Improvising at Clemente

February 1, 3 hours 15 minutes spent at Roberto Clemente

The writing classes yesterday were shortened to make time for a documentary on racism to commemorate the first day of Black History Month. We didn’t get much accomplished on the writing project with so little time. The students were either continuing their letters from the World War I trenches, or they started researching a figure of the Harlem Renaissance for a one minute presentation at some future point in front of the student body.

The students were working in a very small computer lab because the library was unavailable for some reason.

At the end of the period, I walked with the instructor back to his normal classroom. He asked me if I wanted to hang around and give his World History students a brief presentation on the events happening in Egypt while he retrieved something left behind in the computer room. I’ll tell them you’re a news specialist, he said.

He introduced me as the guest speaker. I greeted the students, took my jacket off, and led a 10-minute talk about the protests in Egypt. They knew the location of the country on the map as well as the historic importance of the Egyptian civilization. We talked about Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, as well as the tension between Israel and the rest of the countries in the Middle East. We also talked about the assassination of Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president who signed the Camp David Peace Accord with Israel, and the ascension of Mubarak 30 years ago. You can understand why the people would want a new president after 30 years, I explained, as well as nervousness of some world leaders about whether a new regime would recognize Egypt’s peace treaties. The U.S. promotes democracies in theory, but sometimes as in the case of Egypt, the U.S. prefers regional stability. (Something to that effect.) Now, when you go home today and hear about the protests on the news, you’ll have an idea of what it’s about, I said.

It was definitely improvisational and kind of fun. I thanked them for letting me talk to them, and stayed for the World History Lesson on the Mongolian invasion of Kiev-Russia.