CynicalOptimist

blatherings about life, the universe & everything.... or more likely just books, students, family, & someday politics, religion and those more esoteric themes related to self actualization. Trying to be optomistic, but raised w/ Tricky Dick, bumbling Ford, Teflon Ron, Waffling-Read-My-Lips Bush & Slick Willie as her formative Presidents. Could we once again have intelligence & integrity in our nation's capital & capitol?

Friday, October 17, 2008

A kid of mine died.
I technically should call him a student, but I always call my students my kids, unless my 3 biological kids are listening.

I know it might seem odd, but I grow attached to these kids of mine. I see them a few hours a week, and I find myself spending more time in prayer about them than I do my own three. Sure they outnumber my 3 by a few hundred every year, but it's not just because of the number of them. It's because I believe my biological kids to be safe, to be ok, to not have the issues of my students, my kids. Oh, sometimes I believe my youngest does what he does just to get me to pray for him more, but he doesn't live in a world of drive by shootings. His parents might be divorced, but except for a few bad days we aren't bad parents. I know that deep down my son will be ok unless he choses to screw up.

But Tarrell... I know nothing about him really. He's been in my classroom for a few weeks; every other day for 90 minutes. There have been over 50 kids in that class since the beginning of the school year, & even though we're down to only about 25 on the roster, I still don't know the kids like I'd like to. There have been a few days I've blown up & most probably created distance & slowed down the getting to know them. I am not a perfect teacher... I'd have a halo already if I were.

But Tarrell... What do I know? I know that at first he didn't even pretend to do the work. I know that he has always been polite to me, if not obedient. I know that lately he was doing more of the work. I know that he was beginning to act like he might have something to learn in my class.

I know that last night, the night he died, I told a friend about him. You see Tarrell realized that during the silent reading time in class he might fall asleep, so he found a good strategy. He started out sitting, but then he would stand leaning against a wall, or a file cabinet, or leaning over a desk or bookshelf, he would walk quietly & slowly so as to not lose his place in the book. He read.

He read.

No, I don't think he took the notes he was supposed to after he read. But he could talk about what he read.

My students in that class complain about how boring the books are. Classic history-changing books. Narrative of Frederick Douglass, Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington; Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs/Linda Trent; I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou; Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown; Their Eyes are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston... and Watson's go to Birmingham by Christopher Paul Curtis... ok it hasn't changed history, but it does have a history changing moment recalled in it.Some read, some don't.

Tarrell had started to be one of the readers. I was proud of him & bragged about him & now he's dead.& I don't know why.

I don't know how he was in the world. I don't know. But in my room, he was one of my good kids. He was even fun.

Early in the year we teachers tend to sort kids into three categories: The good; the followers; & the bad. & that sounds worse than it is... The bad are the ones we actually try to get to know the best the fastest. If we can get "the bad" to behave better... to care about their education, then the followers won't join the bad. The good? They do their work no matter what. & so I pray a lot for " the bad."

By the end of the year, I don't have "bad kids." Ok, not all are good students, but what I do have are... the kid with an anger chip on his shoulder cuz mom died a couple of weeks before school died.; the kid whose dad beats on him, the girl who is pregnant; the kid whose parents are mad because of homosexuality; the woman who works 40 hours & pays the rent even though she's only 16; the girl who writes poetry about suicide; the boy whose father has a couple of girlfriends on the side & a mom who finds out about it; the girl who wishes she had never had that first drink; the boy who sees his brother die & doesn't expect to live to be 18.

They aren't bad kids, ever. I just don't know why school is not a focus for them at first. I don't know why they don't have respect for their own futures. Why they don't see how school will benefit them.

Though I'm statistically one of the very few folks on this planet with a Masters degree, I don't earn the serious money that education suppposedly promises. I can not tell them that education will make them rich. Oh, I have the statistics to show that it is true, but I don't even earn 43K a year. A year or so ago my kids & I could have qualified for free & reduced lunches too, if their father was a deadbeat... fortunately he isn't. So I can't say study to be money wealthy.

I struggle to figure out how to tell them that education frees the brain & the soul.

It removes chains.
It keeps people from being able to jerk you around with their lies & propaganda & persuasive tricks.
It gives you the freedom of feeling confident about your decisions.
It gives you choices.

How to explain that when the books that say it clearly are "boring"?Boring because 70% of today's youth of all races & wealth read below grade level & do not understand what they are reading. Boring because it's more comfortable to say that than "it's too hard." & yes for my students the percentage of below level readers is higher.

I try to offer a variety of levels of books, but some of the "good" students this year decided to take the easy road & took the easy books. As Emerson would say they are chosing not to till the plot that has been given to them. They are not doing what they know is their best and it will not satisfy them. Usually the "good " students don't get away with it. Usually I take the time to fix the lists of who is reading what to prevent that. I forgot this year.

But meanwhile... Tarrell began to read.

I don't really know what level of book he should have had. I don't know if he is a high reader or low reader. & now it doesn't matter.

But he had begun to read.

The other day a colleague & I just happened to be discussing the distressing idea that some of our students don't expect to live to be 25... that some of our students don't expect their lives to go by with out jail time. Heck, some have been there already... or are wearing the ankle bracelets of home arrest or supervised parole.

Did Tarrell expect to live? I don't know.
Did he expect to stay out of jail? I don't know.

But because of how he had begun to try to do some classwork, I think he did expect to live. I think he wanted to live & stay out of jail. I think he did.

Had he always? I don't know.
Had he always shown respect for his own future? I don't know.

But this I do know.

I think he had hope and dreams, so damn the bastards that shot him. Not only because they took his life and his future, but also because now some other kid of mine thinks that cuz Tarrell died, maybe there is no reason to do school work or respect his own future, cuz he won't live to be 18 let alone 25 either. One of my kids might now think that because he can't control what some bastard with a protected by the 2nd amendment gun can do, why should he even try.

What the hell good do Emerson & Faulkner & Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Hurston, Jacobs, Brown & Angelou have to say to some one who is in a coffin before age 18?

I don't know.

I do know that they can give those who are still alive reason to hope to stay alive. Reason to believe that those trials and tribulations that make it easy to give up can be survived.

Those who read can be given the hope and the courage to prevail and not just barely survive. They who read can see the honor and sacrifice and pride and pity and compassion that help us to endure with out having to learn everything the hard way themselves.

So damn the man, boy, girl, child, mental infant that shot that blasted gun... & yes I know I told a kid of mine today not to use damn cuz the Bible tells us not to...Yes I know it. But how dare that so called human rob hope from my kids. How dare that subhuman hurt my kids more... How dare it not show respect for the future of all of my kids by robbing one of my kids of his next day & his ever brightening future.

and so I grieve for a boy named Tarrell that I barely knew, and all of my kids who are hurt by his death.

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

As I warned myself & others warned me. If he would lie to her; he would lie to me.

I knew something was wrong for a couple of weeks, but couldn't get him to talk as much, which was a symptom that something was wrong, too.

He told me he was giving up the rented house so that he & I could afford life together better. See each other more, have less debt, etc. He was going to see about renting from my mom & work off part of the rent instead of $. But then he changed that into just moving into the semi-abandoned farm house he stayed in last winter.

His stories about where he was sleeping during the moving process had holes & contradictions. Then Monday night his eldest daughter texted me & asked what our status was. I told her that if he was living w/ wife we were over. If he was at that farmhouse, even then I wasn't positive cuz he wasn't giving me updates either.

Yesterday, Tuesday their pastor called me on my cell phone during school. Wife got my number off her home phone, but didn't call it herself. Asked pastor to confirm whether it was a contractor or not like FBE told her it was. Pastor told me FBE had moved back in w/ wife & was blowin on her in church like she was his best gal.

FBE tried calling while I talked to pastor. I texted him that I was talking to pastor. FBE & I talked afterwards. He tried to tell me he was just doing it for short term so he wouldn't get screwed in the divorce. He tried to tell me about how he needed to avoid alimony & extra child support he couldn't afford. He tried to tell me it was so we could be together in the long run. I just pointed out that he lied to me & that he knew how I would feel about him living with her.

Later he texted "lets just call it quits." I already had taken off the ring. It's a pretty ring.

We texted during school & talked afterwards. He still loves me he says, but he wants his kids too. He doesn't know how to have both.

I've told him & his daughter that its over, but if/when he changes his mind & has nothing to lie about, he knows how to find me.

I want wife to know the extent of the lies he told her.
I need to figure out what to do with his clothes & stuff.
I just tried to shut off his credit card on the account we shared, which is technically only in my name. For some reason they can't guarantee that he can't use it any more.

Damn it. I broke every common sense rule. Every common sense rule that every woman knows. I thought it didn't apply to us.

I can't eat. I can't sleep & I can't cry enough.

& I saw it coming. I knew something was wrong. I felt the lies of omission, heard the evasions. I know how he made moving to the farmhouse not a real lie to himself. He did move stuff back into it that he took from it. He just didn't move himself there.

I told him in a text last week when he wouldn't answer the phone, that I had watched him for a year avoid her calls, & delay responding to her texts, tell her 1/2 truths. I told him I noticed him doing it to me & it made me worry.

May you remember common sense & trust your instincts. Don't tell the rules & your guts that they are wrong. Listen. God gave us a brain & intuition for a reason. Use them.