Day 1 of the New Book

So I kind off fell of the face of the planet while moving back to DC and entirely failed to update on the status of my summer school kids. This will happen soon. But not yet.

I just needed to get my thoughts down about today.

Today, I started teaching at the school I will be at for the next two years. I'm not quite sure why, but I had a lot of fun.

I spent 35 minutes in a hallway teaching one group of eighth graders how to properly line up and stand quietly before entering a classroom. I spent lunch administering 'silent lunch' detention to two students who chose to push the boundaries on the first day. I was hoarse by the end of the day from repeating the same talk about dreams, goals, expectations, and consequences. But holy shit, it was so much fun.

I never expected there to be such a difference between brand-new eighth graders and summer-after ninth graders. Chronologically, these age groups aren't that far apart. But developmentally, there seems to be a critical difference.

Maybe it's just these kids, at this school, but: I feel like they're all still motivated. There are a few that wrote some pretty negative responses on the student surveys and goal stars (i.e. Is there anything you would want to change about yourself? Most people wrote their attitude or how well they can do math. One girl wrote "the way I look.") But on the whole, there was still a plethora of doctors, lawyers, police officers, detectives, fashion designers, ball players, and even businessmen or entrepreneurs on those goal stars.

Seeing them identify that goals are about the steps we take to get to our dreams was also incredible. It kept hitting me over and over again that these kids were so incredibly insightful. They just have it. They're so effing smart.

So that part of my day was amazing. I can't say I could have asked for much better. But while cleaning up the room at the end of the day, I did find something rather disturbing. It was a post-it note from one of our activities. One of our students had drawn 57 and 58 on there with the word gangstas under one, I can't remember which, and another word (crew maybe?) under the other. He or she had filled in the 8 with a smiley face on top as a person. Most people would think nothing of it, but I choked up when I looked at it. I realized instantly that this kid was repping the neighborhood that he or she lived in. This kid was already getting caught up in the neighborhood conflicts that got one of my clients locked up for multiple decades.

I guess that's when it sunk in. I don't just say I'm doing this for the kids that got sucked into the system for the sound byte. Somewhere along the way, my answer to "Why I Teach for America" had become so automated that it barely made me blink anymore. But somewhere deep inside me, it does resonate. It still brings me to tears thinking about those lives that are lost to the judicial system each year and those seemingly meaningless lockups continue reinforcing the cycle of broken homes and unfulfilled families that ultimately feeds back into the system again.

It was like a slap in the face seeing that post-it note. I'm not here for the glory, the children's affection, def. not the money, or the martyrdom of TFA, or even the networking or other shit people try to promote. I'm here because I can't let another kid fall victim to the cycles of crime and violence that dictate the rules of these neighborhoods and cut short the dreams that these beautiful, intelligent children have. I just fucking won't.

~N.