A Day in the Life
Written by Chelsea Whitt, Aspire AmeriCorps Member
The doors open to the Drew Community Center, and the students stomp, strut, or stumble in, their loud voices preceding them in a symphony of TikTok memes. Before we can finish setting up the tables and chairs, they are already making the room clangor with every onomatopoeia imaginable. We get our lassos and wrangle the students to their seats–Just joking. We politely ask the students to sit down, and, of course, they immediately follow our instructions in an orderly manner. We hand out the snack bags. The negotiations begin. I don’t want a sandwich. Yes, I want a sandwich. Where are the Doritos, Takis, and Rainbow Goldfish? Finally, they settle on their food of choice, and as they “nom nom nom,” the playful jabs ensue, back and forth and back and forth, until the referee breaks it up to introduce Mat Meeting (a way to break the ice and start the class).
Soon after, as the tables glitter with spilt juice and food crumbs, we play “Crack a Smile.” In this game, students must work together to make one student smile or laugh, by any means necessary. One of the students makes such exaggerated faces that she accidentally pulls something in her neck. We must tell her to take it easy before she hurts herself. After a moment of recuperation, she is back, stronger than ever, making silly faces that would make even the greatest of contortionists tip their hat. Even the quiet kid finally laughs. Victory!
As we play these games, the cleverness of these kids really shines through, and their gifts emerge: the great orators, Broadway performers, and artists. But for now, their talents rest over a good prattle and round of processed goodies. After a few “One, two, three, eyes on me,” the students finally settle down, and then they are called to line up by the door to go outside. (You only get called to line up if you are actually being quiet.) They, eventually, form a line, but the quiet doesn’t last long before they blast through the side door, race down the colonnade, and up the steps to the community park. At least one teacher (me), wheezing close behind, trying to keep up.
On the playground students flock to their usual turfs; the twisty slides, the spinny seat thing, and on the asphalt of the basketball court a bucket of chunky colored chalk has summoned a few playground faeries. What starts out as a long sloppy line becomes a tower brimming with windows. One by one, students are radicalized by the scale of the building and join the Rainbow Chalk Faction. Soon a tower turns into an onion domed palace in New York City, dappled with saxophones, beam notes, bi-colored suns, verdurous flowers, and a duck! Then a student, of her own volition, begins to write the Aspire Expectations, paying homage to all the teachers by writing their names. Sniffle. On the left side of the palace, an artist asks for a review of her work. I tell her it’s amazing. She smiles and keeps drawing, following the heart of an artist.
By now we have drawn a bit of a crowd–the sweet rugrats from around the neighborhood. They ask if they can help us complete the mural. As the sun begins to set, we finish our artwork. Crumbs of chalk scattered like detritus. Palms coated with pretty shades of powder. There is a sense of greatness in what we have done, even though the next rain will soon wash it away. In the last of the dying light, the older neighborhood kids encroach upon the basketball court with their bikes and games. They laugh as they glide over our drawings.