Dear Marcus…

There was an altar set up in the (former) EOSA building for our lost student and EOSA family member, with papers available to write messages, and this is what I left:

Dear Marcus — I will never forget...
… your sweet, beautiful smile…
… you so often acting goofy in class — and somehow managing not to drive me crazy in the process...
… how you always asked me to play Chris Brown songs for warmup stretches…
… you going on stage all by yourself (after much encouragement — and pushing) to perform your sophomore-year Beginning Dance final as a solo, when your partner didn't show up…
... your junior year dance history final, in the style of Michael Jackson...
… senior year, after being kept out of school for a couple of months, you came back the day before (the day before!) the Winter Concert — and pulled off your part in "Rocka My Soul" with style and aplomb…
… when the whole Dance Production class was asked to come to your Student Study Team meeting, to help keep you on track in your senior year…
… on the way to performing at New Highland Elementary, you grabbed me just before I would have stepped off the curb in front of a car I hadn't seen coming — saying "Mrs. Goodwin, I just saved your life!" (and you did)…
… did I mention your sweet, beautiful smile?…
... and of course, your absolutely invaluable contributions in a class that made some truly meaningful dances together...

You were so much a part of my teaching life for those years, I still can't wrap my head around the idea that you're gone so soon — I will never, never forget you.

Hard news...

I found out this morning that one of my former students from EOSA was shot and killed... Marcus was one of the dancers from 2008, in that amazing class who created the dance about youth killings in Oakland. His entrance words for that piece were "I lost at least three of my friends last year… with all this happening, it makes me think about how much longer I have to live..." I had described EOSA, in my NDEO presentation that year, as a school where kids walk around in t-shirts saying “RIP, gone but not forgotten" and miss school for way too many funerals. And so it goes on...

Rest in peace, Marcus, you were beautiful and will never be forgotten...

Claudia, Marcus, Asia, & Johari

East Oakland student to Mills

I haven't written a lot about my current dance class this year, in large part because it has been one of the most… well, shall we say challenging?.. classes I have taught in all my years of teaching teens — an odd and unfamiliar combination of not taking Dance seriously as a class or subject, but still caring about a good grade. This group has been hard to reach (which is also one reason my blog posts here have been pretty sparse of late).

But we do have small successes, of course, and one came recently in the form of the only senior in the class fall semester. Back in November, we had had the opportunity to attend the Mills College Dance Repertory concert as a field trip (for anyone outside the bay area, Mills is a fairly exclusive private university which boasts one of the preeminent dance programs in the area). Many of the students seemed disengaged during the performance, and needed some reminders about theater etiquette; but this senior was captivated, and talked to me extensively about both the dances she saw and the Mills campus on the way back to school.

Unfortunately, this student had to transfer out of the dance class in order to complete some other credits this semester… But a few weeks ago, she stopped by the class to tell me that she was so taken by the atmosphere on the Mills campus that she had applied there, and had just found out she was accepted! I spoke to her about it again last week, and she said that she was lining up her scholarships and financial aid, and intended to attend Mills in the fall.

The reason this is big news is that, even though Mills is located in East Oakland, just a couple of miles from the inner-city communities where my current students (as well as all my former students from EOSA) live, the low-income students in the community who even aspire to attend Mills are few and far between (those with high aspirations are much more likely to try for the UC system, which is generally much better known). One of my creative dance teaching mentors, herself a Mills graduate, mentioned to me that when her organization began working with the Oakland schools to create an elementary school dance program in the neighborhood, one of her dreams was that she would see an East Oakland student go to Mills… so, one small success from this class!