Reflecting on My Time At Tunbridge

This past week was my second visit to Tunbridge Public Charter School, where I am working with Ms. Stafford and her 3^rd grade class. Tunbridge is different from the other schools I have visited because it has students from all over the city, and is more diverse than the typical Baltimore public school. The class I have been placed in has many excellent, and well-adjusted students; however, there are two students who have recently become behaviorally concerning, distracting the class, insulting the teacher, and being overall quite unruly. Both of my visits I have spent time with these two boys, trying to help them stay on task and work on their behavior during lessons. My first visit was quite frustrating, as I did not seem to make any difference in keeping the boys from being trouble during class time, but my second visit I was greeted by one of the boys, and he was much more responsive to my efforts this time around. By the end of my two hours there, he had even been invited to join his peers on the rug during teaching time, which he had not been permitted to do in a few weeks, and I could see his excitement when his classmates went so far as to congratulate him on being so well behaved. Although my first visit was frustrating, and I felt I had not made any difference, I clearly had an impact on at least one of the students I worked with, as he went out of his way to behave for me during my next visit. This week’s readings focused a lot on how minor things may not seem like a big deal to one person, but from another’s perspective it is endlessly significant.

            In “The Cask of Amontillado”, our narrator opens the story by proclaiming his hatred for his one-time friend Fortunado, although he does not give us reason for the sudden change in this relationship. He lures Fortunado into his dungeon-like basement by telling him he has wine for him to taste. After getting his friend sufficiently drunk on wine, our narrator lures him into a small nook, chains him to a stone, and seals the entrance with bricks, where his body has still not been discovered some 50 years later. Throughout the story, as our narrator leads Fortunado closer and closer to his death, he remains oblivious to his impending doom. It is interesting that whatever Fortunado has done was bad enough to warrant his murder, but was so insignificant to him that even as he is sealed into his tomb, he cannot fathom any reason why his friend would do this to him, and interprets his predicament as a joke. Clearly, in this case, Fortunado has done something that had a great impact on our narrator, without thinking twice about it.

            A similar message plays out quite differently in “My Papa’s Waltz”. This poem tells us about a moment the speaker shared with his father that clearly stands out to him. This moment from when the speaker was a “small boy” sticks with him so strongly that even so many years later he can still remember the vivid details of this night. Considering how strongly the smell of whiskey is described on the father’s breath, he likely does not remember this night too well, it may not have been particularly significant to him. Like Fortunado’s slight, the actions of this night resonated with the speaker of the poem, also in this case in a more positive tone.

            This week’s final reading, “Cincinnati”, is about the speaker moving to a new city, where they hope to find liberation in the fact that no one there knows them. This is short lived as they encounter an insult thrown at them in passing, which manages to cling to them, ruining their feeling of freedom. Again, we have someone who has made a comment in passing, one that they probably have not spent too much time thinking about, but radically changed the experience of another, completely shattering their newfound sense of identity. All three of these stories show us ways in which things which we do not give a second thought to can completely overwhelm the life of another, in a positive or negative way. This is an important thing for us to remember every day in our lives, it is the reason we need to engage in opportunities like service-learning, and it is the way we must approach service towards others, such as my interactions with the children at Tunbridge.