#west jackson

got hit by the infamous truck didn't see it coming so now I'm fighting for my life on the hospital bed

When poet Alexis Spencer-Byers lived in West Jackson, MS, she once asked two teen boys, both drop-outs, to name their dream jobs.  Maybe no-one asked them this question before, or not often enough.  Or, maybe they accepted their fates as set, knowing that for inner-city dropouts, the options are few.  One boy says: “Walmart.” His reason: he likes “putting things together.”  The other boy never answers.

I read Alexis’s poem (below), and I am back in a Detroit high school classroom.  I taught for InsideOut, a nonprofit that places writers in Detroit public schools.  I loved my assigned school, felt that the principal and teachers were all passionate, smart, and very committed.  My students wrote great pieces, and I felt proud of my ability to get a high rate of students to participate.  But one day, I asked a girl, perhaps 15 or 16, but with the eyes of a much older person, the following question: What is your big dream for yourself?  She said: “I don’t dream.”  I asked why.  She replied: “It hurts too much.”

To hear such a response hurt my ears, my heart, my everything.  I didn’t pry.  I didn’t ask what disappointments she’d suffered, or who may have discouraged her from thinking too big.  All I could do was think of myself in high school.  Yes, I was born in Detroit, but I was raised in Troy, in a relatively affluent suburb.  At each of my suburban schools, I felt encouraged.  There was always at least one teacher who praised my writing, or suggested I take an advanced class, or gave me nurturing advice.  Of course, there were also mediocre teachers, and occasionally a teacher who felt like an enemy.  But I felt possibility all around.  I dreamed early and often.  No one told me to shut up, or be “realistic.”

We can’t underestimate the power of encouragement.  Of modeling a way to be.  Of mentoring.  Of taking the time to imagine the world as we want it to be.

Teaching writing taught me one thing: imagination is a muscle.  The power to visualize is indeed a power.  We have to work these muscles out, or else they atrophy.  If we don’t work at imagining the world we wish for ourselves, we will settle for what is at hand.  I’m glad Alexis asked those boys to dream.  Maybe they forgot her question five minutes after it was asked.  But it’s just as possible that it got them to think.  To maybe flex what was flaccid. 

Now that’s the gun show I want to see.

  Dream Job                 

by Alexis Spencer-Byers

  The two teenage boys                                                

Tell me they’re almost ready

            to start looking for jobs—                              

school having long since ceased to be

            a way to spend their days.                             

                                                                                                Street basketball                                                        

and sitting on front porch steps                                             

have apparently become tedious,                             

or perhaps it’s just that these pursuits                      

are somewhat less than satisfactory

to the hard-working grandmas                                  

            with whom these young men reside.                        

                                                                                    Eager to show my approbation                                             

            of their work-related aspirations,                 

I ask the boys a question                                                        

            that seems simple enough to me:     

                                                                                    If you could have any job in the world,                     

what would it be?”                                                                 

  Both are stumped.

  One never does come up with a response.

  The other thinks long and hard

before venturing,

with a conspicuous lack

of enthusiasm,

“I guess I’d like to work at Walmart.

I enjoy putting things together, you know.”

Stunned, I mumble something

vaguely affirming

and stagger off toward my home—

two doors down and a universe away-

not wanting to malign

a respectable ambition,

and yet wishing desperately

that my young neighbors

could conceive a dream