The Best Thing You Can Ever Give

She takes a deep breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Her heart is pounding at a rate so fast it feels like it’s going to burst out of her chest. I stand there, biting my lip, fists gripped; hoping, praying everything goes as planned. She takes a deep breath in… This is her moment. One more breath out, she finally speaks, “I read my story.” 50 kids erupt with excitement! Jumping up and down chanting her name, “Yass-mine! Yass-mine! Yass-mine!” She did it. Her excitement and her satisfaction was fueled by that of her classmates and her competitors.

This was the scene during yesterday’s Vocabulary Competition. Such a simple sentence, such an electric reaction! I’ve never felt anything like it; not when we beat Aspen, not when Navy beat Yale in the NCAA Men’s Lacrosse tournament, not even when the BMHS soccer team won state in 2012.

Within the Nichols family, if a TV was on it was almost always a sport. Sports Center, lacrosse, hockey football, hell even golf. When the home was empty you could almost guarantee we were either, skiing, playing lacrosse, surfing, or just about any other sport. Sports are my family’s passion, it’s the glue that keeps us all together. I’ve always said the best way to end a fight with the Nichols brothers is to go outside and play football, frisbee, bike, skateboard; you name it we will do it. I can’t imagine how different my life would if we didn’t have that passion for sports.

In the United States our passion and our energy is nearly entirely focused on athletics. It’s not a bad thing, don’t get me wrong I love watching the Denver Broncos win a Super Bowl. I’m eternally grateful for the relationships that have been formed through athletics. 

But here I am, college bound and the focus of my life isn’t on sports.

Here in Rabat, Morocco that energy that fixation, is centered entirely around education rather than sports. It’s gratifying to see someone celebrate the victory of a vocab competition with the same emotion and enthusiasm that Von Miller had when he sacked Cam Newton for a touchdown in Super bowl 50 (#gobroncos). It’s a foreign idea to think that someone would think this way about education, yet this is so common among Moroccan families.

For these students, passing the Baccalaureate exam is the equivalent to the NFL combine. Every year hundreds of athletes go in an attempt to display their talents. Their entire lives they have been committed to this moment. Every stride, every rep, every film session, every ounce of effort was dedicated to this moment. A moment of greatness.

The ability to achieve greatness in Morocco is tested by the Baccalaureate exam. Knowing English can be the key between failure and success. Every word they write, every book they read, every “t” they cross is dedicated to this test. This level of passion has no doubt been displayed in my classroom every day for the past two weeks. Even when they were going on only a few hours of sleep and empty stomachs, their minds were entirely focused on what they were learning in that moment. Each lesson was like a play aimed towards winning a game. Except this game was life. Everything I threw at them they analyzed and attacked with every ounce of energy and focus in their little bodies. And of course when they got it, when they nailed it, when it all went perfectly, they celebrate. They celebrated with more energy than I have ever seen any student-athlete celebrate with before. Including the 1987 Miami Hurricanes.

These students have completely changed the term, Student-Athlete.

A student-athlete is not someone who goes to class for 7 hours a day only itching to get out to hit someone. A student-athlete is an individual who comes to class ready to give the perfect effort. A student who embraces every minute of class, values their teachers, and their opportunities they have been given. We should be having banquets for our teachers, praising them for their hard work, dedication, and accountability. But instead we walk out the front door flipping off the very institution that gave us the greatest gift of all time. The gift of education. When we were leaving the school, 12 year old Halima, with a tear rolling down her eye, handed me a hand-written letter. In that letter she said, “Thank you for your help and efforts to teach us. You have given us the gift of learning.” I quickly read the letter, looked up at her gave her a hug and she said, “That is the best thing you can ever give.”

Make Up YOUR Mind

Ah, April 1^st; the only day of the year that people critically evaluate what is being told to them by the media before accepting them as true.

The media is a business and much like every  business it has a foundation of what sells. Unfortunately that foundation is fear. Fear sells. In the experienced words of Seth Morrison, people love to be scared. There is this concept of near-death riding that has become the basis for what is acceptable. If you’re not inches away from death, it’s not going to make the movie (The Ordinary Skier).

Sadly that conception of ‘fear sells’ is reflected in nearly every aspect of American media.

Don’t believe me?

I strongly encourage you to read an article that CNN posted titled, “Why They Hate Us” written by Fareed Zakaria. In the article Fareed writes, “Let’s be clear, while the Jihadis are few, there is a larger cancer in the world of Islam – a cancer of backwardness and extremism and intolerance." Well, I don’t know exactly which “world” Fareed is referring to, but here in the Islamic “world” of Morocco I have not found that to be the case.

Just yesterday, we went to a girl named Ghita’s house. Ghita is one of my students, she is smart, witty, and never late to class. While Ghita’s mom was attending to some unannounced guests, we had the chance to sit down with the small, but chatty aspiring agricultural engineer. She sat upright,  legs crossed; discretely critiquing her hijab, assuring herself that she looked presentable, while she waited eagerly to answer every question. After answering a few questions about her own life and her life at home, Ghita showed us an in-depth understanding about the importance of family that most girls her age would not comprehend. But it wasn’t until we started to talk about religion that Ghita showed us that she had wisdom and maturity far beyond her years.

With Ramadan literally right around the corner,  we asked Ghita what her favorite part of Ramadan is. Without hesitating she replied, “My favorite part of Ramadan is the unity. This is a month where every Muslim is equal. We all eat like the poor (fasting); we give like we are rich, and we pray more than ever before. It is in this month where we all experience true peace and tranquility.” Inspired by this profound answer from this basic question we eagerly asked another, “As a Muslim, if you could give everyone in the world advice, what would it be?” She sat back, thought about it for no more than two seconds, then leaned forward to answer. Although I don’t speak nearly any Arabic, just by looking at the way she talked about it was not only inspiring but assuring. She spoke with passion and confidence in a way that when you looked into her eyes you truly believed she was thinking about the greater good of everyone in the entire world. Once she finished I eagerly awaited to the translation from our translator Icabel. But once she stopped speaking, Icabel had to take a second to herself because she was getting chills from Ghita’s answer. Icabel translated saying, “She would tell the world to stop judging. She thinks that everyone thinks they are better than one another, trying to critique and change them. We have forgotten that we are all human, we are all the same. We do not have that right to judge others on the way we view our life. Only God has the right to judge. It is our job as humans to unite together so that before god judges us all, we can live in peace.” Wow, I too had chills running down my back. But it wasn’t the type of chills that would spark a revolution. These were different. They were the chills that provided me with assurance and a new faith in humanity. But they were also chills of guilt and disgust.

After leaving Ghita’s house I kept thinking about this quote said by the great Muhammad Ali. He said, “We as Muslims have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda. They have alienated many from learning about Islam.” While that may be true, we as Americans have alienated ourselves from a beautiful and powerful group of people that brings peace and tranquility. We are blinded by our fear that was created by our ignorance.

I challenge you, tell me which world has, “a cancer of backwardness” of extremism and intolerance?

Is it a “world” in which Donald Trump is president? Or is it a “world” whose leader said, “We continue to receive refugees at a rapid pace, whether they come from East Africa or the Middle East. Our only concern beyond the humanitarian aspects to which we obviously sensitive, is purely securitarian.”

Stop listening to the reports about the one percent of Muslisms who are extremists. Stop listening to lies. Start listening to those who put the humanity of the world before their own safety. Start listening to the Muslims, because we have a lot to learn.

Education

What has become of us? What are we turning into?

We have let our arrogance and our ignorance overcome us completely. We live in a world where the pride of our parents has become more important than their child’s true potential. We live in a world where students honestly believe that a letter is more important than their honesty and hard work. Students would rather tell their parents, “Well it’s not my fault! She doesn’t teach us anything!” Rather than be honest, admit their wrongs, and ask for hard work. It’s pathetic, but can you blame them? Students listen to their parents, who would rather brag about a near perfect grade point average rather than their child’s honest work ethic. It’s this blinding ignorance that has disabled us from understanding what it actually means to learn.

Thankfully, on the other side of the world there is another world that shows us exactly what it means to have the amazing opportunity of education. That other world is called Abdasalam Saya.

Our first day at Abdasalam Saya we met Touria, the education director. “Abdasalam Saya” literally translates to “slave of peace.” Which in my mind is the best way to describe Touria. Touria emphasized how truly hard working and grateful students are at Abdasalam Saya. This was displayed to the “T” during our first day in the classroom. We have been teaching for two days now and in every class, during every hour, and every minute, students treated every word as if it could be their last, hanging on to every last syllable. They seize every education opportunity that is presented before them. They show up to school every day with an ambition to learn like their lives depend on it. Because they do.

Mariam is one of the brightest, hardest working students in my class. She is soft-spoken, diligent, accountable, and at appropriate times she can even be funny. Yesterday we had the opportunity to sit down with Mariam and her humble family inside their home. While there, Mariam’s guardian and older sister admitted that Mariam will sometimes come home from school crying. Crying because she has not understood the lesson that was taught to her class that day. Her sister continued to say that “Every time she cries I have to remind her that ‘we pray for those who teach and for those who want to learn.’” She continued explaining that education is not about being the smartest in your class. She justified it saying, “If education was about the smartest people then we would only have good doctors and engineers, that’s it.” To be a doctor or is an engineer is an amazing thing. But if we want to live in a perfect world we must have great carpenters, great shoe makers, even great factory workers. She continued saying “It doesn’t matter what you do, if you educate yourself you will be great and you will be helping to change the world into a better place.”

Education is not about talent, it is about passion. From carpentry to law school it doesn’t matter what your profession is, what matter is your willingness to learn and achieve success.

What is happening to the American education system is truly unfortunate. Some might even say, “Well, that’s life.” But, in the words of one of our translators Wassyan, “You can’t say ‘that’s life’ because that’s only the life you know. Unless you go and experience another way of life you will live your entire life thinking that there is no way to fix some of the life’s greatest problems.” It is our job to experience all ways of life and apply what we learn to our lives.

We, as a community, as a state, as a country must swallow our pride and take responsibility for our wrong doings that are negatively affecting our education system. We must stop blaming our teachers, our principals, and our education system. We must stop telling students they won’t achieve success if they don’t get a good grade in algebra. We must instead, “pray for those who teach and those who want to learn.” Because those are the people that will change the world.