This week, my favorite thing about being a tutor for 826LA is the focus. When a student comes to me, and puts their assignment on the table between us, that is all I deal with for the next several minutes. What’s going on in my life outside of 826LA is not important to them, and it shouldn’t be, unless I’m somehow the subject of their essay. They’re with us to get help with an assignment, and I am here to help them.
I was out of town for a week earlier this month due to a death in the family. I’m from Minnesota, and I could find neither cheap nor timely tickets out of Los Angeles in that direction, so my girlfriend and I simply got in a car and drove through the night and the next day towards five terribly sad and difficult days.
Today was two weeks later, and my first day back as a volunteer. I joined a group of tutors at Animo Venice, where we were to help a 9th grade class with drafts of a persuasive essay.
Every day I think about what happened in Minnesota, as I probably will for the rest of my life. But I can’t think about it all the time. When I stepped into the stout brown bungalow housing Mr. Carr’s class and I looked over a room full of teenagers with essays in various states of completion, I remembered that I wasn’t there to be interviewed and instantly put the pervasive thoughts of the near-past to the side.
These students didn’t know me or my life story any better than I know theirs, and in a strange way, it was an unquantifiable relief. I just sat down next to a highly intelligent, soft-spoken teenager named Alex and read his essay which attempted to convince a civil rights museum to display an exhibit on the Black Panther Party. For twenty minutes, it was all I thought about; my mind soaked up Alex’s repository of Black Panther information and helped him with the best way to express it.
The hours passed and more students came and went at my table, bringing me essays with myriad challenges and rhetoric. I asked a lot of questions and watched their faces as they contorted into thoughtful poses. I solved spelling conundrums, helped them find the right phrasing, and learned several new facts about the Black Panthers. I focused on them and was rewarded with their revelations and opinions and novel expressions.
The volunteer work at 826LA always leaves an impression on me. This week, though, having the students to focus on may have made a bigger difference to me than ever before. When the afternoon was over, I walked home alone, feeling a lot better than I did walking there, realizing that the students I worked with today will never know that. I am here to help them, and that is worth doing for its own sake no matter what’s happening in my life.
