!) says that every run has a purpose. And if we can figure out the purpose of each run, we can run toward it and run better because we are measuring our runs in more than just numbers. So I’m asking here, what am I even doing here? Asking that question isn’t a luxury I get in the States. I wonder if part of my time here is just the privilege of pausing and being able to ask that question at all.