Sandy Saturdays at Seven

"School activity" usually involves a few disgruntled students, and one or two quick-tempered teachers who bark out instructions. It's an activity scheduled for every other Saturday morning at 7:00am; all the students must show up and clean the school or weed the yard for a couple hours. It is not fun for anyone. I avoid it whenever I can.

But the tasks involved in constructing a library were such that 1,000 extra pairs of helping hands were of much use. Thus, many Saturday morning school activities were dedicated to the library. This worried me. The students dread activity - sometimes it's used as a punishment for late or disruptive students - and the teachers don't want to be put in charge of it. Wouldn't this be a bad way to start the library, with dread and obligation? Then, I imagined, after the library was finished, kids would associate the library with punishment, exhaustion, and working under the hot sun on an empty stomach.

I warily eyed the students on the first day of school activity. They looked tired and grumpy before even starting. Lots had shown up, but it was mandatory, after all. The director addressed the students.

"Today, everyone carries sand up from the river."

There was a collective groan.

"How many bucketfuls per person?" Someone had the courage to ask.

"Five buckets!" The top of the director's head barely comes up to my nose, but his word is the law.

Even bigger groans, and exclamations of "what!" "that's too much!" "sand is so heavy!" The director teased the students, saying each bucket had to be full to the top, and, wait a second, maybe it should be seven buckets per person? The students got bolder and cried out in protest. It was settled that each student would carry three buckets of sand from the river, to eventually be mixed with cement to build the library walls. The students went off to the river, dragging their feet and empty sacks behind them.

Twenty minutes later, the students started returning, each with a different recipient full of sand. One teacher was assigned to keep track of how many buckets each student deposited in the growing sand mountain. The students tried to trick the teacher and not fill up the buckets all the way, or say they had completed their three buckets, when they actually had done only two. I put my hand in my pockets to keep from throwing them up in exasperation.

Then I remembered the little black bag hanging over my shoulder. I took out the camera and aimed the lens at a nearby sand depositer.

The first few pictures went by unnoticed, but then a couple students started coming up to me to see the images in the small screen.

"Hey, there I am!"

"Wait, take one of me, too!"

"Oh my god, look how I came out in this one!"

"Over here, take one of me sitting here!"

"Teacher, teacher! Another one of me by myself!"

School activity was suddenly full of laughs and shouts and students almost knocking me over trying to see their pictures. Fingers reached out to touch the fancy machine. Kids struck either their sexiest or their toughest poses for me to capture. They jostled me in excitement. They called their friends over and posed again and again.

For twenty minutes, I was the Cool Teacher, and for the same twenty minutes, school activity was fun.  The students worked with renewed vigor, trying to show off for the camera.

We each need something to work for. Where does motivation come from? It can come from something as small as freezing a moment in time with a camera, but when it is present, it's everything.