Harness Social Awareness by Breaking the Rules
I entered some sort of social consciousness in the sixth grade.
Having moved to a working class Puerto Rican neighborhood in Brooklyn, I started to take the train on my own to continue attending elementary school with my friends in Manhattan’s Chinatown in the Lower East Side. Every day, I descended into the train abyss, where after my first train, I took a staircase that ejected me into a dingy urine-scented tunnel.
My backpack jostled behind me as I quickened my pace past the homeless people who took nightly shelter in the tunnel. The smell of urine infused my nose as I huffed and puffed up four flights of stairs to reach the platform for my next train. Along with awakening my sensory glands, I became acutely aware of my physical being as I shimmied through the crowds of people to find my balance on the train. Often space was so tight that I was only able to catch my breath when the train emptied at a stop near Wall Street. All the fancy looking adults poured out to clear a direct line of vision to the menacing kids across the train who slanted their eyes with their fingers to gesture at me.
Whereas the subway system introduced me to the complexities of the larger world that I was yet to understand, my sixth grade class was the microcosm for where I learned and practiced to negotiate and manage power dynamics that sowed the seeds of social awareness that prepared me for making sense of and navigating the world.
In the sixth grade, my classmates and I felt like we ruled the school. Not only were we the eldest, but we were also in the ‘gifted’ class. We were badass, and we had a teacher to back us up. Mr. Ross sported a black T-shirt, a pony tail and polarized glasses. He was entertaining, turbulent, and volatile, and he conducted the classroom as such. One minute, he bantered with us, playfully picking at certain favored students and cracking jokes as we chattered during his lesson; and the next minute, his head spun around and breathed fire into the air, cursing and stunning us into sudden silence for not giving him due attention. Everyday, Mr. Ross and my classmates wrangled for the pendulum of power — whichever side seized the pendulum bob rewrote the social contract of decorum and esteem, until it was wrestled away again.
Taking advantage of Mr. Ross’ cavalier coolness, we often played Cho Dai Di, a Chinese card game, during class. Cards were deftly dealt around the table as Mr. Ross casually delivered a lesson and insouciantly strutted to one corner of the classroom and back. We organized the cards in our desk slot for notebooks and each person around the table played a hand every time he turned his back. We carefully piled our played cards under a stack of folders in the middle of the table and spiked glances to cue each other if Mr. Ross edged near. But as soon as we grew comfortable with the inattentive disorder in the classroom, we were sent cowering at our desks for the slightest infraction.
As we managed the power struggle in the classroom, I learned that authority figures do not always need to be listened to, rules are not set in stone, and that the status quo is boring.
On the way home from a class ice-skating trip at Central Park, we walked by the world’s famous toy store FAO Shwarz. We gawked and squawked at the giant size teddy bear and the fantastically massive toys displayed in the store windows that were so clean we thought we could walk through them. Mr. Ross tried to move us along and explained that as minors, we each needed to be accompanied by an adult in the store. But our earnest eyes revealed that this may be the only opportunity we would have until adulthood to set foot in this store (which proved true in my case) that was located seemingly a world away from Chinatown. Mr. Ross was compelled to take a risk that became the capstone of my elementary school years.
Mr. Ross found an unguarded side revolving door and motioned us to sneak in and instructed to meet back at the appointed spot in thirty minutes. Two by two, we squeezed into the revolving door and like stepping through the looking glass in Alice in Wonderland, we were catapulted into a maze of colorful reverie. A chandelier dangled to illuminate the entire store, where over sized stuffed animals that draped the shelves came to life and massive Lego blocks saluted us. Meanwhile, a magnificent train set weaved through the store offering us a ride that punctured the walls of NYC’s grim subway system to carry us into a subterranean fantasy filled with adventures only limited by our imagination.
Being careful not to draw suspicion for being unaccompanied, we giddily about-faced and scrambled like Scooby Do and friends when we saw a security guard. We tip toed pass staff who sniffed our trails as they re-organized toys we ruffled on the shelves. I was in the midst of hosting a glamorous party in my giant doll house when one of my classmates ran over to us and panted —they found us!
We knew we all had to get out. Fast.
To not cause any commotion, we squealed and skated down the escalators and leapt over the final steps to quicken our pace. We gathered classmates as we passed them and threw a classmate over our shoulders when she slipped, and continued running. When we saw a security guard heading our direction, like the GI Joe figurines we met in the store, we crouched on the floor and elbow crawled the last twenty feet to the exit as if we were reaching the shores of Normandy. We piled into the revolving doors like a packed clown car and all thirty-something of us spun out onto the concrete streets to reunite with reality. Mr. Ross counted our heads, hastened us into the train station, and vowed us to never utter a word to any school official nor to our parents.
For my classmates and I — whatever happened at FAO Schwartz stayed in FAO Schwartz.
By breaking rules and norms of engagement in and outside the classroom, Mr. Ross challenged us to be comfortable with disruption and defying authority. In unconventional ways, he taught us to be willing to bend the rules to grow the mind and create possibilities. Thanks to Mr. Ross, I learned to evaluate and assess actions and behaviors that required me to pay attention to the changes in my own emotional experience, cultivating an emotional maturity that is needed as a foundation for social awareness.
At the end of sixth grade, I felt bolder and wiser. When the suit-cladded adults boarded the train at Wall Street, I slyly felt like I had a furtive glimpse into their world that I once thought was so mysterious and inaccessible — thanks to the FAO escapade. When the same menacing kids gestured at me in the train, I recognized that diversity sometimes brings friction before mutual understanding can be achieved. And it is in this discordant space of struggle for identity, power, and worth that Mr. Ross had acclimated us to, where the most personal growth and learning happens.
