Teaching theater and trimming windows

Armed with our 100 Projects for Peace grant and teaching outlines, my classmate Erika Sogge and I arrived in Biloxi this June, excited to teach young teens in the Boys and Girls Clubs to write plays.

Our students were not necessarily excited to see us.

"I don't know how to write a play" was a common refrain during the first days of the program. "Yes you do. You just haven't tried." As they worked through drafts, our students' skepticism slowly gave way to frustration, and frustration eventually gave way to pride. They began thinking analytically about how people react to a given situation, recording their adolescence in the process. Devin, who still lives in a FEMA trailer, wrote about single-parent families surviving Katrina. Bianca wrote about her sister's teen pregnancy. Their plays represent their understanding of life in the post-Katrina Gulf Coast.

We introduced our students to the world of theater, a world many of them had never before experienced. When we took our East Biloxi students to see a teen play at a community theater, they sat captivated. At the end, one student exclaimed, "I thought it was real! I forgot it was a play!" We also gave them the opportunity to create something in which they could take great pride. I will never forget the moment when Aneeka, who had at first wanted to quit, finished her play. She ran around her friends and to the teachers, a huge smile on her face: "Read my play! Read my play!"

I stayed in the Gulf Coast for three months, living at a nonprofit shelter called Hands On Gulf Coast. During the periods of time when Erika and I were not working with our students, we volunteered at Hands On worksites. On construction sites, I hung drywall, lay flooring, cased and trimmed windows, installed cabinets and painted walls. I also cleared trails, weeded parks, lay mulch, planted flowers and bushes, and drove volunteers to different worksites. I came to Biloxi with my own project, but in the process I became part of a community of volunteers.

I have learned so much this summer about the effects of Katrina on individuals' lives, the progress of the rebuilding effort and the future of the Gulf Coast. I learned how to hold a hammer and how to help a student when she says, "I'm stuck." I began to understand (although I never fully can) the connotations and loaded meanings behind words like "FEMA," "casinos," "tragic opportunity," "mold remediation," "volunteers," "rebuild," and "Katrina." I learned that good teachers keep things fun for students while showing them that their work matters.

My students' plays reveal the human perspective of Katrina's effects and life in the Gulf Coast. I feel incredibly lucky that they and the volunteers at Hands On shared this perspective with me this summer.