05.19.07
Posted in AV 2006-07 Domestic at 10:38 am by lindsey
Back in August when I packed my bags for the Bronx, I had no idea that there was one thing I couldn’t help but bring with me that I would take with me every day. My white skin. True, I’ve been a white girl all of my life, but it’s never been more apparent to me than over the past 9 months. I think I speak for everyone in our Bronx community when I say that from those first few moments in our new neighborhood; being led down Fordham Road by Brother Michael, appearing embarrassingly well coordinated (thanks to our new AV apparel), and feeling like a bunch of pathetically out of place tourists/Fordham students, we all wondered exactly what we were in for this year. One thing was clear though; in our new home we were going to stand out.
I am white, and for most of my life I’ve been around mainly white people. As a member of the majority, racially based stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination were topics for conversation in my classes, and headlines of news stories that I was often troubled by but had difficulty imagining encountering in my daily life. My personal experiences have generally lacked moments when I even thought about color of my skin, let alone felt that I was being evaluated or discriminated against based upon this aspect of my self.
But here I am, a minority; a white girl in the Bronx.
At times, the stares on my daily trips on the 4 train are penetrating, and I’ve gotten everything from a casual “Hey shorty” to a few marriage proposals while walking down the street. My physical presence as someone who doesn’t quite fit in is constantly acknowledged and this in and of itself is exhausting. Even my clothes are definitely not Bronx style, although I’ll admit that during the winter I bought the cheapest version I could find of the black quilted coat with a fur hood that I saw just about everyone in this borough wearing and retired my pink LL Bean jacket for the season. The Bronx just doesn’t wear LL Bean.
Thankfully, I have a job working with Bronx women who are near my age and who have allowed us to work through the white girl stereotypes with humor and thoughtfulness. It’s only inevitable: I talk like a white girl, but as it turns out I’m not as corny as some of the women once suspected, I’m definitely not rich, I do like spicy food (which apparently is atypical for white people). I even listen to Hot 97 and I love Beyonce.
I do, however, have the anticipated high school diploma, college education, and, in the opinion of women living in a homeless shelter, more foreseeable options than obstacles for the future. I’m not included in the stark and startling statistics that Black and Hispanic women my age face every day. Based on my race or ethnicity, my future child’s chance of dying from SIDS is not twice as high as the national average. I’m not a member of a race that contributed to 81% of new AIDS diagnoses among women last year. Though I was utterly disgusted by the comments made by Don Imus this year, I will never be stung quite as sharply by his words as others might have been. And I will never fully grasp the atrocity of the history and present day use of the “n word”.
Writing this in May, I can definitely say that my strong sense of self-awareness still exists, but has decreased dramatically from when I first unpacked my bags in August. For this transformation I give full credit to the Bronx itself. Not only have I been blessed in getting to know so many amazing women and their children, but through everyday interaction I have truly gotten to know the Bronx. Undoubtedly, this community has toughened me up a bit by showing me hardships and sadness, but more over it has introduced me to a type of human beauty I never knew existed. The Bronx is a place of strength and love, and I see this every day just walking down Fordham Road. It’s a place where I may never look like I fit in, but it’s also the place where I’ve learned that that’s simply not as important as feeling as though I can and want to belong here. As time passes I become more and more comfortable with this idea and have learned to be not just any old white girl in the Bronx, but Lindsey, who lives at 2342 Andrews Ave. Bronx, NY.
Lindsey Kelpin
Bronx, NY
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05.15.07
Posted in AV 2006-07 Domestic at 11:17 pm by anthonycoletta
The first day I walked into St. Patrick’s middle school in San Diego seems like years ago. I walked from classroom to classroom with the principal and introduced myself to the students whom I soon hoped to turn into P/E addicts. Of course the first classroom I came to was that of the eighth grade. I remember feeling a wave of fear rush over me and thinking: “Come on Anthony, these kids are ten years younger than you, be a man.” I walked in, chin held high and stated, “My name is Mr. Coletta, and I will be your P/E teacher this year.” Looking back on that moment I could only imagine what was going through the minds of my students. (Probably something along the lines of: “What’s with this kid’s hair?” “Wait did he say he was a teacher or a new student?” or “He has no idea what he got himself into.”) The truth of the matter is I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into or how much a bunch of middle school students could help me become the man I hoped to be on that first day.
P/E at St. Pat’s is like nothing I have ever seen before. The equipment is limited and the designated play area is dangerous. There is no gym at the school or even any grass for that matter so my classroom is an area of blacktop about half the size of a football field. Needless to say, I have seen more skinned knees than most have in a lifetime and I would bet the amount of tears that have fallen on my watch equal the rainfall total for San Diego this year. Nevertheless, I am asked on a daily basis by kids of all ages whether or not today is their day for P/E and the excitement I see on my students faces when I walk into their classroom, to remove them from their studies, is something that will remain with me for the rest of my life.
P/E is just one of the many duties that I have taken on this year at St. Pat’s during what every other teacher at the school has told me is the “craziest year yet.” One of my many other roles is to lead the KICS (Kindness in Community Service) Club started by previous volunteer, Maureen Eichler. During the Easter season the KICS club was asked to provide an Easter basket for a young girl from the orphanage in Tijuana. We raised money through various events and I left it up to the kids to make a list of things that they wished to stuff the basket with. When I walked into Target about a week later I remember looking down at the list and thinking that I was in way over my head. I have a hard enough time buying clothes for myself and here I was shopping for a seven year old girl. The first thing that came to my mind was, “little girls love pink.” So, I made my way through the aisles and grabbed as much pink colored clothes as I could. (Pink shoes, pink socks, pink dress, and pink underwear and so on.) Unfortunately when I got home I found out that the little girl whose style I thought I had just nailed on the head was a “tomboy” and “hated pink”. To this day though what remains with me is not how terribly wrong my perception that all girls love pink was but rather how a small sum of money, raised by a group of young people, can really impact the lives of others. On that Easter Morning, when she received her basket filled to the brim with clothes, toys and candy I can only hope the love that when into the basket outweighed the color of the items in it.
Children have the ability to see the excitement in everything around them and find pleasure in even the simplest of things. In order to illustrate this fact I would like to talk about a kindergarten student of mine by the name of Joseph. Joseph is slowly becoming a legend at the school, mostly because he runs on full throttle, all day, and everyday. Each afternoon when I walk out into the yard for recess, Joseph looks at me, says “Mr.” five times before the letter C can finally follow and orders me to “watch this.” He then pulls his leg back as far as possible and boots his red “bouncy ball” into the crowd of junior high students in the hope of hitting one on the head. If he is successful, Joseph breaks out in an uncontrollable laughter, shouts “YES!” and chases after his ball. One day, during P/E, I informed the kindergarten class that today we would be playing “Hot Potato.” Upon hearing this Joseph raised his hand and politely asked if he could “be the potato.” His spirit is contagious and his willingness to throw himself into every situation and give 100 percent continues to inspire me. Although he can be brutally honest at times, (he once told the 3rd grade teacher that “her face was kind of old but her legs looked real strong”). Joseph and all of my other students have opened my eyes to the importance of finding beauty and excitement in everything around me. I now approach life as if it were a game of hot potato, and rather than stand around and merely be a spectator, I want to throw myself right in there and be “the potato.”
Anthony Coletta
San Diego
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