Church in Jamaica

Since I got here in Queens, I’ve mainly been going to the Jamaica 1^st ward (as in, Jamaica, the neighborhood in Queens. I don't move around that much). The Saturday before my first Sunday here, I just looked up the meetinghouse locator to try to find the closest ward to where I’m at, and the closest one I happened to find just happened to be the Jamaica 1^st Ward, which is absolutely amazing. First of all, it’s in a totally different-seeming part of the neighborhood—St. John’s (the Catholic university we’re being housed at during our training) and the immediate blocks around it are pretty middle- to upper-middle class, down to the street (Hillside) where there’s a subway stop. From then on, it slowly becomes more and more inner city, until you get to Jamaica Boulevard, which feels a lot like the main drags in cities I lived in in Brazil and Mozambique—full of street vendors selling everything from ice cream to falafel to halal food, and full of storefronts of those types of stores that sell a bit of everything, especially if it contains plastic or was made in China. And the crowds, too, especially after church—it just feels joyful, the huge groups of people, I love it.

And then there’s the ward itself—I’ve seriously never seen a more multicultural congregation in all my time in the church. There’s the Indian-descended guy from Guyana with his family (the ward mission leader), the Ecuadorian guy who speaks Portuguese and is really into capoeira because his wife is from Rio (he’s the young men’s president), the gaúcho bald white brasileiro with a goatee with his family (the ward clerk), the black Haitian guy in the bishopric, the hilarious Jamaican guy in the bishopric, the numerous Caribbean-sounding women, the very academic and smart man from Trinidad (who’s the High Priest rep in the ward), the older, frail-looking white woman with a German accent (who’s the bishop’s mom), the older man from Haiti who bore his testimony about feeling healed after a problem with his spine, the African-American guy who works in security who teaches Sunday School, and a number of other folks from all sorts of backgrounds (various parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, a lot more African-American and Hispanic folks). The first week I went, there was also a visiting black lady from London named Sylvia who’s a member and who sat next to me (she was in town visiting her brother who lives nearby, and got excited when she saw the chapel so that she knew where she could go to church). Seriously, it’s amazing what a melting pot this ward was. I love it—I remember thinking, on my walk back from church on that first Sunday here, this is the gospel, all of these different types of people together, working together and loving together and building Zion together. And above and beyond the diversity, there is the openness and the friendliness and the love that I feel there—more so than any other ward I can think of, it often seriously feels like a family. I can remember many leadership meetings where it was discussed how we could build more the feeling of “ward family”—well, this ward gets it. I have felt more loved, and welcomed, and accepted as family in this ward than I have in most (if not all) wards I can remember—seriously, especially my first Sunday I left it with that comforting and warm feeling I have only ever felt by being with family. How could you not fall in love with that? My only regret is that this isn’t where I’m going to be working, so I can’t transfer my records here. I would love to live in this ward—the familial feel of it is what I picture heaven being like.

I want you to prove me wrong

I felt floored by a realization I had the other day.

As part of our training for teaching in the fall, we have diversity training sessions every Friday. This Friday’s session was amazing. We were talking about recognizing and dealing with bias, and we started off by doing some mental exercises that got me thinking. Scott (our curriculum specialist, who leads the sessions) asked us to write down, for each of a list of things, what the first mental image was that came to mind. He started his list: a student with behavioral problems, a student with a troubled home life, a student who is not a successful student—and it really troubled me that, at least for all of the categories I just mentioned, the image that came to mind was of a black boy.

I know I’ve thought a lot about bias, and racism, especially in the past few years—an experience I had in my last semester at Rice really got me thinking about it. It was spring of 2004, and one time at night I was heading to the library to do some studying. On the way there, I passed by a friend of mine from my dorm, a really nice upper-middle-class black guy with glasses and a Cosby-kid look to him, who I said hi to without thinking much of it. Soon after, though, I passed by another black guy who was wearing warm-up pants and sports clothes, and I remember just catching myself thinking, “This guy is probably here on a sports scholarship.” When I caught myself thinking that, I was shocked to have caught myself being so openly racist. It made me think of Mom’s Relief Society friend from Chicago that Mom always quotes as having said, “You can’t say that you aren’t racist. What you can honestly say is, Yes, I’m racist—but I’m trying.” And as I thought about that those years ago, I resolved to try my hardest to fight against those impulses towards racist assumptions that come scarily often.

Well, this mental exercise that Scott had us do really bothered me, because it reminded me that despite all the time I’ve spent thinking about this, and despite the many personal examples of amazing and successful black men that I’ve known, the dominant social assumption about black males is still the dominant image that comes first to mind when I think of troubled students. The fact that that is my kneejerk, instinctive mental image, despite all the thinking I try to do to the contrary—that infuriates me. It really infuriates me.

As I thought about it in that session, though, I realized that this rage I was feeling can be channeled. If I want to fight my biases, there is no better way to do so than to let the existence of my biases, and my frustration and rage at their existence, drive my performance as a teacher. Let it fan my flame, let it stoke my passion, let it keep me pushing myself and keep me pushing my kids—not just because I want them to dispel the stereotypes that are held against them, and not just because I want them to prove society wrong. Rather, at its root, because I want them, and need them, to prove me wrong.

As I thought about this, and realized how much I needed them to succeed, not just for them, but for myself, the quote came to mind: "If you have come here to help me, then you are wasting your time…But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together." The next two years will be an amazing chance to do just that.

Life and Times at P.S. 42

Wow—it’s been a really, really long time since I’ve posted on here, and it’s crazy to sit down and realize that the reason for that is that this is the first time I’ve had a relatively free evening in the last three weeks. It’s been amazing, but very intensely amazing.

The schedule here is pretty insane, bringing back memories of the missionary training center—though this version is a lot less spiritual (not to say that there aren’t religious underpinnings to this work) and a lot less well-rested (most of us, myself included, are averaging about 4-5 hours of sleep a night, on a good night). Two weeks ago our training really started, when we were split up into schools where we would be teaching summer school—I’m at P.S. 42 in the Bronx. In order to break us into teaching slowly, we’re split into groups of 2, 3, or 4 teaching summer school classes collaboratively, switching subjects week by week (the first week I taught writing and math, this week I’m teaching word study and vocabulary, next week I’m teaching reading comprehension). I’m teaching a class of six third grade boys, along with two girls named Kelsey and Chrissie. We’ve gotten really close as we’ve been working together, as it’s been easy for all of us to get attached and invested to these kids, our first kids, the first ones that we are primarily responsible for in terms of their learning and their progression towards 4^th grade. And though six kids may not seem like a lot, we’ve gotten a pretty rowdy group of boys (I would kill to have a girl in the that room, just to offset the overpowering wanna-be-macho vibe in the room of 9-year-olds trying to be cool), who have sent me home more than a little stressed and wondering how I’m going to handle this several times, but who I feel more and more that I’m coming to really learn how to work with and who I’m getting more and more attached to. There’s Matthew, the peppiest and most smiley nine-year-old that Puerto Rico ever produced; there’s Danny, who has some serious trouble concentrating and likes to act tough but secretly loves being good and gets the biggest kick out of really getting what he’s being taught; there’s Bijon, who’s an amazingly advanced reader and talks the best smack I’ve ever seen; there’s John, an adorable big guy who I wish I could loan some deserved self-confidence to; there’s Shamar, who’s the biggest handful I’ve ever seen but is amazingly smart when you can get him focused; and there’s Christian, who is your secret confidence booster because he’s the kid that always gets it (and thus doesn’t leave you feeling completely inept at the end of the day, even when it’s a hard day). There have been some serious problems between them—with numerous fights and almost-fights and some really horrible racial epithets having been thrown around—but with time it really feels like it is getting better, as we address those issues as they come up and try to really build a sense of community in the classroom. The other day a lovely thing happened—Matthew and Shamar had had issues one day (which had gotten really bad, to the point of one calling the other the n-word), and the next day both of them really wanted to read something I had read on the board. I was afraid it was going to break out into some harsh words as they fought over who could read it, but before I could step in to diffuse anything, Matthew looked up with the sincerest look on his face and simply said, “It’s okay, Shamar can read it.” That effortless ability to forgive and forget and give up something you want for someone else that you know wants it, too—it’s no wonder Jesus said that children are examples of life in heaven.