NCT Week 1

Week 1: May 31-June 4 (Because of Memorial Day, the week is only 4 days instead of the usual 5.)

Age Group of Class: 3^rd-5^th Graders. 7-10 year olds.

Tuesday May 31 Day 1:

This summer I am interning with the Nashville Children’s Theatre (NCT), helping to teach weeklong drama day camps to 5-18 year olds. Today is the first day. God, give me strength. They are going to eat me alive.

Kids are not like other tiny terrifying creatures—snakes, spiders, baby sharks; they are not more afraid of you than you are of them. In fact, kids smell fear, and the more fear they smell, the more powerful they become. It is like Magneto with metal; teachers’ fear is kids’ material for world domination. I know because I have been in school since I was 5 years old, and I have witnessed teacher after substitute after coach being overtaken by a classroom of small bodies. Images of these teachers' final days bit my nails to the quick as I wait by the glass doors of the Theatre on the first day of Drama Camp, heart racing, intestines twisting, waiting for the parents to walk through the fragile barrier and release their offspring onto me.

I have worked with kids before—swim lessons, babysitting, little sister—but I have never co-led a classroom before, and certainly not a classroom in theatre, a craft that brings out the best (i.e. empathy, creativity) and the worst (i.e. egotism, manipulation) in people. Furthermore, I am working with 3^rd-5^th graders this week, 7-10 year olds, the age children run, crazy-legged and unaware, out of the rye field.  I am writing my obituary.

Wednesday June 1:

Surprise! I survived the first day. Someone telling a story about how she almost died is just one long spoiler. Let me guess: in the end you survive. Thanks for ruining the story by getting up to tell it.

I am working after-care this week, and NCT has a no-lap-sitting policy, which is easy to understand because you have one lap and many kids. But it's so hard to practice, especially when you’re sitting on the floor and the little girl is four and she climbs into your lap and you have to pick her up, setting her beside you, saying, “You can sit next to me, but you can’t sit on my lap.” And she looks up at you with wide brown eyes, not understanding. So again, she stands up and tries to sit in your lap, and again you have to pick her up, setting her down, saying, “You can sit next to me, but you can’t sit on my lap,” when all you want to do is to wrap your arms around her and cradle her in your lap, chin resting on top of her braided head; because she is four and even though she may not know much about the dangers of this world, she does know about some of its comforts, and one of those comforts is the warm nest of a lap.

Thursday June 2:

I am not that ra-ra, fun, kid person. I connect best with people older than me, and throughout my life, people have assumed my age older than its years. So if interacting with adults is my comfort zone, then working with children is me entering the jungle, spear and war paint left behind. And always before entering that jungle, I am afraid the kids won’t like me. I won’t be fun enough. I won’t be able to connect with them or to communicate with them on their emotional, mental level, knowing that that failure is my failure. Because for one year of my life, I was 7 years old, then 8 years old, then 9, then 10. But those kids have never been 21 years old. So if I cannot connect or communicate with them, then that is my failure for not remembering what I once lived.

Despite me not being that ra-ra, fun, kid person, I do like kids, and for some reason which I cannot understand, they like me, too. Exhibit A: Today the hugging began— those spontaneous bursts of affection when a kid comes up and hugs me without any known reason. It is heartwarming and confusing.

Friday June 3:

I HATE traffic. I want to throw a baseball into its face.

Today the kids performed the play they have been preparing all week, Anansi and the Five Yam Hills. Very proud of them.

Official NCT Name Badge