I could write pages about how incredibly amazing our 18 juniors and seniors were on our trip to Italy-Austria-Germany. (Are the kids all right? These kids were INCREDIBLE.) I could write about the beauty of the places and the tastes and the sites and the kindness of the host families and BREAD-CHOCOLATE-BREAD-CHOCOLATE. I could write about our British tour guide who had some crazy good teacher chops alongside his fab accent and dashing good looks. I could write forever about how dang good Emily Philpott is at her job as Global Studies Director.
But today I really want to write about Mayson McKey, Cool Teacher.
You see you hit a certain age, all of us do, when suddenly you transition from young-hip-trendy teacher to not-so-young-anymore.
And on this trip, I most definitely hit it.
I blame it on the fact that two other chaperones were the super trendy-cool-young Sara Clark and Mayson McKey. I blame it on the fact that I was most definitely actually NEVER trendy, not even in my twenties.
But this isn’t a story about me. This is a story about Mayson McKey, Cool Teacher.
Watching Mayson shine magnetic-like on the trip was a sight to behold. He has a way of drawing in whomever happens to be standing next to him with a joke, an aside, a quick little affirmation of “we are friends and this is going to be fun.” This is a fabulous trait in real life; but this is like gold on a global studies trip in which 22 near-strangers are catapulted into best friend/family status overnight. We either make this long walk uphill in the cold darkness a game of roasting each other or we just are tired and cold. Mayson always chose making it a game.
One thing he instituted early on in the trip, perhaps initially after our first all-night flight, was the “vibe check.” It was a quick flick of the wrist with a “Y”-shaped hand, almost like the sign language we use for “I agree” when we want students to nonverbally affirm another students’ statement. Initially he used it with his small chaperone group, then it spread to my group, and it quickly became an entire group phenomenon whether walking in the rain in Salzburg or boarding crowded trains in Dusseldorf. Vibe check meant, “are you doing okay, like on a scale of 1-10?” It meant “someone here is checking in on you.” But it also, just as crucially meant, “we are part of a group together and we have signals that have a significance of meaning shared just by us.”
The story could end here, but of course, like many things, vibe check became so huge that it eventually crumbled in on itself. Once we joined host families and started attending school in Germany, “vibe check” spread like wildfire. We would walk across a crowd of random fifth grade German students and, upon seeing Mayson, they would begin bustling excitedly, making the vibe check signal. “MAYSON!” they would shout with no irony, “Mayson is COOL teacher!” Literally this little signal that had started with just a few teenagers and their chaperone had become a schoolwide phenomenon.
Mayson began worrying the signal might mean other things in Germany, that it had taken on a life of its own, and so, he subtly stopped using the signal and it lost momentum. Our students caught on too and stopped promoting its use with their new German friends. After all, a trend is really only trendy when it is somewhat niche and novel. Even the coolest move has the potential to lose its initial intrigue. Our small in-house signal had simply gone too viral to maintain its special status. It was time to say goodbye to vibe check.
Of course, just because the hand signal died down didn’t mean that Mayson lost his cool teacher status. Mayson remained the center of intrigue for many of our students and the German students as well. After all, you can take away the vibe check, but you can’t extinguish that cool vibe. And the fact that Mayson always made sure to spread the love with all the students, that his popularity was never about exclusivity . . . that made Mayson the cool teacher in my book.
This is the hidden-bit-side-effect of a global studies trip, I think: relationships and unanticipated connections. Each time I see a student or colleagues across the plaza from that trip, now over a week removed, genuine squeals and delight result. You share time together and, whether or not you were the cool teacher, or the middle-aged-weird teacher that never could quite get used to the European coffee, a little sprout of a thing sprouts. “I didn’t really know you before, and I know you now, quite real and imperfect. And surprise surprise! We quite like each other.”