Letters from Abroad. Occasional Paper Series 9

What counts as knowledge and whose knowledge counts? When does going away help shape a clearer sense of home, and when does it not? How does living abroad change our perspectives as teachers and learners? The educators who have contributed to this Occasional Paper share a formidable combination of purpose, curiosity, courage, and self-awareness. Reflecting on their choices to live and work in other parts of the world, they offer a provocative range of personal and professional explanations for seeking our the strange and unknown. Their letters from abroad reveal a genuine interest in what matters to others, a capacity to describe people and environments with intriguing detail, and a willingness to reveal themselves as inexpert newcomers. As these essays make clear, no preparation is ever sufficient because what happens always diverges from and exceeds our expectations. Risk-taking and error are inevitable, as integral to each story as the exhilarating discoveries that travel affords. Most important, we learn how these educators came to value the experience of "otherness" in themselves as well as in those they met. Today, we are more mindful than ever of the need for global awareness, understanding, and engagement. "Letters from Abroad" is designed to highlight what some Bank Street colleagues have sought, found, and questioned while working far from home. The editors of the Occasional Papers Series hope these missives from foreign shores will inspire others to set out on explorations of their own, explorations in which they resist the temptation to make the strange familiar and enjoy, if only for a short while, the way that the familiar itself may become strange. After an introduction by Linda Levine, the essays comprising this paper are: (1) What We Bring with Us and What We Leave Behind: Six Months in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Virginia Casper, Donna Futterman, and Evan Casper-Futterman); (2) There and Almost Back Again (Holley Adcock); and (3) Living in the World (David Penberg).