A Flicker of Fall...My Reflection by Mia Tsui, America SCORES Bay Area Program Manager

A Flicker of Fall...My Reflection

BY MIA TSUI, America SCORES Bay Area Program Manager

 

My years always contain eight digits.

2006-2007. Senior year of high school.

2009-2010. The year I learned to speak Italian.

2012-2013. My first year as a San Franciscan :o)

Maybe it's unfair to make it seem like I thought of this, since I've been conditioned for at least 17 years of my not-much-longer life to see the units as carrying over across January, with little islands of summer in between. Even now though, whether it’s the early morning frost on the ground in Boston, or driving the Bay Bridge at a very special moment in twilight, there’s something about fall that is charged with excitement and possibility, making me feel ready for anything.

I was lucky growing up; back-to-school to me meant the excitement of seeing my friends and doing science experiments, group projects and going outside, playing on teams. There are lots of ways to learn, and even though I loved school it’s hard for me to say I remember much of what I was told in a classroom. I don’t think that matters though, because at the end of the day the most important lessons are ones that can only be taught in ways that force you to learn them for yourself.

School, I imagine, will always be a place for facts and lectures and homework. I’m proud that at America SCORES, we make richer what ‘school’ can mean to our students. Our program complements a traditional classroom setting using sports and arts to teach those lessons that if at the end of the day our students only learn, we want to be the ones.

Yesterday, on a little farm celebrating the harvest moon festival, I found myself kneeling with my palms on the dirt, feeling the familiar surge of excitement that comes of seeing pumpkins on the ground and feeling September air against arms not yet clad in sleeves. When we get school right, it doesn’t have to feel like ‘school;’ school is what comes with us everywhere we go with wide eyes open ready to take in beauty and never stop learning how to learn.

Mia is a musician, amazing chef and also an avid gymnast!