A Little Backstory

A shout out to Muppet for prodding me on this one.

So, some of you may be wondering what went on between the last time you saw me and "Hey, I'm in Pakistan! Check out my blog!" Since it's been a good ten years since some of you saw me, this will be the "wide-angle" picture, but don't worry--for the sake of those who saw me in July, I'll be brief.

I've spent most of the last ten years since college working with youth development/academic enrichment programs. That experience included a long stint as the site-director-cum-program-coordinator-cum-acting executive-director of a smallish non-profit program for grades K-12, and then a brief tenure designing an ecology enrichment curriculum for middle-schoolers. All of that, plus my long-standing personal enthusisam for international issues, eventually propelled me into a one-year Master's Degree in Comparative and International Education.

"What the hell is that?" I hear you ask. Good question--no one actually knows. But I studied things like

• The effects of microfinance on school enrollment and retention in Bangladesh
• Girls' schooling in Iran
• Sesame Street around the world
• The (mostly negative) effects of the World Bank and IMF on education, economic development, and quality of life in developing countries
• The effects of globalization on U.S. higher education
• Educational philosophers (Paulo Freire, Mary Wollestonecraft, John Dewey, Toni Morrison--read The Bluest Eye again, seriously)

. . . and so on. Determined to continue in the field of education, missing my work with children, and wanting some experience in the region I had studied, I started applying to teach in international schools. One of my buddies in the graduate program forwarded a job announcement to me in May, and within a month I'd flown to San Fransisco for an interview and been hired as a Kindergarten teacher in The Lovely City, Pakistan. By the end of July I was off to the (U.S.) East Coast for some training, and within days, well, here I am.

Feel free to keep the questions coming.

Peace out.