Challenging Cultural Differences

I want to start this post off by saying, I am safe and I am not writing this to cause concern.  When I decided to write a blog while I am here I wanted it to be honest, and this experience made me think a lot about my own culture.  Below is an excerpt from my teaching journal.  If you just want to know the happy stuff about my trip, go ahead and skip this bit, it is simply some food for thought.  

After an assembly during spell 4 on Friday the assistant principal, who is our acting principal because Bruce is in China, came into the hall to tell us there had been a bomb at the school.  Apparently a student she expelled earlier that day came back with a bomb.  During this assembly the wing had been evacuated and the rest of the school had been informed.  She also said the fire department and police had cleared the building and we were safe to go to class.  And that was it.  Only I didn’t feel safe at all, I felt terrified.  At home violence in schools is a terrible reality.  One as a future educator I have taken very seriously.  At home even the threat of a bomb is a big deal.  This would have meant a school lockdown while the suspect is being apprehended, and the end of school for the day.  Also tons of media attention and a lot of very scared parents.  That was all of the information I went into the last spell of my day with.  I had my difficult year 11 class and they came in joking about it.  Trying to keep cultural differences in mind, I explained to them that where I am from violence in schools is a reality, and it’s terrifying.  I just asked them to please not joke about it and that the school had said we were safe so there was not cause for concern anymore.  But it was hard, because I felt VERY concerned.  I almost started crying in front of them.  After school Mr. Douglass came to talk to me about it, I think to make me feel better.  He explained that the bomb was simply a bottle full of gas with some nails in it, and it was never going to explode.  He also said that the students probably just wanted to cause trouble, and were never going to blow up the school.  Honestly though, that didn’t make me feel better about it at all.  Just because the kids involved didn’t know what they were doing does not mean the issue should be dismissed.  In my mind just the fact that a student put anything resembling a bomb in the school has a very clear and scary implication.  It means that someone had the intention to cause harm to the school, students, and staff.  The staff and students gave the general idea that this just wasn’t a big deal.  I kept trying to get my head around the idea that this country as a culture has never had to face the deaths of students and school teachers, and that changes the perceived level of danger.  I felt like I was being overdramatic about it.  Even in trying to explain my reaction to Barb I really struggled to connect my perspective with hers.  The way I think about it is so different that I am not sure people that do not share the cultural history of Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, and a whole slew of smaller incidents of violence can understand.  After talking to people from home about it I feel like my response was validated.  It is an unfortunate and painful reality of my culture, and I hope that people here never have to understand it.  

I think I am still processing this in some ways.  It isn't that I am worried about anything going wrong, or that I was ever really in any danger.  The way the people here responded to the situation created one of the most significant moments of culture shock I have experienced here.  I felt like no one around me understood my thinking at all.  It is one thing to explain to people why you feel afraid, but quite another for them to understand.  My Kiwi colleagues and students were respectful of my feelings, but they just didn't get it.  And like I said, I hope that they never do.  

Constantly I am faced with small realizations of my own identity as an American.  In the last few years I have grown to feel a sense of pride about being from the North-west, but I haven't ever really considered what it means to be a member of my country.  I know the basics, I get it, but traveling has a way of making you realize the subtitles.