Cornerstone connection
By Rachel Watson
Cornerstone University student blogs her thoughts.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
I dream in color
 By Rachel Watson
Rick and I thought we could make a difference. So we volunteered. But sometimes the unexpected happens. It certainly did this time.
Several weeks ago I received an e-mail at work about an opportunity to teach a weeklong journalism elective to elementary school students at Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Academy in Southeast Grand Rapids.
The school opened a year or two ago, and this summer they decided to offer a program called Kids Games, similar to many churches’ vacation Bible schools. The difference with this program, other than the school setting, is the optional “tracks” kids can sign up for each night, including horsemanship, karate, crafts, drama, jump roping and journalism.
I immediately e-mailed the co-worker who had passed along the opportunity, to tell him I would do it. Another co-worker, Rick Martinez, offered to teach the nightly sessions with me. We went to lunch with the community events coordinator, set up a plan, and had only to wait for the opening night this past Monday.
But we were only there long enough to hear some words that made my stomach reel.
We had arrived about an hour and a half early that night, so we parked ourselves in the second floor media center, preparing, and waiting for our track to start. Ours was unimaginatively dubbed, “newspaper.”
When 7:55 p.m. rolled around, we walked down to the courtyard and held high a bright blue sign with our track name cut out in block letters and pasted at the top, and The Press’ Sunday front page mounted just beneath. The event coordinators had made it for us, along with signs for the other tracks.
So we waited in the sunny courtyard for kids to join our group. Were we scowling? Did we have food stuck in our teeth? Did our apprehension scare them off? Because it seems as if one of those things must have been true to elicit the response we did—or rather, the lack of response.
The kids scurried past us to join scrapbooking, woodworking and soccer tracks, but not a single, curious, budding writer stopped to ask for a spot in our nightly session.
In fact, few of the youngsters even noticed our sign. No second glances. No names on the dotted line. Yes, we were disappointed, but I didn’t think it reached the level of requiring a lot of sympathy or attempts at explanation from the other volunteers watching nearby.
But one woman in particular seemed to think it would help, so her barrage of words began.
“Well, you know, it’s too nice of a night to be sitting in a classroom,” she said. “Still, I can’t think why no one signed up,” she continued. “Last year we offered the newspaper track at another Kids Games location and it was very popular and well-received.”
“Thanks. You’re really helping us feel better,” I thought.
After more of the same, the woman dropped a parting comment I couldn’t ignore.
“You know, you have to consider the area, too,” she said. “My husband and I worked last year at the Kids Games in Northeast Grand Rapids, up by Forest Hills schools. THIS is a totally different area.”
Her glance was smug and knowing, and she lowered her voice so the other volunteers, the ones who live on the Southeast Side, wouldn’t hear. I knew exactly what she meant. She might as well have said it out loud, because the meaning she didn’t supply with words was all-too-evident to me, in my heart.
So I began to wrestle with her implication inwardly, knowing the truth all the while.
She seemed to think I shouldn’t have expected kids to sign up for a journalism class here, in the inner city. Are they any less capable of that potential than the white, upper-middle class kids at Forest Hills? Do they have less talent? Less natural curiosity? What of their dreams? Do they have different dreams because they live further South, in crowded apartments instead of suburban communities?
Geography obviously wasn’t her point.
As she stood there calmly with her expensive sunglasses hiding her eyes from view, her highlighted hair perfectly styled and oozing “soccer momness” and her tanned, manicured hands resting on her poised hips, I felt the deeper meaning of her remark.
I felt her subconscious superiority complex as she “volunteered her time,” not in Forest Hills, but “where it was more needed.”
Yet as I looked around I saw yellow-clad volunteers everywhere. They were doing just fine. She wasn’t conferring any great favor on them by gracing the school with her presence. And, incidentally, neither were we.
As I tried to understand why she would drop that hushed remark so condescendingly, I concluded that it had little weight.
There are a million possibilities to explain why no kids signed up for our newspaper workshop that night-— I mean, who can really compete with jump rope and karate? But I don’t believe any of those million reasons has to do with the color of the students’ skin.
Skin color does not determine talent, passions or dreams. Each child is born with those gifts—- and white children don’t have more or better gifts. I choose to believe that given enough time and opportunity, those shy, uncertain word-lovers would have emerged at Martin Luther King Academy that night. But for reasons God only knows, they didn’t in the two hours we were there.
And the woman who was so willing to subtly blame it on race differences? She’ll only hurt people, and herself, by persisting in that belief.
Next year, when the school’s Kids Games program, and its newspaper track, is better-organized and advertised, I’d like to go back and try again.
Why? Because sometimes dreams need a little help to get off the ground. All dreams—- red, brown, yellow, black and white.
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