One of the stories I found when I was down in Guatemala last fall was the plight of indigenous community radio stations. In Guatemala, radio is an incredibly important medium. Much of the population is illiterate or lacks access to print or digital media, so radio is the only way to get information. Also, Guatemala still has a huge indigenous population, so radio serves a huge role in preserving the culture and language of all the individual communities spread throughout the country. You can read my report in this month’s Columbia Journalism Review here.

Here’s some more photos that didn’t make the mag:

I walk through the door of Aspirations High School and into the open lobby. The fluorescent lighting bounces off the clean white linoleum floors and freshly painted white walls with blue trim.

It feels like a hospital.

“Um, excuse me, sir?” A voice barks at me from my periphery. It’s ripe with sass.

I haven’t set foot in the school for thirty seconds, and I’ve already blown the security checkpoint.

Oops.

The nice uniformed security guard takes my ID, lazily fills out a log book and makes me sign my name. I ask her for directions and she vaguely points me to the end of the hall. She snaps her gum loudly at me as if to signify I am someone else’s responsbility now. I turn right down the hall. To the left, in the other half of the building, is another high school, the EBC School. This is a new concept to me. I have always gone to schools that had their own building. Thus, a school is a physical entity defined by its building. Now, I am in one building that houses two schools.

Two minutes in and my mind is already blown.

The secretaries send me further down the hall. I wander down the sterile, well-lit hallway past a hall monitor, perched at the intersection of two paths. From his perch, he can see the end of the hall where the students enter from the outside which is stationed by yet another monitor. These men are not uniformed and are clearly staff members at the school who have a healthy rapport with the students.

I find the classroom I am looking for. Jeff Kaufman, the US history teacher, is a classic New York tough guy with a heart of gold. This former NYPD officer has bushy mustache, a local accent and constantly ends his statements about the state of education with a defeated, “but, hey, what are you gonna do?”

I come right into his classroom and we strike up a conversation. The desks are grouped in pods with tiny computer modules bolted into the center of each. Most of the classrooms are outfitted with these PCs. There is no computer lab here, every class is hooked to the Web. A boy and a girl are at one pod, cutting out templates from a piece of paper. Another boy sits slumped over at a chair with his walker in front of him. He is staring blankly at the front of the class with his headphones turned up.

I assume this is some sort of study hall or free period. I start asking Mr. Kaufman questions about the school. He tells me he has been teaching for 12 years and that makes him one of the oldest people at Aspirations. The staff here is young and progressive. This makes for a fun atmosphere, but things can be a little disorganized.

“It’s a teacher’s dream school,” he says.

He tells me there are 271 students. Not a single one is white. It takes a toll on the kids, makes them feel like a lower class. It doesn’t help that the school is a “transfer” school, which means the population is made up of kids who are overage but still need credits to graduate. Others were kicked out of their old school or had to leave for gang reasons. There is a nursery in the lobby.

Another boy stumbles in. He’s got a Dunkin’ Donuts bag in his hand. His iPod is blasting loud in his ear.

“This is Jamel,” Kaufman says to the boy and me. “Smart kid. I tell ya, if he cared half as much about school as he did music, he could really be something.”

Jamel slumps in his desk then gets out his breakfast and starts eating. Mr. Kaufman pulls out a piece of paper and tells him to get working on his essay.

Then, it dawns on me. This is second period. This is an actual class. Today, four kids showed up for Kaufman’s second period class. His roster shows thirty.

When the bell rings ten minutes later, none of them will have put pencil to paper and even started their essays.

Third period. We move one classroom over. Kaufman is a “traveling teacher.” His next class is a little larger. It starts with six kids and by the time the period is halfway over, the ranks will have swollen to double.

It’s Regents prep week, Kaufman says, which means he has to focus on getting these kids to pass the test which is required for them to receive their diplomas.

He doesn’t hide the fact that expectations are low. He states it plainly at the beginning as he goes over the practice prompt.

“It doesn’t matter what your score is,” he says. “You just have to pass. They don’t care what the number is, as long as its above a certain amount.”

His attitude is probably realistic, but it hurts to watch how plainly both the teachers and students handle the fact that these kids aren’t outstanding. There is no hope that they will be someday.

Just get them to pass.

Every Tuesday around noon, I return home to grab a meal and retreat into my thoughts before returning to class. It also happens that at noon the children of PS 135 descend on the playground outside my window.

I never get the retreat I’m hoping for.

From my perch at my kitchen table, my window is a frame. There is no need for television during lunchtime. The children provide the entertainment. There is every ingredient for compelling drama in the fifth grade: love, heartbreak, jealousy and anger.

They burst from the school doors as though someone has just split open a bag of coffee beans that is straining under the weight of its load.

They pour onto the sidewalk and their voices shake me out of my thoughts and draw me to the window.

The proctor, enlisted in an attempt to bring order, unlocks the padlock barring the children from their sanctuary. He wipes the rust and sweat from the lock on his trousers and the steady stream that built up behind him bursts once more into the yard.

The pigeons that pick at the puddles and candy wrappers from yesterday´s melee launch to the rooftops. Their foraging is stolen away by screams and trampling feet.

The playground is designed for freedom; inside there is space for running, climbing and half of a basketball court. From the outside, the tall black gates block the lot off like a prison yard.

The girls with fluorescent beads in their hair retreat to the fence behind the sole play structure outside my window. Here, I am privy to all their secrets. They bicker over boys, share headphones and flop about to the beat of their iPods.

A lost basketball strays from the court. It rolls into the girls’ forbidden territory. The boys all point to one of their own. A scout is sacrificed to rescue the ball.

The boy keeps his gaze directed at the ball, never straying to eyes. The girls tower over him; their young bodies have matured much quicker than his, giving them a natural advantage. They could eat him alive if they wanted.

i. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
ii. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
iii. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
iv. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
v. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
vi. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

As a journalist, I find that I identify particularly well with rules one, two and three. I often catch myself in lofty sentences overflowing with punctuation and exquisite vocabulary. If I go back in and slash and burn, the outcome is always better.