Short version: I have a friend in New York working her first year as a teacher. Her students have a pretty rough life, so she wants to help them feel connected to the world. She’s asking for photographs and objects with stories from all over the world. If you’d be able to send them a photo and story of your pups (not fiction, just a snippet of your life) she’d be very grateful. Send me a message and I’ll send her address.
Long version:❤️💜💚💛🧡💙❤️💜💚💛🧡💙❤️
CALLING EVERY CREATIVE AND BEAUTIFUL PERSON I’VE EVER MET. If you’re reading this, that means you.
I AM BEGGING for your help on this very important project I’m doing.
It’s called Mott Haven Meets the World.
The school I work at, PS 154, is in the South Bronx, an area teeming with poverty and crime.
The school is surrounded by projects and highway, by litter and broken glass. There’s very little green. Not enough art. It’s a bleak and scary place to grow up in and many of my students don’t step outside it.
They live in scary situations, in shelters, in abusive homes, or lonely homes, they’ve lost parents and loved ones, been exposed to sexual abuse and have a fear of violence. They hear gunshots at night. They have to take care of little siblings because their parents are not able to. There are hard working, caring, loving parents and families doing their best and struggling because of the crushing society they live in. The people in this community carry the weight of the world on their shoulders.
All they’ve been through has made my kids put up such a hard front. I was out of my depth with how high their walls, with the stony faces I got from some of them.
I came into the school in the New Year and threw the rule book out the window. Instead of writing lesson plans, I brought in things to play with. Objects of beauty, bright sparkly jewelry, vibrant soft fabric, stuffed animals, some live bugs, smooth stones and pebbles. Sensory objects. Snuggly blankets that were made for me by friends who loved me. Soft pillows.
I played music. Songs about hope and peace and change and beauty. We danced. We laughed. They spontaneously made their own bad ass music, banging out amazing beats with intense and evocative rhythm.
They are experiencing JOY. A flood of it and they are responding by showing kindness, maturity and calm. They are asking questions and slowing down to find some answers. They are dressing up in beads and capes, imagining themselves as warrior kings and queens.
They are writing and drawing and hugging and loving and living. Making music and building community.
It’s nothing short of a miracle! I have never laughed so much. These little sweet babies who have grown up in such a harsh environment are BLOOMING. Taking on leadership roles. Becoming self assured.
This momentum cannot be stopped, because it’s alive, but it can pick up steam.
These students have just flourished by letting their guard down enough to see that they are LOVED. They are loved so hard by so many caring, nurturing adults in that building.
Let’s take it further! Let’s show them that the world loves them.
I’ve traveled so much and seen so much goodness and beauty in this world, but I came back to teach in my home city to realize how bleak and segregated it still is.
The science is sound. Stress and learning don’t mix. I want them to be flooded with so much warmth and positivity from all over the world, that their woes melt away, or at least are forgotten for a while.
Over the past two days, I’ve seen all ~60 of them show kindness, happiness, love and tenderness, all because I stopped saying no and started saying yes! Yes to fun, to life, to creativity and exploration and expression.
SO HERE’S WHERE YOU COME IN:
With objects representing world cultures. Letters and photographs of you and your family having fun together.
Photos of your babies and your pet, smiling and loved. Photos of people you have lost, and the stories of what they meant to you.
Photos of the people who make you laugh hardest, who pick you up and give you a shoulder to cry on when you’re at your worst.
Photos of girls and women loving each other and having each others backs. Photos of men being kind and soft and nurturing.
Photos of warm embraces. Wedding photos. Candid, silly photos. Loving couples. Fierce, nurturing women. Soft, gentle, kind and loving men.
Photos of people of all races, genders and religions mixing and having fun.
DROWN OUT THE HATE AND VIOLENCE. Give them something to hold onto when they leave the safety of our school and go back into hard, dark lives.
Today I planted dozens of interesting objects in my classroom for the kids to just play with. I also planted the below photo of my dad, Donal Kerins, reading to me and I can’t tell you how many of them came up asking questions about it. I planted dozens of personal photographs in the room among the toys and beads and objects and they came to me with questions of wonder.
Send boxes that represent your life and the good things in it. Your culture. Your family. The wildlife that lives where you live.
Pass on a sweet gift that loved one gave you, one you can part with, knowing it will reach the hands of a love and touch starved 5th grader who the world has tried to make an adult.
Send foreign currency! They loved my Chinese money!
Fill them with objects pleasing to the eye and touch.
Natural objects. Smooth stones. Pretty rocks. Dazzling sparkly jewelry. Carved marble or stone figurines from places you’ve traveled. The kiddos are Wakanda/Black Panther obsessed, so anything of that aesthetic would be especially appreciated. Send beads and feathers and soft fabrics with pretty calming fabrics.
Send flowers. Flower crowns. Leis. Things to make them feel pretty. Face paint!
Send drums and shakers and other percussion instruments. These kids have TALENT that needs to be nurtured. Our teachers, administration put in crazy hours trying to flood them with love, but they need more. They need more to really believe it.
Send photographs you’ve taken of natural objects. Animals. Dazzling images. Calming images. We may not have much neighbor in reach, so send images of it to us.
It ignites their imaginations. I think this is how we can change the world. At the very least, you will change the lives of the students in our community.
My goal is to get enough packages that the 5th grade can’t handle them alone. That we have to pass some onto younger grades to open and sift through. That we get so many we have to get parents to help.
That we get creative ideas bouncing around about how to sort or share our information.
That we have so many packages full of love, that we have to start walking around, handing them out to strangers. Strangers who are sad and downtrodden and alone. Perhaps that will bring a little joy into their lives. The people of Mott Haven are so hard working. There are parents desperate to help their children, to see them succeed and grow and flourish.
Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe I’m gonna get myself fired. But there are at least two or three hundred of you I’m gonna start personally harassing if I don’t get a box of goodies from you soon.
NOTHING COMMERCIAL PLEASE. Nothing with plastic or advertising. They get enough of that. Send them things with meaning. Jokes and stories, artwork you’ve created or picked up on your travels. GOOD, PURE STUFF ONLY PLEASE.
I know you guys are crazy enough to do this for me. And spread the word.
