Moving Mountains

Our Tolerance Club took a group of 28 kids to the Martin Luther King Memorial this morning. I had been by the site from the Tidal Basin side, but not inside, as we had Isabel with us, and dogs are not allowed. This time, we entered from the Independence Avenue side, and I knew from the research I had done to prepare our group that the thirty-foot stones that flank the entrance are called The Mountain of Despair. Once inside, you see the huge center piece that has been removed to create the opening, and from it the sculpture of Dr. King emerges. This piece is called The Stone of Hope.

Both are a reference to a line in the I Have a Dream speech, but the symbolic power of those stones standing for what everyone wishing for equal civil rights faced, the mountain of despair, and what they were able to achieve through their hope and perseverance was very moving to me.

And it was not lost on our students, either. When, at the end of the trip,  we gathered to talk about our thoughts and observations, all of them were able to express their admiration and appreciation for those who had moved mountains to allow them to have the opportunities they do.

What Is Up With That?

Picture this:

A teacher is leading a perfectly respectable class discussion. Most, if not all, students seem to be listening and involved-- in fact, several hands are waving, signaling a willingness, if not a downright enthusiasm to participate. The teacher scans the group, wanting to be sure to include everyone, especially those kids who do not always seem engaged. With a smile and a nod, the teacher calls on just such a student, leaning forward in encouragement, eagerly waiting to hear what the usually reticent scholar has to contribute.

"Can I go to the bathroom?"

Kids Today

It was a beautiful day here with blue skies and temps pushing 80 and above, so of course we rolled down the windows and opened the sun roof when we went out to run errands. A little while later, with our mission accomplished and a fresh breeze blowing through the car, we turned up the music and headed home.

As we drove into our complex, we passed a neighbor leaned over to inflate his bike tire. At the sound of our raucous arrival, he straightened, put his hands on his hips, and gave us a disapproving look. His eyes widened a bit; I guess he didn't expect a couple of forty-something ladies in a station wagon to be creating such a disturbance-- especially since he couldn't have been more than 30 himself.

Signs of the Season

I saw my first summer commercial of the year a little while ago, and frankly, two guys sweating on the stoop drinking sweet tea never looked better. It can't be long now.

Hero and Villains

The Tolerance Club showed the movie Afghan Star today at school. Made in 2008, this remarkable documentary recounts the experience of four contestants on the Afghan TV version of American Idol, and it is very informative and revealing about life in Afghanistan since the overthrow of the Taliban regime.

Most interesting to me was the heightened awareness of and concern about the contestants' ethnicity and gender. Having read The Kite Runner, I was fascinated to see both a Pashtun and a Hazara man featured. The main drama however involved the women, for as controversial as singing in public was to this nation emerging from strict sharia law, allowing women to perform was even more divisive.

Each woman approached the storm of moral ambiguity differently. One tried to be as respectful as possible, honoring tradition as closely as she could, and the other was outspoken about her "open-mindedness," pushing the boundaries of propriety in her performances.

To add perspective, both women dressed quite modestly, and both covered their heads, and so the subtlety of their differences was mostly lost on a predominately western audience such as ours. When the one removed her head scarf and danced on stage for her exit number, though, there were many in the group that clapped.

There was at least one who did not. A sixth grade girl, who is Muslim and wears a head-covering herself, left the movie shortly after that scene. "What she did was really bad," she told her friend on the way out. "She showed her hair."

Low Tech Solution

We have a core group of students who come to our weekly writing club, but sometime before spring break, we threatened to rename it the Hanging Out and Talking Club, because so little actual writing was getting done. The kids spent a lot of time on the laptops collaborating to create websites and blogs, but they spent even more time talking about things completely unrelated to writing.

Still, it was hard to determine if we were being overly critical-- maybe this is just how writing looks in the early 21st century?-- but we decided that, at the risk of being too prescriptive, and perhaps even sacrificing the engagement of these students of the new millennium, we were going to try some more structured activities.

Then, as luck would have it, we couldn't get the laptops, and so we were all forced to write the old fashioned way. Oh, there has been some moaning and groaning for sure, but there has also been a lot more words put to paper, and they are still coming every week.

Five Things I'm Thankful for Today

#5. Quinoa

#4. Nikky Finney's poetry
(Not a girl any longer, she is capable of her own knife-work now.)

#3. The web TV show Anyone But Me

#2. Walking my dog

and....

#1. The auto-release on the mammogram machine