In our wide and chilly central meeting room, I find book bags wildly scattered about the room. A mess of teenagers have forgone the neat circle of chairs to convene in the middle of the room.
The mission seems simple; they want to mimic the dance steps Kendra has designed. I hear the simultaneous snap she has integrated into her steps and the bursts of laughter that follow their inability to all achieve the perfect synchronized timing.
They entice me to attempt the same moves. We laugh even harder at my inability to hit the beat Kendra has created. Our laughter ushers Miss Nancy into the room, who looks like she doesn’t know whether to fire me for encouraging them, or use this opportunity to add new steps to the upcoming Girls Club performance.
Laughlin Memorial Chapel, where we are gathered, is tucked between the hills of Ohio and West Virginia and sits a few blocks from the Ohio River. Each day nearly 200 students from kindergarten through high school meet for an after-school program.
What’s really special about the chapel is that it constantly defies stereotypes, particularly those about Appalachia. I am from Appalachia and sometimes hear the crude jokes and harsh assumptions outsiders make about my home. Those remarks always feel more like accusations about the inadequacies of my culture. Then the memories of working at the chapel come to me.
This memory debunks three myths.
First, it debunks the myth that Appalachia is all white. Outsiders who volunteered at the chapel would scramble to hide their surprise that we served predominately African-American students. We operated (and they still do) with a small staff and partnered with a number of local colleges and service organizations to get temporary volunteers who needed service hours. While I was there I taught a second and third grade after-school class and worked as an evening youth advisor.
Second, the center illustrates that dancing in Appalachia is more than fiddles and strumming guitars or that hip-hop only occurs in urban centers.
And finally, contrary to people who believe my birthplace to be an intolerant one, we celebrate tolerance and diversity. I think of those days at the chapel and recall how the students there invited visitors to eat with them during dinner and dance with them after. On these occasions they danced to the rhythm of tolerance, and taught the same steps to our guests. On those evenings I saw many minds be nourished by more than food and physical activity.
Yahn is a middle school language arts teacher in Ohio.
Links:
[1] http://www.tolerance.org/author/jacqueline-yahn