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.