Van Cortland Hike

Bronx, New York, USA

From Van Cortland Park Hike

One of the things I love best about New York City is the abundance of public parks and green spaces, a wealth that is growing in quantity and quality as I live here. For the third summer in a row, it is my intention to see some parks this year that I haven't visited.

It's also my goal to do some Saturday hiking this year, to get in slightly better shape, but more for the renewal of a little time in green and nature. While I love New York, I'm not actually a city person by nature.

So when I saw that the Friends of Van Cortland Park was doing a highlights hike of the park on my day off, I jumped at the chance. Van Cortland is a huge park up in the Bronx with lots of more or less untouched woods, cross country and bridle trails, cricket and soccer fields, and some historic buildings.

There's a couple of golf courses with a swamp in between that I'd love to come back and spend more time exploring the edges of.

All in all, it was a nice little hike in the big city.

From Van Cortland Park Hike

Recognizing White Priviledge

Bronx, NY, USA

We were just talking in class today about what Michelle Martin has been talking about all week on NPR's Tell Me More. To be honest, we've been talking about it all summer, with some in our program having to really restrain themselves not to let talk boil over into rage. Is there still racism in America? Is there racial inequality? Is there still (or again) segregation in our schools? Is it inevitable? What can we do about it?

Of course there is. More black and Latino boys are diagnosed with Emotional Disabilities and ADHD than white boys, certainly more than girls. More black and Latino boys drop out. Why? Is it because of the culture of their communities, or the culture of their schools? We used to think it was the culture of the communities. Kids in urban, ethnic, poor neighborhoods grow up with families that don't care about them, fill that gap with gangs and crime, and end up in prison or dead, right?

We watched "Waiting for Superman" today and we've been reading about the KIPP Academies and Uncommon Schools all summer long, and the reality today is that we cannot blame where they come from for the problems our kids have in schools. Schools across the country, many of them urban charters in low income, high crime neighborhoods, are proving that black and Latino boys, given the right instruction, can pass state exams at the same rate as white children. (Now, only about 20% of charter schools are more successful than your average public school, so I don't want you to think "Waiting for Superman" is right about that ... but he is right about a lot of things!)

Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children's Zone, features prominently in "Waiting for Superman," and he's proven that schools and communities have to work together, from birth through college, to achieve wide-spread success. That doesn't discourage me, though. I'm more convinced than ever that there are things I can do in my classroom that will have far-reaching effects. (I'm thinking about Kawthar and her sister...)

It makes me see my own youth and young adulthood with a lot more humility. Yes, I was most definitely discriminated against in grade school because of my lack of religion and because my parents were from out of state. I thought I was such a persecuted teenager. (What teenager doesn't?) I had it so easy. I know this; I knew it before I came to New York City. I learned it in the Peace Corps, in Jordan, but all along I said, 'Being poor in those places is so different from being poor in America!' And it is. But I didn't really realize until this summer just how difficult it was to be a poor black or Latino kid in America. And I've no doubt I'm only seeing the beginning of what will be a very enlightening--and probably heart-breaking--journey.

Bronx: First Impressions

Bronx, New York, USA

This morning I went to two interviews in the South and East Bronx, both of which involved long bus rides through the borough, and I had a lot of time to think about the area.

We're all familiar with the Bronx's reputation from the 1990s. That's probably why one recruiter at a recent DOE Job Fair said, "You're willing to teach in the Bronx? We will definitely be getting in touch with you!" I must have looked surprised, because she said, "I'm serious! We have such a hard time finding teachers who are willing to work in the Bronx!" I know my father likes to tell about a story he'd heard on NPR about an experiment leaving cars broken down on the Cross-Bronx Expressway (I95), and finding them stripped of everything but the frame within 2 hours. That's not even to mention the reputation for gangs, violence and crushing poverty.

It's not like that anymore. Crime rates are way, way down all across New York City since the bad ole days of the 90s, and that goes for the Bronx, as well. In fact, there's some serious gentrification going on around here. It makes sense. No one can afford to live in Manhattan anymore, and even Harlem, Washington Heights, and Brooklyn are getting too expensive for the middle class. So people are starting to move into the Bronx.

All along the 6 line uptown to my neighborhood, for example, are these huge brick buildings that I want to know a lot more about. I think they must have been built in the early 1900s as tenements or workers' housing, because they have these really interesting sculptures on their corners, almost Socialist-Realist in style. Now, though, they're condominiums with solidly middle class restaurants and stores like UNOs and Macy's in their lowest levels.

From the bus today, I saw a wide range of homes: rowhomes, duplexes, apartment complexes, and even one small neighborhood that was all one-story ranch houses with half- or quarter-acre grassy lawns. Surreal, really.

The Bronx is also much more multi-cultural than I had expected. The small businesses in my neighborhood - restaurants, halal groceries, 99 cent stores, hair and nail salons - tend to market to a Latino, African-American or Bengali customer base. I think almost a quarter of the people in my building complex are Muslim by the women's headscarves, mostly Arabic-speaking as far as I can tell, though I've heard Turkish, lots of Spanish, and some languages I can't identify.

Actually, as I walk down the street, I'm often reminded of when I taught that course on Islam at "nerd camp." We read an essay from Shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak Out about Hispanic women in the United States converting to Islam in significant numbers, putting on the hijab and all. When their families protested, these women said that the "uniform" that Hispanic girls have to wear to be respected - short skirts, tight shirts, teased hair, lots of make-up - was just as restrictive but far less respectful than the hijab. It was an interesting academic inquiry for me, but I didn't know how true it was. Now, though, I've noticed quite a few young Muslim women, wearing hijab and speaking fluent Spanish.

I think I'll be glad to live here!