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AmeriCorps Means Miracles
Our team is working in a school in Chula Vista, Calif., right on the border of Mexico near Tijuana. We are teaching conflict resolution to students in kindergarten through sixth grade. There is extra time, so we pick up a few extra projects: tutoring kids during lunch and after school, reorganizing the library card catalog, planting rose bushes and resodding the dirt soccer field, playing soccer, and talking with the kids during free periods.
They don't understand what we are or why we are here. They ask over and over, "What is AmeriCorps?" and we explain it again and again, but they have never seen people helping other people with nothing to gain but a good feeling and maybe a hug.
Every day during lunch, another team member and I play soccer with some of the boys in my fourth-grade class. They are really good and we were amazed at their skill.
Every lunch period more boys want to play. My teammate and I become captains so that the picking of the teams is unbiased. Because of this, we begin to have amazing matches. One day during the game, three girls approach me and ask if they can play. "Sure." The girls are surprised, but I'm picking the teams, and if I want to pick a girl, the boys respect that. The girls are actually really amazing players, too, and the boys start to take them seriously after that. It's one of the happiest days on the field for me.
One afternoon we are digging as usual, transferring grass from the rose garden to the soccer field. One student, who always hangs around after school wanting to help us, leans on the soccer goalpost chatting with the team. The end of the day comes and we are cleaning up. He is getting ready to leave when he says, "Hey, I finally figured out what AmeriCorps means. AmeriCorps means miracles...because nobody else would do this for us." He turns and walks off the field on his way home.
It had been one of the weeks when the team was fighting, doubting our worth and wondering why we were doing what we were doing. We just stand there, unable to speak, watching him walk away. I remembered that child's words the rest of the year. Whenever there were rough or hard times and I wanted to quit, I just remembered what he said. |
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