Reconsider

Come back with me if you will, to what seems just about a lifetime ago. It's early October, 2010, and we are looking to introduce our after school programs to this East Camden high school population with a bang.

We have no choice in the matter. It is the first time that my organization has ever been in Camden, though they have countless school sites throughout Philadelphia, and even Trenton and Chester. It's my first time, too. This is my first time officially managing a staff and having a salaried kind of professional job...and we're asking to basically dive head first into this hostile, unforgiving environment and try and create something positive, constructive, and deeply engrained into the school's culture. So I, filled with an intensely potent composite of idealism, optimism, and only what I can describe as that Holy Ghost fire, assist with the implementation of our introduction into the school.

What we basically did was find the best dancers we could hire at price, held an assembly, told all of the students they sucked and challenged them to battle our dance crew. Bold, right? Not only did we do it in an assembly packed with these ballsy adolescents, but we also invaded their lunch periods as well, setting up speakers at the corner of the cafeteria and inciting another impromptu dance battle in a circle of eager onlookers.



And you know what? It worked. We were passing out program applications by the stack-full. Pretty soon, we were ready to start one of what would be many after school programs: Hip Hop Dance.

Flash forward to March of 2011. The crew has gone through phases of waxing and waning as far as attendance goes, yet Hip Hop Dance is still undeniably one of our strongest programs. It contains our core group of kids--those that were with us from those shaky and uncertain beginning times when I would wake up every morning with a fervent, white-knuckled prayer to just make it through the day. Actually, now that I think about it, I still pray like that. I guess that's how you know when you're doing things in God's strength: fleeting are the moments when I feel like I've got my job down pat.

Needless to say, we (me, my program assistant, the kids, and the instructor Blaze) all had been through a lot since the start of the program. We've seen kids come and go, weathered a long winter on the grey streets of Camden, and had our fair share of disappointments like shows being cancelled. We even endured the heartache of having one of our members slain in the streets one chilly night, shot twice as he was running away after refusing to relinquish his personal items to some random thug, turning it into a robbery gone bad...but more on that in another blog, at another time.

Yeah, Hip Hop Dance is one of those stalwarts in my program. It already has a history, a legacy, even its very own nostalgic feeling when we reminisce on "the good ole days" of Hip Hop Dance program.

I say "good ole days" because you see, dealings turned sour at some point with our original dance instructor. After nearly 6 months leading the program, which is almost an eternity to these kids out here, he decided to part ways. Of course, we replaced him...twice. But there's hardly been a week that's gone by without one of our oldest participants, our original students, asking about him. At the time, I chalked it up to a lot of our kids having issues with both abandonment as well as the deep emotional scarring left when someone close to you is abruptly ripped out of your life--say, by an untimely death, but our kids were highly upset when he left. One cried, others cursed and were irate, still others stared blankly at either the floor or off in some distant place. I thought these were supposed to be tough, inner city high school kids! Something about him not being there changed the dynamic for good. It's like, we all started this thing together, but because of one reason or another, we wouldn't be able to finish it together. We...lacked closure.

That's why it was so hard when about 9:30 tonight I got a call from one of my kids, one of my original Hip Hop Dance kids. I've grown really close to him over the past year, and I've really been trying my best to invest in his talent as a dancer, encouraging him to develop his skills.

"Hello?" He sounded almost at the brink of tears on the other end of the phone. I could tell that he had been in deep thought prior to calling me. He gave his little speech as if he had rehearsed it a thousand times in his head before dialing--it came out quick, and slightly shaky. "Chase," he mumbled, "I know that this is probably impossible, and I know I ask this all the time, but hear me out."

"I'm listening."

"Could you please try and get Blaze back maybe once or twice before the school year is over? I really want to see him before he goes off to college."

Now, this student isn't exactly Simon Birch, and would hardly tug on your heartstrings if you met him on a normal day. In fact, he has a mouth that would make a trucker blush. But I have to admit, even when he curses, he really is a lovable kid. So I made a choice...and I'm still undecided about the morality of it.

Though business dealings went south, though I haven't spoken to him in months, though my heart has been thoroughly hardened towards him at times, I contacted Blaze. I let him know what an enormous influence he had been on that particular student's dancing, how much he meant to that student as a mentor. And then, I invited him to our final Hip Hop Dance performance of the school year. I don't know if he'll show, or even text me back, and I don't know if I would've done better just to keep my mouth shut, from a best practices business perspective. What I do know is that the sincerity and quaking emotion I heard in that student's (usually confident) voice really changed my perspective. I couldn't muster up the strength to give him yet another "adult" answer that ends with "you'll understand when you're older."I made a different choice. I sent that text message.

And now I'm waiting for my phone to ring.