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Just a few days ago, as I walked my son to school along 156th street, we came upon one of those make-shift shrines that are so common in our neighborhood. I would have just past by with a glance except that I realized that at that very moment, we were lacking George’s “Good Morning!” I bent over next to the young man that was kneeling there and read the first line of a note written in a strong hand: “Our good friend George,” it read. “George is dead?” I asked, already knowing the answer. “Yeah. They found him yesterday morning. George was nice to everyone.” I stood up and staggered the rest of the way to my son’s school, trying my damnedest not to cry, though I made my sadness very clear to my son. George is dead.
The word community is bandied about for many different conditions, but community is that place where you are known to others, and others known to you. Often, especially in urban areas, community is hard to define, and even harder to come by. Though I may try to present myself, or fool myself into believing otherwise, being a part of a community is something that I have really searched for, even in the days when I strove to be an outsider. I needed to have a community to be outside of.
When I was accepted by the NYC Teaching Fellows, I knew that I would have little say in where I would teach. That was not such a concern for me, but where to live was a concern. I ascribe to one of Paolo Freire’s philosophies of teaching, of living, in fact, that states that in order to teach a people, in order to make a change for the better in a community, then one must be a part of that community. When I knew where in the Bronx I would be teaching, my wife and I found an apartment within a fifteen minute walking distance from my school. This fulfilled my Freirian belief, but also made commuting a non-factor and made good use of the structure of a city; Things are close together to improve access. Cars and commuting kill communities.
On my first walk to school on a hot July morning some six years ago, I met two people: A young girl sitting on the steps of a building who asked me the time (now a teen who walks her younger siblings to school) and a man on a the corner of 156th and Union with a cup of coffee in his hand who responded to my cordial, “Good morning,” with and energetic, “Good Moornin!”
The man’s age was hard to figure out. He was a Black man beyond forty but less than sixty. Several years later when I heard him say, “ Buenos dias, hijita!” to my wife, and I knew that he was from a Latin American country. I figured out that he was Garifuna after hearing him speak to others a few times, though I cannot say from what country. He was there every day, looking slightly disheveled, as though he had spent much of the previous night in that spot. Much of the year he would wear a black or Navy, down coat, and, to my eye, had the look of someone who was homeless. I have no proof of this latter description, though he was on that street corner, in front of the bodega, every morning on our way to school and every afternoon or evening on our way home for six years.
For a couple of years, George was just the man who said hello. Then, one afternoon as we were walking home, we heard somebody shout from inside the bodega, “Hey, George, you want a cup of coffee?” Nancy, Damian and I looked at each other in wonder: His name is George. We toyed with the idea of saying, “Good morning, George,” but it didn’t seem respectful to use somebody’s name when they don’t know yours. One of these days, though, we thought, we’ll stop and introduce ourselves. At least the knowledge of his name gave us a way to refer to him when he was not in view. For six years all told, we walked past him and shared salutations. For the past nine months, our daughter has been a part of this tradition as well, receiving an even more affectionate “Good morning!” (“Buenos Dias,” a mi esposa) which punctuated our walks to Bethania’s big brother’s school.
As white guy in a mostly Latino and Black neighborhood, I stick out. My choice of dress, often including a tie, sets me apart even more and to the visitors or more recent arrivals, it is sometimes assumed that I am either a cop or a missionary. The suspicious glances that I would receive on that one corner would quickly fade away as soon as George marked me as a known entity by stopping whatever he was doing to share a hello. On one of those mornings, I realized that I was not such an anonymous passerby to George. “¿Lo conoces?” asked a young man standing near the bodega door, believing me out of hearing range. “Claro,” replied George as though it were a ridiculous question, “Es un maestro. Por aqui pasa siempre.” I was a part of a community.
As a teacher in the NYC public schools, I considered the community an integral part of the education of my students. There is a great need to get students to look at their community as a resource and a positive place. While it is not impossible to know a neighborhood in which you do not reside, only spending time working inside of one building in that neighborhood cannot offer a clear perspective into the surrounding world. This is exacerbated when the people that have no contact with the neighborhood are the administrators. “No, you cannot have afterschool classes that go out into the neighborhood because it is too dangerous.” Or, my favorite response when I noted to an assistant principal that a particular troublesome student had become my neighbor: “Move out. Why would you want to do that to your family?” Yet the neighborhood is somehow acceptable for the student body. I found it difficult even for myself to be as much a part of the community as would like with all of the demands of teaching and the restraints put in place by administrations; school, city, state and federal. That desire to be a part of the community was one of the various reasons that I chose to accept the position with the Bronx River Alliance. I would be a part of a community and could focus more of my energies on helping teachers to know at least a little more the communities around their schools.
On Saturday, June 14th, I had the pleasure to be a community member who enjoyed the Hunts Point Fish Parade along with my family and so many others. The event, organized by The Point CDC, was everything that community and community events should strive towards. The Parade started in Hunts Point Riverside Park, where Addy, her son and the RTB crew were setting up for community rowing. From there, it marched towards Barretto Point Park, through the very communities that The Point serves and acted as a celebration and an invitation to participate in the day-long event at Barretto. My son and his friend rode along with Bronx Classics bike club, while I rode next to two kids with the oversize fishing poles and the juggler on the unicycle, ringing my bell to the rhythm, ding, ding, ding,-dingding. The concessions and tables were a mix of locals, local organizations and larger organizations that served food, offered games or shared information. As we walked around Barretto, filled by the way, with ten times the number of people I had ever seen there, I felt very much a part of a community. Adam and Kelly from the Point not only organized a great day, but there attitude of welcome made all feel at home.
Tomorrow, I will again walk past that little shrine made by George’s closest friends and the tears will again come. I have a little note that I want to leave next to the candle that my family placed on Friday afternoon. There will be an apology for never taking the time to really speak with him, and let him know that he will be remembered by our family. But I also have a message for him: There are some good things going on in our community, and every time I say hello to someone new, I’ll think of the daily reassurance that he once offered me, that I was a part of a community. Thank you, George.
DG
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June 15th, 2008
Home Depot might not seem like the place to go in search of an epiphany about the need to serve many communities, but epiphanies don’t like to be pigeon holed. I walked through the aisles of Home Depot, searching for items of comfort for the beginning and the ending of life. These items add safety to the surroundings of my loved ones and some feeling of comfort to me. For my 9 month old daughter, I searched for outlet covers and corner bumpers. For my parents I bought a banister for their steps and support bars to help them get in and out of the shower. 80 years separate my two clients, yet their needs are quite similar, and my desire to aid their respective communities is virtually the same for both of them.
As often happens, a decision made to correct an earlier mistake or to provide access for one group that had been previously ignored can benefit many people. A very clear example is for the benefit offered to parents with strollers, bicyclists, and pullers or pushers of carts every time they mount or dismount a sidewalk. Those little sidewalk cut-ins that make the transition smooth were designed to aid the disabled in ADA of 19–. That decision made many lives better.
Two new parks have been opened in Hunts Point in the last year. Ostensibly, the parks were opened to offer the local population access to the waters that surround them for recreation and relaxation. But it may and should grow into something much more.
All along the Bronx River, we are working towards making the river itself and its adjoining environs more accessible to the thousands of school children that live nearby or have heard about its history. The combined efforts of the Education Program and the Recreation Program offer ideas and opportunities to teachers from the area, ranging from a canoe trip with a dissolved oxygen lab to a simple, “Yes, you can walk around in that area.” The teachers are thankful for the support, and the students express their gratitude with their keen interest. About thirty of those students came together on Thursday, June 5th at Hunts Point Riverside Park for the Bronx River Student Symposium. They showed how they are learning about water quality, the wildlife and restoration of the river. Incredible has it sounds, students came on a day off from school to share what they feel is important about the river; Their Bronx River. The access to the river has turned on something in these students far beyond the science or environmental and social issues that they discussed. The students were the ones teaching those that were present about the river. They showed they own the issue and the place, and they are poised to take over. Nothing could make a teacher happier than to have a student move beyond them, hopefully make them superfluous.
The desire, no; the feeling of responsibility to bring about one change for one person or group that need can often have a greater effect on groups beyond those targeted. The Bronx River Alliance and the groups that we partner with have tried to increase access to the river for teachers and students, and the students will take it on to the world. In the case of the banister that I put up for my octogenarian parents, the first one to use it was nine month old daughter. The first person to grab on to that banister was not the intended user, but that smile of satisfaction that came from the safe feeling of the sturdy oak rail told me that I had done the right thing.
DG
June 8th, 2008
Why do we bother teaching science to students? Do we really believe that we are teaching the next Charles Drew? Do we see in the faces of the youth around us some audacity of imagination that just might happen to advance an end to diabetes? The truth is that it is actually true. When you work with somebody who is learning something new in the world of science, some odd duende appears and you believe that this person may just make an advance in the world that will benefit us all. But that is not why science is important; It is important beyond the science itself because of the dialog that you see between the mind and the world that surrounds us. Last Friday I was lucky enough to speak with some of the interlocutors that have been involved in that dialogue at the Banana Kelly Science Fair.
Nic and Carly at Banana Kelly High School have built their ninth grade science curriculum around the Bronx River and water quality monitoring. They have also given students a window onto their world and some of the students have taken that view very seriously. As I walked between the two rooms where the Science Fair was set up, I was amazed at the amount of information that the students had sorted through and had to make sense of in the form of a presentation. There were discussions about salinity, turbidity, global warming and comparisons of the levels of pollution in the Bronx River, the Hudson River, and the Newtown Creek. Just like with adults, the depth of the discussion varied greatly across the classes, but you could feel that the dominant opinion was that the subject merited discussion.
In the interest of full disclosure, Nic and Carly put me in the difficult position of grading the projects that I viewed, a job that they face everyday. I was given a rubric and had to see where on that scale the students stood. This is necessary because the students, all of us actually, need to know that people are looking critically at everything that we say and do. The unfortunate thing is that I wrote all notes on those rubrics instead of in my notebook, besides the fact that I was a little harsh in my grading.
At any rate, many students showed that they had looked deeply into the data and asked, “Why does the salinity level change?” or “What is the relationship between the amount of precipitation and turbidity?” Then they tried to make sense of these numbers, a task they call mental mastication. The data, mostly just numbers and dates, was obviously much more to these young people; they had collected the data, seen the parts of the world they were talking about, and knew that they were talking about their world. The dialogue that they engaged in was intimate which made the information relevant.
Beyond the actual information, the off-the-cuff remarks of many of the students made me really think about what education is really about and how hard it is to judge the understanding of a student. “Maybe,” Said one, “The Bronx River is cleaner because people have been trying to clean it up. Maybe that’s what the Newtown Creek needs.” To be able to see beyond the first view, beyond the numbers and actually bring in a historical perspective is profound and extremely heartening. It is beyond science and into life itself.
I was glad to have been invited by Banana Kelly to this event, but I must admit that I felt a bit like W.H. Auden: “When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.” That goes for the students and their teachers as well. And for these dukes, our natural world is their court.
DG
April 21st, 2008
If you ever wished that you were young again, assuming you are not young, then stop. In the past week I have met a ton of young people from whom I have drawn two important conclusions: 1) There are plenty of young people out there. 2) They are doing such incredible work that they don’t need us to be mucking up the works.
On Tuesday, April 1st, I attended the Teens For Planet Earth Symposium at The Bronx Zoo. There, groups from as close by as Van Cortland Park, and as far away as Washington state came together to share some of the projects that they have been working on in their communities. The projects were as varied as the students backgrounds. The projects included invasive removal in Van Cortland Park, raising bees in Bergen County New Jersey, and raising awareness of the importance of snags, nurse logs and amphibians in Washington State. All of the groups had command of their information, and the Washington State group had even run a teacher training for their local teachers. It was very impressive, to say the least.
Then on Friday, April 4th, VOICE held a mobile workshop for the Planet youth conference. Young people from Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice, Rocking the Boat, and The Point gave a tour to several other groups of young people from all over the country, including New Orleans and Richmond California. The YMPJ Youth Organizers presented their CSO campaign, gave a tour of the backyard rain barrel and rain garden system, and green roof on the church roof next door. Rocking the Boat youth met the group at CPP with rowboats and led a boat tour of Bronx River shuttled them down to Hunts Point Riverside Park and their program site. Finally, youth from The Point’s ACTION program took the group along the future Bronx River Greenway to their community center where their afterschool programs were in action and they heard about ACTION’s work. I didn’t get to stay for the later events, but I was very impressed with the energy of the participants as they discussed Environmental Justice in their world.
On Monday, April 7th, it was the YOUTH CAN Conference at the American Museum of Natural History. This time it was students from all over the world running the show, running workshops and panel discussions about worldwide environmental issues. There were elementary kids talking about watershed function and high school kids comparing water quality of rivers in New York and Bangladesh. It was amazing how much energy and excitement was out there.
So, George Bernard Shaw did not quite have it right; Youth is not wasted on the young. There are some incredible young people out there doing incredible things.
April 8th, 2008
30 high school seniors and juniors from around the country are spending a semester here in NY with Cityterm to learn about New York City. You know these students and their teachers are not only super intelligent but also know what’s hep because part of their focus is the Bronx River. To that end, these intrepid interlocutors met with Drew and myself for a short walking discussion, starting at River Park, 180th Street, strolling through the newly named West Farms Rapids, and ending in Drew Gardens, just South of Tremont Ave.
Our Environmental Issue Walk
The issues discussed varied from early Bronx History to Fish Ladders to Santeria. The guiding concept of the walk was to consider the fact that no issue exists in and of itself. There are a variety of connections that need to be made in order to understand a perceived problem before any attempt can be made to ameliorate it. Lets try to get an idea of this by using the examples given above.
We started out our talk be looking back into Bronx River History and human involvement. Previous generations made the decision that a dam was what was called for at River Park and other areas, at first for mill use, and then for the attractive look and the soothing sounds of the cascade. Now we look at it in consideration of the alewife, an indigenous anadromous fish, and see it as a barrier to normal estuarine ecology. Removal of the dam might actually disrupt life on both sides due to scour and turbidity, so a fish ladder is brought up for consideration. The construction of a ramp on one side of the dam may become what is called an “attractive nuisance,” meaning more people may want to get out there and see what it is, possibly making for a dangerous situation.
Of course, what you want is for people to get out and enjoy the river, but how is it best for them to do that? As we walked down stream, we came upon a pumpkin and a jar of honey set carefully down by the side of the river. To some it was trash, but as it was most likely an offering to Oshun, trash may very well be in the eye of the beholder, or the believer in this case.
The group finished its walk in Drew Gardens where they were treated to a great composting demonstration and given a history of community gardens, and Drew Gardens specifically, by Jennifer P. Jennifer was extremely generous with her time and answered question on topics ranging from why they don’t use horse manure in the garden to why the CSO across the river spills human manure into the river when it rains.
We hope to see this group again sometime in the near future.
DG
April 4th, 2008
