China Gray

The building I live in is mostly filled with older women and men, all of whom I’ve come to love. There is no elevator in my building of six floors. So, my neighbors must walk up and down the stairs. They move with a slow diligence, placing one foot above the other and pulling themselves up the stairs. On their way down, they turn sideways, easing their weight from one knee to the next. Early on, one of the elder women said to me “you always stop and let me pass. You are so polite.” I smiled and let her pass. She hobbled up the stairs, back bent forward, cloth shoes skidding across the concrete stairs and echoing around the hollow stairwell. I didn’t realize it at the time, but little actions like that are what they enjoyed. The hello’s as we passed, the smiles, and my willingness to stop and chat. “No, that’s not what I said. You didn’t understand.” The widowed women from the fourth floor scolded me with a smile. She repeated herself, but her meaning never made it out from u...

There is a committee within each group of students that oversees the propaganda of the week. They are charged with turning the blackboard’s in their respective classroom into a work of art. The quality varies, but I always enjoy them. According to my students, propaganda  is often seen as a tool for the government to care for its citizens. Perhaps these pictures will help you understand what I mean. As an aside, students are divided into cohorts. This happens in elementary, middle, and high school, as well as college. Students are with their cohort for all of elementary,   middle, and high school, and this holds true for college as well. They go to all the same classes with their cohort, and are divided into dorms according to their cohort. They are assigned tasks according to cohort, and engage in sports, singing, dance, and academic competitions based on cohort, whether that is within their cohort or between competing cohorts. Each cohort has one of the committees I des...

Classrooms at my school are simple; rows of bolted-down desks face a blackboard to the front. The teacher’s 6-inch raised stage and podium face the students. An additional blackboard is in the back of the room, usually covered in the week’s message. It took me some time to adjust to standing above my students. I’d put my laptop, clipboard, and teaching supplies on the podium at the beginning of class while all my students were watching. I was quite literally a performer on a stage, for hours at a time. When I drank from my bottle, my students would stare, “he’s drinking so much water,” “is the water hot?” “his bottle is so big!” It was a Nalgene, and the water was room temperature, and, yes, I do drink an enormous amount of water. But I need to. I spend so much time repeating myself, my throat is bound to go dry. I did, eventually, get used to my new position up high, and I did, eventually, come to find its uses. From up high I could see which student’s heads were lookin...