Across the Great Divide

Shelter Report: Rehearsing for Halloween.

Today we practiced for Halloween. It's the one day of the year the preschoolers get their way without saying "please," and, to their credit, it was hard at first for some of them to ask for candy without saying the magic word.

Most of the kids put on costumes from our dress-up collection. Earlier, they'd decorated goodie bags and now it was time for them to go around to the teachers in the classroom, say "trick or treat!" and then "thank you" after they got their candy deposit.

My station was the first one. I had to remind the kids to say trick or treat instead of please and to hang on tight to their bags when I dropped in the Snickers bar. (Almost all the kids lost their grip when the full-sized bar hit the bottom, but they learned fast.).

After the circuit of the room, we led them through People Serving People to some of the offices, where staff were armed with more candy. You may not think of a homeless shelter as a fun place, but there could not have been a happier location downtown this morning—the kids, the teachers and volunteers in costume, the staff meeting all the children at their doors and the other guests who saw our parade of lady bugs, fairies, Spidermen, Ninja Turtles, cats and Little Red Riding Hood.

This afternoon, after nap, the children will be joined by the parents who can attend and they'll decorate Halloween cookies together.

A good friend showed up for his first volunteer day just as I was leaving. That was a treat, too.

*****

The People Serving People newsletter this month included an interview with me about being a volunteer. I answered more questions than fit on the page, plus gave a few answers that might have been a bit too pointed. PSP has been great about me doing this blog, but they also need to maintain a degree of neutrality in their own publications.

Here's the full interview.

When did you begin volunteering (in your lifetime)?

I remember in high school delivering Christmas food baskets to houses on the “wrong side of the tracks.” At one place, the door was open but everyone hid from us. We put the turkey in the refrigerator, and there was nothing in it except what looked like a plate of lard.

The first big commitment I took on was with the Neighborhood Involvement Program in the late ‘70s, tutoring at-risk middle school kids in North Minneapolis. I still remember trying to help my 7^th grader understand fractions by showing him a ruler, but he’d never learned to use one. He could read at a second grade level. That’s when I really began to appreciate what some children who didn’t have my advantages are up against.

When did you begin volunteering for People Serving People?

January 2009.

What made you choose People Serving People (to volunteer)?

I read a friend’s blog post about coming across a homeless person’s camp and realizing he didn’t understand much about homelessness, so he signed up to volunteer at PSP to learn more. He ran a small business and had two small children. I thought, if he can do it, I can, too.

About the same time, I was doing a lot of political blogging, but not doing much social action. I read an essay about the “cognitive surplus” created by America’s great prosperity—how many of us have been given the opportunity to manage excess free time. But we spend it watching TV or arguing with each other online, essentially squandering this great asset. President Obama had just been elected, and it was a time to ask if I was really contributing to constructive social change or just talking about it.

Finally, PSP seemed like the right outlet for the guy at the picnic who’s always off goofing around with the 5-year-olds.

What have you done as a volunteer for PSP?

I started half a day a week as an assistant with toddlers in the Daytime Children’s Center and loved that. When one of the boys moved up to the preschool, I was asked if I’d go along with him to help with his transition. The 3-5 year olds presented a different kind of challenge, but I loved that, too.

I support the teaching staff in making kids feel welcome, helping with learning activities, reading, watching for behavior problems, supervising things like hand washing and playtime. I think of myself sort of like a 6^th man in basketball, coming off the bench to rest the starters and bringing as much energy as possible for the relatively short time I’m in the game.

I also specialize in singing, opening milk cartons, giving shoulder rides and playing a broccoli-eating zombie.

What was a surprise to you when you began volunteering at People Serving People?

The biggest surprise for me was the number of children in our community affected by homelessness and disrupted home life. At Growth & Justice, our work is research-based and policy-focused, so it tends to focus on data and broader solutions, and not at the level of individual people’s experiences. I knew the poverty numbers intellectually and felt empathy in general, but nothing has the impact of getting to know kids in their situation and wonder what is going to happen to them when they leave here.

What were you expecting at PSP that DIDN’T happen (at PSP)?

Maybe not an expectation, but a hope: That I could somehow help every child who passed through that classroom. The fact is, each of us has only a small window of time to make a difference and we will never really know the ultimate outcomes.

What is your favorite memory of volunteering at PSP?

I get a new favorite memory almost every week and I write about it in my blog, Across the Great Divide. Here’s one I haven’t mentioned.

We were on the playground one day when the garbage truck came and this big tattooed and pierced man gets out and loads up the dumpster. He’s very careful up picking up all the stray trash and when the armature set the dumpster back down, all the kids cheered. He said, “I wish everyone was this glad to see the garbage man.”

If I had to single out one thing to highlight, though, it would be the staff that is there every day doing an amazing job with these kids. Seriously, if we made it a condition of running for office that a candidate had to spend a week volunteering in our classroom, all of Minnesota’s education and social services programs would receive a lot less criticism and a lot more support.

What has been the biggest challenge or the hardest thing to witness?

It’s hard seeing kids face so many obstacles in these early years that are so vital in shaping their ultimate success in life. But it’s even harder to witness this while listening to the political discourse about the poor, which is so unhinged from the realities I see.

These kids aren’t responsible for the situation they find themselves in, so lectures about “personal responsibility” and a “culture of dependence” ring hollow to me. If you’re an unemployed single mom overwhelmed with small kids who already have behavioral and developmental issues, you don’t want your family’s life to continue in that state. But you need help. It’s not realistic to think if the government gets tougher with her she can just go out and get a job and everything will be fine.

Being punitive with parents does nothing to help the kids who’ll grow up to be the next parents.

If you could share anything with volunteers of PSP – what would you share?

I’d say, you are part of an amazing institution that brings together the best of public services, corporate and philanthropic support and individual volunteerism to help our guests achieve their aspirations for their families. These kids are worth every hour you give.  

 

Shelter Report: Getting on the Same Page.

We were reading a book about food and drink. Kadija, let's call her, was pointing to pictures on each page and asking me which item I liked best.

Watermelon, I said.

Spaghetti.

Chocolate-covered toffee.

Coffee.

That's not coffee, she said of the scoop taken out of a rich brown pile of ground coffee beans. That's dirt.

And sure enough, when I looked at it from her perspective, it could have been dirt.

I had a rotating cast of three to four kids bringing me books to read, scrambling for room on a small love seat and my lap. We did a train book, a book on colors, one showing how a house was built and one about dinosaurs, of course.

In that sort of picture book context, I'm not often reading so much as guiding them through the book, letting them turn the pages and focus on what interests them. They set the pace. They remark and ask questions. I use their own attention to lead them to learn something new.

Sometimes they make up their own story using the book as inspiration. It's a sort of preschool fanfiction.

Today, Kadija wanted to "read" a book to me. I picked out a book about a cat who keeps inviting a mouse to play while the mouse keeps coming up with excuses to stay in his hole. She'd obviously had the book read to her before, because each time the mouse's refrain to the cat appeared, she repeated it. As for the rest of the story, she told it loosely, riffing on the pictures.

After reading it to me twice, she picked up a book adaptation of A Bug's Life and launched into a far more detailed and emphatic account. I'm not sure how closely it followed the original story about ants in conflict with grasshoppers because it was hard to hear in the general chatter of the room. (Maybe it's time to get my hearing checked.) But thanks to her rendition, for the first time I've become aware that ladybugs are boys as well as girls.

*****

Because he's lactose-intolerant, Dion can't drink milk so he gets water with his snack. Today, I'd give him the cup and he'd push it back. He also refused his orange wedge.

I squeezed the orange slice into the cup. Here, I said, orange juice.

He downed the water and asked for more.

A class of 17 preschoolers in constant flux between refusal and acceptance. One of my jobs is to find that little twist or distraction that brings  a kid from tears to laughter, from fighting to peace, from wanting to go home to wanting to be in school.

When there's a disagreement over the agenda, the adults eventually win. We're bigger and stronger with more smarts, resources and authority than the kids in the class.

If I were a country, I'd be America and they'd be Venezuela, Greece, Libya and Uzbekistan. But if I were a president, I'd be careful about how I exerted my superior power.

Why shouldn't I just order more ships and rattle more bayonets?

Because it's possible to be an adult without being a tyrant. Because these kids are already up against superior power and coercion. Because they learn better when they're hooked into something they already know or want to know.

Because some day they will be running the world, and I won't be, and they already know how to fight.

Riding Lessons.

At the end of April, I had a serious bike accident. Upon hearing about it, everyone asked the same question: Were you wearing a helmet?

I was, but the helmet had absolutely no role in protecting me from injury.

However, one simple thing could have saved me from the hospital: fixing a depression in the road that was unnoticeable to a car but caused me to lose control of the bike.

Staying last week in the colonial city of Antigua, Guatemala, I got a chance to reflect anew on how we ask the wrong questions about bicycle safety interventions—whether helmets, special bike lanes or dedicated trails.

For days I walked the narrow streets in a place whose street grid was set in the 1700s and has scarcely changed since. (Photo: Zack Clark)

Sidewalks average about a meter wide and narrow further wherever barred windows project into the walkway. Each block is built right to the corner. The only traffic controls are alto signs painted on the sides of buildings.

There are no lanes painted on the streets, which are cobblestone canted toward the center for drainage. On the outskirts, there are speed bumps, but the irregular pavement in the central city functions as one continuous deterrent to speeding.

The streets fill with pedestrians, cars, motorcycles, trucks and tuc-tucs, while the town's distinctive buses prowl the main drags.

Not exactly what you'd call a welcoming urban cycling environment, right?

Nevertheless, bikes were part of the traffic and after three days of walking, I was ready to jump on one of the bikes at the place we were staying. A Murray Baja with no working rear brake, it looked about average for the beat-up mountain bikes I saw on the street—underinflated tires, discount store frames and missing or maladjusted parts.

Perfect, in fact, for the rough streets, slow pace and lack of poles for securing the bikes. This rack at a cathedral was the only one I saw. 

However, I did enjoy several rides through the city, sans helmet, and never felt endangered in this foreign environment.

Here's why:

Speed. The narrow, bumpy streets, short sightlines and mixed traffic meant everyone was going at approximately bicycle speed—6 to 10 miles an hour. The mass of larger vehicles is a lot less dangerous at these low speeds.

Driver attention. Although I saw lots of Guatemalans looking at cell phones on the street, the drivers didn't. There was simply too much going on, with tuc-tucs and motorbikes and proximity to pedestrians,  for a driver to be inattentive or to have the illusion that he was in control. Likewise, there was no advantage to racing to beat a light or to pass another vehicle.

Cyclist attention. A lot of cyclist bad behavior is related to maintaining momentum or taking advantage of gaps in traffic. The same factors that slowed down the drivers and made them pay attention affected the cyclists, too. I saw only two riders in full kits with road bikes and helmets during my stay. One was walking and the other was rolling along at about 4 mph. Neither of them looked as happy as this guy, who was the only other rider I saw wearing a helmet, with good reason.

My Guatemalan experience reinforces that we are asking the wrong questions and arguing over the wrong solutions if all we talk about are adjustments like helmet use and advisory bike lanes.

As one expert says:

It’s safe to say that there isn’t any conclusive evidence that helmets help. The scientific community has been split down the middle for two decades. There are basically two camps: those who look at head injuries and look for ways to prevent them, and those who work towards getting more people to choose the bicycle as transport.

Another, unnamed camp has the biggest voice in the matter, though.

Our cities are built and engineered for cars, so car traffic rules. Whatever changes are made to help equalize that difference will be more effective than putting every cyclist in a helmet.

Shelter Report: Marriage? The Greatest of These is Love.

As a volunteer in the shelter's preschool, I deal almost exclusively with the kids. While the teachers seem to have good insight into their individual situations, their family lives are usually opaque to me. That's as it should be. I'm not really in a position to interact with the parents within the larger scope of their lives.

But I do see their kids up close and build close but fleeting relationships with some of them. I see the parents through how the kids behave, how they are dressed, how they perform in school, their confidence and their hunger.

During handwashing today I had two children in row tell me they are "smart in school." This message doesn't just come from the teachers. It comes from what they are hearing from their families. These two, as well as several others I could name, are smart in school. They have confidence, pay attention, rarely if ever act out and demonstrate high degrees of emotional and intellectual intelligence.

There's another energetic subgroup who slip in and out of attentiveness but are clearly smart and have some potential, and yet another cluster of kids who are so hungry for love and attention that they have difficulty staying with the program. If their needs aren't met, they easily can become disruptive.

Today one boy who's in the latter group was doing a good job sitting still, paying attention and waiting for his turn to speak. But when the teacher called on some other children without recognizing his raised hand, I could see he was hurt. Before long, he drifted off the carpet where the class is supposed to sit and began acting out his displeasure.

It's difficult for a teacher conducting the class to see all these dynamics playing out, so the volunteers and assistant teachers have to round up the escapees and bring them back into focus without creating a bigger disruption or rewarding the child for acting out.

But back to the families.

Today when we were outside, an older man came up to the fence and talked to several of the kids. He kissed a boy and a girl through the bars. We have to keep an eye out, but here it was clear the man was their grandfather.

I asked the girl where her grandfather lived. Was he in the shelter? No, he lived way far away.

Later, her mother showed up in a car with some other adults. Again, it was clear the girl had an affectionate relationship with her mom. I love her, the girl told me. And, unlike some children who get upset and anxious when their parents pass by without taking them, she was fine with saying hello and goodbye.

Another couple came past, young and handsome. They would not look out of place in a Target ad or a college recruiting brochure. Their daughter is one of the smart, high-spirited kids in class. The love between parents and child was unmistakable.

Right now in Minnesota, we are considering an amendment to the state constitution that would define marriage between and a man and a woman, with the intent of "preserving marriage." NFL football player Matt Birk jumped in recently with the opinion that "Marriage redefinition will affect the broader well-being of children and the welfare of society."

I don't spend a lot of time worrying about who's married and who isn't among the parents I deal with here. I don't disagree that having two parents is usually helpful for kids, but of all the characteristics supporting those kids unmistakably doing well, the greatest of these is love.

When I head out to Colorado, in another couple months, I'll be back volunteering with adults, some of whom are chronically homeless.

What separates the homeless pre-schoolers from those adults is not marriage or even housing opportunities. It's some have people who love them and some have run out of love.