Tilyn- 826 Chicago- Day Three

Maddy, Ashley, Megan, and I all woke up early to meet Zach at Cameron Elementary school. Zach and a professional photographer were introducing a new memoir project to three classes of seventh graders. The project is entitled “The Me That No One Knows” so we gave the kids two questions to think about: How do you see yourself? And How do others see you? Our job was to walk around and talk to groups of kids in order to help them brainstorm ideas of what to write down for each question.

It was very interesting to see how the students self-identified, and how they thought others perceived them. Every kid we worked with was either Hispanic or African-American. The way they identified themselves racially was particularly interesting to observe. There was one child whom I asked about their background and he said, “My parents are from Mexico but I am from here,” putting a lot of emphasis on the latter part of the statement.

When I was working at another table, one Puerto Rican girl asked a boy at her table if he was also Puerto Rican and he responded, “NO. I am a fifth generation American born citizen.”  The boy was of Puerto Rican descent, but clearly thought it was more important to clarify his family’s immigration status.

There was something else I noticed when working with the kids at Cameron that really stuck out to me: several of the more ornery boys described themselves as “devils” or “demons” because of their talkative, rule-breaking behavior. I don’t know if it is a normal use of the word in their culture, but I do know that as an Anglo-Saxon, white, middle-class American, I would have never called myself a “demon” when I was in seventh grade or at any point in my life for that matter.

When we got back to 826, we helped out with some odd jobs, namely prepping and painting a wall. When 3:30 came, Natalie and I worked at the same Writing Table again. We gave the students the same prompt as we had the day before, as different students often come to the center on different days. It was really interesting to see how several students could approach the same topic from completely different angles and each come up with something totally unique.