The Wasteland

I have sat down several times to write this blog, then abandoned it in frustration.

Rashee. He is a favorite among my readers (aka my mom and dad), and I can easily see why. In writing, he is charismatic, hilarious and wildly entertaining. In real life, Rashee is...well, charismatic, hilarious and wildly entertaining. However, the child is a nightmare to teach and a terror to try to manage. Part of what makes him so funny is his tendency to push the limits; his inappropriateness and cocky attitude.

I haven't written about Rashee in a long time because he has not been at RMS for a long time. Let's back up to where I last left off--with him being suspended for 10 days and waiting on his hearing to decide whether or not he would return to our school.

Given Rashee's spotted history, I doubted that he would ever come back. He has already been given three 10-day suspensions this year; that kind of record isn't going to get you anywhere with a judge. I was surprised, then, to see Rashee show up randomly a couple of weeks ago. First block was over and he walked into my room, greeting his classmates with grins and high-fives. "Rashee!? What are you doing here?" He was dressed in his best "skinny" jeans and was wearing a light-yellow button-down underneath a navy blue sweater-vest. "You look nice."

Rashee puffed his chest out. "Yeah, 'bout to go to my hearin'. Ain't lookin' too good for me, M."

"Well...good luck," I said as he turned and headed out my door. "If I don't see you again...um...bye." I watched his faux-hawked silhouette exit my door, perhaps for the last time.

Or not. The next day, he was back, triumphant and even more cocky than before.

"Rashee? I thought that was it for you! She must've liked the sweater-vest."

"Yeah, I yes ma'am-ed and no ma'am-ed the hell outta that judge, and she said I was a 'respectful young boy' and needed a second chance!"

"Well, you're lucky," I said. "I was worried about you. I thought you were gone for good. I'm serious, Rashee, you've got to think before you act next time. PLEASE don't do anything stupid." As much as I dreaded keeping him under control for 75 minutes each day, the thought of him wasting away at some alternative school was far worse.

Two days. That's all it took for him to get suspended again. It took me a while to find out what happened this time, but apparently he acted a fool in Ms. G's class. When the ornery and overweight choir teacher commanded him to do something, he jumped up on a desk, grabbed himself and announced that "I run this bitch!"

Good decision. Ten more days and another hearing. He came back Friday because his suspension was over before the hearing took place. "RASHEE. Tell me how a smart boy like you does the most dumb-ass things I have EVER heard of??" I asked.

"What you talking 'bout, M?"

As if he had to ask. Third block he was awarded TEN MORE DAYS for almost starting a fight in the hall. What do you do with that? Seriously. What. Do. You. Do. With. That. I have no doubt that he will be gone for good now, and the whole thing is just sad. Hopeless and sad. I don't know much about his home life other than his father died. There is talk that his mom has a drug problem, but I don't really know if it's true or not. There's a lot I don't know--not just about him, but about all of my students. A lot of times I don't know why they act the way they do. I don't know why Rashee feels the need to act like he's stupid and hard and unfeeling. I don't know why he has to cry out for attention in a way that gets him in trouble, and I don't know why he can't seem to see a connect between his behavior and the consequences it affords him.

I don't see what goes on behind that devious smirk or that impervious facade. All I see is an incredibly smart, funny, clever and resourceful young man with a lifetime of bad decisions in front of him.

What a waste.

It's the Small Victories

"I'm about to show this video clip--'The Science of the Winter Olympics.' DO NOT move your chair or your bodies closer to the front. You can see from your desk."

Before the words are even out of my mouth, Rell is picking his chair up and dragging it to the front of the classroom.

"Tyrell. What did I JUST say? Take your chair back."

Tyrell looks me in the eye, plants his chair on the ground, then turns around to sit. Without thinking and possessing a perfect timing uncharacteristic of me, I jerk the chair backwards juusst as he lowers his bottom to sit. BAM! Rell is belly-up on the floor.
The whole class laughs uproariously. In an instant, I am transformed from uptight teacher to valiant hero.

[Circus] Ring Around the Rosie

We are reviewing for our Chemistry final. I'm talking about the periodic table (again, is this real life?). "Groups are columns. They go up and down. So what are periods...Rosamuel?"

I chose Rosamuel because he was turned (aka "turnt"-- check out Soulja Boy's latest lyrical masterpiece) around in his chair, leaning alll the way back with the front two legs off the ground, laughing at God knows what. When I called on him, he slammed his chair down and whipped around, startled.

".....umm...ain't that when you bleed?" he asked with a goofy grin, eyebrows raised all the way to his hairline.

Sigh.

This kid makes me wonder. The other day, Jaelynn called for help as I was searching for my dry erase marker. "Ms. M! Ms. M! Can you tell Rosamuel to get off me?" I looked up to see Rosamuel's chair scooted all the way up to Jaelynn's, where he was smothering the poor, quiet little boy against his chest. "ROSIE!! What are you DOING!?!" I asked. This was the first time I had ever even seen him acknowledge Jaelynn, much less appear to be so...friendly with him.

Rosie was smiling, eyes closed, inhaling deeply. "He smell like soap." That simple. Like that cleared up everything.

"What are you going to do when you grow up?" I asked him one day at lunch. "A architect," he said. "Unless this whole education thing don't work out for me. Then I gotta backup plan."

"Which would be...?"

"Can't tell you, Ms. M. It's dirty. But Imma tell you anyways, jus don't get mad. Imma be a porn star."

Wrong Place, Wrong Time.

I seem to be there a lot: wrong place, wrong time.

First there was the incident with Ms. A when her students picked her up and carried her crowd-surfing style down the hall and I was the only witness. That was a long statement I had to write.

Then there was the time when I was the only person standing around when a kid threatened another boy's life. That was a long statement I had to write.

And of course there was the second-week-of-school disaster where my classroom got vandalized. That was a long statement I had to write.

Today, yet AGAIN I found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time. I entered the lunchroom behind my fourth block class. As soon as I crossed over the threshold, I heard a lot of commotion coming from a table in the corner. Quickly scanning the room, I noticed I was the only teacher in that area. Great. I didn't know what "it" was, but "it" was getting louder and louder. All the students were standing up, craning their necks to get a better view. Following the direction of everyone's stare, my eyes finally rested on the instigator. An enraged girl was standing over one of my students, bowing up and screaming at the top of her lungs. As far as I could tell, my student was doing nothing to provoke her. She merely sat at the table, staring straight ahead as her nemesis rained obscenities on her head.

I started walking over to the action when all of the sudden the aggressor stopped. She stormed towards the door to leave with the rest of the class. Whew. Close call. BUT WAIT. Now she was spinning on her heel again--this time with fire burning in her eyes. Unthinkingly, I sprinted across from the opposite direction to cut her off before she could get to my student. Right before she was in swinging distance, I valiantly leapt in her path.

Bad idea.

You see, this was no ordinary middle-school girl--a fact I unfortunately realized a moment too late. As I stared up at her 5'10" frame and across her shoulders (which easily doubled mine in girth), my mind went blank. Uh...what next? What exactly was I planning to do at this point? "TURN AROUND." It came out a lot less intimidating than I had hoped. The girl bumped her chest against me, barely looking, then BAM! One swift push was all it take to send me flailing. From my feeble position against the lunchroom table, I saw a police officer run in and jerk the girl up by her collar before any punches were thrown. So much for heroics.

"Daang, Ms. M!" some kid said. "You 'bout got NAILED by a SIXTH GRADER!"

"That girl was a SIXTH GRADER!?!" I asked incredulously.

"Yeah. You 'bout beat by a little sixth grader!"

She may have been a sixth grader, but there was nothing "LITTLE" about that girl, I can assure you. I walked back to my boys' tables, trying to decide if this was real life. What kind of wack job do I have? Word of the incident spread quickly through the lunchroom.

"That was that Alabama defensive back coming out in you!" BJ joked. "'Cept for she must have been C.J. Spiller 'cause she run yo ass OVER!"

"We didn't see it," insisted Jemon, Norman, and Will. "But if we had...she'da gotten WHOOPED! If she'da laid Ms. M out, I'da STEALED her. Don't worry, M, if we see her in the halls its gon' be REAL bad news for her!"

"Yeah, right," I laughed. "As soon as she pushed me, I turned around just knowing that my boys would be standing right behind me, ready to defend me. But where were y'all? Nowhere to be found. And you call yourselves men!"

Laughter. "Well, brah," Norman admitted to Will, "she WAS kinda scary!"

The good news? By the end of the year, perhaps I can collect all my statements and publish a novel out of them. It would be a colorful read, no doubt.

My Precious Angels

I call my boys that a lot: precious angels. Most of the time, my voice is dripping with sarcasm. I could think of many adjectives to describe the boys I teach, but "precious" doesn't rank in the top 100. Sometimes they surprise me though.

Take this past week, for instance. I would like to preface this by saying that my boys revel in being assumed tough, stoic, and otherwise unaffected. You've heard Kanye's song "Heartless," and this is a title they wear proudly--going as far to advertise themselves as such. I remember one day I came to work sick and without much of a voice. I started every class off by saying, "If you have a heart at all..." That day was one of my worst to date.

Anyways. This week Mr. S was collecting funds for Haiti relief efforts. He started off the morning announcements every morning by explaining a little bit about the devastation there and asking RMS students to contribute each day--even if it was only a nickel. I watched along with my first block, thinking to myself, "Yeah, right." These boys don't exactly come to school with cash falling out of their backpacks. Shoot; half of them don't even own backpacks. They may have fancy shoes, but they're topped with the same pants they wore the day before, and the day before that. Over 3/4 of them qualify for free or reduced lunch. Add this to the fact that their screen names are some version of "dontgivaf***96" and you're going to have a bunch of empty offering baskets.

False. Every day when Mr. S came in with his green bucket, I was overwhelmed by my kids' generosity. Boys that would rather get an F on their lab report than pay 25 cents for a pencil to complete it were emptying pockets and turning their bags upside down. This Friday, 8th grade was coming in second place (after 6th) with over $400 given. I even heard about some students skipping lunch so they could put their $2 in the bucket instead. They may not have much, but they recognized that they were in fact fortunate compared to so many Haitian families.

And yet again I am teacher-turned-student, learning lessons from those crazy boys. I basically got to see the parable of the poor widow played out in real life. Humbling, much?

Also sweet on a smaller scale:

This Friday we had a lockdown. This means that there is some danger present within the school walls and no one can leave the room. When the "Lockdown" announcement came on over the intercom, I had vague flashbacks to RMS training back in August. Something about how I needed to lock the door and slip some card underneath it...Where was that card? For the first time, I felt nervous for my safety at RMS. I ran out into the hallway to lock the door from the outside, shakily fumbling for the right key. By the time I came back inside, my students had calmly turned off all the lights, closed the blinds, and were sitting quietly in the corner away from the door. "Everyone stay seated and silent," I said, trying to sound calm. The directions were pretty unnecessary, though, because my boys had already taken care of all the safety precautions for me. Whenever someone started to speak, his classmates hushed him disapprovingly.

I looked around the room at their dark silhouettes, thinking about how much I've really grown to care about each of them over the past few months. "Ms. M?" Rosamuel asked.

"Yes, Rosie?"

"Imma be real with ya. If they let us outta here, I'm pushing you to the side and runnin' out the door. I just wanted to let you know 'cause I'm selfish."

"No." Norman countered. "I'd get Ms. M out of here safe first." The rest of the class murmured in agreement.

I smiled to myself. My brave little 14-year-old protectors. My precious angels.

Heard at the Lunch Table

There are few kids that I realllly can't stand. Jaquais is one of them. This kid is just a jerk. Every time I tell him to do something or ask him to help with something:

"I ain't ABOUT to walk in a line." "I ain't 'BOUT to pick up that tray." "You don't make the rules and you ain't ABOUT to tell me what IMMA do."

Really? You're thirteen years old and you're going to talk to me like you're grown? How about you learn how to sit in a chair for fifteen minutes without drumming a "phat beat" on the desk, throwing a paper ball at someone, or farting and then maybe, MAYBE I will talk to you like you're an adult.

Anyways, I catch Jaquais in the hall when he's supposed to be in the lunchroom. He claims he's going to wash his hands (but is headed the opposite direction). I tell him to go immediately back into the cafeteria ("I'm not ABOUT to let someone tell me I can't wash my HANDS!"). Once we get there, he sits down (still mumbling under his breath) next to Tariq.

"Tariq," I ask. "Why is Jaquais so angry all of the time? Why does he have so much hate inside of him? Did his momma not give him enough attention when he was little?"

"Naww. His momma ain't give him enough milk."

"Tariq's still on his momma's milk," Jaquais retorts.

Tariq doesn't skip a beat. "I'm on YOUR momma's milk!!"

At this point, I have to turn on my heel and walk away so they don't see me convulsing with laughter. Ohh my life.

You'd think I would have learned by now...

"It is EXTREMELY long and hard."

I was talking about an extra-credit worksheet. My 14-year-old boys didn't take it that way. The rest of the lesson? Didn't happen, due to the hysteria.