作者贾端端为新澤西蜜尔本高中畢業生，十二岁創辦ABC Club，今年秋天將進入杜克大學主修公共关系，也被布朗、康奈尔、达特茅斯、乔治城外交学院、纽约大学斯特恩商学院等录取。连续四年考入新州乐队，任高中网球队及辩论队队长。曾獲艾森豪威尔领导力獎 (Eisenhower Leadership Award)，高中体育学者奖 （NJ State Interscholastic Athletic Association & Educational Testing Service Scholar Athlete Award），新州学者夏令营（NJ Scholars Program），英文写作奖，也是新州美华协会第一届青年理事会主席。ABC俱乐部在新州几个镇的华人父母子女中开展活动，包括举办讨论会，公共演讲，接待中国学生，助选拜票，选民登记，面试培训等等。贾端端曾在中国高中介绍了这种模式，也借助微信和网络视频培训了加州、德州等地家长和学生建立俱乐部分支。
How the ABC Found Me
Austin Jia
6/3/2016
If you were to ask me to describe the ABC Club (Achieving Better Communication, hence after ABC), I’d chuckle, scratch my head, and ask if you’re prepared for a long conversation. You see, unlike a sports club or an orchestra or a debate team, the ABC cannot be approximated or even summarized. But that is why I write this piece. It may be long and it may be tedious, but I will try my best to capture on paper what has been less of a club and more of a concept, a friend, and a guide to me.
The origins of ABC were rather nebulous. Nameless, even. Our household has extensive relationship with non Chinese friends in town so we called together monthly book discussions. What allowed this infantile discussion club to grow was our book choice and its multiracial, multicultural nature. Unintentionally, we had selected controversial books, dense books, simultaneously unifying and divisive in their provocativeness. My Name was Keoko unearthed the dilemmas underlying kamikaze bombing during the Japanese occupation of Korea, as part of the broader illustration of the miserable lives of the Koreans under brutal occupation. Our Jewish friends were not aware of such pain suffered by the Koreans (or the Chinese for that matter). Their awareness was with the other book Number the Stars, which we compared with the first one. Steve Jobs revealed the roots underneath a software empire. Book after book drew the most reserved students out from silence; after all, who could reserve an opinion on sending their son off to die on a bomber jet?
After a year of inciting discussion with literary merit, I discussed to target directly what I wanted: the controversy within the books. Instead of operating off of the pretense of a book discussion club, I decided to morph the concept into a “general discussion club”. This also coincided with the teenage/preteen conflict between American Born Chinese kids and their recent immigrant parents. I observed a lack of communication between the two generations, and started with a language survey of how kids view their parents' English skills and what language kids feel comfortable speaking with parents both inside and outside the home.
The survey resulted in much discussion as parents lamented why their preteens shut them out of their lives. Over the years, I fed my club members' explosive thoughts with equally incendiary topics: the merits of peer pressure, the pitfalls of social media, the balance between social and academic life, Asian identity and stereotype, social justice, time management, mental health. Soon, our conversations became so irresistibly magnetic that the parents could not help but to join. And, as the entertainer that I am, I decided to spice up the room with debates about parent-child relationships and proper parental involvement. And thus materialized an unforeseen byproduct of my unsuspecting club: allowing children and parents to settle disagreements that would never have materialized in their own households.
Soon, there came to be a rhythmic quality to my routine of preparation, a simple quality. As the club members and their parents became more outspoken and less dependent on my mediation to carry on the conversations, I found myself generating fewer and fewer discussion questions. My group, that had once looked at me to revive dead discussions, was now self-sustainable, even energetic.
Running the ABC Club over such a long span of time has enlightened my awareness of the nuances of leadership. With practice, explaining plans, motivating groups, and mediating discussions became instinctive - a natural way of interacting. It was a good thing, a healthy thing, an empowering thing to taste the responsibility of management, to delegate, and even to share the mantle of mediator to those who were bold enough to try. All told, my transformation was as acute as those that surrounded me. Because, before I discovered ABC and ABC discovered me, I, too, was a nonconfrontational, inward teenager.
Some people ask me why I persist in running ABC, why I take so much time to support the growths of other people, rather than of myself. I think that at the end of the day, leading the ABC was never about its self-inflating moments spent heading discussion groups and directing conversations. Guiding a dozen listeners certainly made me feel powerful and leaderlike, but ironically, I felt always as if my personal satisfaction was derived from a sentiment that seemed diametrically opposed to leadership - that of humility. I think that it is quite appropriate that only now, as I hand the mantle of ABC down to the next generation, do I finally understand this irony.
I understand that leadership is a fundamentally supportive role, about enabling rather than receiving. Power, when flaunted and demonstrated, devolves into mere accessory. Power, when exercised in charity and in selflessness, does good. And nothing feels as good as seeing a quiet teenager compelled by my efforts to shirk the limits of shyness and contribute his presence, his voice, and his bottled-up opinions. Five years with ABC was a gift because it allowed me to feel that singular rush when my leadership emboldens timid hands to raise, insecure mouths to speak, unsure souls to unlock and embrace their potential, vibrant and boundless.
