Upon arriving in Washington DC, I caught a cab to the Fairmont Hotel and took in the sights along the route. The last time I was in Washington DC I was in 6th grade- my memories are vivid, yet I now recognize that my ability to capture the spatial relationships was limited at the time. I never realized how close everything is; you can walk from monument to museum, from hotels to the Capitol, from statue to the White House. I made a few mental notes about the proximity of everything and then focused on the weekend ahead- there were people to meet, speakers to hear, and plans to unfold.
I checked in to my hotel room around 4pm, took some time to look through my folder of information, and then headed to our soiree in search of my travel partner. After getting awkwardly close enough to read people's name tags for a bit, I found Laura, the teacher I would be spending time with while in Meknes. Laura teaches government and social justice class at a high school in the Bronx, NY. We began to put faces with names of other teachers we had worked with during our online class and slowly people began to find others in their travel cohorts. We went out to dinner with several teachers traveling to Ghana, and while our conversation inevitably always turned back to education and teaching, it was an insightful discussion- not just tired teachers venting their frustrations. It seems no matter where in the U.S. one teaches, we are all facing similar struggles-funding issues, state initiatives, administration teachers resisting change, the same few teachers serving on every committee and sponsoring every club, all the while trying to personally improve our trade of teaching.