world::girl

Today began the first day of my teaching classes since last January. It was splendid! The classes I taught today are being held at a continuation high school in Watts. I usually begin my first class with a little get-to-know-you game. Students pick two cards, each with a question. They then choose one question to answer themselves and one to ask me.

A put-together young lady in the back row, looking to be in 11th or 12th grade, read her first card, “If you spend a week doing whatever you wanted, what would it be?” She said that if she were 21 she would spend the week clubbing, because she really like dancing. When I asked if she would stay in Los Angeles or go somewhere else to do this, she thought for a moment and replied, “Well maybe like Inglewood, Carson, or Long Beach.”

For those of you who aren’t from the LA area – all of these places are 5 to 15miles away from Watts! Given the opportunity to go anywhere and do anything…she chooses to stay very close to her small world.

One could read this and conclude that this young lady must really love her home. Unfortunately, I don’t think her answer is so heartwarming. Although kids from the inner city live in and near places where worlds meet and diversity abounds – they themselves are usually drastically confined to their own personal complexes walled within their neighborhoods. Sometimes to extents that may cause disbelief. Such as a kid from MacArthur Park never having been to the beach (merely 15 miles away.) Almost like living at the base of the Alps and never having seen snow!

The smallness of their worlds worries me. How can one dream of a world of opportunity when one isn’t even able to dream of venturing out of one’s own town? I have a feeling my challenge is cut out for me…to open the door of opportunity and encourage these students to dream of making life and sexual choices different then the oppressive and unhealthy situations they have been forced to grow up amongst.

A Dream Deferred
by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over--

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?