Wait, that wasn't the assignment
Week one's been a hard one. I've been trying to get these kids settled, but with 32 students in a small, ex-middle school classroom, it's been tough. The past couple of days I've come home and fallen asleep within the first five minutes.Today was a little better, but there are a lot of kids who only think about the gang life, music, hair, and who they like and don't like. Typical teen stuff really, but the ever-present poverty, family instability and death in their lives really has an impact on their psyche, and the gangs are just a bad solution to their problems.
Not that all the kids in gangs are bad though. Some of them are actually really nice kids, but they're on a rough road for the future.
I keep encouraging them to think about the future, and telling them that we're not going to give up on them. I think on some level they hear what I'm saying.
posted by chris.mattler @ 7:26 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
I guess you guys caught the article in RFT with Bloods and Crips. I spent alot of time in the city in the summers growing up and working since. Not much in a long time. My father had property right in those "hoods." I'm a white boy in University City and it scares me thinking about what those neighborhoods are like at night. And that's just imagining from a distance. I ponder what it's like having your life threatened with a gun drawn to your face. Part of me wants to go "Fuck You!" Then I think about how easily some individuals can pull that trigger without a thought. Like Iceman. I have not always valued my own life and now that I do or have people counting on me or something to lose it frightens me what such a world is like. What it takes to face such threats. Like Mike has suggested - that could be any one of us. Just plant our birthplace, home or school a few miles from our own. There's Nature and Nurture and ulitmately what's left out is Environment. Hardly just Nurture - it is a powerful influence that competes for superior control of who you become. I hope for the best that you can impart some of your wisdom and alternate outlook on your students. You are certainly one of their few privileges; however little they recognize it. Admittelfy I never did appreciate my teachers until years later - so perhaps a few will now as much as later.
It's been a crazy week. I only had to break up one "posturing to fight" fight with two girls, and one incident with a girl who was screaming at some guy that she was going to have somebody come fuck him up cuz she knows people in the such and such gang. (not all my classes have been all girl so far)
I was talking with one teacher for the male classes, and he was saying it's just gang fight central. Kids not doing anything in class, and the daily flare up that he has to break up. (he doesn't seem to be very happy with those classes)
Those were just some papers I found balled up on one of the tables, and I took pictures of them to show you guys.
btw I have a student named Shayna, but she pronounces it Shu-nay
Another child that will forever have to correctly spell and pronounce their name after hearing or seeing it butchered up for the 1000th time.
Of course Patti, Patty, Pati has voluntarily changed her spelling several times I still just pronounce it Pootie.
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