You said it Joe!!

Last week I just wrapped up a six week program where myself (Colyn), Matt, and two of our friends set out to teach fifty or so inner city kids health, fitness, and nutrition through to medium of our favorite sport, Ultimate Frisbee.  The grant proposal for this program was written by my roomate, Edward, and another friend of ours, David.  They submitted to proposal to an organization started by the mayor's wife, Maggie Daley, called "After School Matters,"  (afterschoolmatters.org).  I have been teaching in their environmental science programs for about a year, and when Edward and Dave asked me to be the health and nutrition guy at one of their two sites, I decided to switch gears and try to remember enough of what I went to college for to teach the basics to some kids.  Something to note with programs sponsored by ASM is that they actually PAY the kids to show up.  No matter what the program is, and they range from all forms of art to computer science to sports, the teens get a non taxable stipend.  Yes I was paying kids to play Ultimate all summer, pretty sweet huh?  Anyway, long story short the last six weeks have been exhausting, inspiring, terrifying, eye-opening, and most of all a lot of fun.  Another friend of ours posted a few pictures of our end of the season tournament on his Flikr page  (DSC_0144 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

All, well, most of the kids played exceptionally well.  The truly amazing thing is that I have worked with rookie players at the college level who could not play at the level that some of these high schoolers were able to achieve in just six weeks.  However, it isn't the outstanding level of play that amazed me most, I knew that these kids had the raw talent.  It was their stories of how they live.  I had a very bright, funny and laid back young man who had to miss almost a week because of court.  He had also been stabbed about a year ago, and claimed that he gets into a lot of fights due to his "bad temper."  I had another girl who could easily compete with Natalie for sweetest person ever, who told me that she would have to miss a day because she was testifying in a court hearing regarding her grandmother's murder, (she also showed me the perfectly round scar on her right shin where a nine millimeter bullet hit her last year).  Last summer I met kids on the far south side who were not allowed to leave their homes except for school and these programs because there was a gang war going on.  I have even had a kid, who we knew was in a gang, threaten to "bring his G's and bust a cap!!!" because we fired him for pulling a knife on another kid.  

All these stories were things I had heard before, in the news, in books, etc., but when you are starring at someone who you have gotten to know as a sweet and bright young man or woman and they drop a story on you like that, well I can say that I was not prepared to comprehend it.  The point I guess that I am trying to get at, is that, though I think that The Flava of Love is an atrocity and it glorifies ideas and principles that I find awful and disgusting, principles that are glorified all over pop culture, Flava Flav is nothing but what we have allowed him to be.  TV has become a medium of shock value.  Whoever can do the most disgusting, crazy, terrifying, or depraved thing, whoever can be the biggest, fastest, or best looking gets to stay, all the rest must rejoin the ranks of the normal, unexceptional, those who may only watch.  The worst part about this is the idea that it is very, very uncool to be smart.  I mean it isn't that outstanding to make a lot of money and do well in life if you are smart, but if you are ignorant, like Flava Flav is on his show, and you make a bunch of money, well that is something to see.  

When I would do a quick review lesson on say, nutrition, the kids would actually make fun of the people who knew the answers.  I literally heard the sentence "I ain't trying to be smart!!" said with pride.  But every time I would pry an answer out of them, they would hide their smiling face by looking down and mumbling.  These kids DO want to be smart, but they also want to be cool.  It just so happens that there are more situations in their lives where they need to be cool than they need to be smart.  If you're not picking on someone, you're being picked on.  If you can't come back with something funny when someone makes fun of you, you're done.  It took, I would say four weeks to get the kids to complement each other for making a good play without me prompting them, they look at everything as a battle.  

So to address you're question, Joe, as to why your master violinist is not a role model is simple, he isn't trying to get teenage fans.  His record label isn't pushing MTV to put him on the lineup for halftime at the superbowl.  He doesn't have his own saggy pants tuxedo line.  He's not out on the block pushing his mixtape for five bucks till he makes it big.  He's working on his craft, not his image.  But the kids who really need a role model like him aren't going to admit that they need a role model like him, and they most certainly aren't going to go out and find him, he's got to come to them.

Whew!!!  Now that was a rant!!!  More to come from Espana!!!

-Colyn