My first experience living and working communally occurred in 2000, when my husband and I both joined an AmeriCorps program stationed at Inner Harbour Hospital in Douglasville, GA. There were 20 members on our team, and we all lived together in cabins on the wooded 1,200 acre campus of the hospital where we worked.
Most of us were in our early twenties, and this was our first experience working with severely emotionally disturbed children, at least on a professional level.
For me, learning to navigate the boundary differences between these kids and the ones I’d worked with all my life was the most difficult lesson. In my experience, kids needed to be cuddled, hugged, and kissed, but this hospital had a “no touch” policy.
Inner Harbour provided art therapy, drum therapy, wilderness therapy, a ropes course, and equine therapy. Some of our group was specifically attracted to the program because, aside from loving kids, they were also artists, drummers, or had an affinity for nature and horses.
After we spent a few weeks learning about the program, and participating in team-building activities, each member of our team was assigned to work with a specific teacher and a specific group of kids.
I was assigned to the long-term adolescent girls’ classroom. Many of the girls in my class had spent most of their lives moving from foster home, to group home, to psychiatric hospital. Some of them had already lived at Inner Harbour for up to two years.
Whenever a new girl arrived, a large portion of the class had generally encountered her before, elsewhere, within the psychiatric-system-hop. If the girls caught wind, in advance, of someone’s impending arrival, they were certain to clue-in the rest of the class about each of her “issues” as well as the list of anyone she’d (supposedly) “slept with.”
It was daunting, at first, to find my place, as a respected adult, within this new culture… the culture of the long-term-adolescent-girl.
On the day we were matched with our groups, there was a hospital-wide assembly. Our director, Lynn Wilson, described our role, as AmeriCorps members, to the kids and the hospital staff. After that, she announced each of our names along with the group we’d be working with.
After we’d all been “officially placed” we walked with our groups to our classrooms.
I walked beside the teacher of my group (she’d been teaching there for 30 years). The 16 girls in our class walked in single file behind us. They were required to walk single-file every time they changed location, and each time they stepped through a doorway, they were required to number off.
All of a sudden – mid sentence – my teacher stumbled on a pine-cone, rolled her foot, and fell face-first on the cement. When she lifted her head there was way too much blood.
One of the counselors tried to calm the kids and direct them away from the accident scene. The other counselor sat with the teacher and radioed for help.
Separating the kids from their teacher was a difficult task, because more than half of them asserted, quite dramatically, that they would “never leave her side.”
Because I’d, thus far, built absolutely no rapport with these kids, all my requests to “head on over to the classroom” – if acknowledged at all – were met with a brief but very solid, “no.”
Soon, several more counselors arrived. Some of the kids were taken back to “the unit” (their locked-down living quarters). The rest of us were furnished with a fresh counselor who, with a single “git-yer-hiney-in-line” glance, had the girls surrendering, lined-up, and redirected to the classroom in a matter of moments.
We all sat down and the counselor looked at me.
“You’re AmeriCorps right?”
“Yeah.” I responded.
“So aren’t you like… an assistant teacher or something?”
My stomach dropped as I realized where this was headed.
“Uhhhh… I guess so. Yeah.” I muttered.
“Well, you can basically just take over then… if you want. The girls have rec therapy in an hour and a half, but we haven’t got anything to do ‘till then.”
I seriously almost shit myself.
I said something dorky like… “Ok. Cool. Well, I’ll tell you guys a little about me, and then I want to hear about you!”
They all groaned and rolled their eyes.
I’m pretty sure my face turned the shade of a Gala apple. Somewhere in the depths of my sub-conscious I filed the statement: “I-am-an-utter-failure-at-teaching-adolescent-girls.”
Thank God, in that hospital, time flew like a hummingbird on crack. We easily spent the whole hour-and-a-half introducing ourselves.
For months it seemed like all my teammates were settling into their AmeriCorps roles instantaneously. Like they were just born to teach art, or poetry, or organize talent shows, or take groups on woodland explorations…
I tried all kinds of lessons and activities, and I wouldn’t say that I taught anything badly, but I never could seem to meld with my group.
Until…
I was trying desperately to get the girls interested in a poem by Sylvia Plath. I’d been sooooo sure I’d discovered something they would relate to! Nope. As I read one of my favorite stanzas, I felt like the dude playing folk songs on his guitar in the corner of a busy restaurant.
Unexpectedly, I got really pissed off. I shut my Sylvia Plath book, looked Janelle in the eye and said, “Will you please quit saying that Shannon has ‘The Clap’? Do you even know what that means? It means Gonorrhea. Do you actually know anything about Gonorrhea? Or do you just like the sound of your voice spouting off that somebody has “the Clap” whenever they step out to use the bathroom?”
Wait a minute… for the first time in 3 months, all eyes were on me. No side conversation. No eye rolling. No groaning...
“Here’s the deal, girls. Tonight I am going to the library, and tomorrow you are all going to know more about the Clap than you ever wanted to know in your life!”
The silent attention was eerie. I was about to start reading Sylvia Plath again, when a little girl’s voice said… “Will you also get me a book on how milk comes? ‘Cause I think I’ve got milk, and I ain’t never had no baby!”
“Girl… You know you got an infection!” Said a louder voice, from the back of the class.
“Ok.” I said. “I’m gonna get lots of books. We’ll talk about all of this tomorrow. Right now we’re reading Sylvia Plath, so stop talking.”
After that, I could teach pretty much anything… and I did. In the four years I worked at the hospital (two as an AmeriCorps member, and two as a regular teacher) I taught each of the core subjects as well as electives. But every time the vibes got shaky, I reverted to my ol’ faithful: Sex Ed.
During that time, I relied extensively on my AmeriCorps teammates to help me finagle the fine grey line between what was… and what was not… appropriate to discuss in the classroom. My team spent at least an hour, every single morning, discussing our progress in the classroom. During those first six months of teaching, I felt so vulnerable about my position in the classroom; I don’t think I could have accepted help from anyone besides my AmeriCorps “family.”
I know that some people like to keep a vivid separation between “work” and “home,” but I’ve never enjoyed making those distinctions. I love living with my coworkers. At the hospital, I even appreciated sharing laundry facilities with the kids and when I plodded into the cafeteria for breakfast, I was usually happy to see my group, at their designated table, eating grits and sausages.
Keeping my work and my life enmeshed, keeps me from feeling like I’m spending 40 hours of every week “making money.” Instead I’m just doin’ the life thing… and money just shows up.
Now I’ve got the whole work/life merger completely under wraps… since my job is to hang with my kids and there actually isn’t any money.
But I’m still raising kids in a team.
Instead of wondering whether the classroom is the appropriate venue to perform a ‘rap about the clap’… we talk about whether our 4-year-olds kids are allowed to say ‘freakin’ and, if so, in which context? We try to maintain consistency concerning when they are permitted to tear the couches apart, and we duke-it-out about the pros and cons of screen-time.
My kids are developing relationships that blur the lines between “friend” and “brother”… “housemate” and “aunty.” It’s a little scary, but it’s the life we’ve been visualizing for 16 years.
Occasionally I lament that the kids might be postponing my larger communal pursuits (cottage industry, non-profit, etc.). How are we going to find the time? But, ultimately, they are the communal vision… aren’t they?
Besides, I think if you can raise kids with somebody… you can pretty much do anything together. I guess you’ve gotta save some things for later.