On the Yard
Amritha M Berger
It was a typical public school in Los Angeles. Concrete everywhere. Locked gates. A few trees in small plots of dirt, but no grass. Most of the colours one could see were the brightly painted railings and gates, and the murals on the handball courts depicting children holding hands around the earth, with animals and butterflies around them.
It was pouring the day I went there for my interview. I was wearing a skirt with green printed leaves on it and a black jacket. I was very nervous, but the assistant principal I met, greeted me with a warm smile, easing my anxiety. At the end of the interview, she asked me, ‘Why are you wanting to work in a school like this?’ Apparently, I was over-qualified for the position of ‘teacher’s assistant,’ even though I had never worked in a school before. I had little experience in nurseries and daycares.
But I thought about it and said, ‘I want to work where I am needed, and I want to work in a place where children are in need the most.’
I was hired on the spot, though I asked for some time to make my decision. As I walked out into the pouring rain, I met a woman outside the school, who was standing with an umbrella in one hand, and a little girl beside her.
‘You’re coming here to work as a teacher?’ she asked.
‘Teaching assistant,’ I replied.
‘This is a good school,’ she said, ‘you’ll learn a lot. This is my granddaughter, Adriana.’ She put her arm around the little girl. ‘She goes here. And I’ve been working here for twenty-five years. I’m from El Salvador, but Adriana, she was born here.’ She said smiling down at her.
‘Hi Adriana,’ I said. ‘I’m Amritha, my grandmother is from India, but I was born here too.’ The little girl looked up at me and smiled shyly.
I said goodbye to the grandmother and granddaughter and walked back to my car. Warm and cosy inside, I shuffled through my tapes, it was a ’98 Camry with a tape player. I was searching for The Cranberries. Just then my phone started ringing, it was my aunt.
‘Hi pedamma,’
‘How are you, ra?’
‘I’m good, I just finished an interview at a school. I got the position but I’m not sure if I’m ready to take it…’
‘I think you should,’ she replied. ‘How are you going to support yourself as an artist? You need to start working.’
Just then, between the parting clouds, a thin sliver of a rainbow appeared in a clear patch of sky.
‘I think you’re right pedamma, I’m going to take it.’ I said with a smile.
*
My first day working at the school, I was put in ‘Guerrero’s class. It was just me and the teacher with twenty-five kindergartners. ‘Guerrero was a sweet, older woman. She welcomed me briefly before continuing her work with a small group of children. The rest of the class was sitting or standing at their tables with reading packets, attempting to read. The classroom was loud and chaotic. I wasn’t given any direction except, to ‘assist.’ ‘Guerrero looked too overwhelmed and busy to be interrupted so I went around looking at what each child was reading. The students started asking what this or that word meant. I replied with, ‘sound it out,’ enthusiastically, and helped them to form the sounds of each letter. I wanted them to learn how to try, to understand that they were capable of learning all on their own, without a teacher to tell them what something was.
After a few weeks of working in ‘Guerrero’s class, I finally got a chance to talk to her. I was making coffee in the cafeteria when she stepped in.
‘Hi ‘Guerrero, do you have a moment to talk?’ I ventured.
‘Guerrero smiled and we sat down at a table.
‘I wanted to go over with you how I am doing in the class, whether or not I should be doing anything differently, we never get a chance to discuss this in class since it’s been so busy.’
‘I know, I’m sorry, it’s just too hectic, all these children need more attention and being one teacher I just can’t give them everything, and on top of that, guide you, but from what I’ve observed, you’re doing a wonderful job, just keep doing what you’re doing. You’ll make a wonderful teacher.’
‘Thank you. I noticed that the children are fighting a lot amongst themselves, is that normal?’ I ventured again.
‘Yes… it is strange. It didn’t used to be like this. In my twenty-five years of teaching, my kids never used to fight like this. They have become more possessive over materials, self-indulgent. When I first started teaching, children used to share more, get along, be friends with each other. There was a spirit of community amongst them, that seems to have been lost in the past few years.’
‘Why do you think that is?’ I asked.
‘We’re getting piled with unnecessary testing and work to meet the benchmarks each child needs to in order to move to the next grade. We’re getting swamped with work and so are the children, even at this young age. There’s a lack of play, music and art in the classroom because of the intensive curriculum. It used to be mandatory for every kindergarten teacher to know how to play the piano, song and music was an essential part of the class. We’ve since lost that, we don’t have any music in our classes anymore, and we have a short art period once a week.’
‘Art and music should be the centre of education, that’s how children learn. Instead, they’re introducing ipads to children as early as five, it’s like handing over an adult’s toy in order to placate them, not to learn, they should be getting more time in nature, not sitting in front of a screen,‘ I replied.
‘You’re exactly right,’ ‘Guerrero smiled warmly. ‘This is a Title one school, meaning most of the children here come from some of the poorest backgrounds, some undocumented, and have to face harsh realities at a young age. There is a lot of trauma they carry. More art and music would be very healing and beneficial for them, not the pressure and restrictions they are under.’
‘But,’ she sighed before leaving, ‘welcome to public school.’
*
I didn’t stay in ‘Guerrero’s class for long before they switched me to ‘Nieto’s first grade honours class. There I was to supervise the students’ PE time on the yard, come up with activities for them, and assist in the class for three hours a day.
On my first PE shift, I came up with the idea of rainbow obstacle course, where they would learn the colours of the rainbow through doing an obstacle course. I carefully placed different coloured hula hoops, each a colour of the rainbow, cones and other multi-coloured plastic circles around the part of the yard we would be using. When I introduced it, the students all screamed in excitement, even though they didn’t know what it was yet.
Despite the fighting amongst each other, being inundated with technology in the classroom, and the circumstances they may be facing at home, the energy and creativity of the children at this school was infectious. They would take a seemingly mundane item, and turn it into the most fascinating piece of material. A paperclip would become a work of art. A branch with leaves, a kite or a wand. It started to descend upon me that this school was a special place, there was magic here, and the yard was the centre of it.
In Child Development there is a term used called Nature Deficit Disorder. It is a recently created term, describing how children these days are spending less time in nature than they have in the past, leading to more behavioural problems. I could see this in the kids. The increase in conflict and fighting amongst themselves and with the teacher, but also the thirst for a connection with nature. And the moments they got on the yard were priceless.
A small yellow flower growing out of a crack in the wall would invoke wonder and curiosity. When one child asked a passing grown up what plant this was, he said, ‘a weed,’ and continued walking. Another boy, Angel, who was around ten, would come up to me every recess and talk about the different types of clouds in the sky that day. He knew all the names, stratus, cirrus, cumulus … all of which I learned from him. He told me he was from Guatemala, and that his family had migrated here when he was three.
Most of the children at the school were from families who emigrated from Mexico or Central and South America. I found it odd that at a school with mostly immigrant families, the children were forced to say the pledge of allegiance every morning. They would line up on the yard, while the principal spoke loudly into a microphone. I remember my one year in public school, where we rose to the flag and placed our hands over our hearts. I always kept mine idly by my side, mouth shut.
*
More and more the magic of the yard started to unfold. The wind seemed to be dancing through the yard, playing with the children. There was a swirl of fallen, windswept leaves making a perfect circle that the children chased after gleefully. On one occasion Angel, pointed to the sky where the cloud was cast over the sun. ‘Did you know when you see the rays of the sun like that coming out from the clouds, it means God is present?’ he said to me. I had no words. I stared at the giant cloud and rays of sun in the sky and for a moment I didn’t know where I was.
As the days went by, I too started to feel God’s presence here. The wind seemed to follow me, almost like it was guiding me. I saw incredible colours in the clouds, surreal pinks and turquoises, like the inside of an abalone shell.
*
The revelation came to me one day, when I was trying to get Nieto’s class to line up on the white line, as they were supposed to, after the teacher assistants blew their whistles sharply, signalling that recess was over. I’ve always had a hard time with discipline, ever since I was young. I was never disciplined as a child and so instinctively prevented myself from inflicting this on anyone else. I flinched at the harshness of other TAs and teachers towards the children, the restricting of their free movement, the censoring of their expression, the policing of their bodies. I found creative ways to try and have them line up neatly in a row on the solid white line, but nothing seemed to be very effective. Until one day, when there was one of those large, winged mosquito eaters that look like giant mosquitos themselves, but are harmless. It was in one of the plots where an oak tree was growing. Some of the children were fidgeting with it. I immediately picked it up, out of the reach of the children to prevent them from harming it. I placed it gently in the palm of my hand, and the kids stood on their tip toes to peer over at it. I brought it to the front of the solid white line and said, ‘everyone must line up before I can show you the mosquito eater.’ In less than a nanosecond all seventeen children were in perfect formation. I passed by each child, carefully showing them the mosquito eater, which they intently looked at with awe, eagerness and curiosity.
How powerful nature is, I thought to myself. How much we can solve with just one little mosquito eater, imagine what else we can do.
These children were starving to learn beneath the weight of a curriculum that imposed itself on them and didn’t meet their needs. They wanted to learn about life, for life excites life!
I started bringing in things to show the children on the yard. The shedded skin of a praying mantis and grasshopper, a perfectly intact fluorescent green Junebug, a book on trees, magnifying glasses to observe with, and coloured pencils and paper for them to draw with.
At first, I introduced these items just to ‘Nieto’s class, but then more and more children started gathering around, against the school rules. I would show them how to place the praying mantis or grasshopper skin delicately on the palm of their hand. They would pass it along with the utmost care, reverently and with precision, something I was surprised to see in school-age children.
‘This is the exoskeleton of a praying mantis. We have our skeleton on the inside, but this insect has its skeleton on the outside. When it needs to grow bigger, it sheds its skeleton kind of like the way we grow out of our old clothes and need new ones.’ I explained.
Soon children started coming up to me, showing me their findings on the yard. An empty wasp nest that had fallen, a ladybug. One boy made a home for a family of ladybug larva out of a sheet of paper. There were tons of ladybugs on the yard, we would observe them with our magnifying glasses, count their spots and do math problems with them. ‘If one side of the lady bug’s wings has 5 spots, knowing that the wings are symmetrical, how many spots does it have altogether?’ I would ask.
Every time I arrived on the yard, children would leave their assigned play areas and surround me, almost toppling me over with excitement. ‘Do you have the book on trees? Can we have the magnifying glasses? Can I look at the grasshopper and praying mantis again?’ They would ask.
One time, just when I finished showing a group of children the green Junebug in the jar, another one flew above us, all the children put their hands in the air, and tried to reach towards it.
Something was happening on the yard, a synergy was being created. A transformation that was palpable. A deep connection with nature was being fostered and a new type of learning, outside of the classrooms, was blooming. That was until Moon came into the picture.
***End of Part I***
Response to the workshop
The Out of Print Workshop on the Infinite Soul's farm and retreat was a truly magical experience. Being surrounded by nature and getting to immerse myself in sharing and critiquing work for an uninterrupted period of time in that beautiful and serene space was a unique and rare gift.
Indira and Zui were the kindest and most welcoming, as were her family, who treated everyone like family, and treated us to the most delicious, homemade food. By the end of it, even though it was only a couple of days, strong bonds had been formed and friendships made.
After the workshop was over, I was able to get the ongoing support of Zui in the editing process of my submitted piece, which helped my writing so much and brought me closer to crystalising the vision I had for the piece.
