troup school
in third grade our school formed a relationship with an inner city school in New Haven named Troup School. i don’t really know what brought this about or why, but i think it was so that we would learn how to interact with African-American children. this experience was advertised to us as an opportunity to make friends and colleagues for life, people with whom to share our experiences in elementary school. when the students from Troup School arrived, we assembled into our assigned groups and sat uncomfortably at our tables, awaiting further instruction. it was very awkward that first day, as anytime kids meet other kids they are invariably shy and uneasy. we basically just sat together, wishing the teachers would intervene or that it would be time for them to go. for some reason the teachers expected us to jump into discussion as if we were close friends with strong conversational skills. perhaps a spirited discussion on the subject of civil rights. maybe a heated debate on the pros and cons of affirmative action. but we were kids. we looked down, we looked up, we looked at the clock, we looked at each other, we looked at the teacher. it was rather uncomforable and we didn’t know why the teachers weren’t doing anything. eventually, seeing their best laid plans sputtering, the teachers finally handed out worksheets for us all to complete in our groups. the time passed. for our second meeting, we went to visit troup school. the day before going, we all practiced for the trip. one person would ask, “Where are weeeee?”, and the next kid would answer, “Troup School, sir!” and salute. i think it was pretty funny for something a bunch of 8 year-olds came up with. so we made our trip and took a tour of their school and did some random arts and crafts stuff in our groups and then came home. we had a few more such meetings and then for some reason this Troup School fad waned and we never heard anything about it again. perhaps the teachers thought we had successfully learned how to interact with a race other than our own and that was that. perhaps the folks at Troup School had had enough of our rich snobbery. whatever the reason, it was a short-lived but long-remembered experience. for years afterward, we would randomly come up to one another in class and demand “Where are weeeee?”
