Regardless of my lack of loquaciousness today, we had an amazingly long and full day.
The whole group started up the morning with a field trip at the site. Third graders are the bomb. They are full of more enthusiasm and brilliance than I’ve seen in a long while. Though I thought this break would decrease my faith in humanity and all of that, the adventures of a villainous cat named Scooter Fuzzy as developed by a group of inner-city third graders has given me a renewed faith.
Post-lunch we went to LaSalle II Elementary School to work with a group of eighth graders on a project in conjunction with our site. They were assigned to write a short story about anything that they chose. And boy did they have some insanely creative pieces. We each got the chance to work one-on-one with a few students to revise their pieces. I met with Jose, Diamond and Malik. Jose wrote about a bullying and a school shooting, while Diamond decided upon a 16-page melodrama about a 14-year old girl with two boyfriends who decides to go on a shopping spree with her father’s credit card.
I connected best with a confident young man named Malik. Malik wrote an incredibly imagery heavy short about a high-school age boy named Christopher. During a meeting with one of his teachers after school, Chris is asked how he feels about death. He brushes it off, only to realize that his teacher has passed the Grim Reaper scythe to him. He wakes up the next day to realize that he has transformed into his worst nightmare. Intensity ensues.
Once again, Tilyn and I got to work at the writing center during after-school tutoring time. Making short, but lasting connections with a few kids that had visited our table day after day has been my favorite part of this entire break experience. We even ran into Yesi, a girl from our site, at LaSalle II this morning! She was so excited to show us where she came to learn each day.
Back at the hostel, we dined with the students from a fifth grade private school class who cooked our dinner based on a country they were studying at school. The hostel has a program in which students from local schools study a country (this time, it was Brazil) and then come to the hostel to share it with people from all over! I found it fascinating to explore the different types of education options that a city of this size has to offer.
We ended the day with an intense talk about the relation between race and socio-economic level, played Spoons and then played with some more spoons. Maddy is really good at making some sweet noises, for any lovers of the unique instrument out there.
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