Heads-Up Americorps, 2005, by Emily Wolkowicz

From MemoryArchive

Who: Emily Wolkowicz
What: Heads-Up Americorps 
When: 2005
Where: Washington, DC

When I look back on my classroom, I picture my kids sitting in their assigned seats. I am standing in the front of the room slightly off center holding up a newspaper asking for someone to read me a headline. Bianca would have been falling asleep or pserhaps Jayneshia is screaming out of turn, or Jemari is hiding under the table or Tanisha is no where near her seat dancing and singing “WHO IS MIKE JONES!!” My partner, Mr. Qui-Juan, is sitting at a table off to the side preparing for a vocab lesson. He is making colorful puzzle pieces of words and definitions for literature circle. He might look up at Jayneshia and say “Who you yellin’ at, son?”

Looking back I’m the only white person in the classroom. My kids live in the public housing projects of Berry Farms, where they pay $25 a month for their four bedroom homes. We’re in Anacostia off the green line in Southeast Washington D.C. My kid’s parents make an annual salary of about $18,000 and there is only one father listed on my role. All of their meals from the ages of 2-18 are through D.C. Public Schools. They all are statistically more likely to go to jail than college. Only 25% of the boys in my classroom will graduate high school, and not more than half of the girls.

I didn’t join Americorps because I thought I could change this or to save the world. I joined Americorps because people told me it was the hardest thing they had ever done. And I joined for the free housing, because my friends were doing it, and all the other right reasons like that.

We were visiting the U.S. patent office at the end of our African American Inventors unit. Bianca grabbed my hand when we passed a group of employees and confessed “I hate white men in suits, they steal you.” I assured her that nothing was going to happen. “That’s easy for you to say,” she told me, “you grown, you don’t have to worry about nobody snatching you.”

I was living in non air-conditioned, unsanitary dormitory on the wrong side of town with one stove for 500 people in a DC summer. I had been assaulted on the street at least 3 times, never to have any of my belongings recovered. What was I doing there?

My first experience with D.C. Reads was a training session in which they would try to talk you out of it. They would ask you questions like “What are you going to do when this kid gets up in your face and calls you a white bitch? Are you going to whip out Dr. Seuss?” Or there would be scenarios like “DeQuan is walking around the classroom taking down the phone numbers of all the little girls. You ask him why and he tells you he wants to start a pimp business. What do you do?”

My friend and I thought these were hysterical and would laugh openly throughout the training. Laura and I were still laughing when we arrived back at the dorm to share our training experience with her roommate. “AND they’re going to let us teach REAL CHILDREN!!” we roared with laughter. She rolled her eyes and told us good luck.

My friend and I were both assigned to Birney Elementary in Anacostia, South East D.C. Birney is located in the Berry Farms housing projects, where all of the students and their families have lived for 5 generations. I would often hear my kids talk about their great great grandmothers and their cousins down the street.

I was assigned to third grade in a room that said “library”. It was one long room with shelves on both sides and 4 tables with a chalkboard in the middle. The shelves were falling apart and rotting. There were no books on them. A series of torn up green chairs clearly made for adults were laying about the room. I thought back to my elementary school library, with the yellow walls, beanbag chairs and computers.

I went with another tutor, Ms. Kristen. She was a skinny white girl with a thick New York City accent, who had been working at the school for over a year. From the moment we walked into that classroom to the moment we walked out she was screaming. “Taquika climb down off that unsteady structure! Marquis, how would you like it if I hit YOU with that shelf?!? Jemari, you have three seconds to take your hands off of Chevonni!” “Haarrrveyy sit down!”

The students would run immediately hide when singled out. Some would climb up on the unstable shelves. I watched as Ms. Kristen struggled to get the class seated. Clearly a year of working at the school had done nothing for her classroom management. This took over an hour, at which point I was told to go and get snack with a two students, Bianca and Jessica.

This was my first chance alone with the students. My heart was racing as I thought of what to say to these 9 year olds who I could in no way relate to. Before I could think too hard they shot off sprinting down the hallway. “Hey! How about we strut like supermodels?!?” I suggested in my most enthusiastic voice. They joined me in cat walking under a white canvass ceiling with threatening brown stains. “You look mah-va-lous dah-ling, simply mah-va-lous!” I exclaimed louder than I should have. When we reached the snack office Jessica smiled and said “Bianca be skinny like Ms. Kristen. But you thicker like me.”

I did not know what we were supposed to do with the dah-lings. They told me that they like to paint so on our way back we picked up some watercolors, brushes and paper. I noticed that the children were painting the same suns and hearts. They didn’t have experience with art supplies and didn’t know that they had to wash their brushes off when switching colors. “Jaynesha!! What do you think you’re doing with those paints?” “Pss Ms. Kristin I don’t care. I aint have to do what you say.” “Jaynesha let’s not fight today, just be good, okay?” “No I hate you and I hate white people!!” Jaynesha shrieked at the top of her nine year old lungs.

It was the week of Valentines Day and especially cold. There were no hats or mittens as the children ran out the door at 6:00 to roam the streets of Anacostia. I continued to work on Fridays with Ms. Kristen for the remainder of the year. I don’t remember seeing any books or homework, as Friday was supposed to be a “club” day. Ms. Kristen eventually stopped coming and the third grade began to calm down. We would play hang-man and math games. Every time the site director, Mr. DeAngelo, would walk into my classroom he would give me a mocking smile that said “You sooo don’t belong here.” My relationship with each of the students improved as I got to know them individually.

Mr. DeAngelo pulled me aside one day to explain the Americorps program at the school. It is called Heads-Up. Upon acceptance you would work full time over the summer in your over own classroom, none of this after school club stuff. You would perform a full curriculum, the backbone of which was literature circle.

My mom was a member the first year of Head-Start in Texas in the 60s. Head-Start is a sub-division of Americorps that provides free pre-school for impoverished children. Heads-Up was later created by President Clinton as an extended literacy program for grades k-6. I had been telling people that I was going to join the Peace Corps since I was 5. I thought resumes, the name Americorps carried prestige.

The clincher was that after my sophomore year of college I knew I couldn’t go home again. Laura and I filled out the extensive applications. We wrote essays on “what social justice means to me” and mailed in recommendations.

Upon our hiring we found out we would be living at Catholic University. The month of May would be training and then we would start program in June. Another friend I knew from school, Howard, also interviewed for Americorps. When the emails regarding hiring were sent out, his was a rejection. Fortunately he never received this email and persisted to call. He was eventually hired to work at Birney when the job was rejected by someone else.

My fellow Americorps members came from 8 schools in the surrounding area: American, Georgetown, George Washington, Catholic, University of Maryland, University of the District of Columbia, Howard and Trinity. American University students made up half the Corps with Howard, Georgetown and George Washington bringing up most of the rest. I would say 70% of the Corps was African American, 20% Hispanic and the remaining few were the white kids.

Catholic University put us in Spellman Dormitory, a 500+ people dorm located off the main campus. There was one working stove, the air conditioning was broken for most of the summer and it was rarely cleaned. The security guards were often rude bordering harassment and the University was not responsive to our complaints. I will always hold the belief that the way Catholic University treated us is representative of the way they feel about diversity and service.

One the first day of training we were given a tour of Catholic. It was requested that we not touch anything, especially the religious ornaments that covered every wall. We had lunch with our site groups. The discussions centered around how bad the kids are. Mike, who was a pre-med student at Howard and returning core member, often lectured us. “I scoff at the lesson plans, forget ‘em, most of the time you’ll be on your feet anyway.” He was also supportive to me, “Yeah the kids don’t really listen, they don’t listen to white people or girls really. You’ll have a hard time.” But I knew better.

The month long training consisted of endless workshops. We pounded classroom management, curriculum development and diversity sensitivity training. We started on the first day with endless icebreakers. The one we all remember and how we all define our Americorps experience is with “Roll Call.” We did “Roll Call” every morning. It started with everyone clapping their hands chanting “Sha Boo Ya, Sha Sha Sha Boo Ya Roll Call, Sha Boo Ya, Sha Sha Sha Boo Ya Roll Call,” and then each site would take turns filling in the “Sha Boo Ya” part. Our first of many roll calls consisted of “We are Birney, Ya, We really shine, Ya, We work all day, Ya, And we look fine ROLL CALL…”

Looking back on the month of training it was blissful. We were done every day by 4pm and spent a lot of time mocking the directors leading the workshops.

In the week before program was about to start a few things happened. The first is that it was announced that D.C.P.S. (DC Public Schools) was hesitant about us using their buildings and so the condition was that we would have to extend our program from 4:00pm until 6:30pm if we wished to stay. It was later confirmed that Americorps had known about this for a long time but waited to tell us. We grudgingly accepted this without compensation. This was the start of ongoing tension between the Corps and its employees.

The second thing that happened is that a gang fight broke out in Anacostia and a 2 year old had been killed by a stray bullet in front of her house. When the police failed to arrive the mother used the daughter’s bibs to clean up the blood.

The third thing that happened is that we began working at the schools. We spent days cleaning out the filthy classrooms. I stood barefoot on the air conditioning unit to try to roll up the windows and when I hopped back down my feet were black. We were also fortunate enough to find a dead mouse in our role of butcher paper. Using the bathrooms was never an option, as the sinks had been clogged for weeks and newly drowned cockroaches were always present. My partner, Mr. Qui-Juan, and I received what we regarded as the best classroom. It was a large rectangular room with lockers on one of the shorter sides facing a blackboard on the opposite shorter wall. One of the longer walls was completely windows and opposite that was the main black board with corkboards on either side. In the middle we placed 5 small tables with 4 orange chairs each. The orange looked magnificent with the pine green carpet and the sea green pealing paint all over the walls. We covered the walls in Shel Silverstein poems. I hauled large amount of books in from the public library so that the kids would have something fresh to read. We created a reading area with our own pillows, hung up stars everywhere and added as much color as we could. We created a science center and an art center. We created a job chart and cubbies. We turned a space that had been long neglected inside Birney Elementary into a thriving and authentic classroom.

We created a bold rule chart that hung to the right of the blackboard. Our daily schedule with 3-d pictures on neon cards was on the other side. It is listed below: 8:00-8:30: Welcome/ Activity Work Books 8:30-9:00: Morning Meeting and Games 9:00-9:45: Current Events 9:45-11:00: Vocabulary/ Grammar/ DOL 11:00-12:00: Literature Circle 12:00-1:00: Lunch and Recess 1:00-1:30:DEAR ( 1:30-1:45:Journals 1:45-2:00:Snack 2:00-4:00: Project Community Experience 4:00-4:30: Conflict Resolution 4:30-6:00: Clubs 6:00-6:30:Clean Up/Dismissal

We set up an area in front of the side chalkboard on the carpet. On it I placed the following riddle, “Complete the series: O, T, T, F, F, S…” We planned our first day step by step. We would play get to know you games all morning on the carpeted area, we would make vocab, grammar and DOL books. We would do skits about the classroom rules.

Many of the schools in DC do not have air conditioning. Though we did not have central air, we did have an individual unit for our classroom. My friend was not so lucky. We went to Georgetown to prepare. We bought long white linen skirts from such humble places as BCBG and Banana Republic.

On the first day I wore an orange peasant skirt and a thin yellow t-shirt. My kids were quiet in line as Mr. Qui-Juan led them to our classroom. As he opened the door the kids filed in and took a seat. “Everyone take a seat on the carpet please and we’ll get started!” he said. Myesha spoke for the whole class and basically set the tone for the entire day when she said “Ew, I aint sitting on there, it dirty.” The kids were hesitant to join the games despite our enthusiasm. I remembered a cheer we had done at training that said “To be enthusiastic you must act enthusiastic! Oh Boy Are we enthusiastic!” But no amount of enthusiasm could get everyone involved in every game. Bianca had clearly had a rough morning already and was falling asleep at her table. Justice needed extra help understanding the games and would get frustrated and cry “It aint fair It aint fair,” as if wailing for injustice everywhere if her turn was skipped. The kids overall would often not follow the rules. “7” “8” “9” “10” “Ohhh Tanisha you out! 10 a multiple of 5” Chevonni would try to help, “I aint out,” Tanisha would say, “I didn’t say 10!” “Tanisha those are the rules,” I would interject, “You can play again next round.” “I aint sittin’” and so on and so forth. So we played games where everyone could participate all the time. We did name association games, “TyQuan…TIGER. Deja…DOG.” We introduced each other. We made up poems to remember our classroom rules: “Rule Number One is HAVE FUN!” “No, actually, that’s rule number 5. Rule number One is respect yourself and others.” “RULE ONE HAVE FUN! RULE ONE HAVE FUN.”

Jessica, after deliberating for 40 minutes on her skit asked her you can respect yourself. I gave some answer about not putting yourself down and being proud of what you’ve accomplished, “that’s dumb,” was her reply.

In the afternoon we tried to do literature circle. I introduced “Ghost Don’t Eat Potato Chips” but asking if any of the kids had every seen a ghost. Many hands shot up. Calvin, who had been quiet all day, hand shot up. He was a scrawny kid who used his sense of humor to the fullest. “I’ve seen a ghost! He was big and he had fat cheeks!!” Calvin said leading over the table and puffing out his cheeks. Then he slapped both his cheeks with his hands and fell over onto the table laughing. Deja said that she hoped her uncle (who had just been shot and killed) wasn’t a ghost roaming around. Just when I thought we were making progress Qui-Juan whipped out the book. He was met with eyerolls and crossed arms, and a phrase we would hear at least 100 times over the next three months, “I…aint…reading…that.” And so on forever. By the end of the day I was convinced these children would be the death of me.

Qui-Juan and I had a long meeting after the first day. We set up assigned seats and made place cards. We developed an incentive system using “bling-bling” bucks, which the kids could earn for good behavior and use to buy small prizes. We also decided to make use of the work-books.

The second morning when the kids sat down in their assigned seats and started to quietly do their work-books Qui-Juan and I were overjoyed. We had placed cups on the table with pencils that were pre-sharpened. The biggest problem we encountered was Bianca, who was seated at a table with two boys, refused to sit in her chair but worked quietly on her work book from the floor. From this we started to plan, everything. We refused to let the two obnoxious kids stop the lesson. We plowed through.

A lot of my kids had emotional and maturity problems. They would throw temper-tantrums, suck their thumbs, and often hide, in our fourth grade classroom. As I got to know each child individually I would realize how the violence and the poverty had affected him or her personally.

Deja was problem all in her own. She had long braids and wore a lot of sexy outfits. She couldn’t control her emotions and would laugh and cry at inappropriate times. She was often violent. Deja was born to a 16 year old mother and many of her relatives had been killed. She remembered them often by constantly drawing R.I.P. pictures. She was attending summer school in the mornings and would come to Heads-Up at lunch time. She was picking fights at the rate of at least once a day and the school work in our fourth grade classroom was beyond her. Qui-Juan and I spoke to her mother about setting up a tutoring program for Deja. We both wanted to help her because we could see where her life was going. Qui-Juan and I tried to talk to her but she would laugh in our faces. She didn’t like individual attention or help and would often become violent, knocking over desks and throwing things. One day we had her write a letter after one of her tantrums about what she was feeling. She wrote to us that she was very sorry and that she wanted to do better. She said she always felt angry and didn’t like school or the other kids. This was understandable, as the other kids ostracized her because she demanded so much individual attention. After the children had started on their current event projects one day and were working quietly I left the classroom to have a talk with Jaynesha, who had been sent in the hallway after refusing to stop screaming. I heard noise and saw Deja had Naudica up against one of the bookshelves and was shaking her violently. She often picked on Naudica, neither of them had many friends and I think they would have made a good team. Unfortuantly Deja threw a rock at Naudica’s head on the playground one day and was expelled. Mr. DeAngelo said he was looking for some free-counseling for Deja but was having problems finding it. Deja was not allowed to go to summer school anymore and is currently repeating the third grade. Slowly she has stopped attending school

Iesha was in the fourth grade class but on a second grade level. At her mother’s request she was placed in the second grade classroom. Ms. Charleese and Ms. Jen exhausted all of their abilities with Iesha and her temper. Iesha came to our classroom and was welcomed by the girls. Iesha was cross eyed but her family never saw fixing her glasses as a priority. Iesha was socially immature she would often cry and throw temper tantrums. Our system was to ignore her when she was screaming or kicking and then she was allowed to have what she needed when she could communicate in a manner appropriate for the fourth grade. Whenever Iesha needed to use the bathroom she would start to cry because she didn’t want to leave the classroom or be told that she couldn’t leave the classroom. She had been told in the past that she would have to wait, but this was not the system in our classroom. Iesha eventually figured out how to get exactly what she wanted (by asking) and then became a joy to have in class. Iesha sometimes needed her own desk, which was always had available. She would draw red flowers on yellow paper and read to me during recess.

My favorite part of the day was current events. As a political science major I was hooked on the news. My kids had never read a newspaper and I loved sharing it with them. The Express had short articled that were tolerable. We learned about headlines and bylines, found jobs and made a mural from the sports page. When we would go on fieldtrips they would find newspapers on the metro and yell “LOOK Ms. Emily, THE EXPRESS is the TITLE OF THE NEWSPAPER!”

One the morning of the London bombings Qui-Juan and I quickly agreed to share the news with the kids. The picture on the front page was still the news of London getting to host the Olympics so my kids were confused. We explained that the bombs had gone off on the trains and that people had been killed. I asked if anyone knew the name of the organization responsible for the 9/11 attacks and Bianca confidently said “the Jews.” I replied that that was a group of people but not the one I was looking for. Chevonni said “Al- Camerio.” My kids, whose lives were already so full of violence, became frightened at the prospect of a terrorist attack in D.C. Mr. Qui-Juan assured them that the terrorist would not get them because they were too scared of him.

The conditions begun to wear us down. Catholic couldn’t manage to get their air conditioning working and we spent many hot sleepless nights. I contracted a weird eye infection from the filthy condition of the school. Laura caught ringworm from one of her kindergarteners.

Still, the summer wore on. We went on fieldtrips throughout the summer to multiple Smithsonian Museums, the National Zoo and to the U.S. Patent Office (to supplement our unit on African American inventors). Despite living in DC all of their lives my kids had never been on the metro. They were well behaved in public for the most part, except when they saw white men in suits and then they would get angry. We would sing Mike Jones music when strolling through national mall. At the U.S. Patent Office we spoke to an electrical engineer. My kids were well versed in the functions of patents and trademarks and were thrilled to learn that they could invent something too. The Anacostia Museum had an exhibit of murals from every state. My kids picked out a favorite and reflected on it. For our final fieldtrip my kids were expecting to go skating and staged a small riot when we announced we were going to the Zoo instead. They had been to Zoo every year with Heads-Up and were convinced it was for babies. Of course we had a blast on at the Zoo during the hottest day of the summer. The mysters were turned on and my kids ran around everywhere.

Everyone’s role in the classroom became clear and the discipline problems thinned our as the summer progressed. The practice of clubs was abandoned and instead we would all go swimming at the Anacostia pool. My girls would take forever to get their swimsuits on and when I persisted that they had 10 seconds or we were going without them, Bianca put her hands on her hips and told me “God, we have to accessorize!!!” Being the only white-girl was never really brought to my attention but it was really obvious at the pool. The teenagers that hung out around there would ask me what I was doing there and I received a lot of stares. My kids became very protective of me and would surround me or call out to me whenever they saw someone giving me problems.

As the summer came to an end I realized how much my personality as a teacher had changed. I was a much more serious person but I had also developed a sense of humor. I stopped yelling at my kids and I started explaining. My everyday communication skills have improved so much. I also have become to observe more personality skills and different styles of relating to everyone. I don’t stress out as much anymore. I can deal with people better.

My kids and I had reached such a wonderful balance in the classroom and such adherence to a routine that I knew it wasn’t possible to have after that summer. I was back to 3 days a week after school. Naudica, Iesha, Justice and Calvin were going back to their neighborhood schools. I was getting Marquis, Kayland, Tykeia and Harvey.

The classroom dynamic starting in September was totally different and I hated it. My new kids didn’t listen and my old kids would just stare at them. I was the only after school tutor that didn’t let them jump rope inside the classroom and made them read.

I noticed the transition from the k-3 to the 4-6 in them. They all started “going together” at once. Jessica was dating Marquis and Jayneshia was all up on Jemari. They stopped playing, with the exception of the occasional jump-rope.

My girls had always been into the sex scene but it became a constant war to get them to not role their school uniform shirts up over their bellybuttons. “This isn’t a music video” is what we would tell them. They begun to memorize the music video dances and wanted to perform them non-stop. The especially sexual ones included Destiny’s Child and laffey taffey, where the dances crawls on the floor.

Kayland and Tykeia became the new troublemakers, replacing Jessica and Jayneshia. Through September I struggled to build a relationship with my new students and maintain with the familiar. Not having my own classroom or a routine made classroom management difficult. Bianca begun to behave emotionally and sat by herself. She would cry with the slightest look of disapproval. We played outside while the sun allowed it.

In October their school work begun to pick up. Homework help consumed most of our time. The day of Halloween we had a party. I told them I didn’t know what I was going to be for a costume that night and I was offered multiple ideas. Jessica thought I should be a disco queen and tease my hair. Kayland offered me one of her Sponge Bob costumes.

November brought their first exposure to the Thanksgiving story. We played bingo and learned social studies vocab. It became too dark to play outside.

I knew I was going away to China in the Spring and I tried to prepare my kids. “Raise your hand quietly if you can tell me one fact about China,” I said during program one day. During this summer we had learned that Russia is a country so I was scared what my answers would be. “They eat Chinese food,” said Chevonni. “It’s a place,” said Kayland. “Yeah, it’s a place where they eat Chinese food,” Tykia added helpfully. We read the Chinese version of “Little Red Riding Hood and learned to count in Chinese. They did math worksheets and made up problems using Chinese numbers for their friends.

I had had a series of partners during this time of whom I was hoping one would click with my kids and serve as my replacement. My kids refused to stay in the classroom alone with Ms. Jenifer, who they thought was mean.

I thought back to when they told me that they hated me the first week of school and hoped that she would blow it off and persist. Unfortunately, Ms. Jenifer left before my kids could warm up to her.

Jessica told Ms. Amy that they hate white people like her. They scared off Ms. Syry when Tanisha threatened to smack her when she told her to use her indoor voice and Tykeia told her that the side ponytail was a “hair-don’t.”

One of my last days on November 30th was Bianca’s birthday. I made brownies because she constantly reminded me of how much she loved Betty Crocker every time we played Ms. Sue (the hand game with the lyrics…sitting in a rocker eating Betty Crocker). For a present she wanted her name written in Chinese, which I gave her. My birthday was 4 days later so she drew me a card on pink paper with a butterfly and a list of fun things we did together and wrote “I love you Ms. Emily” in purple crayon.

When I reminded them that this would be my last day with them Myeshia pretended to faint on the floor and told me that I was going to turn into a Chinese man. Jessica had been helping me make my Chinese flashcards. Tanisha said “Well, your eyes already look a little like a China mans.” Then the conversation turned to how I looked tired. Then to how they could sell the bracelets we were beading together for money. I told them the story of a little girl who had made bracelets to raise money for the people in New Orleans who were affected by the hurricane. This was upsetting because, according to them, the people in New Orleans had more money than they did because “the celebrities like Bow Wow had donated 40 pounds of water.” They asked if Jesus had a lot of money when I told them that I don’t think he did they wondered if he needed the money in heaven. This is standard progression of my conversations with them.

Jaynesha was suspended the last day of program by one of the teachers in the school. Beyond this they entered a test preparation program to prepare them for the standardized tests they take in January. She is not currently allowed to participate in this.

The truth is that I was tired of waking up in the middle of the night wondering what was going to happen to my kids. I had heard in a political speech over and over again how 25% of these black males didn’t make it out of High School, how my kids were all more likely to go to jail than college, how my boys were more likely to go to jail than high school.

I could see them falling behind already and living up the statistic about how by 6th grade the average black child is 2 years behind the average white child in this country. My kids knew their times tables flat after all the review we did this summer but they still haven’t moved onto to long division in math. I ask them what they do in school and they tell me “I ate fishsticks.” I asked them what they’re reading and they say “nothing,” or in math they’re “still doing dem times tables.”

Recently the House passed a domestic spending bill that would cut 80,000 school lunches. My kids would come to school for the breakfast, stay for the lunch and have our snack in the afternoon. Their parents couldn’t be bothered to feed them dinner, much less to pick them up at 6:30pm. When we would call repeatedly they would sometimes be sleeping or on the internet. Chevonni’s mom works on Saturdays as a funeral home receptionist. Jemari’s and Jessica’s mom, like most of the women in the projects, don’t work at all. They pay $25 a month for their four bedroom public housing. They were my age when they had my kids and only one of them has a father’s name listed on the school roster, Jaynesha. Their families have been there for five generations. Their school is there, there church is there, my kids are proud to be from Berry Farms. They don’t want to leave. The little work ethic that they have can be attributed to the fact that their parents don’t work. My kids refused to walk across the street when it rained for their free meals and free summer school.

I’m struggling to connect their lives with the politics that I now surround myself with. In the Senate I see House Republican’s telling my 10 year olds to go find their own lunches. I see this leading to lower attendance and lower graduation rates, if that’s even possible. I see democrats struggling to maintain the support my kids receive but not to help them beyond that. What needs to happen is new programs that find jobs for my kid’s mom’s. My kid’s need to know that if they do graduate high school, someone will help them pay for college. Overall there needs to be fundamental change in the community. I struggle with the question of how to do this. After all, who am I to tell them that Berry Farms isn’t the highest of all reverences?

Mr. DeAngelo himself is a graduate of Anacostia. He was fortunate enough to be selected by Georgetown in the 5th grade to attend a program all day every Saturday and every summer until his High School graduation. Upon completion he was admitted to the University. This is a rare and beautiful thing in the Berry Farms community.

These programs are not readily available. I can spend my long hot summers going over proper nouns but beyond these basic skills my kids have no means or ends, and these skills are certainly not an end in themselves. Chevonni, Jemari, Jaynesha, Myesha, Jessica, Naudica, Iesha, Tanisha, Justice, TyQuan, Calvin, Bianca, Deja, Harvey, Marquis, Kayland and Tykeia have all shrieked their way into my heart and I truly believe that they are worthy of the best schools and should have every opportunity to experience the greater world they live in.

I don’t know who out there is aware of this community or of the potential that lies inside each of them. The contribution to this world from my kids is endless. I see Iesha the artist, Calvin with his own stand up show and Jaynesha as the most sought after choreographer in the world.

The best I can hope for them is that they get a chance to go to college. A degree is the only way out.

Racism in America is complicated. Julian Bond said that schools in America today are just as segregated as they were in the 1950s. If originally my kids were condemned to these projects as a result of their heritage and continue to be held back by it nearly 50 years later, then I question what progress has been made, if any. When I look out at the Washington Monument from the Birney Elementary playground I always think of this.

I think though, a culture that extends beyond the boundry of racism has been created. The poverty that is in America today is relenting. It clenches onto your soul until you find the strength to rip yourself from the part of it you must leave in the filthy conditions that exists in schools like Birney all over America. It is hard, though, for a white girl from Minnesota to inspire this.

I’m still struggling to balance all of it. I’ll go back to visit my kids this summer. I could go back to visit them in 10 years and it is realistic to think that they will still be dancing around Berry Farms. One day though, I hope the whole community will seize to exist. I want to find to my kids scattered around the country doing the best jobs that they know how, and I want to see their diplomas proudly hanging on the wall behind them.