The Artist

My seventeenth birthday was definitely one to remember. I was volunteering with a non-profit for low-income English language learners and elementary students who were behind in their reading skills. Each day, the students learned about a different literary device. On August 2, 2017, the topic of the day was symbolism, and the students were asked […]

My seventeenth birthday was definitely one to remember.

I was volunteering with a non-profit for low-income English language learners and elementary students who were behind in their reading skills. Each day, the students learned about a different literary device. On August 2, 2017, the topic of the day was symbolism, and the students were asked to draw symbols they knew to begin the lesson.

The group of two boys and one girl at my table drew everything from the golden arches of McDonald’s to the Nike swoosh. As I walked around the table to make sure each student was doing their assigned task, I saw it. The same student who had forgotten the “e” at the end of the word blue, could not pronounce the word “laugh” and who struggled to write and spell her own last name just the day prior, had drawn a backwards swastika, with the word nazi written in capital letters just above it. The word was spelled without any errors.

As a Jewish, mixed race person who was always taught to recoil from swastikas, it took me a minute to realize what had just happened. I immediately grabbed the drawing, and presented it to the program director. A horrified expression appeared on his face, and we immediately took the kids outside to the patio for a discussion about why the drawing was unacceptable.

On the way outside, the question “Am I in trouble?” was repeated more times than I can count. While the only one who did something wrong was the artist, we took the other students outside so they could all hear why drawing swastikas is not allowed.

The student, who I privately thought of as “The Artist,” said that she first learned of the symbol at school, and thought that because she learned about it in the classroom she could draw it in other places.

After the program director gave a Cliff Notes version of the Holocaust, we went back inside to re-join the rest of the class. An hour later, the day ended, and everyone went home. When students and volunteers came back the next afternoon, the only one who never returned was the artist.