South Carolina Education Directory
	Click Here to See More

Summer Odyssey

Doris A. Ezell
Chester Middle School
Chester, SC

If my imagination had soared through time, defying space and challenging the human situation, I could have told her how being awarded a 1994 Fulbright-Hays fellowship affording the chance to travel extensively on three of Indonesia's main islands (Sumatra, Java, and South Sulawesi) for thirty-seven days with eleven other educators would redefine my identity while revolutionizing and revitalizing my twenty-two year career teaching seventh grade language arts. I also could have answered her in all truth, with my own self wondering what I had lost, by admitting, "Nothing yet, Mother, dear, nothing yet."

Right away, I'd tell her about how every outlandish incident that happened would be used to empower my students' academic growth. Like that lizard on Penny's and my Medan, North Sumatra, hotel room wall. The green critter never graced my eyes and never really had to, since Penny's screeching dictated what I needed to know, "SCREAM! RUN! WRITE A POEM ABOUT THIS!" Boy, did I comply, doing the first two actions immediately and putting the third on hold to be completed after this encounter, like twenty-three others, had jelled within me.

"About That Lizard" started during Writer's Workshop last October, and I broke the rule of silence during writing to elicit information about lizards. Baffled that someone had talked even though it was their teacher, the honors language arts students kept writing. During lunch the next day, Tony handed me a note, seventh-grade-folded, complete with the "pull out" tab, containing facts about lizards. Tony's note reflected self-directed learning, while portraying creative research techniques, which provided me with correct descriptors of a lizard.

I'd tell her how our remote, isolated Turgo Village stay would stimulate poetry while serving as a springboard for creative problem solving and writing, for example,

Just suppose you are in Turgo Village. The temperature drops into the mid-thirties, a weather extremity for which none of you are prepared. What will you do to keep warm? Elaborate in writing how your creative resourcefulness will help you and your companions survive the night.

I would describe the quaint, long house—thatch roof dwelling with earthen floor built to house foreign visitors or to serve as the setting for village ceremonies like weddings, receptions, birth parties, and funerals—where we Fulbrighters spent one day and night. My description would include the fact that the entire village lacked heat and electricity, something that surprised us as much as learning the men and women in our group would share the same quarters.

Mother would also learn of how, with less than two hours' sleep all night long, I had bounded out of bed at 4:00 a.m. to join four others in scaling a rocky, narrow, winding mountain trail at 4:30. I'd tell her how my feet snapped dried out sticks, crunched on spiny twigs, and how my legs cramped during the climb that stretched, seemingly, higher, higher into still twinkling starlight—as if it endeavored to reach right into forever. Our unforgettable, pre-dawn mission was to watch sunrise over Merapi's summit peaks. (Think about Ms. Ezell's exhaustion felt during the dawn of her awesome mountain climb. Should she have gone or remained in bed and slept? Compose a letter to Ms. Ezell explaining the choice you think she should have made.) and I would make certain Mother knew how this climb helped to engineer an activity in imaginative thinking. My students, for instance, responded to questions whose forethought made them soar beyond anything they had ever produced in my class.

If I had not experienced the Ramayana drama/dance, performed by a world-acclaimed theatrical troupe, I could not have shared with Mother its surreal stage glamour whose presence glazed the gazer's spirit. Nor would my seventh graders have been blessed with the opportunity of reacting to a broad spectrum of literature-based activities pertaining to Indonesia. Several of them, for example, pretended to be characters from the book. They contracted Indonesia fever from me, its contagious symptoms affecting their creative daring profoundly; they raised their hands to read aloud the somewhat difficult passages in the novel. Even the most reluctant or slowest readers volunteered, as they felt right at home with these larger-than-life personalities.

"Ms. Ezell, this Rawana is just like a bad guy in a comic book!" Frederick exclaimed right into my eardrum. (This young man was classified LD and had crawled through instruction all year. Ramayana excited his literacy capabilities, producing a brand new bud for spring.) Frederick drew a picture that featured something covered in the text; Rawana pranced upon the wide, white drawing paper, his fiendish presence scowling, the wound in his shoulder gaping and dripping purple blood. Frederick became a new man through his responding-to-literature project; his art piece clearly demonstrated knowledge of the book's universal theme: Good always wins; evil always loses.

Students tossed Ramayana vocabulary around like household words. During lunch duty one smoldering, mid-May day, a girl, mopping her face with a Kleenex, yelled to another, "I'd give anything to have a Banyan tree spring up. I could sit under its leaves and cool off."

They felt comfortable speaking of the novel's characters.

"Sinta is so sweet."

"Pretty, too. No wonder Rawana wants her for himself."

"Yeah, but Rama won't stand for that, girlfriend."

Several of the girls pretended to be a Ramayana character and wrote journal/diary entries that captured their attitude or mood on a typical day. What surprised me is that just as many boys chose this activity, the joy in doing so evidenced by macho half-smiles—the teacher must never see her "tough guys" having fun.

Other activities included writing a sequel to the book, scripting a mini-play based on a favorite chapter, and creating a vivid, detailed description of one or two main characters in the book. Students were given the option of allowing these descriptions to take the form of another literary genre.

Had all of July and early August 1994 been spent at 230 Miller Street, I would have been spared the terror of getting caught in the middle of a Sarabayan street during rush hour's height; my students would have missed the musing instruction that asked them to write about a scary time in their lives, I would have been denied the exhilaration felt in walking across a sand sea and up four hundred ten steps to get a closer look at the Mount Bromo volcano crater; my heart would not have been able to comprehend the ability of Indonesian citizens to laugh in spite of toiling in rice paddies and rubber tree or coffee bean plantations twelve hours per day, earning $2.50, if that much; and this heart could not have been powered to embrace the genuine feelings of friendship proclaimed through that laughter, oblivious to gut-deep exhaustion, caught in our smiles sent to each other. and as my mother and students learned of other Indonesian highlights, those just named would simply enhance their appreciation of my experiences while acting as subjects and ideas for poems.

I would relate to them the magnificent shade of blue that painted Indonesia's sky and how being there with other Fulbrighters only intensified its brilliance. I would relate how one mosquito in Jakarta was so persistent in its desire to sting me all over, it found places I forgot were there. I would relate how smiles often camouflaged an Indonesian's wish to do more, see more, and be more than most inhabitants on earth—dreaming as graciously and dynamically as angels heading toward Heaven. I would explain how my students would write reflective compositions for these situations.

How else could I have survived the taxi rides in Jakarta had I not been there to ride, always but once, in the cab's back seat beside Penny? Where else would the exotic, natural beauty of North Sumatra's rain forest on one side, rocky mountain surface on the other, and skin-thin, curving road slicing through the middle have been detected if not in North Sumatra? Or the horror felt when our bus driver accidentally hit a young Batak boy one morning in July if I had not been in that particular village? Or the shock in witnessing Hindu wedding rituals, one of which was Kuda Depang, a traditional horse trance dance that featured young men frantically riding giant hobby horses and, in presenting a finale, prancing upon shards of broken light bulbs? How, if I had not actually been there? Then, I would narrate how these incidents would be used as skill builders in language, as ideas in poetry writing, and as comparisons of cultural traditions.

Seventh graders are generally nosy by nature and into everybody's business. They love hearing the latest gossip. I, therefore, capitalized on this innate adolescent trait, a decision that proved invaluable all year long. I shared my personal journal maintained during our journey. Students begged to hear more of what had happened during our time spent in Indonesia.

Rita, a hard to handle student who loved to fight and who virtually lived in I.S.S. or O.S.S. most of her first semester Chester Middle School days, straightened up her act. "Go on, now, leave me alone!" she blared once in the hall to another student. "I wanna hear what Ms. Ezell's gonna read of that journal."

Not only had I discovered a highly effective, active listening skill builder, but I had also picked up on a method of actually helping young people to keep out of trouble. Students metamorphosed from the second day of my sharing information gleaned from first-hand experiences. As with most middle school students, my own were at first quite skeptical about our Indonesia unit. Rita, who'd earlier declared that she was "so sick of Indonesia that she could throw up," was willing to act like a civilized young lady just so she could stay in my class to actually hear about Indonesia. Frederick, who had lagged and dragged behind his classmates all of his school years, suddenly caught up with them, kept up with them, and surpassed many of them—particularly in art response. Other students who had merely come to school for lunch, to see their friends, and to streak my hair with gray became willing to work during class. They seemed impressed with the many kinds of writing like poetry, stories, and sequels they actually were able to produce.

My students grew academically, astronomically. Ordinary turned into extraordinary. Their intellects peaked, their sense of other cultures broadened, and their sensitivity toward citizens from other cultures deepened. They grew eager for these strides to shape their instructional tasks. Questions and comments reflected, for a change, joy in learning. Barry, who had grumbled since day one about not wanting to complete creative writing assignments, actually pleaded to do extra Indonesia-based writing. Barry, like his peers, excelled.

I think about how willingly students executed other writing tasks. They wrote to Mr. Harrison, Chester Middle School principal, and to the International Student Exchange Office, requesting of each to establish a Chester Middle School student exchange program. They created character trees and "from sun up to sun down" self-portraits. Students pretended to be typical Indonesians and wrote about one entire day in their lives. They used Indonesia as a basis for many kinds of writing built by vivid imagination.

Seventh graders may be described as scrambled eggs on legs, a condition that becomes more evident when May, merry and carefree, flaunts her presence. Yet, even spring had no power over their enthusiasm about Indonesia. They replaced being bored with being excited. Listless eyes widened, brightened. Back in my language arts class, I modeled a Batak folk dance and several shy, suddenly bold kids imitated me. They hushed their chatter to listen to Beyond Superlatives: Encounters in Indonesia, my booklet of twenty-four poems grown in that lovely culture nicknamed "The Morning of the World." and each time a lesson took them to Indonesia, that lesson took me back to relive what I'd lived for thirty seven glorious days, to be once more stunned and charmed by Indonesia's magnificence, captivated by its diversity, and mesmerized by the reality of what its presence did for my classroom, my students, and my teaching career.

If my mother ever again ponders what I lost in Indonesia, I will respond by using these words, "Mother, dear heart, I lost all of my being in that third-world culture; yet, I found in its place a new, more dynamic dimension of my entity. And, yes Ma'am, I did come back in one piece, but oh, what a puzzle awaiting me to fill its missing sections." It's what I owe my students as their teacher.

There really is no place like home; yet, last summer's Fulbright-Hays odyssey could not have happened had I stayed at home instead of venturing from it. In fact, that's something else that I'll tell my mother.