J. Houston Elementary

Houston!  Eagles!  Houston!  Eagles!  A crowd of 800 children aged four through eleven shout back to Elia Camarillo, a smiling principal in jeans and a blue Houston Eagles t-shirt, holding a microphone. 

“All right Houston Eagles! It’s Friday!  Now I want all of you to show your Houston pride and respect as we list off the birthdays this week!  Ready?” The kids sit cross-legged in rows, grouped by grade level.  Some kids are fidgeting or leaning over to whisper to a friend; others are quietly looking up.  A few walk on tiptoe between their classmates, trying to find a spot to sit on the cafeteria floor. The names are announced with each birthday celebrator standing up and getting a colorful birthday pencil.  Everybody sings “Happy Birthday Cha Cha Cha!” to raucous joyful applause.

I worked for two years at J. Houston Elementary in the Dove Springs neighborhood in southeast Austin. The orderly chaos of morning assembly in the cafeteria was just one of the many ways that the space filled with life and energy.  Later in the morning, while the students were divided up in their classrooms, a group of mothers spent an hour dancing and exercising with Zumba, swinging arms and legs rhythmically with Cumbias, Reggaeton, and Bachatas.  On some days, guest speakers would come; the front half of the cafeteria could be the solar system, and kids would revolve around each other, rotating to demonstrate the gravitational interactions of the heavenly bodies.  On another day, pre-teen musicians would perform, having come from Medez Middle School a few blocks away to demonstrate their instruments.  

At the end of the year, the fifth graders would dress up in their finest dresses, dress shirts, and slacks, proudly marching across the stage as a symbol of their graduation, their progress from elementary school to middle school.  Parents would sit at tables behind them, cheering and taking photos as the fifth graders shook hands with the administrators and took their diplomas.  They, then, ceremoniously served cake and punch to their parents.

Leaving the cafeteria, and walking outside, there are sidewalks; one goes straight toward the Fifth Grade Building and the portables, and another goes left towards the Fourth Grade Buliding and the gymnasium.  Next to the gym is a basketball court with a tall blue tarp spread out above it like a monochromatic circus tent.  This space too was a center of activities and action.

Fall Carnival would appear in October with dozens of games, hundreds of prizes.  Soda bottles set up like bowling pins: if you could throw a ring around one, you could take it home.  Plastic fish in a kiddie pool full of water: if you hooked one with a plastic fishing lure, you would get a real live goldfish in a clear plastic bag full of water.  You would be very lucky if it was alive the next day.  Haunted houses in the small portable classrooms, a train that circled the concrete in between the portables.  Wrappers, plastic bottles, and other assorted food trash littered the grass and dust in between the concrete surfaces.  Teachers, custodians, and perhaps a few kids picked some of it up, and would take care of the rest on Monday.

These memories adjoin with many experiences for me, and I was only there for two years.  My colleagues who have spent 20 or 30 years must have so many more.  The kids, who spend their childhoods there, perhaps even more.  It is a special place, with a core of pride and at times a community spirit that would amaze anyone.