SKOOL

I'm using words so the tears don't flow from my eyes...I just decided to change my lesson plan 2 minutes before class...I was going to show a video cuz it's the last day before break, but i wanted more...I told them to write silently for 10 min. on the Red Lake shootings, and the suicide in our school last week. They wrote, and what followed has my hands shaking as I write this...BREAK

In the middle of that last sentence one of my students who experienced our incredible discussion came to me, head down, unsure, seeking...and because of him I stopped writing and started listening, again...

He told me of being jumped in an alley and getting a gun pulled on him, about how his real father didn't want him and beat his mother, but how he's trying to focus now and do right so he can go to college or do something productive with his life. He wants to help people, but said sometimes he feels like he can't make it cuz he already screwed up. He echoed the stories of the many students who had the courage to share in my classroom. The first girl to break down and cry told of being raped by a family member. This was followed by another girl who had the same story, had no mother and father, had been locked up for selling crack. Then another girl, beautiful and successful to all appearances, broke down and told the same sad story. A couple of guys, the cool ones, aloof, had the courage to share aswell. One is taking care of three kids at home - no mother, no father,working to pay the rent and going to high school. And we expect him to worry about how to conjugate "ser" into the present tense? Another of my young men shared about his father and his uncle going to jail - still there - and then asked the class in the most poignant tone, " Do you think God would forgive someone for selling drugs?"

I listened and I listened, moving around the room at times to changethe energy, always trying to be attentive, thinking very much about what sticks with me most from the book "Teacher" - how well he listened. We could have gone on much longer than the bell, but I got up at the end of class and said how grateful I was to them for their courage and honesty, and how I would never forget this, never forget them, that I love each and every one of them, that I expect them all to go to college and open the doors to their own freedom, and that if they ever need to talk, they could come to me. And we all clapped for each other, and the girls stayed afterwards hugging each other and crying with the girl who had revealed her darkest secrets, her most burning pain, possibly for the first time.

So here I am writing while my 8th period class is raucous infront of me, lights out, movie on, because they couldn't sustain the same level of maturity when we tried to discuss the same issues. Such is the fleeting nature of the teenage attention span. The door to stillness and mutual respect seems magical to me - it opens sometimes by itself (I steer gently at times) but it can close without warning,leaving me powerless to open it again. And that's OK, because this is Upper Marlboro, Maryland, March 23 2005, and someone just pulled the fire alarm.