Homework Club

At the First Congregational/United Church of Christ, seven or eight girls and I stood waiting out in the courtyard for Pastor Tracy to unlock the door to the parish hall where the homework club met. It was December, 2016, and growing dark at 4:30 pm, though not very cold. As the door was unlocked, seven-year-old Anthony and his mother arrived. She spoke only Spanish, but I understood she was importuning me about working with Anthony. Why was I not dedicating myself to his reading as I had the previous year?

I couldn’t explain that I had taken on, at Pastor Tracy’s suggestion, a writing lab for the six most interested kids. In the previous summer’s program, I had taught a brief series of creative writing classes, which had devolved into chaos by the end of the summer. Pastor Tracy and I concluded it was because there were too many kids and most of them didn’t have enough interest. Which led to the winter writing lab which I couldn’t explain to Anthony’s mother.

Pastor Tracy’s two daughters were deeply interested in reading and writing. I had written a book, published it and gave Pastor Tracy a copy. Ergo, I could teach writing classes!

I was fascinated by the church and the pastor’s leadership. Near my suburban house in San Rafael, this church had built low-income housing on land they decided they didn’t need. The result was the well-run Pilgrim Park, home to 61 families. The church prided itself on its inclusivity. A gay couple and their quadruplet kids had been turned away by other churches, but not this one. I came to church to get involved in the community, especially the choir. But I didn’t appreciate the choir director and instead began to volunteer at homework club.

Most of the older kids were self-sufficient, happily doing each other’s math worksheets and social studies assignments. The club provided a place for the kids to get together and served snacks (goldfish crackers, fruit and drinks). Most of the kids came from the adjacent Pilgrim Park.

I mainly worked with the two youngest, Ginoor, six, whose parents were from India; and Anthony. Ginoor was way ahead in reading and worked on punctuation of her stories. But when it came to math, or her multiplication tables, she simply guessed! Anthony was very bright, but as the only boy, he sadly told me, “No one wants me here.” He needed help reading in English. When I figured out where he was, I brought books from the library that would interest him. I succeeded in winning his allegiance to Nate the Great and of course he was interested in Star Wars books.

Thus it was that, in the second year, when we started the writing lab, I had to rush off to another room, unable to explain to Anthony’s mother why. 

The writing lab itself was fun, because I got to know these kids. Three of them were sisters, recently come from Haiti, each with their hair braided and knotted with bobbles. We studied stories and wrote stories, though again the initial enthusiasm didn’t last until the end of the school year. We did complete a few stories, which Pastor Tracy proudly published on the church website.

I was especially impressed with the work of Mercy, another Hispanic student, who caught on immediately to my suggestions, and used every idea that came her way to make her writing interesting. Unfortunately her family moved away in the middle of the year, but I learned from her sister that she had been writing for a long time already (she was eleven) and was determined to be a professional fiction writer. I have no doubt but that she will succeed. She didn’t need help from anyone!

The students’ reward at the end of the writing lab was a visit to 826 Valencia in San Francisco, an extremely successful tutorial project. Their volunteers worked with hundreds of students from schools all over the city. Associated with McSweeney’s Quarterly, they also published student stories and had workbooks filled with ideas for writing. The project was fronted by a “pirate store,” a treasure trove of pirate paraphernalia including drawers full of ship’s oddities, games, spyglasses, eye patches and a tub of sand with buried coins in it. The ice cream after the visit seemed to trump any educational aspect, nevertheless.

Today, remembering my participation in these well-intended efforts sets off all the questions in my head about education. It seems to me now that sticking with Anthony and working on one kid’s basic education is a better idea than striking off into the wilds of personal expression before kids are ready for it. The state of the world now leads me to believe that going deeper into education, with reliance on the basics, is the most helpful thing. Basic reading, math, history, languages and science ground us in the awareness and needs of the world. Self-expression stays on the surface. And we are drowning in it. 

The word educate comes from the Latin roots which mean “to lead out” or “to train or mold.” By nature, we all want to know, to learn what it takes to thrive in the world. Wonder is at the base of it, something we hope is preserved in every child, and in each of us throughout our lives. Thus education has the delicate task of feeding our hungry minds without stripping away the wonder which creates them.

The study of history shows us that our cultures can be heavy-handed and sometimes wrong. As James Baldwin says, “The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.” We must study the past, acknowledge human failures in history and ourselves, and go on.

To my mind, we are currently in the midst of a cultural reckoning. Our economic system’s dependence on constant growth doesn’t work; climate change is forcing many people to deal with regional disaster; and we lack the leadership to understand and deal with our problems. Moreover, these problems face every nation on the globe. It must make us very aware and conscious, not only of the world, but of the ramifications of our own actions. The seam which ties the inner world of each of us to the outer one swirls with choices and consequences. Grounded education is part of the answer.