The power of the pin

Friday we had a really big meeting with the Dean, who came to Lautoka from Suva, and all of the Primary (elementary ed) faculty and the early childhood faculty.  It has seemed too complicated to explain on the blog, but basically when I got here the Dean, based on pressure from the Ministry of Education, changed her mind and decided that FNU was NOT going to have a Bachelors in Early Childhood Education.  Instead we were going to do all the work to create the degree, but then call it a Primary Ed degree, with a hyphen and some really confusing other label that basically meant a degree in nothing that makes any sense... and I'm learning right now it's still too complicated to explain.

Anyway, everyone here was really devastated by this news.  From my perspective as a short-timer I just decided that either way we still had a program to design, so I would just get busy cranking on that, and shoot for super-awesome, while the political drama played itself out. My hope was that once the Dean saw that what we were doing was legit then maybe down the road after I'm gone she would change her mind.   But then something cool happened.  All of the Primary Ed faculty got really fired up that for no good reason FNU was going to bring me here and write a new degree and not call it what it really is.  And so everyone decided to lobby the Dean and have this big meeting. Lots of stress for everyone here on Thursday and Friday!  But, hooray, the Dean took a look at all of our work so far, and listened to everyone, and completely changed her mind. And, on top of that she also agreed to consider some other major structural changes here - like moving from a really old-school trimester/practicum system to a semester system with practicum embedded in each class.  This is a BIG deal for the people here and I'm really happy for them.  Plus, the early childhood people - just like the U.S. - are rarely given a voice; and when the time came at the meeting Sangeeta stood up for herself and the program and didn't let the situation intimidate her.  Yay Sangeeta!  We did a lot of pep talks before we went in and she rocked it!  In fact - coolest part of the whole thing - she showed how under Fiji regulations from the Ministry of Education early childhood is recognized as ages birth to 8 years old, and argued that this means that teachers who will teach first and second grades (remember the "infant" thing?) should be required to have the Early Childhood Bachelors instead of the Primary one.  And the Dean agreed! This is really rare even in the U.S. 

So we went from working our butts off to create really great and totally invisible degree to now designing a Bachelor’s Degree in Early Childhood Education: Birth-age 8 that shall change the landscape of early childhood education for all time! (Insert dramatic music here).  Well, that's how triumphant we felt walking out of the meeting anyway.  We were pretty much like

And then once we were back in the office we were like

And I hate to take the credit here, but it's all because I gave Sangeeta, and Dropati these little early childhood pins when I arrived. I present to you the NAEYC "circle of children" pin.  

These babies are relics from the 90's that for some reason I decided to thrown in with my welcome and good-bye gifts from Wyoming.  I had bought three of them AGES ago and just kept them around. It's complicated to think of good gifts for people when you travel.  Do you give jewelry?  If so, what?  It needs to have a local flair, and what does that mean in Wyoming?  Cowpie necklaces?  Elk horn?  Sagebrush?    

Completely uninspired this trip I threw in UW t-shirts, UW socks, and a UW draw-string backpack for good measure. But all of those are parting gifts. And rather lame ones at that.  Anyway, I needed something for a, "Hi. I'm the new kid from the U.S. and you should like me" gift.  Desperate I bought like 20 of those little Wyoming bucking horse lapel pins, but as I was packing I saw the COC pins (They love acronyms her more than any place I have ever been and it's starting to have an impact on my brain).  So I brought them along.  When I got here and realized there were 2 ECE faculty - Sangeeta and Dropati - I gave them my first two.  Then when it occurred to me that I needed something for the Dean I gave her the third.  I decided that cheesy or not they do mean something to me and they are a piece of early childhood history and identity in the U.S.  I presented them as an important symbol of early childhood education back home.  They were a hit.

Anyway, Sangeeta and Dropati were both wearing theirs the day of the meeting and I told them before we went in that they were “power pins” that would bring them strength.  Then, what do you know, but the Dean shows up wearing her pin as well.  That was the moment our luck changed!  So now the “power pin” is in.  

I have also given away about half of my bucking horse lapel pins so far.  I gave some to the HOD’s and the HOS, and I’m saving the rest for the CE, the EO, and maybe an OA or two… maybe even the VC or the PS if I’m feeling brave. Seriously, that’s how they address each other here. It’s like, “I will call the HOD and ask him.” (HOD meaning Head of Department).  Not the casual U.S. version, “Let’s ask Satish what he thinks.”  It has taken the entire 2 weeks for me to understand this.  Just the other day I used an acronym instead of a name for an actual human being and I knew the brain washing was complete.

Sincerely,

VF-ECE, FNU-LC, FJ

Slow down, you move to fast

Last Sunday I was reading and thinking about things and I had this moment where I realized that pretty much all I had done since I got here was think about - and write about - how I'm sleeping, what I'm eating, how I'm finding things to eat, how I prepare the various things I find to eat, how I get around, and how I'm feeling about these essential Nikki's-general-happiness related items; and I was embarrassed actually.  I decided then that I have to get outside of myself and start doing something that matters to someone else in my free time while I'm here. It's easy at work because we have something big going on and that's my focus.  But on the weekend and after 5:00 every day when it's just me (and the Chinese man sometimes) it's different.   It could be connected to the fact that I had just finished this awesome book and it had concluded with the following quotes. "Judge no more.  If you're desperate to use your keen sense of judgement, use it on yourself." & "There's no time left to delay.  You've already wasted so much of your life.  The hour is hard upon us.  Wake up!  Stop sleeping through your own life!"  I know, kind of intense!  The whole book wasn't that way, but the end sure was.  Well, under this influence I had a momentary freak out and started looking for things to do to be of help to somebody besides myself while I'm here.  The result of the temporary freak out has actually been good.  I'm paying much better attention to people around me and I'm having lots of really nice small moments here and there.  

I only tell that story to set up my latest epiphany this morning.  I was experiencing a moment of deep satisfaction while I was buttering my toast. I mean really, like sincere pleasure because I was buttering toast, and anticipating eating the warm freshly-buttered toast along with this amazing new cereal I found from New Zealand (see pic below) with real-life cold milk (not powdered hot milk). I had to chuckle because no matter how hard I try, my thoughts here just do keep coming back to the basic necessities of life.  

Weet-Bix!  Why do we not know about Weet-Bix in the U.S.?  

I am absolutely bringing some home with me.

So then I was thinking about an email I received from a friend this week telling me that I could go a little easy on myself because it was probably okay to worry about that stuff here since figuring out how to eat seemed pretty important. (Thanks Lauren, you are a true food-friend)  Anyway, here's the epiphany... This is how it works!  This is one of the things travel does to us and for us.  It makes us put the brakes on and have to focus on things that we just do on auto-pilot at home.  I can't recall a time I've had a moment that special with my toast in Laramie.:-) Yesterday I rode the bus to town to try to find a couple of pillow-cases.  The pillow situation at the guest house has been a little frightening, and oddly it wasn't until yesterday that it occurred to me that I could do something about it.  Sleeping on newly-purchased soft and lovely pillow cases last night was heavenly!  Duh!  This is why I love backpacking so much.  The sensory experience of it all is so overwhelming, and you are so busy trying to just meet your basic needs (including the need to not get eaten by a bear) that all of the silly life-stresses just disappear.  Perspective brought on by a change in location.  The more drastic the change in location, the greater the need to slow it all down and shift your focus.  Thus the Paul Simon quote in the title.  I've also been surviving on music... lots of it.  And it's been back to the basics with that too.  Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel.  Paul Simon in particular has provided the soundtrack for everything that has happened here.  But I digress.  

I think this means I've just given myself permission to continue to write extensively about food.  One could argue that no matter where I am food remains this important.  You may have a point. For sure you have a point. But I'm standing by my toast-epiphany regardless.  Speaking of food... Sangeeta and her husband bought me a coconut from a street vendor yesterday.  We brought it back to FNU and the lovely fellow below hacked that sucker open with a giant cleaver.  He's the nice guy who brings me flowers in the morning.   

In this pick he is gently cutting off the top to get the juice out.  The violent hacking that happened next was difficult to capture on film.  

The tiny coconut inside the giant impossibly hard to chop into coconut husk. 

They made me drink all of the juice and eat the whole thing.  I liked it and I thought of you Mom! Also, no one here has ever heard of the "Lime in the Coconut" song.  Weird.

Learning stuff is good

I just can't help myself, I need to give a quick motivational speech about knowledge. :-)  I think my intended audience would be any students who are reading this blog and/or our awesome teachers at the ECEC.  I am in the middle of what feels like an enormous final exam -like an "everything you have ever learned about teaching young children over your entire career" kind of final exam. We are creating a brand new Bachelors Degree in Early Childhood Education at FNU, and whether or not it makes any sense for me to be the person they brought here to do it is now beyond the point. They're stuck with me! 

We are two weeks into this process and the enormity of the challenge is still looming.  But we're doing it! We came up with a program outline my second day here.  Since then I've been mining every great resource I can find to map the curriculum so that we are creating something that would be considered an excellent program anywhere in the world. This week we are completing curriculum mapping and starting to write 16 courses, 6 of which already existed and we are just revising.  I don't know for sure how long this will take.  Hopefully we can be done with all of the course proposals (basically an outline of the content) by next week.  Then I have to do an evaluation for the dean about the existing capacity here and the needed capacity to make this happen, and start creating professional development for the faculty here to fill in where there are gaps so they can teach all of these new classes. While I prepare for that I'm embarking on a super-intensive study of Fijian cultural practices related to raising and teaching young children so that the stuff I'm offering is not coming from another planet.  Crazy huh!  But I am LOVING IT!  

So here's the thing.  Every bit of everything I have learned from my own classroom experiences with kids and my personal study in ECE is being used in this process.  I am so incredibly grateful now that I have taken the personal time for my whole career to do the extra reading, to find topics of interest and investigate them on my own, to try so hard to keep up with whatever is current in the field.  I'm so grateful that I let Michelle Buchanan talk me into getting a PhD! And trust me, there were about five years there when I pretty much never thought I'd say that. (P.S. don't tell Michelle - I'm not sure I'm ready to admit this to her.) To summarize:  It all comes back to you. Every little bit of goodness and knowledge we absorb matters!  And it doesn't just happen magically via osmosis.  We have to do hard things and then at the end we realize we know some stuff.  There's no time to waste! We need to get busy people!  Find your passion!  Do something about it!  Knowledge is power! (Dang it, I can't think of any additional cliche's)

Phew!  That's mostly it.

Here are some pics from a gorgeous kindergarten in Suva.  Kindergarten here means preschool actually.  And, even funnier, Infant here means grades 1 and 2 in school.  Man, did I have an epiphany the day I figured out what people actually meant when they were using the term "infant" in terms of teacher preparation! It still blows my mind!  But now the faculty here and I have a good laugh about it. 

How good and pleasant it is.

I'm happy to report that I survived Diwali.  It's like a mashup of Christmas and the 4th of July and it's CRAZY!  Sangeeta and her husband Salesh and Ufemia took me for a drive all around town to see the lights on everyone's houses. It was pretty amazing. Then we stopped at a "cousin-sister's" place for sweets and then had Diwali dinner at Sangeeta's home.  It's hard to explain just how many fireworks were shot off that night.  I lived in Evanston and they get really intense at the 4th of July, but it's seriously nothing in comparison to what they do for Diwali here.  It was actually a little terrifying because the neighbors were shooting off huge fireworks just outside Sangeeta's window.  We couldn't even carry on a conversation it was so loud.  There appear to be no regulations about fireworks and all of the old timers don't like how crazy it has gotten.  It was wild and fun and I'm so glad to say I was here during Diwali 2016!  

An example of the decorations that were everywhere.

They keep making me take a picture while I'm eating food.  Diwali "sweets" :-)

 Some additional food pics for your enjoyment.  Pizza Fijistyle!  I found a Pizza place! Yay!  Campus and nearly everywhere was closed for the holiday yesterday.  But I managed to get a cab and find a new part of town that has a movie theater and some great restaurants.  I watched Dr. Strange, which is a Marvel Comics movie and those aren't really my thing, but I was killing time.  Anyway, it's not that bad... a little weird, BUT it has all of these clips from Kathmandu in it and it made me so happy!  All of my intern students are going to have to watch it.

Hawaiian Pizza Fijistyle 

So, I got this HUGE pizza and was looking for someone to give all of the leftovers to when guess who I saw walking by? Some Sister Missionaries!  I was so very happy to see them!  We had a good visit and I, of course, talked about Andie in Mexico City.  These girls were really funny and just so lovely.  And, they were happy to take my pizza. I'm hopeful I run into them again.

And finally, dessert.  There was this most excellent Korean dessert shop right nest to the theater and I ordered Chocolate pancakes for my after-movie treat.  I'm definitely going back there!

 A message for all of my American friends from the ice cream shop - and this is the sentiment of everyone in Fiji that I have met.  There's no time for conflict and all of that silliness.  Everyone just needs to calm down! We are more alike than we are different.  How "good and pleasant" it is when we live together in unity!  I needed to be here this fall.