I met up with Erin and 826 Valencia last September, so when my school let out for the summer and I found myself again in Los Angeles, spending time with the students, tutors, and staff of the newer 826LA was a given.
Five times in two weeks I took the 181 bus to the 206 bus to the 333 bus, reading Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys to spend some afternoons with some bona fide, non-fictional wonder boys and girls in Venice. For these students, the school year is speeding to its end, and with every day their summer tans crept in, bronzing their skin and bleaching their hair. For me, the last week of grade school was spent finding ways to shirk duties at Track & Field Day, where I couldn’t run, toss a shot-put, or find a patient partner for the three-legged race.
Not so for the 826LA students! With summer vacation about to break on their heads, all they needed was a salty seaweed snack or a sweet pair of RedVines, and there was nothing they couldn’t do.
There’s a photo up somewhere on the website of Roman, Tyler, and myself in the midst of a dress up/reading comprehension and editing session. They hunted down grammar mistakes and tense shifts, taking aim at the smallest mistakes, wearing not only big smiles, but also princess tiaras and outsized clown sunglasses. The photo does only a small amount of justice to the thousands of words they reviewed and giggles they let out.
On another day and with Susana, we worked on a civic-minded, autobiographical essay as part of her application to a “life-changing” prestigious private middle school. While being mindful of the honor code amendment at the bottom of the application, which read something like: “I declare this is my own honest and original effort,” I resisted every urge I had to write the darn thing for her so that she could get to the school and then change her own life. But she didn’t need my help, and took the ball. I helped her delve into some personal experiences to relate to the assigned topics of diversity, social justice, and a high-minded but unfamiliar prompt of “ecological sanity.” To Susana, ecological sanity came to signify the importance of protecting the environment from smog-causing pollution that trigger her asthma attacks. That sounded pretty sane to me. I hope she gains acceptance into the famed school, but I’m pretty sure she’ll be all right wherever she sharpens her pencils in the fall.
The 826 center ... I hope someday there’s one across from every school in this country. Fed primarily by thirsty students and generous volunteers; it’s a simple A and B compound to mix, but the result has runner’s legs, especially in Los Angeles, where we need all the help we can get.
That’s all for now, I’m excited to be involved, and there’s a calendar of events for the summer viewable on the website so you can get involved too!
