Rule #1: We are all teachers

On the ride back down from Camp AP, I asked my van full of volunteers how they thought the lesson plan was received. In this early stage in the program, the volunteers are usually buzzing with stories, questions and ideas on the car-ride home. “I couldn’t get this one kid to start writing… just couldn’t find something he wanted to write about,” one of my volunteers vented. “I told him to write about his dreams, plans for the future—he told me he doesn’t have any dreams. I felt so stumped; its like he didn’t even know what I meant.”

This is a painful realization that I have faced many times at camp.

There are so many blatant and obvious ways that I am different from my students: the way I speak, the color of my skin, my cultural upbringing, my socio-economic status, my gender, etc. But the seemingly more subtle differences, differences in mentality, ultimately can serve as as much if not more of a barrier than other more obvious forms of difference. I have students who have never been asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I have students who would find it senseless to plan for this thing called “ the future.” And my gut tells me that this is a tragedy.

This mentality is rooted in a difference in upbringing, environment and socialization. This is not as simple as hopelessness, apathy, a lack of motivation or any other perceived inadequacy in foresight that people might mistake it for. This is a learned pattern of thought and behavior which is developed for emotional survival and affirmed in most aspects of their lives, by their parents, at school and within their friend circles. The majority of the people closest to my students live day by day in many ways. Few people have given these young men the positive reinforcement to believe that they can succeed in any long-term plans. Ifyou have witnessed the people closest to you senselessly and abruptly wiped of the face of the earth, you might find planning for the future a cruel joke too. If the successful role models on TV, in the news and in the movies do not look, talk or live like you, it might be difficult to find affirmation for your hopes and dreams. It is hard to argue with a student who tells you these stories; how can I dispute his learned and lived experience with my idealism?

As cliché as it may sound, for many of these kids, to survive past the age of 25 is to succeed in their community. During our “Step To the Line” exercise, I ask them to step to the line if they know someone who has been killed by gang violence and they all step. I ask them to step to the line if they have witnessed the death of a family member, and almost the entire class steps. I ask them if they have ever been shot at; they all step forward. I firmly believe that something suffers inside you when you are over-exposed to the violence and inequality which festers in our society like a cancer. Something shifts inside you when you are forced to witness death in this way, when you are forced to see life as this fragile, unstable and vicious.

If you are not trained to think of and plan for your future, it is not a far cry that you might also lack perspective of or lose interest in the consequences of your actions. What drives my choices to do or not do many things is the knowledge that it will impact, impede or delay my hopeful plans for the future. Without a “future” in sight, this kind of reasoning may no longer carry such weight. It is therefore no wonder that these boys end up parents at sixteen and find themselves caught up in a culture of criminality before the age of eighteen.

This all comes in stark contrast with the mentality of the average student of a competitive private college. In fact, according to academic and radical activist bell hooks, “College education is so often geared toward the future…. College as it is envisioned by mainstream culture is seen as a stop on the journey with an endpoint that is somewhere else.” (166) Our deeply ingrained “college student” mentality is in exact opposition to the survival-based mentality of our Camp AP students. Most of society praises this forward-driven and ambitious mentality—in fact we have paid good money to attend college and be trained in this way of thinking. Even my camp students see me as destined for success, career, family, happiness, but they are cautious in projecting the same for themselves.

Despite all that society teaches us about what defines success and what kinds of life choices deserve praise or disdain, perhaps this is space where my students and I move beyond our differences to learn from one another. I believe I have something to learn from those who live day to day. As hooks puts it, with this college-student mentality, “it is difficult to teach students that the present is a place of meaning.” (165) There is something beautiful and profound about living in the “here and now” the way my students do; their understanding of the preciousness and fragility of life is in some ways much more enlightened than our blind desire for the so-called future. There must be a balanced medium between living with awareness of the consequences of our choices and maintaining hope for the future, while still remaining vigilant of and grateful for the present. Perhaps my students have taught me that.

And perhaps we can help our students begin to explore the frightening prospect of the future. Perhaps I can provide some positive reinforcement, perhaps I can give them back some of the agency they have surrendered to their day-to-day existence, and perhaps I can have hope for them until they have faith in themselves. I hope so.

Day 1

Programs have begun. Last week was our first week up and running with almost 30 college students flowing in and out of the juvenile probation camp for their first time. Prior to their first day, these students have all met with me one-on-one to be informally "interviewed" and be academically and practically briefed on the background, expectations, philosophy and logistics of the program as I have envisioned it for this semester. But little can psychologically or emotionally prepare someone for this kind of commitment. I am learning, albeit uncomfortably, that each person will undergo and processes this experience differently; I cannot ensure any specific learning outcomes or promise that the ends will justify the means. I must learn to protect against catastrophe and trust the process and the goodwill in people.

In my ethics and orientation training I speak extensively about the complicated issues which we encounter in the Camp AP classroom: privilege, disempowerment and marginalization, racism, homophobia, misogyny and gender-based objectification, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, domestic abuse or absent parents, the failures of our schools, our foster care system, our justice system, and the failures of a society claiming to be “one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all”. When we arrive at the gates of the Camps, I ask my students to remain mindful of these issues and to struggle earnestly with themselves throughout this experience. But I also ask them to walk in without expectations. Without fear, without hopes, without an agenda. I ask them to shake whatever preconceptions they might carry in and just face their classmates as peers, I ask them to just to connect as human beings above all else.