Welcome to the Hood

This morning students got their report cards. A couple beckoned me over together and asked me why their grades were so low. In response, I pointed to their empty desks.

 

“Where’s your work?”

“No, Ms. W, we’re talking about our grades.”

“So am I.”

My rapier-like wit is completely wasted on the young. It took another ten minutes to explain that turning in three pieces of work that you’ve only done when I’m right on top of you will hardly lead to a good grade in history class.

Another student asked me for a private conversation. “Um, Ms. W, can you be pregnant and have your period?”

Phew, I thought, as scary as that question is, there’s a degree of relief implied. But the amount of unwanted information that came out over the course of the conversation is more than I wanted to know. This week, I’ve counseled two students over romantic issues, listened to another vent about her drunken father (“I love him when he’s sober. He’s just, you know, never sober”), and taught a girl a trick for bug bites that she thought was voodoo. I really need a degree in therapy instead of teaching.

At lunch, the trailer park teachers ordered pizza to celebrate the last day before spring break. We were all there, and it reminded me of the Breakfast Club. We have our jock, who can get away with wearing neon orange sneakers and chest-bumping students and swearing up and down the halls because he’s so cool. We have our nerd, who at one point or another has dragged us all into his trailer to see his history games. We take turns being the basket case. We also have our mama bear, our awkward grampa, our sexy librarian, and our hillbilly (now now, Hannah, down here I’m called “rile cuhntray”) who has recently been replaced by Jerry Springer. I guess I’m the religious nut who doesn’t eat the pizza.

I showed my kids a slam poem about racism in history books, and this was the response one wrote:

Define the words of Black and White

Black girl work hard, White girl gets it EZ.

We all are a part of this community, this world, this land, and this country as one.

So why the hell you talking to me like I ain’t got no damn sense.

You see we can be smart, handsome, cute and all that.

But you think I can’t do this because I’m Black.

You see in my mind you fill me with hatred of every second, of every minute, of every hour, of every day, every month, and every year.

Jesus loves everybody and I see it clear.

And you damn sure ain’t gonna disrespect me because I’m black.

Better yet I’ll go Napoleon on your ass.

Better act like you made of glass.

Now time and time this white girl called me a thing because I liked her brother.

She said you know where you got it from.

I said, yo mother.

The kids jumped up cheering wildly after she presented it, and then they were all off writing slam poems—I could barely get them to stop for history class. Even the kid who had gotten bounced into my trailer asked me for a pen so he could write one. 

The last class of the day was cancelled, and everyone headed out to the football stadium for the Spring Fling. Kids mulled around the field, buying cotton candy and hoops practice and racing on the bounce thingies. Four of my kids ran up and grabbed me, nearly giving me a heart attack. Well, three of my kids plus one who bounces into my trailer so often he thinks he’s my student. They told me to watch out—I’d know if there was a fight because all the black kids would be running towards the riot, holding their cell phones out to try to film it. We laughed. Shouldn’t have. Half an hour later, that’s exactly what happened.

I and another history teacher were told to watch the area by the dunking booth, so we picked some prime real estate by the bleachers and watched administrators get dunked (the Spanish teachers had to leave us—they were responsible for the area by the churros table. Ha). Students lined up to dunk assistant principals and favorite teachers. The crowd screamed with glee as their least-favorite administrator got into the booth. The entire school—literally every student and teacher, and I’m using the word correctly—came flooding over the football field to watch this administrator plunge into the freezing water. It was delicious for them to have such a goodcleanfun way of expressing their feelings.

About ten minutes after that, my friend and I spotted trouble. Over by the dance pavilion, kids’ hands were waving above the crowd. Uh-oh. Gang signs. Security guards started to mosey that way, and we watched as students started to throw drinks as well as gang signs. Within seconds, a huge fight was going on. True to form, students ran towards it from across the field to join the riot. Pretty soon, whistles were blowing, police were converging, and we were ushering students towards the buses.

Welcome to the Hood.

Maybe students think teachers are stupid. Maybe they think that wasn’t exactly what we expected to happen. In fact, plenty of teachers—all of them—muttered something about how “the kids had to ruin it” as we cleared the field. Maybe they were surprised, and exactly as stupid as the kids think. But I couldn’t pretend a surprise I didn’t feel. This ended exactly the way I expected it to. How could students not take the advantage of the anonymity of the dance field to begin a riot? That was exactly where we kept glancing the whole time. I knew it would start at the dance area. What I didn’t expect was how normal a riot would feel. Watching the security guards hang back, the kids run towards an area where the fighting was taking place, all while the sun was shining and the music blasting, ruined my ideas of drama. I moved towards the center of the field to keep kids from heading towards the ruckus, and then calmly schlepped chairs back to the main building with my friend. Along the way, we saw: twelve cop cars, two ambulances (a girl’s broken leg was, I think, the worst injury), a fire engine, a student lying on the ground with at least six policemen holding him down, and a girl suffering from the sun and hunger—she hadn’t eaten in a day and the riot had completely overwhelmed her. She we stopped to help. I gave her the last Trader Joe’s bar from my feed-the-students-stash left before pesach and we sat with her, telling her things to make her laugh and keep her spirits up until she could go home. I think it was the ability to help her that made the whole thing seem, well, manageable. Tossing starfish back in the ocean, one at a time.

As we sat there on the concrete, watching the cop cars and chatting with the girl, another teacher walked past. “Welcome to the hood,” she said. Where does she think we've been all year?

And, Break.