I've been gone a while.
I'm back.
I've had a dang hard time writing this blog, mainly because I've only had about an hour of free time per day since finishing my teaching career in Hartford. Immediately following it, I left the city I'd called home for many months and headed to a new one that I'm now calling home for a couple months. That city's name is irrelevant, but it's Williamstown, Massachusetts for you inquisitive cats. Williamstown is home to an outdoor camp for teens called Overland. After I rocked an interview with them or whatever, I was hired to lead one of their summer writing programs. (Enjoy some pictures of what we've been up to in that preceding link.)
When I got to Williamstown for training, it was supremely refreshing to have an organization expertly model what they wanted out of us as leaders. The first thing we did was go on a hiking trip, and our own leaders on the trip were superb examples of the kind of culture and "wholesomeness" that the company wants sprouting in all its programs. Which was great. It was Steinbeck to Teach for America's amateur training attempts.
But despite the highs of the training, I had a hard time coming to terms with the accessibility of these adventuresome trips. You see, these experiences can only be had by students whose families can afford it. And the price tag for many if not all of these trips far exceeds what any family of my Hartford students could afford. So money and only money buys students access to Overland. And Overland's many programs are designed challenges meant to be vanquished, leaving its conquerors (the students) with a sense of self-worth and ambition. And while all of that is perfectly fine, the fact that only kids from well(ish)-to-do families can defeat these nourishing obstacles is certainly depressing for me.
But on a higher note, let me get to my trip. I am mere days away from the end of my first two-week session with students, and I don't want it to end. The kids I've had are all inquisitive and kind and mostly unassuming pleasures to be around. The conversations I've had with them have exceeded the best conversations I've had with peers. Their brains are like speeding machines that easily conjure abstract but wonderfully apt sentences during deeply thoughtful conversations. But what's better is their palpable thirst– comparable to that of a weary desert traveler's who chances upon a oasis. They are parched for knowledge, to learn, to know, to understand things that I had not even an awareness of at their age, and attempting to quench that thirst, even if it's only for a moment, has been immensely rewarding.
Another thing I've learned about these kiddos is that they suffer. They don't suffer to the degree that my Hartford students do, but still they suffer.
And I find it hard to fathom. Here are these kids, these young yearners of knowledge, who have nothing but opportunity awaiting them in whatever form they wish to seek, and yet they suffer. They break down and sob to me in a corner when others aren't watching, letting leak their hate for their father. They casually mention that if they could make anything come out of their finger, it would be a pen that could trace the contours of their "fat body" and cut off its softer, flabbier parts. They say that they won a national poetry competition but no longer consider it an achievement because it happened eons ago in the eighth grade. They worry nearly constantly, about careers and colleges and futures, as evidenced by a recurring theme in their essays about escaping stress and pressures of reality. They are all in high school. They concern themselves with trivialities, and all the while I think, when will it be enough? It must already be enough. They have everything, (i.e. a solid (even stellar) education).
But they don't recognize it. Not yet at least. They are absorbent capsules in a sea of boundless knowledge, but they are yet to appreciate it. They have all been granted an extraordinary curiosity for so many beauties–the whimsy of life, meeting people, and paths (either chosen or fated–a debate we've yet to come to a consensus on)–and that curiosity will hoist them atop life's mountains, allowing them to see farther than so many others who are stuck at so many points below these peaks.
They need not suffer as they do, yet they do, reminding me of my younger self. And though I worry less now after being filled with gratefulness courtesy of Teach for America, I admit I still worry. It's not as intense, but it's there. Is that simply the young human's plight, to suffer and stress no matter situation or circumstance?
I'm back.
I've had a dang hard time writing this blog, mainly because I've only had about an hour of free time per day since finishing my teaching career in Hartford. Immediately following it, I left the city I'd called home for many months and headed to a new one that I'm now calling home for a couple months. That city's name is irrelevant, but it's Williamstown, Massachusetts for you inquisitive cats. Williamstown is home to an outdoor camp for teens called Overland. After I rocked an interview with them or whatever, I was hired to lead one of their summer writing programs. (Enjoy some pictures of what we've been up to in that preceding link.)
When I got to Williamstown for training, it was supremely refreshing to have an organization expertly model what they wanted out of us as leaders. The first thing we did was go on a hiking trip, and our own leaders on the trip were superb examples of the kind of culture and "wholesomeness" that the company wants sprouting in all its programs. Which was great. It was Steinbeck to Teach for America's amateur training attempts.
But despite the highs of the training, I had a hard time coming to terms with the accessibility of these adventuresome trips. You see, these experiences can only be had by students whose families can afford it. And the price tag for many if not all of these trips far exceeds what any family of my Hartford students could afford. So money and only money buys students access to Overland. And Overland's many programs are designed challenges meant to be vanquished, leaving its conquerors (the students) with a sense of self-worth and ambition. And while all of that is perfectly fine, the fact that only kids from well(ish)-to-do families can defeat these nourishing obstacles is certainly depressing for me.
But on a higher note, let me get to my trip. I am mere days away from the end of my first two-week session with students, and I don't want it to end. The kids I've had are all inquisitive and kind and mostly unassuming pleasures to be around. The conversations I've had with them have exceeded the best conversations I've had with peers. Their brains are like speeding machines that easily conjure abstract but wonderfully apt sentences during deeply thoughtful conversations. But what's better is their palpable thirst– comparable to that of a weary desert traveler's who chances upon a oasis. They are parched for knowledge, to learn, to know, to understand things that I had not even an awareness of at their age, and attempting to quench that thirst, even if it's only for a moment, has been immensely rewarding.
Another thing I've learned about these kiddos is that they suffer. They don't suffer to the degree that my Hartford students do, but still they suffer.
And I find it hard to fathom. Here are these kids, these young yearners of knowledge, who have nothing but opportunity awaiting them in whatever form they wish to seek, and yet they suffer. They break down and sob to me in a corner when others aren't watching, letting leak their hate for their father. They casually mention that if they could make anything come out of their finger, it would be a pen that could trace the contours of their "fat body" and cut off its softer, flabbier parts. They say that they won a national poetry competition but no longer consider it an achievement because it happened eons ago in the eighth grade. They worry nearly constantly, about careers and colleges and futures, as evidenced by a recurring theme in their essays about escaping stress and pressures of reality. They are all in high school. They concern themselves with trivialities, and all the while I think, when will it be enough? It must already be enough. They have everything, (i.e. a solid (even stellar) education).
But they don't recognize it. Not yet at least. They are absorbent capsules in a sea of boundless knowledge, but they are yet to appreciate it. They have all been granted an extraordinary curiosity for so many beauties–the whimsy of life, meeting people, and paths (either chosen or fated–a debate we've yet to come to a consensus on)–and that curiosity will hoist them atop life's mountains, allowing them to see farther than so many others who are stuck at so many points below these peaks.
They need not suffer as they do, yet they do, reminding me of my younger self. And though I worry less now after being filled with gratefulness courtesy of Teach for America, I admit I still worry. It's not as intense, but it's there. Is that simply the young human's plight, to suffer and stress no matter situation or circumstance?