I used to run summer programs for urban kids. 400 of em, taken daily to Brooklyn’s only national parkland to study environmental science: botany; ecology; biology. It was logistical insanity and I spent most of my time pushing paper. Except for the last day of the season. On that day, before an audience of parents and siblings, each group presented its final project. It could be a comparative analysis of ecosystems; a rap about recycling; a step dance done to a hollered table of elements.
I am milling about the barely controlled chaos when I see two eight-year-old boys run up to each other and embrace (notable enough for most of these kids come from rough neighborhoods; Brownsville, East New York, Bushwick).
“I got the part!”
“All right!”
Clearly his group is doing a play. I am charmed by their interaction, and I lean in to ask,
“What part did you get?”
“I’m a shrub!”
Oh, this is funny! He is so innocently proud of this part, and really, what is he going to do? Hold a bunch of sticks and stand in the back? Could this possibly even be a speaking part? I am snarfling up my own jaded sleeve as I push it a bit further, and with an oleaginous smile ask,
“And what does a shrub do?”
“A shrub is a natural barrier against wind and water erosion!”
In one amazing aikido move, this kid bends my cynicism against me and totally kicks my ass. And leaves me with a huge, real grin.
posted by ttractor @ 10:06 PM
4 Comments:
Badass! My students do this to me every once in awhile.
I loved this moment. That kid so kicked my ass, and he didn't even know it.
And there is just the total awe at realizing what that kid has learned, how his life has been touched. That I had something to do with it. That working 8, 10, 12 hours a day, every day for weeks, months, has resulted in this gentle, fantastic intersection of life, knowledge, opportunity.
Tell me about your interaction with your students?
Tonight: one of my students stayed behind after our 3-hour seminar to tell me that my name had come up in a significant way during a meeting she was having with some administrators earlier. Another student stayed behind to show me the Charles Dickens web animation on the BBC's website. The whole group clamoured to have me put a four-volume sociology project from the 1850s onto course reserve instead of just leaving it out in the stacks where someone else might check it out before they can get to it again. And they pored over facsimiles of Dickens's working notes for his novels for so long that the book took nearly an hour to get all the way around my seminar table.
It's less common for me to have the beautiful epiphany than it might be if I weren't interacting with so many of them all the time. But every once in awhile, something really, truly lovely happens. Somebody calls me on a misreading, or a pair of eyes lights up, or I hear them finding their way to a close reading they couldn't have done before class started. And then, every once in awhile, one of them will say something very wise to me, in office hours or over instant messenger. And my office bulletin board holds a growing collection of postcards and notes and things my kids have sent me. And also the little skull ring one of my students brought to class for Halloween last semester--she brought a whole bag of them, so by the time I got to class, everyone was wearing them already. I clipped mine onto my nose, in honor of her gesture.
oh, how cool is that!
I do love to turn my students on to things they never could have thought they would enjoy or understand. My favorite sessions are when we review IRS Form 990s and audit statements. You can practically hear them moaning in agony, but by the end they are peppering me with questions about organizational finances and the policy implications. Ya-hoooooo!
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