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In 2004, Annie taught 7th grade Writing through Literature following her junior year of high school. She recaps her summer experiences below:
Summerbridge makes you want to run a mile, read a thousand books, do a handstand or watch MTV for a couple of years. But, dream as they might about other activities, neither students nor teachers with the program would ever choose to devote so much as an ounce of energy to anything but ‘the bridge’, as we came to lovingly call it. From June 14th to August 3rd, I thought of almost nothing else. Looking back, I’m both surprised and proud I made it through the summer.
During staff training week I had neatly made a six week lesson plan. It included details about activities and topics for class discussion. I could have turned it in at school and would have expected a good grade. But at Summerbridge grades didn’t matter. It was a new kind of world. The heading I had carefully chosen to identify each lesson plan by date and class number meant nearly nothing; and, as I tentatively sang the good morning song and waited for a bus to appear on the first day with students, this hit me with the force of a multitude of text books—all of which I could quote without value or relevance in the seventh grade realm.
Totally unsure, I stood on the front steps of the Cincinnati Country Day School as just one of twenty-two teachers. Twenty-one of us looked comfortable and ready, swaying to the beat of the song without agenda. The eighteen veteran teachers even appeared a bit bored. I felt sick and suddenly had the urge to strap on a backpack and run inside to find a seat at the back—or even the front—of a classroom. I wanted someone who knew the answers to hand me a challenging worksheet which I would gladly, quietly and systematically complete in an academic manner. “G-O-O-D-M-O-R-N-I-N-G” I chanted in rising hysteria. Why hadn’t I spent any time babysitting in the past? I forgot the clap. “Good morning, hey, hey, good morning”. Why did I presume to know anything about Lois Lowry’s novel The Giver? It was too late to change my first lesson plan now.
And then, as hot rays of summer sun climbed over the horizon, a stream of yellow appeared from behind the trees that separated the school from Given road. “Bus!” someone yelled in unexplained excitement as the noise of a heavy engine infiltrated visions of my past teachers, God-like before me. I futilely tried to uncover the secret of their successes in the few seconds I had before a person much taller than I was leapt from that first bus grooving to the beat of our song. She clearly knew it better than I did. Ascending the steps, the girl I would come to know as Michelle hugged, accosted and yelled at all of us. And the Summerbridge spirit immediately overwhelmed me. Who needed a plan when there were sixty-six more of these kids bouncing from buses, ready and waiting for me to greet, entertain, challenge, teach and learn from them? So I took their cue and relaxed a bit. The collaboration had begun. I started to divide my morning radio time between NPR and hip-hop stations; the kids bought planners and worked hard to put neat headings on their papers. We discussed The Giver, watched Pleasantville, went to the zoo and dressed in all green together.
Never once during the summer did I figure out what makes my teachers so brilliant, the seventh grade world continues to elude me, and I will inevitably forget to clap at least once while singing any song. But there simply is no time to worry about these distractions when you are working, guessing, painting, running, rapping and thinking. I still don’t even know exactly what I did last summer. The word ‘teacher’ really glosses over a lot. But Summerbridge is a ‘students teaching students’ program, anyway. Under all the structure, neurotic organization and pedantic details lies the essence of learning, and in ‘the bridge’ we don’t mess around. We strip off the layers of the often necessary but also restrictive guidelines and go straight for the goal: joy in learning. It’s funny how foreign a concept so fundamental can be. After thirteen years of fancy schools and hours of homework, it was a grinning twelve-year-old, pondering how the Amish and Communists would choose to play foursquare, that finally taught me what education is all about.
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