Culmination

Breakthrough Summer ‘09 is ending in less than a week. I’m feeling something; it’s definitely a lot different than how I felt at the end of last summer. I guess, unlike last summer, I’m now feeling a sense of...being done.

Done for lots of reasons, not just because I feel like I’ve raised the students from below basic writing last summer up to proficient writing this summer (no, this is actually hardly the reason, and slightly far off from the truth).

I started out this summer with goals. I accomplished some and failed in others. But I’ve learned something both from my accomplishments and failures.

This summer was amazing. While I might’ve disagreed with some of the ways the new directors ran things, I brushed that aside and still managed to have a fun time with the students. Far more amazing than last summer.

Last Friday, all the (incoming) eighth graders and the teachers went on a field trip to the Science Academy in San Francisco. During a group building activity, we all stood in a large circle, and as I looked around at all 50ish students, I realized that I could name all of them. All but three or four of them were here last summer, and they were beginning their first Breakthrough experience just as I was.

There was probably a handful that I never taught this summer and last summer and never really had a lot of contact with, but I knew who they were, and I felt some kind of sense of pride looking over all the eighth graders, who all looked ready to tackle their last year in junior high. Crazy to think that around 50% of them call it done with the Breakthrough middle school program by the end of this summer. (The middle school program includes incoming ninth graders, but usually only half of the eighth graders come back for it.)



This morning in a staff meeting, one of the directors informed us that a student named Timmy would not be joining us for the last week of Breakthrough. Timmy is an incoming seventh grader, and I met him when I caught him doing finger tutting. We bonded over tutting and other types of dancing, and last week, he tried teaching me this one small finger tutting piece. We were getting down to the final parts of it when I was assigned to ride the lightrail (trolley, public transportation) home with the students, a good twenty-five minutes for him to teach me.

However, another seventh grader, Nigel, ambushed me with discussions about breakdancing, Tecktonik, the French singer Yelle, Super Smash Brothers Brawl, and Left for Dead. I had never really talked to Nigel before, so I figured that lightrail time would be a good time to get to know him. I was already pretty good friends with Timmy, so I decided that the tutting piece could wait.

Over this past weekend, Timmy got a call about a family emergency, and he and his family caught a flight all the way to the Philippines to be there. The tutting piece remains unfinished, and even though I had seen him do it a million times, I can’t translate the images in my mind to my actual hands and fingers. Frustrating.

And I still can’t let go of the fact that there was no real goodbye. Timmy and me—our goodbye last Thursday was as simple and unsuspecting as, “See ya Monday!” I know that no one planned for this to happen, for Timmy to leave so abruptly. But randomly during the day today, I would lift my arms out in front of me, join the ends of my two thumbs and the joints in my index fingers to make a square, and I’d tut tut tut tut stop. Pause. I’d glare at my hands: middle fingers resting on each other, index fingers standing up. Unfortunately, the intensity of my glare fails to magically guide my fingers. What the fuck do I do next?

And I guess, these are some of the reasons that I’m considering coming back for one more summer. To see 50% of the students I started off as seventh graders last year finish the Breakthrough program as ninth graders, and to hunt down that one student so he can teach me the end to the finger tutting piece. I struggle with letting go of things, and that kind of closure would probably ease my struggles a lot more.



But one thing that I learned this summer is that I might really not be the best suited to do this job the way it’s “supposed” to be done. There’s a line between teacher and friend. The teacher is supposed to play the teacher role and tease that line only lightly, but I often found myself stepping way over it. I put myself way out there this summer, and that had its good side and its bad side. I reached out to more students. That was one of my main goals for this summer, and I accomplished it. The students could come to Breakthrough feeling confident that they could have someone really chill to hang out with.

And that is just my nature. I am, according to one of the directors, a “flippy-floopy fun kinda teacher.” A chill teacher. That’s great, but last night, I graded my students’ in-class response to literature essays. It seems that the more flippy-floopy fun that I am, the less students tend to pay attention to actual important material in class and to turn in their homework regularly. This was a problem last summer, and at the beginning of this summer, I told myself that I would fix that. But I couldn’t. Discipline. Exert power over others just because I’m given the “teacher” status. It’s not in my nature.

If I looked slightly younger and shorter, or if all the students looked slightly older and taller, you wouldn’t be able to distinguish me from the rest of the students.

The students deserve an education as much as they deserve a friend and role model. I think differently about which should be more prioritized, but the standard norm seems to say, get acquainted with the students enough so that they pay attention in class and then cram them with knowledge; actual friendships: optional. And since I can’t ingrain that bit of philosophy deep into my brain, I’m probably not mature enough for this job yet.



But then... (At this point I’m just ranting in circles.) At the field trip last Friday, my group of students and I were in the rainforest dome. There were all sorts of crazy butterflies fluttering around, and Leandra, a girl who I had last summer and this summer for writing and who would prefer to be off in her own little world, tried to avoid the butterflies. When one landed on a handrail next to her, she freaked out. But the butterfly stood there perfectly still, so I urged her to let it walk onto her hands. She approached it with a cautious finger, jolting and pulling it back as though it would try to take bites out of her. But when she finally made contact and slid her finger under its legs, I saw her face light up as she lifted the butterfly.

We all momentarily stared in awe at the butterfly in her hands before I thought to bust out my cell phone to take a picture. We all got excited, but the butterfly got away—however, not before launching right into Leandra’s face of course. She jumped back and laughed; we all laughed, and that laughter I saw in her—I mean, she’s laughed plenty of times in my class and around school, but it has usually always been about something kinda inappropriate. This kind of laughter that I witnessed in the rainforest dome as butterflies continued to float around her like angels—it was remarkable.