My Cardboard Balcony

This Concrete Jungle by Belinda Roddie This concrete jungle is too harsh and cold for me to stay here, stewing over bad coffee, old newspapers, a crumbling scone, counting all the ulcers I've had this week on one hand. I'm as skeletal as my aged car, pathetic, rusted in the lot, waiting for me to take it wheezing back home so I can watch cable until I can no longer keep my eyes open. When I leave the coffee shop, I drop a dime into a panhandler's cup. He's pissed that I didn't leave him more. I'm ready to plant my shoe in his teeth, but then I find myself remembering God's jaundiced eye.

The projector in the classroom was broken, so I couldn't show the movie like I wanted to. Instead, I had the students bust out the smartphones and cameras and see if they could make their own movies. What started as individual tomfoolery, to my initial shock and my resulting admiration, turned into a class-wide act of cooperation. At first, students just wanted to make their own single goofy videos. Now, they wanted to create an entire group production.