Sucking out all the marrow of Athens (literary reference alert)

 

Apollo's Temple on the island of Aegina

Quick Americano and lounge at a seaside cafe in Piraeus

Recorded a podcast with the eminent John Papadakis of Owlcast radio

I head to Crete this weekend, but I have been wringing every last bit out of my days here in Athens. After a weeklong spate of snow and grey days that pretty much shut the city down and cancelled all of my school visit plans for a few days, the sun finally came out again, and the city came back to life. I had my first real glances at the beautiful beaches that Greece is famous for - SO many shades of blue - and I explored more of the ancient history that's around every corner in this amazing country. I have a hard time describing the feeling of standing in a place where people stood in 447 BC, but it's like nothing I have ever experienced in the U.S. 

I also have not been shy about sampling the food here. When I asked a 5th grade class that I was visiting what is the one food I shouldn't miss in Greece, they yelled, "Souvlaki!!" so I tried one of the places that they recommended and oh, my, goodness! Imagine an incredibly tender barbequed beef skewer laid on a flatbread that is toasted crisp on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside. Along with this, a thin spread of tzatziki for flavoring and tomatoes, onions, and for some reason french fries. SO delicious. Along with the copious amounts of coffee, bread, cookies, and assorted other sweets that are everywhere in this city, I am lucky that I like walking so much.

And then, there's the people. The Greek people have a tradition of hospitality, also known as "guest-friendship" that they take very seriously - and that dates back to Homer's (you know, the guy that wrote The Odyssey) time. No matter where you go, people go out of their way to make sure you feel comfortable and welcome - and this extends to the schools I've visited. A particularly noteworthy example is the American Community School where I had the opportunity to teach two classes, showing teachers how to integrate social emotional learning into the curriculum. I did an improv activity with a drama class that included defining, acting out, and identifying different shades of emotions and hilarity ensued as the students jumped right in. Debriefing the activity afterward, students dug into what ended up being a very thoughtful and somewhat contentious conversation about the emotional norms society imposes on different genders. Then, in a literature class, we graphed our reactions and the speakers reaction to a character in passages from Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. They'd read the book, but this was their first foray into talking about it in class. Not only did students participate in the activity, but the conversation led them to realizations that were incredibly insightful and they left class talking about the book amongst themselves and excited to do more in days to come. The teacher later wrote in an email to me that students "loved the activity, the passionate exchange of ideas, the realizations they made about their own responses to language and their "manipulation" by the author." I couldn't have asked for a better example of how tapping into students emotions can lead to engagement with the curriculum. 

In addition to sharing my ideas, I came away from this past week's school visits with some incredible resources to take back to my district. I learned of a program called Youth to Youth being implemented by Julia Tokatlidou, Dean of Academics at ACS Athens in conjunction with the NGO The Home Project where students and teachers from the ACS work with students from the refugee camps in Greece. I only had the opportunity to speak to Julia about it briefly, but I look forward to learning more of the details of the programs as it has deep implications for the trauma-based and social-emotional needs of our students back in Paradise.

I also learned of an app called Equity Maps, developed by the principal of ACS Athens, Dave Nelson. It is an app that can track a classroom discussion and provide data on who speaks in the class and how much. This app makes it possible not only to provide students feedback in real time on how the conversation progressed, but also who talked for how long, the percentage of talk time between students and teachers, different genders, and it even records the conversation for reflection for the whole class or one-on-one with individual students. Anyone who's ever run a discussion knows the value of reflection and feedback for improving the quality of the conversation and I'm still trying to wrap my head around the possibilities provided by this app.

Here are some screenshots of the discussion Dave mapped for me with the Equity Maps app: