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The Street Game Challenge |
Kids from a poor city neighborhood make up imaginative street games to amuse and challenge each other. Different gangs form and develop rivalries. To keep the peace, a school counselor organizes a competition between the gangs using the various street games. The competition winds up uniting the neighborhood and leads the gangs to respect each other. |
There was a neighborhood of a big city called Belmont. In many ways it was a typical lower income area. In the center of the neighborhood was a school with a playground. All four sides of the school block contained large apartment buildings. The street on the north side was called Northern Boulevard, the one on the south was called Southern Boulevard, the west side was called Broadway, and the east side was called Main Street. In the apartment buildings along each of the streets, many kids lived. They all attended the school in the center of the area and they all played in the playground next to the school. Perhaps as you would expect, the kids from each street joined together into gangs called the Northerners, the Southerners, the Broadsters, and the Mainliners. As the kids from the four gangs played in their streets and in the playground, clashes often broke out between them. Over time, the four gangs became more and more territorial and the clashes more serious. The trouble between the gangs often played out in the school with fights breaking out and behaviors that caused disruption to school activities.
There was a counselor in the school called Mr. Romero. He grew up in a neighborhood similar to Belmont and understood how belonging to a gang gave a kid, who lives in a somewhat deprived neighborhood, a sense of camaraderie and power that otherwise they wouldn't have. He often walked the streets surrounding the school to better understand these kids. There was one thing that really impressed him - the games the kids played. They were so imaginative. He started talking to some of the kids to learn more about these games, how they were created and their rules. He learned that some had been passed down for generations, while some were made up from things that were found in the trash piled up in front of the buildings or discarded items thrown in the alleyways that treaded through the streets. The kids frequently carried around with them the paraphernalia used in these games, such strange things like bottlecaps, chestnuts, baseball cards, rubber balls, tops, and other things used in the imaginative games they played.
This gave Mr. Romero an idea. Perhaps he could use these games to turn the gang rivalries into something positive rather than the dangerous way they tended to be played out........
