"The thing of nightmares."
"The aberration of death itself."
"Akin to the death penalty."
What do all of these comments describe? Cannibalism? Taco Bell? Our country's economy?
No.
The New Braunfels High School Freshman World Geography Africa Project
AKA
The Africa Project
This project has served as a rite of passage at the high school for who knows how long now. A successful, professional presentation can leave others in awe and transcend the freshman into the beacon of scholarship. A dreadful presentation can make one sob uncontrollably, pass out, stutterer worse than Elmer Fudd, and otherwise leave one academically scarred and humiliated by their fellow students.
The embarrassment is a lot like this.Not only must you compile detailed information about African countries, keep your eyes peeled to newspapers and periodicals to ensure that the quick-to-change environment of Africa doesn't melt away your entire thesis, and know everything from a nation's flag to the amount of librarians in Morocco, but you also have to present all this information flawlessly and in perfect sync with your team in front of your worst nightmare:
Upperclassmen.
These upperclassmen have survived this project and achieved their rite, and they come back to watch and observe on the panel of this stressful project for four reasons:
1) To get out of their normal, boring class.
2) To make sure the standards they set on their project are being maintained.
3) To look smart in front of faculty and peers.
4) To make the freshmen wish they were getting hit by a train or some other equally as traumatizing and fatal event.
However, some are spared this event. These lucky few are called the Tompkinians. The students of the one and only Mrs. Tompkins who, unlike her ambitious cohorts Brake and Wenzel, made her students merely draw a map of Africa and present it in front of a sleeping audience with no pressure of memorization, or even of research. Heck, I think it was a Daily Grade. However, Tompkins no longer teaches at our school and the incoming students no longer have a possible luck of being spared.
I was spared. Kirby was not.
I remember hearing the stories about this project during our freshman year. I remember hearing about its potent ability to reduce the most stable people I know into a puddle of tears. I continued along obliviously, unaware of the torture these students were experiencing at the front of that room.
That is, until today.
Today I had the unique experience of serving on the Africa Panel in Mr. Brake's classroom during U.S. History. While I never had Brake as a teacher nor did the project myself, Brake and I have worked together to piece together SkillsUSA, my club, this year. This made me feel less guilty about barging in -- Along with Allyson, Rachel, and Evan who were quick to attend and escape the movie-watching, lights-out atmosphere of History. I quickly found a seat and settled down, looking down the panel. What I saw both amused me and perplexed me: juniors and seniors sitting poised in their chairs, ready to strike, atlases as their weapons and laptops as their shields. It was a grim experience that sent me into introspection. "What am I doing here? I don't belong here."
Mr. Brake's class, approximately 2:25 PM, March 11th, 2009
Upperclassmen.
These upperclassmen have survived this project and achieved their rite, and they come back to watch and observe on the panel of this stressful project for four reasons:
1) To get out of their normal, boring class.
2) To make sure the standards they set on their project are being maintained.
3) To look smart in front of faculty and peers.
4) To make the freshmen wish they were getting hit by a train or some other equally as traumatizing and fatal event.
However, some are spared this event. These lucky few are called the Tompkinians. The students of the one and only Mrs. Tompkins who, unlike her ambitious cohorts Brake and Wenzel, made her students merely draw a map of Africa and present it in front of a sleeping audience with no pressure of memorization, or even of research. Heck, I think it was a Daily Grade. However, Tompkins no longer teaches at our school and the incoming students no longer have a possible luck of being spared.
I was spared. Kirby was not.
I remember hearing the stories about this project during our freshman year. I remember hearing about its potent ability to reduce the most stable people I know into a puddle of tears. I continued along obliviously, unaware of the torture these students were experiencing at the front of that room.
That is, until today.
Today I had the unique experience of serving on the Africa Panel in Mr. Brake's classroom during U.S. History. While I never had Brake as a teacher nor did the project myself, Brake and I have worked together to piece together SkillsUSA, my club, this year. This made me feel less guilty about barging in -- Along with Allyson, Rachel, and Evan who were quick to attend and escape the movie-watching, lights-out atmosphere of History. I quickly found a seat and settled down, looking down the panel. What I saw both amused me and perplexed me: juniors and seniors sitting poised in their chairs, ready to strike, atlases as their weapons and laptops as their shields. It was a grim experience that sent me into introspection. "What am I doing here? I don't belong here."
Mr. Brake's class, approximately 2:25 PM, March 11th, 2009
The first group rose and took their stand in the niche Brake had built for them at the front of the class. I'm not sure if it was to protect them from the savagely upperclassmen or to provide a pulpit for their copy-and-paste preach. Two people on the panel I had encountered before. They were friends of Kyle -- Kirby's younger brother -- who attended his birthday party. They seemed pretty shaky as they made their way to the front. Comments such as "Oh, God," and "We're screwed," leaving their breath as they fired up the projector and opened their PowerPoint.
The feast had begun.
"We're doing, uh, North Africa," one timidly quipped. His confidence struck me as flimsy. Allyson tore a piece of paper from her notebook and slid it to me. "We're gonna rip them apart," it read.
Usually, the group presents a type of African food dish to the panel. Partly to demonstrate their understanding of the culture and basic TAKs abilities to read a recipe, but mostly to distract the panel and appease them. It is similar to a sacrifice to some pimpled pantheon. However, Brake decided to not allow this form of bribery. My stomach gurgled as I saw a Pawpaw Muffin flash on the screen: I wanted one.
Hunger aside, I've always been one for the holistic approach: tell them what they do right and build on positive reinforcement (a method that has been endorsed by psychologists and our own Freud: Kilford) and I kept steady on that idea. Evan told me that I was "missing the point" and Allyson assured me that "no one goes easy on them." I was going to try and be different.
The group continued along, each slide trotting past our eyes like a wounded animal. The upperclassmens' stomach pangs were beginning to reach audible levels as they scribbled down notes and went, "Arg---hmm," to themselves, as if starting a snide remark but then swallowing the idea, locking it away in their abdomen. Soon enough, the presentation was over and the group was taking questions.
Hushed whispers spread along the classroom as each panelist raised their hands -- all except for me. I would wait. I need to see what the other panelists thought: I didn't do this project, remember.
"Why did you go through Algeria?" Alex started.
"We, uh--" one quickly replied.
"I'm merely asking because, well, Algeria is full of landmines."
"We were not aware of this---"
"Oh, reaaaaallly?"
"Let him finish," Brake quipped to Alex.
"We, uh, can clear out the landmines. They have a machine now that can roll over the ground and destroy the mines."
I was familiar with this machine. This tank-like vessel was designed to disarm mines after wars. By flailing chains through the ground at a high speed, this machine disarms the mines by actually exploding them. It's effective, but mostly still a prototype.
MV-20 Double Flail-Tiller Heavy Mine Clearing System
The feast had begun.
"We're doing, uh, North Africa," one timidly quipped. His confidence struck me as flimsy. Allyson tore a piece of paper from her notebook and slid it to me. "We're gonna rip them apart," it read.
Usually, the group presents a type of African food dish to the panel. Partly to demonstrate their understanding of the culture and basic TAKs abilities to read a recipe, but mostly to distract the panel and appease them. It is similar to a sacrifice to some pimpled pantheon. However, Brake decided to not allow this form of bribery. My stomach gurgled as I saw a Pawpaw Muffin flash on the screen: I wanted one.
Hunger aside, I've always been one for the holistic approach: tell them what they do right and build on positive reinforcement (a method that has been endorsed by psychologists and our own Freud: Kilford) and I kept steady on that idea. Evan told me that I was "missing the point" and Allyson assured me that "no one goes easy on them." I was going to try and be different.
The group continued along, each slide trotting past our eyes like a wounded animal. The upperclassmens' stomach pangs were beginning to reach audible levels as they scribbled down notes and went, "Arg---hmm," to themselves, as if starting a snide remark but then swallowing the idea, locking it away in their abdomen. Soon enough, the presentation was over and the group was taking questions.
Hushed whispers spread along the classroom as each panelist raised their hands -- all except for me. I would wait. I need to see what the other panelists thought: I didn't do this project, remember.
"Why did you go through Algeria?" Alex started.
"We, uh--" one quickly replied.
"I'm merely asking because, well, Algeria is full of landmines."
"We were not aware of this---"
"Oh, reaaaaallly?"
"Let him finish," Brake quipped to Alex.
"We, uh, can clear out the landmines. They have a machine now that can roll over the ground and destroy the mines."
I was familiar with this machine. This tank-like vessel was designed to disarm mines after wars. By flailing chains through the ground at a high speed, this machine disarms the mines by actually exploding them. It's effective, but mostly still a prototype.
MV-20 Double Flail-Tiller Heavy Mine Clearing SystemAn effective device indeed. I thought it was a good answer, but then I quickly remembered the fact that Discovery Channel's documentary over it was fairly recent and this machine is likely not produced on a large-enough scale to effectively clear Algeria. And, imagine if it was stolen. Would you want to be responsible for this thing traversing the streets of a village or port town? Heck no.
My geeky thoughts dissuaded and I was once again the classroom. We were talking about the pollution of the Nile river, and after a few more good points made by our panel in an attempt to both impress and subdue the project-victims, the group was finished. A heavy applause was given and one of the panelists reached her hand to shake one of the teammate's. The shake was not returned.
Bitterness and disappointment was in the air.
The intermission was hectic. Audible complaints and too-late retorts coming from the back of the class as the group took their seat. One of the students doodled a picture entitled "Algeria Sweeper" on a piece of paper in an attempt to ridicule the traverse through the mine-riddled country by splicing it with the ever-familiar Minesweeper. Soon, Allyson and I were making up t-shirt ideas until I said one that stuck:
"My heart is in Egypt, but my limbs are in Algeria." (I want this as a shirt)
Laughter was shared by the panel but we quickly regained our professionalism as the next group proceeded to the front. I was determined to ask a question this time and not get lost in the thoughts of a mine disarmer.
The next group was oddly confident. It was a silent confidence that was augmented by their professional PowerPoint and well-binded book full of information. I personally found few flaws in the presentation and was overall impressed by their organization and coloring abilities (I have never seen a map colored so nicely).
Slowly, the PowerPoint ticked by. It grew to be entirely too lengthy and I splurged myself in doodles on my supposed comment paper. I remember one of the doodles was a lion and a snake in a fight to the death... But that's largely irrelevant.
In a hilarious feat, the PowerPoint actually crashed when they tried to proceed to the folk tale section. The ever-familiar Windows Vista showed itself and proceeded to interpret its binary into a frank message: "Sorry, PowerPoint has crashed." Sorry... It's almost like it's apologizing. But it doesn't mean it any more than my fellow panelists meant "Okay," or "I see," after receiving an answer to their questions. They were both dully professional and interiorly structured. The panelists did not want an answer to their questions just as much as the computer was incapable of understanding the horrible timing of its crash.
Eventually, Brake got the video to work and soon I was watching the group act out folk lore about a Turtle, Elephant, and King in Africa. The ever-familiar suburban houses of New Braunfels lined the background -- the film was obviously filmed in a greenway built for flooding purposes. My house is right along one, and it struck me as amusing that this Africa Project video was filmed in an environment I live near, and the intrinsic similarities between it an Africa. Interesting, I thought. The video itself was actually quite funny. One of the students was dressed like a turtle -- complete with a shell -- which showed me how much they cared about making a good grade. They cared enough to wear a turtle jumpsuit with a Hobby Lobby felt shell, just for a few points on a rubric. This project goes deeper than a grade, however, and the passion surfaced. The students stared at the video on the screen, the team members chatting among themselves and burying their faces into their papers when they said their lines on the video.
Amusing. It's rare to see a teenage video with violence in it, I mean -- Oh, there it is. A man in a chair goes toppling down a spillway into a dry flooding reservoir. The video clicked to an end and the lights came back on. The group was staring at the panel, fear in their eyes, silence on their tongues.
The panel once again dished out their dose of questions, but the case this time was much more stable and impenetrable. The only discrepancy was calling "African" a language, something that Alex quickly corrected from atop his high throne.
As the last question was answered, the bell rung unexpectedly, sending everyone reaching for their stuff and rubbing their weary eyes. Time had slipped away and the joys of the panel and the woes of the teams were set aside for the day as the afterschool commotion quickly swelled then diffused. The torture for the groups was over for yet another day.
As I slowly made my way home, I began to think about what I had just experienced. The Africa Project is some sort of social norm that has embedded itself deeply into the culture of our high school. It highlights the students who excel in professionalism and ridicule the ones who crack under pressure. The project is a prime demonstration of time management. It supplies a flippant tool for upperclassmen to manipulate to their will, and a blank canvas for incoming students to prove themselves upon. It represents the clean slate of your academic life when you come into the 9th grade. You can paint a Picasso or scar scribbles onto the canvas -- But what you can achieve is totally dependent on you. I feel it epitomizes the mindset one must possess in high school, and despite the fact that I never experienced it, I openly endorse it.
It's not unlike a bird's first fly from a nest. A really, really high nest that overlooks some sort of chasm that represents all your deepest fears and teenage faux pas. The nest represents your time in school up until high school, and the sky represents your future, the many clouds symbolizing the future colleges you may consider in years to come. In this situation, when you spread your wings for the first time, the only advice I can offer is: don't look down, look up. The sun is blinding, but the warmth it provides is critical to the nurturing of your success.
Spread your wings and soar among the greatest minds of our generation, and the wind will be on your back.
-Andrew
My geeky thoughts dissuaded and I was once again the classroom. We were talking about the pollution of the Nile river, and after a few more good points made by our panel in an attempt to both impress and subdue the project-victims, the group was finished. A heavy applause was given and one of the panelists reached her hand to shake one of the teammate's. The shake was not returned.
Bitterness and disappointment was in the air.
The intermission was hectic. Audible complaints and too-late retorts coming from the back of the class as the group took their seat. One of the students doodled a picture entitled "Algeria Sweeper" on a piece of paper in an attempt to ridicule the traverse through the mine-riddled country by splicing it with the ever-familiar Minesweeper. Soon, Allyson and I were making up t-shirt ideas until I said one that stuck:
"My heart is in Egypt, but my limbs are in Algeria." (I want this as a shirt)
Laughter was shared by the panel but we quickly regained our professionalism as the next group proceeded to the front. I was determined to ask a question this time and not get lost in the thoughts of a mine disarmer.
The next group was oddly confident. It was a silent confidence that was augmented by their professional PowerPoint and well-binded book full of information. I personally found few flaws in the presentation and was overall impressed by their organization and coloring abilities (I have never seen a map colored so nicely).
Slowly, the PowerPoint ticked by. It grew to be entirely too lengthy and I splurged myself in doodles on my supposed comment paper. I remember one of the doodles was a lion and a snake in a fight to the death... But that's largely irrelevant.
In a hilarious feat, the PowerPoint actually crashed when they tried to proceed to the folk tale section. The ever-familiar Windows Vista showed itself and proceeded to interpret its binary into a frank message: "Sorry, PowerPoint has crashed." Sorry... It's almost like it's apologizing. But it doesn't mean it any more than my fellow panelists meant "Okay," or "I see," after receiving an answer to their questions. They were both dully professional and interiorly structured. The panelists did not want an answer to their questions just as much as the computer was incapable of understanding the horrible timing of its crash.
Eventually, Brake got the video to work and soon I was watching the group act out folk lore about a Turtle, Elephant, and King in Africa. The ever-familiar suburban houses of New Braunfels lined the background -- the film was obviously filmed in a greenway built for flooding purposes. My house is right along one, and it struck me as amusing that this Africa Project video was filmed in an environment I live near, and the intrinsic similarities between it an Africa. Interesting, I thought. The video itself was actually quite funny. One of the students was dressed like a turtle -- complete with a shell -- which showed me how much they cared about making a good grade. They cared enough to wear a turtle jumpsuit with a Hobby Lobby felt shell, just for a few points on a rubric. This project goes deeper than a grade, however, and the passion surfaced. The students stared at the video on the screen, the team members chatting among themselves and burying their faces into their papers when they said their lines on the video.
Amusing. It's rare to see a teenage video with violence in it, I mean -- Oh, there it is. A man in a chair goes toppling down a spillway into a dry flooding reservoir. The video clicked to an end and the lights came back on. The group was staring at the panel, fear in their eyes, silence on their tongues.
The panel once again dished out their dose of questions, but the case this time was much more stable and impenetrable. The only discrepancy was calling "African" a language, something that Alex quickly corrected from atop his high throne.
As the last question was answered, the bell rung unexpectedly, sending everyone reaching for their stuff and rubbing their weary eyes. Time had slipped away and the joys of the panel and the woes of the teams were set aside for the day as the afterschool commotion quickly swelled then diffused. The torture for the groups was over for yet another day.
As I slowly made my way home, I began to think about what I had just experienced. The Africa Project is some sort of social norm that has embedded itself deeply into the culture of our high school. It highlights the students who excel in professionalism and ridicule the ones who crack under pressure. The project is a prime demonstration of time management. It supplies a flippant tool for upperclassmen to manipulate to their will, and a blank canvas for incoming students to prove themselves upon. It represents the clean slate of your academic life when you come into the 9th grade. You can paint a Picasso or scar scribbles onto the canvas -- But what you can achieve is totally dependent on you. I feel it epitomizes the mindset one must possess in high school, and despite the fact that I never experienced it, I openly endorse it.
It's not unlike a bird's first fly from a nest. A really, really high nest that overlooks some sort of chasm that represents all your deepest fears and teenage faux pas. The nest represents your time in school up until high school, and the sky represents your future, the many clouds symbolizing the future colleges you may consider in years to come. In this situation, when you spread your wings for the first time, the only advice I can offer is: don't look down, look up. The sun is blinding, but the warmth it provides is critical to the nurturing of your success.
Spread your wings and soar among the greatest minds of our generation, and the wind will be on your back.
-Andrew
Totally, completely, epically true. I know this from first hand experience... The Africa Project, to this day, has been the only time I cried on the phone with a teacher (Wenzel :)). But overall it really hits as one of the most important events that occur in a poor fish's life. I learned a lot, gained a lot, lost a lot, cried a lot. The atmosphere with the panel and those put in the spotlight is intense. It was also totally, completely, and epically worth it though! (got a 100 on my Africa project!)
ReplyDeleteI too was a fellow Tompkinians. A victim of terrible teaching, never going through the traditional initiation of what high school is all about. However I gave still found my place through other ways, I do wish I could go back and experience the heart ache and tears that my many friends have. It truly gives you this unbreakable bond. They all went through it together and now it is their turn to strike back. What a wonderfully brutal cycle. I can’t wait for more post to come. I was clenching my stomach with laughter the whole time. (P.S, keep me posted on the shirts)
ReplyDeleteAhh... the Africa Project... I'm so sorry it's over...
ReplyDelete