RE F L E CT IONS
COLIN HOGAN ’13
n
a
e
M
t
I
s
e
o
What D
To S erve?
Colin was a participant in the Prep’s first
Trip to the Center for Working Families
(formerly Working Boys Center) in Quito,
Ecuador. Colin attended Williams College.
After graduating in 2017 Colin joined Teach
for America. He taught Algebra for the past
two years at North Panola High School in
Sardis, Mississippi.
I work as a math teacher in a public high
school in rural Mississippi. When I met
my students, they did not trust me at all.
Directions to the class were ‘misheard.’
School policies were twisted and broken.
The kids were trying to push me away. It’s
a kind of test that I’ve seen them run on
other newbies, to see how hard a person will
fight for them. And I have to admit that it’s
a successful strategy. New teachers must
confront and understand their motivations,
or, like so many others, they will burn out.
Though I’ve passed the initial test (I hope),
I still think about my own motivations a lot.
A frequent starting point in my reflections
is a service trip to Ecuador in the summer
Being in Ecuador was a
catalyst for my personal
identity, shaping how I saw
my place in the world.
18
RAMVIEW
of 2012. My younger eyes saw the trip as
something to help defray the Prep’s service
requirement. Thinking about it more back
then, I knew it could be useful practice
for Spanish classes. Some truly deep
reflection illuminated the usefulness of
pocketing a “transformative” experience
before the impending college application
season. And as our departure date came
ever nearer, I repeatedly imagined the ways
South America would fulfill my previously
unknown desire to travel. It was a busy
spring ruminating so many advantages and
possibilities. Thankfully my mom found time
to bake cookies for the bake sales, which
I usually sold in the commons during free
periods. And when my parents’ friends
donated to the trip, I duly thanked them with
scribbled notes on appropriate stationery.
Finally school ended, and bags had to be
packed. I found myself in the international
terminal of the Miami airport when I
wondered for the first time, what does it
actually mean to serve somebody? A shrug,
like a breeze below a falling leaf, was
enough to carry the thought out of mind. I
boarded the plane, Auntie Anne’s in hand.
But this particular question would act more
like a seed, as it eventually settled and over
time grew large. Just recently, I fretted in
my journal: “To this day I am affected by the
complex emotions and hard lessons from
that summer.” Dr. Lee recoils somewhere at
the passive voice, but I mean that sentence
earnestly. The selfishness I brought with
me to Ecuador is easy to recast as myopic,
or uninformed. But the misguided kid
selling cookies forecasted with astonishing
accuracy: I did have an amazing experience
traveling to South America; I did light a fire in
myself to speak and understand languages;
and I did find the trip so “transformative”
that I included it in the story I told about
myself on applications and elsewhere. Since
Ecuador I have wrestled with what it means
to serve, that very same question I once
shrugged away. And as I practice the idea of
service in my life, the word has accrued more
connotations, nuances, and sharp edges
than it had when I read it on the banner of
Fordham Prep, not so long ago.
For example, there is always selfishness
in service. Fundamentally, service implies
inequality, so it often must grapple with
paternalism and prejudice. And, depending
on who serves whom, the distribution of
power will either re-organize or entrench
itself. A quote attributed to Lilla Watson
challenges me to examine my own
motivations to serve:
curfew, high school kids from the Bronx
and Quito found ourselves laughing and
exhausted, immune to a flurry of Spanglish
scolding. We felt connected. But those guys
knew injustice before their teachers told
them about it. I can’t help but wonder if they
remember our two weeks fondly, or even at
all? Are the parades of American teenagers
“transformative” in their lives?
In Mississippi, my students have shared their
experiences and opinions regarding people
who ship in to help them. They know how
quickly people can pass through their lives
and how little their intentions mean. Trust
is not easily won, because after projects
collapse no one stays to help sweep up the
ashes. The cruel irony is not lost on them
that while doors open and praise heaps
for adults who serve in their Title 1 school,
the same doors close and derisions grind
against the students who graduate. In fact,
it is because of those who came “to help”
that it is all the harder to know or accept
true service.
Where I work is not like Fordham Prep, but
it does make me immensely grateful for
Fordham, the communities I found there,
and its mission of service. As Fordham Prep
celebrates 25 years of its Service Immersion
program, I am proud that I can associate
myself with its many accomplishments.
The homes built in Appalachia, the
support for institutions serving the poor
around the world, and the meals served
at P.O.T.S. in the Prep’s own shadow
altogether demonstrates a commitment to
transnational justice without neglecting the
needs of the local community. I believe that
the Service Immersion program is a robust
answer for how to shape men at a time when
masculinity itself is undergoing needed
critique and reform. It is an impressive
legacy for one school.
Yet, for the young men who today walk below
the word ‘Service’ on their school’s banner,
it is not the school’s legacy or mission that
truly concerns them. As every person does,
each aches to know his own legacy, though
it is not yet written. In their lives, all will
write and re-write the words to carry on their
own banners. Words like leader, visionary,
partner. Having attended Fordham Prep,
these men are more likely to be shapers of
our world than many of their peers. I contend
that to lead, to build, and to love effectively,
these men must first serve. There is no
leadership without service. Bryan Stevenson
says, “You can’t understand most of the
important things from a distance…. You
have to get close.” The Service Immersion
program, as I understand it, is practicing
getting close. It is one beginning from which
young men can find out for themselves, what
does it means to serve.
If you have come here to help me, you are
wasting your time. But if you have come
because your liberation is bound up with
mine, then let us work together.
When the wheels left the Miami tarmac in
2012, I was going “to help.” I did not possess
enough empathy to see the world outside
of my own experience, so I could not have
sought something like liberation for others.
I did not know of a world that was restrictive
or coercive, so I could not have known to
challenge it for myself. I disagree, however,
that my time was ill-spent. Being in Ecuador
was a catalyst for my personal identity,
shaping how I saw my place in the world.
Part of my story and my privilege is that I
could study, discuss, and observe inequality
before I had to live with it. I think about
the kids we played soccer with in Ecuador
underneath the thick, black nights. The
games went so late that people at the Center
would shut off the lights over the dusty field
to shoo us inside. Long after our supposed
SUMMER 2019
19