Day 11 - “How Could You Eat a Deer?”
Banneker Day 6
It was a hot walk to school. Hot for a sweater, a field jacket, and a cap. But it was beautiful. 66 degrees with a blue sky, I’m not going to complain.
Childish Gambino’s album is out in full on NPR Music. I listened to it all through my DCCC internship in the morning, and man did I wish I could play it for the kids at school. It’s definitely not school friendly, but not for the usual reasons. Yeah he curses a lot, but it’s for a purpose. It’s smart and tricky and clever. It’s Donald Glover talking about being Donald Glover. He’s black but not black enough, he’s not white, he was a nerd, people called him faggot, but look at him now? Writer, actor, comedian, rapper, model - he’s unbelievable. I hope they listen to him at home. The Banneker kids, the Roosevelt kids, everyone. I know I’m a white girl who lived near a farm in Wisconsin. But listening to him on the way to school, everything made sense.
On my way to the library I ran into Mitzi who was on her way to soccer practice. She asked me if I’d seen the paper and I told her that I loved it and I brought it home to show it off, then thanked her for everything she’d done, since I know it was a ton. She’s so sweet and so driven.
When I got into the library, Mrs. Brinkman showed me all of the surveys they got back. Instead of doing it at lunch like we did, they did it in all English periods so they got answers from virtually everyone, and it’s fantastic! They have all of this raw data to fill in their stories with and they asked for story suggestions on the back and got some great ones!
Today was by far the best day in the program. We went through the surveys, sorting by grade and then gender. Saudia had e-mailed me yesterday to let me know that she’d be coming to visit, so it was just luck that she was there to get pictures of us, all sitting around the table, talking and laughing over our data collection.
We all know each other now. They’re comfortable enough with me to take my advice and then laugh with me about something stupid. We had a great time discussing the written responses to the weirdest food ever eaten (one of mine was the winner: human). But we also talked about columns they want to do to create more structured and regular content for papers to come. They were gung-ho for humor, crosswords, pop culture reviews, and advice.
The key of course is maintaining the enthusiasm beyond these meetings. They need to keep it up when they’re actually doing the writing, and I think we’re making progress. It’s such a great set of kids who obviously enjoy each other and their time there. And I get to be a part of it and offer what I can.
Another perk - we left at 5:00! Meaning I got home by 5:50 and it was glorious. I don’t expect it to happen again, but it was great. On the ride to the metro Mrs. Brinkman told me about the three years of research she did to track down the artist of a WPA painting of the school from their foyer. She found out so much about the school and eventually found the man’s son, giving everyone a great story, great information about the school, and a great example to shut kids up who are complaining about their research.
Mrs. Brinkman has a healthy skepticism about these kids. Yes, they need to apply to get in to and they need to do well to stay in. But some of their writing just isn’t good. It’s bad for high school and really bad for a selective high school. I know you could say the same thing for my science ability at USM, but let’s be serious. No one cares about my physics grades. Everyone needs to write. She asked me how I learned to write and I told her that that was the one thing I was good at from the start. And because I was good at it, I kept writing. I enjoyed it. I stressed the “write tight” from news writing class (there’s another professor to thank for a skill set I’ve used in Prime Movers) and I think we made some progress.
A really, really great day. I’ll miss them.
