Meghanarchy

These last few weeks, I’ve been teaching some camps at the community center. One of the classes was my spoke word class. It’s hard to just teach a one time class. Especially because most of the kids knew what it was. I would have preferred them not knowing so I could dish out all this information. But I guess slam and spoken word is really quite the above ground movement these days. Le sigh. 

So I walk into the classroom and there are 8-10 kids slumped in their chair. I let my friend finish up her workshop on film and just stood in the background. You know how I should have come in? Booming. With my arms flailing, getting the kids up and moving around, and using my diaphragm as much as possible. (and not a gold one either. badum-chh. anyone know what joke that references? it’s not a nice one. but it’s funny) But, I came in. Asking who knew about spoken word, slam poetry, yada yada. Then I went into my Dial Soap piece. I don’t even remember version I did. I was so excited to do it; I’d been practicing all week long. Some of the kids smiled but meh. Most of them just sat and stared. And yeah, I wrote that when I was 14, but it’s still funny.

We did a few writing exercises. I read them stuff from when I was 17 which was pretty embarrassing. I hoped it would encourage them to read their own, but no. So I just started calling on people. And their stuff was good. Their ages were obviously reflected in their pieces, but you could tell that some of them were getting places. But felt nowhere near comfortable yet. I smiled the whole time though. Because these pieces they had written were because of me. Whether they liked them or not, I didn’t give a shit. 

So I read them my stuff, Big Poppa E stuff, and Lennon Simpson stuff (1. because they fit the age range. 2. I lost my Slam book :( ) 

And for REAL they just SAT there. Christ. It was such a tough crowd. I do, now, realize all the things that could have been done differently. But. Then they filled out their surveys. And I got mostly 4s and 5s on how much they liked me and felt engaged. 

So WTF? 

This is my revelation:

Just because a kid is sitting there with the most bored look on their face doesn’t mean they’re not interested. Teaching creative writing is not going to be like youth poetry slam practice. 

It was a good revelation to have. Because if I managed to go through my entire schooling career and not realize this, I would probably cry on my first day of teaching in a high school. Of course, that might still happen ;)