You know you're in the American school

Walking into the American School of Dubai (ASD) is disorienting. It was 16 hours of travel to get to this country, and you take just a few steps and you're back in the USA.

There's just something very American about the design of ASD. The giant track and soccer fields out front, with freshly cut grass – a rarity in this sand city. The poster-bedecked classrooms. The shininess. It's all very comforting, if a little strange too.

But the American-ness of the place runs deeper, right through the personalities of the students. My students at ASD are not all Americans by birth – in fact, most aren't – but they are so American in their attitudes. They're more world-weary, a little less deferential (they don’t call me "sir," like all my other students). They're very good students, and I like them. But it's there – in the way they dress, the way they talk, the way they sit. You can feel a different culture at work in the seams of the class.

Here's my favorite example. I teach a math problem about a girl named Clare, who is six years younger than her brother Adam. How old will Adam be in three years? C-3? C+6?

Our strategy is to make up an age for Clare. "How old should we make Clare?" I ask. Kids almost always say "10," and the ASD class was no different. So we worked through the problem. Adam will be 19 in three years, or C+9. No problem.

I've got a kid in that class named Ray, pitcher for the ASD Indians baseball team (whose logo is a direct and charming rip-off of the Cleveland Indians). As we finish the Clare problem and start to move on, Ray mutters, under his breath but loud enough for everyone to hear, "We should have made Clare 18."

You'd sooner see pigs soaring gracefully through the blue sky than you'd hear such a comment in a class of Middle Eastern kids. I was, quite honestly, shocked. I seem to have become a delicate rose of sensitivity in my ten weeks here. I'll need emergency coarsening when I return. Save me a seat at the poker table.