Jess Banks schools you.

Six years ago, I became a high school teacher aide. I knew how to teach, and I’d had kids who’d benefited greatly from the help of a paraprofessional, as teacher aides are called in America. I figured: I can aid teachers and students, right? How hard could it be?

The answer was, of course, really hard. But also really easy. I just listened to the students when they told me what was difficult, what they wished they could understand or do better, what they felt like in classes and classrooms that didn’t give them everything they needed to succeed. Then I tried to fill in those gaps. It was important to me to not only help the kids learn what they’d missed, but how to weave their own safety nets of self-advocacy and understanding about how they learn differently than their peers.

When I talked to my colleagues, though, they were astounded. How did I figure these things out? How did I know which questions to ask? Most of all, how did I get the kids to tell me these things? It definitely wasn’t because I had any experience with special education. And it wasn’t just that I’m weirdly good at making people feel comfortable. I work hard to be a good listener, and I try to pay attention to the whole person, not just the part that’s talking to me at the moment.

But then I realised: I wasn’t just asking them the questions I thought would get them the help they needed. I was asking them the questions I wish someone had asked me in high school.

I was one of the millions of girls who was never diagnosed as neurodivergent in the 1970s and ‘80s. Autism and ADHD were seen as “boys’ things”, and for a girl to even get assessed, they had to have pretty significant delays or disabling characteristics. The rest of us were just dubbed “sensitive” or “chatty” or “quirky”, or my mother’s particularly cutting compliment, “Jess is intellectually far ahead, but socially backwards.”

The signs were clearly there, though. When I was finally assessed for ADHD this year, I went looking through the scant documents from my childhood that I have here in New Zealand. Among them was the report from the testing done when it was being decided which grade I should start school in. The researcher’s comments were the purest distillation of “Tell me she’s neurodivergent without saying she’s neurodivergent.” 

Who knows what my future would’ve been like if I’d been recognised as autistic and ADHD while I was still in school? Would I have been in so many clubs and activities and advanced courses to satisfy my bottomless need for stimulation, but also be so stressed that I was ill almost constantly? Would I have had my special interests fueled by teachers instead of being told “no more book reports on American history”? Would I have been as vulnerable to relationship abuse if someone had filled in the gaps in my social awareness and emotional intelligence? Would I have finished my Ph.D. with adequate support for my physical and neurological disabilities?

I can’t answer those questions, but I suddenly found myself in a place where I could give a new generation of students the recognition and support that could’ve changed my life. What’s more, I could help other teachers learn how to recognise and support their neurodivergent students, their neurodivergent colleagues, and even themselves if their story mirrored mine. The average teacher may only receive a few hours of instruction about learning differences and neurodivergence—for any more than that, you need to do postgraduate education in special education. That absence of information leaves them poorly equipped to understand how to meet their students’ needs for sensory, socio-emotional, and academic support. And far too many of the kids I was meeting as a teacher aide were telling me things like “You’re the first teacher who’s ever said they can tell I’m smart.” I don’t want to believe that’s the case for a 16-year-old student, but if teachers aren’t being taught to perceive all the forms of invisible intelligence kids have, it seems sadly possible.

I made it my mission to fill in some of the gaps for my colleagues, so I developed my first professional development seminar on how to support neurodivergence in the classroom. Something about the way I explained neurodiversity to my neurotypical colleagues, from the perspective of lived experience but in the language of education they understood, somehow made it accessible and engaging. I was asked to give the presentation for more people, from student teachers to heads of Learning Support departments. I was asked if I had more presentations available, so I made more, focusing on the specific experience of neurodivergent students in the classroom and how simple accommodations could make school less hostile for the kids, their neurotypical peers, and even the teachers themselves. I’d become the Neurotypical Whisperer. 

I wasn’t surprised by how many veteran teachers came up to me after my presentations to tell me they’d never learned any of what I’d told them, but I was impressed by how many of them wanted more information. It was the kind of intellectual curiosity and desire for growth you’d hope to find among teachers. We’re in a notoriously time-poor profession, so requests for references and research rabbit holes tell me they thought it was something worth investing in. 

The real shock was how many people came up to me after my presentations to say I’d just said what they had desperately needed to hear when they were in school. A lot of these were women, and a lot of them had tears in their eyes as they told me their stories of being overlooked, misunderstood, and often, both underestimated and overestimated at the same time. We talked about the burden of masking: the exhausting practice of creating a physical and social façade that allows neurodivergent people to “pass” in the inhospitable and overwhelming world of neurotypicals. And we talked about the relief of connecting with someone who shared the experience of what it’s like to walk through life feeling so much and understanding so little about the unwritten rules and unmarked roads that neurotypicals seem to follow so easily. I’ve kept in touch with some of those people for years. Some of them have washed out of education, finding the sensory and energy demands overwhelming without wider acceptance of the need to accommodate neurodivergent teachers as well as students. But they still express gratitude for the recognition and acknowledgment they felt as they heard me say they mattered and they had untapped gifts they could offer their students. 

I had no idea the title “teacher aide” could mean helping teachers become their whole selves, but it’s a job I’m proud to have had.

I can do a lot of things. I bloody well should, considering how old I am. I can read sideways, upside-down, and in several languages, though not all at the same time. I can do a tidy dive and a messy cannonball. I can make about fifty different kinds of soup. I can sing harmony to every Christmas carol. I can make a baby smile from across the room. I can give good advice, and I can keep it behind my teeth when that’s the better choice.

There are plenty of things I can’t do as well. I can’t play video games (even the nicest ones give me anxiety attacks).  I can’t read just one book at a time. I can’t keep a tidy house. I can’t balance a checkbook. I can’t fall asleep without white noise. And of course, there are all the things I can’t do anymore because while the spirit is willing, the flesh is very weak: eat spicy food without regrets, walk or stand for more than an hour, stand up or bend over without groaning.

There are, however, a few things I can’t NOT do. You know, the things that, try as I might, I can’t purge from my behaviour. They’re like reflexes: able to be suppressed with effort, but it feels unnatural and unsustainable. For example, I can’t not move. No matter how still it looks like I am, some part of me is moving just a little bit, even just my toes flexing inside my shoes. (It’s a neurodivergent thing.)  

I can’t not swear. Yes, I’ve tried, and yes, I have good control over the when/where/who of it all. But curse words are an essential part of my vocabulary, and I can’t fully express myself without them. 

And I can’t not speak out when I see injustice. I’ve tried that too, but it’s just impossible for me to ignore the pain and suffering of others and try to do something. I’m partial to marches and protests and community organising, but I know every shared petition or resource has the power to change the world, even if only for one person.

Most of all, though, I can’t not teach. When it’s not my job as a university lecturer or teacher aide, I find other ways to teach people new things. I train volunteers in activist skills like phonebanking or de-escalation. I demo card games at conventions. I show people how to use the self-serve kiosk at the airport or McDonalds. I share unsolicited informative asides at the museum or bookstore or a cultural attraction. I sprinkle conversations with my family with relevant facts or topical insights. Not all of these are met with the enthusiasm I’m looking for, but I persist. Sometimes, they just want me to pass the salt, not tell them that the word ‘salary’ comes from the Roman practice of paying its soldiers with the stuff. 

My chronic inability to stop teaching is directly related to my inability to stop learning. I’m constantly reading and listening and absorbing information in any format I can find, on more topics than you could imagine. I take year-long correspondence courses in other cultures and languages. I consume audiobooks and podcasts while I drive and cook. I watch documentaries and video essays while I stitch and fold laundry. And what I understand and find interesting, I immediately want to share with others. It’s not that I feel like I’m a better vector for learning than other sources of information–I just need to share my enthusiasm for knowing things. I’m like a missionary who’s seen the light, except I’ve seen so many lights, and maybe just one of them will illuminate something for someone else and help them find a thing they’ve been looking for. My sermons in this ministry most commonly end in the words “Isn’t that cool?” or “So now you know!”

All of this is to say, I started a graduate diploma program to get my certification as a high school teacher at age 50. There are some who would say I’m finally getting around to what I should’ve done straight away, and they’re not wrong. Looking back, it seems like I was fated to be the kind of high school teacher I most admired: the ones who loved their subjects, who loved their students, and wanted to help each of them find the thing that would reveal something about themselves or their world. All my time in grad school was ultimately about trying to become a professor who would do those things, and I was doomed to failure when I realised that university jobs are more about politics and independent research and the publication and grant-writing hustle than teaching. My favorite jobs have let me do the core job of enlightenment: lecturer, audiobook narrator, radio newsreader, teacher aide and tutor for students with learning differences.

So here I am, full circle and halfway to becoming a high school teacher in Aotearoa New Zealand. I’m concentrating in History, Social Sciences, and English, but with my educational background, I’m eager to try my hand at Classics, Media Studies, and French too. I’ll never be able to work more than part time because of my cursed, haunted, chronically in pain body, but I know I can create the kind of space where students walk in the door as their whole selves and walk back out understanding something more than they did before. I can be the kind of teacher who creates a safe space where some fragile and misunderstood kids might relax and bloom. And most of all, I can go to sleep at night, knowing I can wake up and do the thing I can’t not do all day long.

On the morning of May 1, I take everyone outside to wipe a bit of dew off the grass to wash our eyelids so we can’t be fooled by glamours and lying images in the year to come. I pick lilacs and iris and tulips to put explosions of color and scent on every surface in my home. I plan the bright outfit I’ll wear to the May Day Parade with its fantastical puppets and papier-mâché expressions of hope and love. I light candles to celebrate the fertile fire festival of Beltane.

On the morning of October 31, I run around to procure the last elements of our Halloween costumes. I kick through the fallen leaves, whether they’re crisp and fragrant or sodden with rain and melted snow. I luxuriate in the jewel tones of mums and pumpkins and Indian corn, the burnt-dust whoosh of the furnace first kicking on in the autumn dark. I light candles to welcome the ancestors to the fragile dangerous festival of Samhain.

This year, absolutely none of this applies. Samhain is May Day Eve. The ferns and palms and conifers keep the hillsides’ emerald glow. No snap of frost threatens the extravagant pink hibiscus flowers. My body and spirit are deeply disoriented by this particular inversion of the Wheel of the Year.

There is mourning to be done this year, though. I need this Samhain to process and let go. Because the last boxes have arrived, and we finally know the scale of what we left behind and what we lost in the act of moving around the world.

The process of unburdening ourselves of possessions was incredibly difficult. Decision fatigue became decision burnout became decision trauma. I fantasized about lighting a match and throwing it into the house, turning all those decisions into cinders. It helped to see beloved things go into the hands of friends who recognized them as the treasures they are. It helped to see useful things go to places in my neighborhood where they’d be taken by people who needed and appreciated them. But getting rid of things was getting rid of possible futures, investing all that potential into a single uncertain path.

We catalogued and photographed and shrinkwrapped ninety-some boxes and pieces of small furniture. It seemed impossible that it should be so many. It seemed impossible that it could be so few.

Some boxes go straight into storage, full of papers and mementos worth keeping as a shared history. A few boxes of utensils and coffee mugs to be familiar on the new shelves. Seventy percent of the boxes are books and games, though, not just ones we want to read and play, but ones we want in the library that tells the story of what we think is important. I look at things and wonder why on earth we thought this deserved precious, limited space. Some things get a little surge of excitement and gratitude that they made the cut in those moments of frenzied elimination.

There’s pain too, though. Pain for the things that won’t ever arrive. Things it was too difficult or impractical or replaceable to justify bringing. Things we were certain we’d brought, things we would never have willingly left behind, things that are just gone without a trace. They’re as gone as they would’ve been if I’d tossed in that match.

As far as we can tell, only two things were destroyed, two blue-and-white-striped bowls I brought home from my year in France and moved safely through all the changes since. Ironically, they weren’t broken in shipping; one of my son’s hands slipped, bobbling them into a hard landing beyond the tolerance of the bubble wrap here in our new home.

Whether it was Beltane or Samhain, I’d be lighting candles tonight. I’ll do it by lighting matches the way I’d fantasized in our traumatic departure from the things and people and seasons of the familiar North. I’ll try to embrace the confusion and vertigo of this most unbalanced turn of the year’s wheel. I need to accept that the light of the bonfire only reaches so far into the deepening dark, and straining my eyes and asking questions can’t reveal where things end up beyond the veil.

For loved ones around the world, let me reassure you: we are okay. Auckland is at the opposite end of the country from Christchurch, almost the distance from Edinburgh, Scotland to London, England. The government recommended that all New Zealand mosques shut their doors yesterday, but there were no indications that other Islamic centers were targeted.

And for those same loved ones, let me tell you: we are not okay. One of the things about living on a small set of islands is that the national feels local. There’s one main TV channel, one main nightly news program, one weather report for the whole country. When radio stations run contests, people call in from all of New Zealand, not just the metro area where the station is based. To be honest, there just aren’t that many of us here, and spread out though we may be, there’s a sense of closeness. It’s a neighborhood that also happens to be a nation.

One of the most difficult things about leaving Minnesota was leaving behind my neighborhoods. Sure, the geographic ones where we complain about I-35W and cold winters and bike lanes, but more importantly, my neighborhoods built around shared values and experiences. I knew where I fit in. I worked hard to be someone who could be counted on to show up. My place in my neighborhoods was defined by what roles I played in them.

I’ve been learning about the indigenous Maori healing arts found in the wisdom of plants familiar and new. I can hardly keep up with all the new vocabulary I’m learning: not just plant names, but the Maori words to express the energy, the connection, the web of interconnected life reflected in and defined by what the earth gives us and how we use it.

Plants are easy. They show us what they are by what they do. A plant that lays low to the ground, flourishes in busy paths where it gets stepped on, and persists because of its tough, shallow network of roots provides external healing for the wear and tear of life. A plant that spends its energy growing a single, deep taproot goes to the heart of an illness. To observe these lessons is to let the plants tell you how you can both rely on them and nurture them.

I’m like those plants: I am what I do. But without knowing my place in the web of things, the neighborhoods of people and communities, I feel shallowly rooted and unsure of my purpose. My transplant isn’t complete, and I can’t add my strength to the healing, the rongoa, it’ll take this country to recover from the shocking arrival of the white supremacist and Islamophobic violence that was an everyday occurrence with everyday excuses back in America. What do I do for people whose fresh shock tinges my weary horror? What do I decide to be to help heal a new home hit with a familiar nightmare?

I am what I do. When we were in the States, I knew what to do to protect and support beloved communities under attack. In New Zealand, I’m still untethered. I have no connections, no place to plug in and say that this hate can be fought and survived, that I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes. So right now, I can’t do anything. What does that make me?

When my Darling Husband moved to the States to marry me, we had a singularly crappy old car with a manual transmission. I’d never driven one before, and practicing with my mom was so hilariously horrific we had to stop the car regularly because we were laughing so hard we couldn’t breathe. So the DH stepped up as our primary driver.

But all his driving experience was in New Zealand, where everything is flipped. Driver’s seat on the right, gear shift on the left, windshield wipers where the turn signal would be. I’d laugh when he walked to the passenger seat with the keys. I’d laugh when he’d clean the windshield while changing lanes. But when he went to shift gears, and he let muscle memory do the work, he’d bang his hand loudly against the door panel to his left. I wouldn’t laugh. I’d say, “We are all going to die.”

I came to New Zealand knowing I’d have to retrain myself like he did so long ago, and that I would probably scare the hell out of myself and everyone else while I did. I’m not like my dad, who picked up the rental car at Heathrow and drove us out of the parking lot like it was no big deal.

The strangest thing was that the driver’s license people didn’t think it was a big deal either. I walked into the office, they looked at my Minnesota license, and gave me a New Zealand one on the spot. No written exam, no driving test. Just “here you go!”

This is baffling. I wouldn’t have given me a license at that point.

I’m getting the hang of it now. I’m not wracked with anxiety when I need to drive somewhere anymore. I’m entirely dependent on Google Maps for getting around, but I was when I drove in Minneapolis, too. I get honked at sometimes for being too cautious or forgetting I have right of way. But it’s not too bad. Keep your shoulder on the center line, and follow other people.

And when I turn on my windshield wipers, I get to laugh at myself now.

I’m a Wiccan by faith (Unitarian Universalist by church home), so an important issue I’m grappling with here in New Zealand is how to adapt my practice to the southern hemisphere, where seasons are flipped. While pagan bloggers down here recommend following the seasons as they come, since the Wheel of the Year is based in the natural cycles of growth and dormancy, it’s tough to uncouple the dates I’ve followed since I began this path in my teens. Finding meaningful connections in a new environment will be the project of many years to come.

I feel very much connected still to my northern home, in part thanks to the magic of the internet. I can imagine and remember the deep freeze in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and it’s easy to picture myself bundled up and weathering the polar vortex with that “cold enough for ya?” camaraderie.

And amid this dark, frozen time of year arrives a particularly significant pagan holiday on my calendar: Imbolc. It’s known as Candlemas in both pagan and Catholic tradition, the day of the year when all the ritual candles for the coming year are blessed in the first days when the return of the sun can be perceived. It’s light just a little earlier today, and dark just a little later, but the trend toward long sunny days reveals itself around February 1. (This is also how Groundhog Day becomes a holiday about a rodent seeing its shadow on February 2.)

It’s also (St.) Brigid’s Day, celebrating the Goddess’s return to the virgin girl, fresh with promise yet to be realized, her capacity for fertility and ripe abundance still latent. B is my homegirl; the Irish goddess and saint are inextricably entwined. The saint’s patronages are identical to the goddess’s domains: home and hearth, pregnancy and childbirth, fire and poetry. This time of year is for her and her boundless potentiality.

But here in the upside-down, today is most definitely Lammas (or Lughnasadh), the festival celebrating the harvest’s first fruits. We’ve been gorging on summer fruits and herbs all along, but only now are we able to enjoy some of things that needed the whole warm summer to ripen. We can sink our teeth into apples and sweet corn we haven’t seen since this time last year, even while the days are still long and the air is still warm.

So how do I reconcile two holy days that seem at such odds? The connection that’s helping me make sense of today’s contrast is my experience as a mother now. I’m watching my sons launch themselves more bravely into the world. They’re already their whole selves but still have many experiences to grow into. It’s back-to-school time, a bigger leap than usual as my sons start at new schools in a new country, looking for their place and the friends they’ll find there. Of course, this reminds me of myself at this age: told since my first years about how much potential I had, and seeing the first glimmer of what’s ahead in adulthood. And of my own mom, how she must have felt at this stage as both the girl and the mother.

Brigid can see the light at the end of the tunnel of childhood that’s protected and sheltered her as she grew into her whole self. She can imagine the first fruits of the hard work of growing up. And the mother at Lammas can look back and see herself at that age, and forward at the harvest to come that sets another person on their own path. The returning light in the north flies like an arrow loosed into the south’s first abundant harvest. And I know it was Brigid launched that volley of fiery hope.

This is my first attempt at writing about the multicultural society here, and it certainly won’t be the last. I’ll be learning the ways Maori and other Pacific cultures are embedded and interpreted in New Zealand for the rest of my life. I’m coming at this as someone who’s been a little more than casually interested for a long time, but who’s observing and experiencing the extent of indigenous culture on the broader New Zealand society for the first time.

New Zealand is a bilingual country, with all government publications and services bearing messages in both English and Maori languages. Kids learn Te Reo Maori (“the Maori language”) words, phrases, and songs from the day they enter school. Signs in libraries and community centers and public swimming pools are labeled in both languages. And many places retain their original Maori names.

The integration is more than official. Maori words crop up in Kiwi conversations all the time. Folks inquire about your family with “How’s the whanau?” Stores with calligraphied photo frames and plaques have “arohanui,” or “much love,” alongside the “love makes a family”-type stuff.

As someone who’s dedicated a lot of years to reading, writing, and speaking languages beyond English, I really love seeing Maori in print everywhere. I’m watching a bunch of shows on the Maori-language TV channels, and I’m working hard to get my pronunciation and vocabulary right. It’s the one part of indigenous culture where I have more clarity about what’s appropriative and what’s not.

Most importantly, though, is the fact that Maori’s omnipresence means that there’s no mistaking that indigenous people, their language, and their culture are alive and well, now and into the future. It’s a stark contrast with Native American people and cultures in America, where place names are obscured or unmoored from their origins, and Native people are rarely portrayed in the present day by mainstream media.

The differing paths of colonization have everything to do with this contrast. But New Zealand offers a vision for how language can be used to stitch together the past and present and offer a way forward as a bilingual and bicultural society.

The sun in New Zealand is not messing around.

That seems like an absurd thing to say, but it’s absolutely true. The sun isn’t that friendly yellow circle on kids’ drawings. It’s a vicious predator that will not be stopped.

It’s not the amount of sun we get. It’s the intensity. Once, I sat outside with my book, and I propped my feet on another chair. Five minutes later, I could feel my shins scorching. My shins.

Peak UV levels here are 40 percent higher than at the same latitude in North America, and New Zealand has the highest rate of melanoma in the world. Folks take sun exposure very seriously here. Rash guard shirts and full-on wetsuits are for sale in every swimwear section. Homes often have a pump bottle of SPF 50 the size of a mayonnaise jar in Iowa. Long-sleeved shirts and pants are common at the beach. And lots of people wear brimmed hats–you can even buy them as part of kids’ school uniforms.

The atmospheric conditions cause the severity of UV radiation here. There’s still a major hole in the ozone layer, but it’s over the continent of Antarctica. That said, “plumes” of ozone-depleted air can wash up over New Zealand, thinning the atmosphere so more UV rays get through. The lower concentration of air pollution here actually lets in more UV rays as well.

And try as I might, no matter how well I SPF it up or cover up, the sun is determined to leave a mark. As a person with the approximate skin color of a recently drowned person, I feel targeted. I know it’s coming for me. And when I let my guard down? It will attack with extreme prejudice.

I thought, “How should I show my New Zealand assimilation? I’ll write about McDonalds!” Obnoxious American powers, activate!

Say what you will about global fast food chains, but they accomplish a paradoxical feat: they’re all gloriously the same, and they all differ to fit the culture where they find themselves, at the same time. Videos exploring those regional differences are fun to watch, and I always find a new variation I wish was widely available (McD’s chicken katsu burger from Japan, people). But when you want a taste of America, there’s nothing like crappy food from an international corporation.

I bring glad tidings from New Zealand, though. McDonalds here is so much better here.

A couple of factors are at work here. First and most importantly, corn syrup is banned here. Everything is generally less sticky sweet. Coke is made with cane sugar, so it tastes more like MexiCoke. (Do a taste test if you’ve never experienced the difference.) Tomato sauce (a.k.a. ketchup) is more savory. Peanut butter is hardly sweet at all. You can get these things American-style, but you’ll have to go to a specialty international foods store.

At McDonalds, this manifests in some interesting ways. First, the french fries are paler. They don’t get that sugary spray before freezing that caramelizes in the fryer and makes them look golden brown. So fries here are a little floppier and a little whiter, but the potato flavor is stronger. Sauces are better too. The sweet & sour dipping sauce tastes more like orange chicken. I’m sure these things are still a nutritional disaster, but they taste more complex than just pure sugary syrup.

Regional menu items are pretty great. New Zealand has this thing about beets (that’ll be a whole different post down the line), so the Kiwiburger has a big slice of beet and a fried egg in addition to your basic toppings. There’s the Big Brekkie burger, which has a fried egg, hashbrown, bacon, BBQ sauce, and cheese on top of the burger patty. The lime shakes are a huge hit with my kids. Ice cream cones come dipped in chocolate if you want, or with a piece of Flake chocolate bar.

Finally, and I find this weird and hard to explain, but you can customize your sandwiches to an absurd extent. Sure, it’s cool when you can swap out beef patties for Filet-o-Fish patties on your Big Mac. But do you want four beef patties on your Big Mac? Easy. Do you want a grilled chicken breast on your Quarter Pounder? No problem. Do you want alternating layers of fish and chicken and fried eggs? Here you go. This blows my mind, especially in contrast to the fact that all other portion sizes are small (no super sizing here).

It is absolutely no help to anyone that the back gate of our yard, toward the bus stops and grocery and library, opens into the parking lot of a McDonalds. It’s going to get worse when the kids start coming home from school. But it’s a taste of home, both in America and right here in New Zealand.

I’m reviving this blog after a period of neglect so I can share observations about my new home in Auckland, New Zealand. When we moved in December, I knew that there would be some culture shock, despite the ever-present American media and products and policies that soak into the culture everywhere.

But there are plenty of things that operate differently. Some of these are practical, like shop hours and food and driving. Others are deeper cultural issues, from manners to political and social attitudes. And on a personal level, I’m navigating living near family and figuring out where my career and my activism go from here.

I’ll tag posts about life in New Zealand with the terribly clever name “Auck’ward,” since I’ll still post more general posts about things happening in the wider world. Welcome back, and thanks for following along.