Reason #1,000,000 Why I Won't Go To A Strip Club In This City

Well, friends, orientation week is nearing a close. Yesterday was spent teaching the same half-hour lesson on Cornell Note-Taking to eight different groups of students. Today was spent doing different team-building activities. Tomorrow is a cookout / game day. Schedules will be handed out on Monday morning, and regular classes will start immediately thereafter.

This morning, students did two activties:
1) A scavenger hunt. One question of the scavenger hunt asked the students to identify the two new members of the staff. As such, I spent half an hour spelling my first and last name over and over and over.
2) An activity called "The Tree of Life." Essentially, students were divided up into smaller groups. Each student was given a large piece of paper and asked to draw a tree and illustrate / label it, from their early lives to the present, in order to tell the story of how they came to be at this school, doing what they're doing, living the lives they lead.

So, okay, I join a table of students and grab myself a piece of paper and some markers and start working on my Tree of Life, trying to set a good example about how to stay on task and do the project. I'm putting down stuff that's happened to me, good and bad.

And then, I start looking around at the Trees that the kids around me are writing, and thinking about how what I've got on my Tree must look like compared with their Trees.

Item: "My dog dies. My parents get me a rabbit." vs. "I am born. My daddy already has 17 kids."
Item: "My parents get divorced." vs. "October 1999, my daddy dies. November 2000, my mom dies."
Item: "I move to California." vs. "I get locked up for the first time."
Item: "I decide to study abroad." vs. "I get three stars." (i.e. killed three people as part of gang violence)
Item: "I start college." vs. "I start stripping." (And yes, this student is still a stripper. It's how he supports his girlfriend and their two kids. Going to work to strip was actually what he had to do after school today. He's 19.)

I'm not saying it's a comparison study, or that I feel sorry for these kids, or that I'm embarassed by the fact that I put down "I fail physics" and remember how much that sucked when my students are talking about serious life-or-death things that have happened to them throughout almost every year of their lives.

I just feel out of touch, more than a little out of my depth. I know that kids like these are all over the streets of this city; in the neighborhoods I visit and the circles I run in, I don't encounter them on a personal level. Yeah, I know we're going to get along fine--most of them are really great kids, no matter what kinds of crazy things they've done. We'll talk about books, and I'll nag them to do their homework, and they'll talk too much in class, and I'll get irritated.

Just a week ago, I complained about rude, grouchy guests in the restaurant. I disdained wine that we pour for $13 a glass. And now, getting to know my students a little better, I feel like an asshole for taking my good fortune so lightly. Somewhere, I replaced my gratitude with a sense of entitlement regarding a status and position in life that is purely an accident of birth. I feel--for lack of better phrasing--so white and suburban that it makes my skin crawl a little.

Perspective: it's a good thing.

Also--tomorrow's cookout is going to be delicious. Fried fish, macaroni and cheese, collard greens, etc etc etc. Sign me up.