TENNIS SHOES AND TELEPHONE WIRES

So one of my many jobs at Ruth Eckerd Hall is to go into low income schools and work with teachers by teaching part of their curriculum but doing it by coming at the material in a more artistic way. I tend to focus more on the writing of poetry. Well one of the things we do is thing style called a box poem, which helps the kids write a poem without them even having a clue they are doing it until the end. Well, I do this style of poem with them based on landmarks that are from certain continents that they are studying in 3rd Grade.

However, the trick of the poem is that you have to explain what landmarks are to these kids. Now most of these kids do not see beyond the 6 block radius of their worlds. Landmarks that we are going to be talking about are simply pictures in books. That is all. I live 10 minutes from the beach, and many of these kids have never even seen a beach....you would think I would be joking, but I got bad news, these kids exist. Very few have any idea how close they even are to the beach.

So landmarks come up and are explained, and once they can grasp the concept, you ask for them to provide landmarks they have in their head. And you get the standard replies: Statue of Liberty, Eiffel Tower (yes the kids who have never been to the beach in their back yard, know the Eiffel Tower), Mt. Rushmore, Grand Canyon, Great Wall of China. Until one little boy raises his hand to be heard, he is so proud of his landmark, "a piece that marks a piece of the world, that lots of people visit.")

He proudly says, "Mr. Jared! I have a landmark! Tennis shoes that have been tied together and thrown over a telephone wire." The class erupts into applause, and as he is a joke-ster in the group, he isn't really bothered by it. I am not so sure that he is aware that it was funny, but he laughs right along with them....including me. At first glance, this exchange is very funny, because how do you let a third grader know that this is a landmark, but not really the one i am looking for.

I would like to take this time out that anyone who doesn't know, tied shoes thrown over telephone wires is an indication that drugs are being sold in the area. Though I don't know that this kid knows this exact thing, it is still very funny that he connects that to a landmark.

I laughed for a good three minutes, without stopping. I couldn't breathe, the teacher had to take over for a minute because I could not catch the wind in my breath. She was laughing as well, but I found it absolutely hysterical. Yet again another very interesting way a 3rd Grader takes a question. Kids are awesome.

But even when the laughter subsides, something sad tends to come to the surface. Clearly the kid has seen this and has connected with a landmark of some kind. This is the world he comes from...or one he lives around. This is a fantastic kid, and he really is quite a wonderful and funny student. However, you think of them in 3rd Grade and you go, "You have to get them now. Teach them at this age."

This whole school is filled with wonderful, amazing, and astonishing kids who come from worlds that I can only imagine. I mean my mom and dad were on food stamps for a little bit of time when I was a pre-teen. I mean we had it tough, but I didn't realize that due to great grandparents, I was never really in any grave danger. I didn't live in a bad area (a working class area, but never a bad area), I never was confronted with drugs until I got out of high school, and the world I lived in I thought was pretty annoying, but in reality there was no wolves knocking at my door trying to blow down anything in my well-developed brick house...(hey, who knew that that story had a meaning...and my dad is a bricklayer...double meaning).

I see the world that these kids I work with grow up in and all I can do is just hope that they learn in their youth to fight it and to get out of it. They are all so capable. Some of them are so incredibly smart. Some of them, sadly, you can see the doubt and anger of their world starting to seep in.

Politics be damned. I believe a song I know put it best, the only things you really leave behind in this world are "children and art." Why are we not putting our money in the future of the world?