The Pros and Cons of Ceding Control

I sit in the parlor of the homeless shelter, lost in the scene unfolding across the room. On a sofa sits Megan, one of my Introduction to Journalism students; beside her is Mesline, the Haitian shelter resident whom Megan was interviewing.

But they aren’t looking at each other. Instead, they both stare at Fanta, who is doing the translating between Megan’s English and Mesline’s Haitian Creole.

Communication comes in fits and starts. Sometimes it takes short conversations between interviewee and interpreter before, finally, an answer of some sort emerges in English. Sometimes that answer is no: Mesline tells the interpreter when a topic is too painful to share, and the student has to improvise.

Unfortunately, the most painful experiences make for the best material. In this case, the interviewee had first traveled from Haiti to Brazil, then walked and rode her way through nine countries, including the notoriously dangerous Darién Gap and the some of the most challenging provinces in Mexico. She managed all this with one child alongside her and another in her womb, only a few months from birth.

As I observe, I keep glancing toward my student interviewer, wondering what’s going on in her mind. Megan’s blessed with a resting smile, no matter what’s going on, but I noticed her glance down at her questions, which seemed less and less likely to be answered. For two months I’d been coaching the class on writing and then ordering questions in a way that made for natural, easy conversation, even as I warned the students that conversations have free will, defying existing order. This was clearly one of the latter. I could imagine Megan, a perfectionist with her prose, hiding some anxiety behind that smile.

I could relate. For the entire semester, I have been projecting confidence that this was all going to work out, even as I fretted that it might all implode.

Sure, as both a teacher of service-learning courses and the director of a service-learning program, I’ve always felt that the getting students to work in the unpredictable world beyond campus is one of the strongest arguments for the discipline. Whether a college calls its program community service learning, community-based learning or civic engagement, the opportunity to engage with people different from themselves, facing challenges beyond the students’ experience, can provide a kind of learning that, unlike 90 percent of what I say in class, they are likely to remember decades from now.

And for student journalists, there’s no replacing the education of having to secure their own interviews with strangers, figuring out locations and times, and living with the uncertainty of working in a world in which people aren’t paid to build their schedules, or even their email habits, around the convenience of students. When teaching people to do the dance between patience and persistence, some unpredictably, even some chaos, can be a good thing.

But that means I’m bringing that much chaos into my own life. This past spring, my 18 students had to do two stories apiece that would be read by a broader audience. The second of those assignments, this one, involved interviewing and writing custom pieces for two agencies who served the homeless: In The Hour of Need Family Shelter (where we now sit) and Central Massachusetts Housing Alliance, providing both with articles that the agencies could to use for publicity and fundraising. That means we have to depend on two or more folks from outside the campus to make each story happen. If there is some kind of multiplier-effect formula that measures the chances of an endeavor failing, our probability is way higher than that of my colleagues who simply give lectures and grade papers.

One would think I would be used to this by now, that I would easily summon the same sense of bemused adventure as my dear friend Esteban Loustaunau, one of the most imaginative practitioners of service learning I’ve ever known. During one Christmas break, Esteban sent me a detailed email in which he unpacked a challenging problem he was having in designing his spring course. He outlined an intimidating series of what-ifs that came with choosing a community partner, imagining all the ways his plan could go wrong. But at email’s end, I could almost hear Esteban’s cheerful laughter as he signed off with, “Oh, well, I’m optimistically clueless!”

I found spiritual wisdom in this—so much so that I made it an inspirational slide in our annual retreat. I don’t mean that we’re truly clueless. We obviously design courses and build the necessary relationships and agreements before a semester begins. But the best plans can fall through. There’s something to be said for the students seeing that the professor is stepping out from behind the lectern and facing uncertainty with a sense of calmness and confidence, showing faith that if we keep doing the work, in the end we will find a way to solve every problem and get the job done. And in the process, my students will meet extraordinary people working to help the homeless, the kind of folks who complicate their view of the world, inspire their future choices as citizens and, of course, build their confidence as journalists.

Which brings us back to Megan, whose interview has become even more tortuous. Mesline’s 6-year-old has joined us—as has the baby Mesline carried inside her for those thousands of miles. Megan waits patiently during all the adult oohs and aahs that a baby often solicits. Mesline opens her blouse and, in an English 202 first, continues the interview while breastfeeding. Still more folks interrupt to adore the baby, who is sometimes passed from person to person during the conversation. Knowing the story, the odds against this family making it this far, this baby, even in this ordinary room, seems extraordinary. Miraculous.

When Megan and I walk out later, we linger on the shelter’s lawn. I ask her what her plan is now that the original concept has gone down in flames. We agree that what actually happened is better than anything we could have planned for: The story of a group of people on very different journeys coming together in one New England living room, helping one brave mother tell her story in a new tongue. The story wasn’t about just her; it was about the loving community of the shelter, gathering around her and help her move forward, helping Megan tell the story, which, of course, will, in one form or another, become part of the story of In the Hour of Need.

They also helped this anxious professor, the one who had been wondering if he had courted disaster one time too many—the 66-year-old part-time idealist who had only the week before wondered, in the words similar to those uttered by many an aging action star, “Am I getting too old for this?” Within weeks, I would be sitting in a cafe, writing this essay, even as my imagination leaps ahead to next year’s partnership.