Nov
3
Back To Class
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By Sara Aboulafia ’09
One of my recurring and most frightening dreams is a classic. In it, I am back in high-school, lost in its countless hallways and unable to find the right classroom. When I finally arrive at class — a room, lodged, of course, in some dark and unseemly corner of the building — I realize that it’s the last day of a class I’ve never attended. The final test is passed out, and I stare bug-eyed and helpless at its indecipherable math problems. I look up at the teacher for some help, but his face is completely unfamiliar to me. I flee.
Recently, I went back to school — middle school, perhaps even more terrifying than high school ever was. I’m involved with a program originally begun by Lamont House residents to help out JFK middle school students with their work, and spent my first day helping a group of sixth-graders during their Language Arts period.
It was one of those nauseatingly idyllic, beautiful New England fall mornings, and I would have appreciated it more had I not underestimated the amount of time it would take me to get to the school. I had borrowed a friend’s too-small bike (a word to the wise: our school is a safe space for students, perhaps, but not necessarily for our belongings – find a U-lock and use it!) and pedaled awkwardly along the bumpy bike path. Still sweating, I walked into JFK middle school’s double-doors and was promptly taken through the narrow hallways, past rows of lockers (now shorter than me, I noted), to Ms. Allen’s sixth grade classroom.
I had never met Ms. Allen. Neither had I ever met the 23 small faces that turned from their parallel desks to look at me as I walked into the middle of the room during the lesson I interrupted. “Introduce yourself,” the teacher said, smiling. “Hi class,” I said, surprised at my own formal utterance and consciously becoming more casual. I must have mumbled through my introduction because one boy shot up his hand right after I was done. “What’s your name?”
“Sa-ra,” I repeated, smiling nervously. I spent the next few minutes crouched into a tiny desk-seat in the back, listening to a string of 11-year-old amateur authors go up to the front of the class and read about the peculiar habits of their cats and dogs. For a few moments, it seemed like the nightmare I had always had — late to class, unfamiliar classroom, strange faces. But these kids, thankfully, made it a little easier on me.
The kids in Ms. Allen’s class appeared to be more well-adjusted than I remember ever being. They were respectful of one another, not too unruly, except when the bell rang for lunch (I stayed back in the classroom by myself, perusing the various junior-high embellishments on the wall — the ancestral “where are you from?” map, the slogans encouraging tolerance), and then again when the bell rang for an assembly. They were also open, funny, and relentless chatterboxes.
I quickly had the opportunity to sit down with four students, all girls, and brainstorm ideas for non-fiction pieces they were writing. They spent most of the time bouncing ideas off each other, nodding in approval (“I love that story!”) or encouraging each other (“What about when you won that soccer game? You should write about that!”). I had to reel them in with promises to read a story about a chicken (their suggestion, not mine) that I’d write as they did their own writing — an incentive that worked. One story about a chicken, two about monkeys, and two exotic vacations later, I was beaming.
I’m looking forward to spending two days a week with the kids at JFK. This time, I won’t have to run away, and thankfully I’ll never have to bring a calculator.