A to B: Morgan Camu, Ed.L.D.’14

I was eight years old when I ran away from home. I carried a bright red backpack and a box of Oreos. I was going to Japan, but I got a bit confused when I arrived at the corner of Elm Street and Carlton Drive. Was Japan to the left or to the right?

A hundred yards into my trek, my dad pulled up alongside me in the family’s powder blue minivan. Knowing better than to order me in the car, he slowly coasted the van as he teased me with questions. Where was I going? How was I going to cross an ocean? Could he come along? No. I remembered the way his eyes watered choking on his morning coffee after hearing me declare: I’m going to be a professional sumo wrestler when I grow up. Could he come with me to Japan? Nope.

After patiently listening through the rolled-down passenger side window, my dad proposed a compromise. If I agreed to not go to Japan, he would try and find some outlet for my passion closer to home. Being a kid from suburban Florida, the closest I got was tumbling classes and watching WWE matches after school and on the weekends. While I never donned a green mawashi or stomped around a dohyo, I felt like my dad got me.

I discovered this career aspiration a few months earlier, sitting in an Asian supermarket and watching a grainy, black and white image of two men, larger than life, crouched close to the ground. They powerfully pounded their feet and slapped their thighs before charging headlong into one another. The excitement of the audience was palpable even through muted television speakers and I watched, riveted, by these superheroes with super powers.

As a child, I was captivated by people who executed spectacular feats that defied mortality and the laws of physics. I marveled at window washers who bravely dangled from the sky. I sat transfixed watching surfers glide down waves of blue glass. I believed that magic tricks were, in fact, magical. Wanting to leverage the transformative power of optimism and adventure, I turned to teaching. I had no formal training, had never considered the profession, but had all the hubris and naivety of a 22-year-old in spades. I believed that through energetic catchphrases and trite fortune-cookie wisdom, I would empower my students to greatness.

I was wrong.

My high school students, still children in my eyes, did not marvel; they did not hope. Each night, they sat on rickety front-porch swings and watched weeds overtake rusted and idle tractors. They lived with their kin in dilapidated one-room houses, some with a functioning outhouse in the backyard. They walked to school on gravel roads, and for many, the furthest they had ever traveled was across county lines for football games. They rarely made a fuss, barely spoke in class, and moved, like Mike Alston, through the hallways, detached and dispassionate.

Mike was an ideal football lineman. With his large and sturdy frame, he effectively intimidated his opponents and fiercely protected his quarterback. He slouched in the back of my third-period physical science class, unmoving and unresponsive, avoiding eye contact with the rest of his classmates. Mike languished in this class for the third consecutive semester, having failed it the two previous times, and unceremoniously represented the oldest student in the class as he neared his twentieth birthday.

But Mike, I learned, was smart. Really smart. He not only had a proclivity for numbers and could do computations in his head with incredible speed and accuracy, but he could also simplify complex physics principles through quick demonstrations and anecdotes. But there he sat, day-in and day-out, never moving and barely breathing. While I had traded in my mawashi for a mint green scarf and my classroom hardly resembled the grandeur of a dohyo, I channeled the sheer will of my childhood idols. I hurled my words and emotions at Mike, imploring him to believe in his own greatness. I watched him up-close and at a distance scanning for cues of what he was thinking and feeling. I left him notes that praised his accomplishments and pushed his thinking. What started as an uneven match, with my aggressive advances, became more balanced as Mike found his voice and verbalized his self-doubts and anxieties.

One afternoon served as a defining moment in our relationship. We would use the conversations from that afternoon as a catalyst for smaller incremental changes over the course of the semester. I would often sit on the sidelines and watch him play football, crouched low to the ground with his hands out in front, and if I tilted my head slightly and the light was just right, I could swear that I was watching a majestic sumo wrestler in action.

— Morgan Camu, Ed.L.D.’14, is the chief academic officer at Participate Learning, a global education company based in North Carolina. Camu oversees all of the teaching and learning work for their network of more than 1200 international teachers and 400 partners schools

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