In Parenthesis

I took a walk around the neighborhood this afternoon after school. I hadn't set out to make a stand, or to cause a raucous, but it all had to do with protecting my turf, my school, my territory. I hadn't done so in quite some time. As the years have multiplied on a great, and sudden 10 years of teaching, I haven't been as free to storm down the neighborhood drives with the kids. Priorities change, my kids come calling, there's grass to be mowed. Go home.

At my old school, the principal and I used to walk the lane with students until the road ended on a cross street and into the dilapidated apartment complex. My first teaching assignment on the East Side of town was a place I felt destined to have worked there. It was a neighborhood school, where most of our kids were walkers. The students who were bussed in were primarily of Hispanic descent (those kids' stories are in a future blog to come). I was reminded of my second grade year, Park Place Elementary, and also even younger, when I walked to my kindergarten or first grade class across a weed field where my grandma and her life-long partner, Benny, would look on above from the comforts of the porch balcony. Also, my high school years, not necessarily in the demographics (primarily white jock, white preppy or white trash) but in the fact that the minority kids were bussed in from remote locations, primarily the Acres Homes kids, in an effort to integrate our high school. (As a hispanic student, it didn't really matter that I was brown. I was basically white, too, because I did not associate myself with the mexican kids and I surely didn't fit in with the black kids other than I loved rap music.)

Anyway, we had to walk home with the students on Fridays because Fridays were "Fight Nights." The kids would meet in the complex and simply break into a series of fights. Sometimes it was boys, other times it was girls. Young kids, older kids, and sometimes even adults who chimed in or fought with other adults as well. With us there, most of the kids simply walked home. Maybe they fought later, maybe they didn't, but we were somewhat a deterrent. Once a mom yelled at me after school for not allowing her girl to fight after school. Another time, we chased a kid away who had run from another bus stop to get a kid. He was not too happy.

Now, there was nothing of the sort going on in the neighborhood. Not yet. There had already been fights, and intimidations. Threats and rumors of war. I chose a side tonight. I chose to make a presence. Now, a lot of my colleagues will say walking away the problem is a primary fix. I simply cannot do this every evening. One day, I'll meet a parent. One day it will be a group of kids. I watched the group of girls I had been walking with, one going down the lane alone, the other with a younger sister. Pretty girls, the kind I wouldn't want walking anywhere alone. Yet they do this every day and don't think anything of it. I have either sheltered my daughter or not given her enough credit for being brave if she had to.

Delcina and I were talking a lot about this very intervention over the past few weeks. Do we rely on the school's authority to control the students once they leave our school? I've heard many times and read on he news of bullies and the blaming of a school that fails to respond. I also see the ramifications of neighborhood fights and the intensity written on a Facebook pages that can cause problems for a teacher in their classroom. Some of my fourth graders have Facebooks, most don't. Ultimately, fourth graders are babies. They don't know how to start drama--yet. Fifth grade is a whole other ballgame. Over half have accounts. Their names are unintelligible garbage. Their pictures are sometimes too risqué for their ages. Yet they have them. Next year I think I want to speak to our PTA and teach a net etiquette class. It's needed now more than ever. Do I want to be proactive or defensive? What would you call my jaunt in the neighborhood?

Earlier in the day I whispered to one of my fifth grade boys. He's a special kid. Charismatic. I chastised him yesterday in front of his classmates for having a "ghetto" Facebook name. Today I knelt down beside him, and asked, "What's wrong with you God-given name? Are you ashamed?" He had the middle name a month ago, "Jesus Christ" and I said, "What would he say?" He looked at me, nodded. He knew. I told him, "I see your beautiful face on your profile. I want the best for you. So does He." We hugged. Today I noticed he reverted to his old name. His "swag" name was in parenthesis. The world wants us to show or swag. If we were really that courageous, we wouldn't have to boast about it.

Sun Snakes

Today. Eventful and uneventful. Humbling and boastful. Rewarding and surprising. We end the night with my wife wrapping birthday gifts for my son and me finishing up some quick lesson plans for school. A nice glass of tea, a carpet that needs vacuuming and crumbs on my arm I'm brushing off from my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Delcina was not with me for most of the day. She had ANOTHER root canal, so she headed off early. My kids were sleepy and unwilling. Perhaps they were feeling like we were feeling. One coffee ordered at Tim Horton's and we get the furrowed eyebrows, "Only one"? "Despicable Me" plays on the kids' DVD player. Cruz isn't buckled.

Dropping off Reycina. School. Meeting early about trust. Seriously? I know who I trust. Who is with me? Lately, everyone seems to not trust anything. Even trust in themselves seems to have wavered. Silence in the meeting. We must look like surly teenagers who don't want to speak after being reprimanded. Bell rings and we bust out of there like one of those movies where the kids run out the building as the roll of toilet paper slings across the quad. I didn't wear a belt so I'm already heaving up my pants.

It's day 2 of working on my new discipline plan. I released my "good" kids from the bondage of having their cards flipped. It doesn't mean you will never get in trouble, I remind them. But it does mean I expect more. The others? I remove their yellow warning card. No more chances. The calls and texts to mom haven't worked, our encouragement hasn't worked. You've graduated, my friends. Surprisingly not one kid smirks. Even the smirker isn't smirking. One kid tears up and I place my hands his shoulders. I know you are working hard. Focus a bit more, it will come. One kid writes me a note: "I think this is a fair class." I tuck it into my back pocket along with those yellow cards. Padding.

Recess duty. I make the kindergarten kids raise their hand and yell, "I'm ready!" And we walk to the station in funny Olympic style walking man poses. Reading class goes very well. We learn more about how the sharecroppers felt when life wore on them. They looked to their faith and kept their heads high. I notice some heads nod when we talk about the fear of seeing one's father in jail. I silently hope no one says anything. It's always for me, the most awkward part of my day, to realize at that very moment that they are literally on the line of just throwing their supplies in the air and crying in despair. But they don't, but the bothersome details still linger.

Second recess. Copying homework and stopping by to talk to the new kid who has already bought herself a 2 day in school suspension. Although she isn't in my class, I can see her acting tough hasn't impressed anyone. I told her that I hoped she would have a good weekend and that I want to see her smiling at school on Monday. Love wins. I get a kinda-smile. It's better than nothing.

After school, I get to hold baby Hannah when I arrive to get Reycina from childcare. I make baby talk and try to make contact with her little blues. I imagine that's what God does with us. Cradles us until we look. Sometimes we look all around at the colors but we sometimes don't look at who is holding us.

Mowing grass at home. First pull and the engine turns. First time for a spring day. Grass is thick and lime green. Wads of it stick to the sidewalk. Cruz runs through and turns his socks into moldy fungus. Ice cream man comes. Delcina arrives too, with cousin Alexis who is going to the walk to Emmaus (ironically, that kid I talked to earlier had the same name). I'm jotting down to-do lists and mad how my lazy endeavors have turned into lazy Christmas lights that haven't been taken down, the back yard trash can full of water, the water hose that has burned a line through the grass like some sun snake.

I end the day with a call from my brother. (Ironically, I'm watching "Parenthood" where the two brothers refuse to talk to one another. I feel suddenly grateful). We talk about my dad. "I have no choice," he always replies when asked about how he just keeps going and going. I try to bring up the point that doing anything on your own isn't what God wants from us, but I don't see an in. I back off. I think of the mom from "Sounder" we are reading in class. "You gotta walk that lonesome valley, you gotta walk it by yourself." I'm just not so sure it's so lonesome. He's cradling me. He's looking into my eyes. What is my response?

Uncool Vanity

I had the chance today that many teachers do not. Just how many teachers get their haircuts from a mom whose kid they just disciplined the day before, sent to detention even? Not many. But as I walked into Great Clips, I knew already that the possibility of seeing that parent. In that moment, my vanity of having a proper fade won out over any misgivings.

I just read an article about the life of an uncool teacher and it struck me that sometimes this is what I really do. In fact, I've been on display for much of my life. Sometimes it has been a shameless ploy for attention. I remember my days as a junior high student, making bad jokes, grabbing girls' butts, searching for hugs in all the wrong places. Popularity was a must for a 12 year old kid. Even if it meant the occasional grounding from parents or the acceptance and ridicule of teachers, office workers or administration alike. I specifically remember Mr. Bell, my 8th grade science teacher and basketball coach. I was in the office working the charm on the secretaries and in he walks. He realizes I'm waiting out the final hours of my suspension by waiting in the office. Why was I suspended? For fighting. For fighting a classroom kid who we relentlessly teased day in and day out. Wherever Robert Warren is now, I'm sure he's drinking a beer in disgust of us.

So Coach Bell goes into this tirade as I sit there. All I'm thinking is, "Why is he so upset? I didn't fight in HIS class or beat up HIS kid?" I understand it now, though. I'm Coach Bell at times, too. I shake my head and go into tirades (hmmm, like this Friday?) towards some of my brightest and best. Perhaps Coach Bell saw something in me that day succumb to the lowest denominator. Perhaps he felt I was going to be another kid lost to the crowd.

Back to teaching. Since day one, I have been tirelessly promoting good will from all my students and the future ones as well. I high five, act like I'm going to eat their PB and J sandwiches, talk funny and listen to their stories. At first, it was a way for me to prove that attitude and popularity was all you needed to be a successful teacher. Watch me out-teach these old ladies! Of course, I also shouted, stammered and burn myself out for those first 6 years.

I still do a lot of these things. I play basketball with my fourth graders like every game is my last. I tease some of my fifth graders from last year and I try and promote something more than myself--God. God wants my best, everyday. Sometimes it's a daunting task, especially when I don't seek his help. But, it's a far less exhausting task than before when I just promoted myself. Promoting yourself led nowhere. I burned a lot of bridges along the way, and some of those people continue to be in my life. Far better than I deserve.

So, here I am getting a hair cut. I wrote her kid up on Friday, and she's telling me the story of how bad his day was on Friday. I chuckled at her smile, and the fact that there wasn't a question as to the validity of the offense. We started to talk about the classrooms, todays kids, technology, the dangers of facebook and so many other things. I'm blessed to be one of the few carrying on a meaningful conversation while the others are sitting silent.

But the coolness factor still rears its ugly head. I got a chance to learn a monologue as if I were the character of Barabbas. You know him, right? He was set free by the Jews who had turned their backs on Jesus. Barabbas was the guilty one. But, he was the one set free, the first sinner to be saved by the blood of Jesus. And talk about following the crowd--what of Pilate? He had the power, he knew it was wrong, but he washed his hands and let the people decide because of their wishes. Been there, done that.

And I decided afterwards to quietly head out the building. I didn't want to hear, "good job," even though secretly I did. That's vanity. During awards assemblies, the principal would call our names and the class would cheer raucously. I loved being THAT teacher. This past year, she nixed that because I think some teachers actually got booed. I hear the kids tell me to fail them so they can come back. "No, you must leave and grow, my dear." Fifth graders sneak back into my room and talk to me.

Sometimes I have these silly visions of leading a kids' chorus, a performance. Like the kind you see on youtube and you think, "I want my kid to be in THAT class." Maybe that's God's way of saying that he wants me right where I am. The leader of the chorus. The Band leader. March on.