Early lessons in community

10.08.11 By Frank Swoboda

“Yo, Raph!” A tall student bumps fists with a skinny, short guy in the hall outside our classroom. As the bell rings, another student runs in – and, before taking her seat, exchanges quick cheek kisses with her friend. Discussing immigration in the Gilded Age, one young woman tells about a family friend who has been in the United States without documents for over 15 years, has been engaged to an American citizen for some time, and is now getting deported; another student shakes his head and whispers to her, “That is crazy.” I have to smile when I watch the students at BLA. In the month that I’ve been here, every day has shown me new facets of the support and affection – the community – that our diverse student body shares.

Community is one of BTR’s big themes, along with equity and inquiry. And I’m starting to think that community might be the most challenging of those three to truly understand and put into action.

As residents, we got started on community right away. Before we formally started this summer, we went out in teams across Boston to visit youth programs, neighborhood centers, and service agencies. We also investigated the “community” of each of our schools. For us, just defining BLA’s community was a challenge: Is it the blocks around the school’s location at 205 Townsend in Roxbury? The neighborhoods where our students live, all over the city? The students, faculty, staff, and families who come together within our school walls? All those things? Something else entirely?

In our coursework, we hear about community partnerships between the school and our students’ families, neighborhoods, and lives. We strive to be conscious about the different communities that make up Boston, the inequalities among them, and how schools can either reinforce those divisions or help break them down. We talk a lot about building community in our classes to help us and our students meet the high expectations that everyone will learn and succeed. And since July, our cohort of 76 individuals, committed in different ways and for different reasons to the power of education, has been working to figure out what our community is, and what it can be.

Through all of this, I’ve realized that community is hard work. You can’t just wave your hand across a group of people and say, “OK, you’re a community – go!” Community has to be built from within and worked for continually. It requires us to constantly attend to ourselves and our peers. Yet when you face a litany of questions like “What period is it?” and “How many minutes left in class?” and “Who’s with me, and who doesn’t seem to be getting this, and what should I be doing differently right now?” and “Who needs to meet after school?” and “What are the test scores?” and “Are we on track so far this year?” – when you have to attend to those little things, it’s even more challenging to attend to the big things. And community is maybe the biggest thing.

But if I get myself out of my own teacher-resident-head for a few seconds, and I just look around at the students with whom I get to share time each day, I see the community they bring into our classroom. And I love what I see. I’m honestly a little jealous, because – as a teacher, and especially as a resident who’s only going to be at BLA for one year – I’m the outsider.

Even more, I’m jealous that my students make community look so…easy. As a history teacher, I know that community has proven, over and over again, to be a real challenge in our world. But does it have to be that way?

When it comes to what community means, my students may have a lot to teach me.