From the inside

I want to be him.

Teaching is like a brussel sprout, either you love it or you don't. I happen to find it exhilirating and deeply rewarding to witness the transformations in students who actually get what I say. I admit, teaching fulfills my need to have people listen to me. So, teaching's perfect for someone who strives to be an authority figure. Last night, I had about 60 students in two classes, Beginning Acting and Intermediate Acting. For most of the students, English was a second, if not struggling, language...and it was perfect. From my heart, kudo's to immigrants! Screw immigration laws. We are all people working to live our lives. America created the American Dream. Let us aspire to those dreams instead of spending wasteful time stomping on people's heads. Apologies for the off tangent spin, but it just came out. Sometimes that happens.

So, anyway, back to the kids in the class...between the ages of 13-23. After substitute teaching in NYC public high schooIs, I was ready for a nightful of headache inducing urban contemporary gestures (UCG's - credit given to my friend, Ms. P, who came up with that term). You know, the "unh-unh finger flicking hand swirling body tilting hip jutting head turkey-bobbing" kind of rebelliousness that makes me want to smack them on the side of the head and say, "go to your room" only they're not your kid and this is a class in Harlem, afterall. I was so wrong. I'll be the first to admit downfalls and smack-myself-in-the-head bites of the tongue ignorant outbursts. I am fallible, and terribly prejudiced. I don't pretend to understand the current trend to save Darfur when so much of what is going on there remains globally prevalent. Why Darfur? Why not Burma or Sierra Leone with the largest child soldier armies in the world? Sorry, sorry, I sway again.

But, last night, these kids melted my heart and taught me instead. Every one of them wanted to be an actor because, "it'll give me confidence, teach me how to speak English better, be famous so that I can help my people, I can let everything inside all out and come out of depression for a little while." I gave them exercises, scenes to act out in their own words. A mother dying. A person murdered before their eyes. Witnessing a rape. An abandoning father. A choice of killing someone to save your own life. I could not have written a better script. Their words were viscerally poignant, made me cry, made the other kids cry. They got it. They got that acting comes from within, that the script has to come from you. Then, I handed out corks (I sterilize and collect them to hand out in situations like this). They each gripped the corks between their teeth and recited, "the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain," over and over and over. Then they took the corks out and recited it again...it was music. Their voices were pure, nearly accent free. They wowed each other and me, laughed from the amazement of their transformation that they were speaking English, clearly, crisply, cleanly like the true Americans they really are but never knew because people kept telling them otherwise. I learned more from them than they from me last night...and I thought...I love teaching and having someone listen to what I have to say.