Stream of consciousness post

"If you succeed, prepare to be crucified."
-Jay-Z

This week's been another rough one for ya boy, but I'm taking the punches like a boxer in the ring. You come to expect the one-two jab followed by the uppercut after awhile. The disillusionment translates to the lives that are in front of you everyday in addition to the selfish notions of self-preservation in an environment where it's acceptable for 11 and 12 year olds to say "fuck you" because you told them to get in line (for the 5th time).

One of my boys (it's always "one of my boys," sadly) robbed me today. It wasn't like the nigga stuck me up and was like "Gimme your wallet". Never that (I'd have to really hem a child up for that). It was actually much less serious than that, but still, he stole something from me. We were in math and I was tired of having to tell him to stop talking and to get his notebook out. I went back to his desk and opened up his (torn up) binder and tried to find a clean page of paper. Every sheet was covered with random drawings. This boy usually spends every day drawing in his notebook and "baking" on his friends in the class. Baking: the act of playing the dozens, "cutting up," "treating," or "joaning" on someone by the use of humorous and witty comments. The goal of which is to leave one's adversary "speechless."

Once I saw that the young man in question had nothing worth keeping in his binder, I took it. I closed it, took it off his desk and put it in my "work corner." This is basically my desk, but its really a mass of boxes, papers, and posters in, on, and around where my desk is. Of course this made him get all hype on some "Gimme back my binder!" type stuff to which I replied "No, your mother can pick it up," to which he responded "Fine, you take my stuff, I'ma take something off your desk," to which I replied, "No you're not. You're going to Ms Craig's room." Ms Craig is the lead teacher who takes students when they've been kicked out of their teacher's room. He refused (of course) and went over to my desk to eye something to take. I didn't wanna have to choke him for breaking something of mine, so instead I dragged him outside (literally) and had security take him to Ms Craig's room.

Now, I didn't really drag the poor child, but he was fighting against me, and he was losing. So as I moved one way, and he fought the other way, he ended up being dragged out. Oh well....

My other big problem student was already out of my room because he couldn't keep his mouth shut when we were taking our bathroom break (which took 30 minutes). So with Problem #1 and #2 out of the room, we made some progress during Math. We covered an entire lesson and they didn't go bananas for a full hour and some change.

Then Problem #1 came back and immediately brought back chaos. Within a couple minutes, Problem #2 came back in. He was still mad cuz he got embarrassed and blah blah blah. I cared about this much. Probably less. But then Problem #2 came up to my desk and this is the dialogue that ensued:
Problem #2: Gimme back my binder.
Me: No. Take your seat.
Problem #2: Nah...Fuck nah!
Me: You're not getting it back so sit down.
Problem #2: No! You take something of mine, I'm gonna take something off your desk.

Now, meanwhile, Problem #1 has made Problems #3, 4, 5, and 6 to get riled up and now there is pandemonium in the room. Also, I have 5-6 students who are begging for my attention to help them finish their math worksheets. Problem #1 and Problem #5 are horseplaying and screaming in the back of the room. Problem #3 and Problem #6 are at the very brink of getting into a full-out fistfight in the same general area.

As I'm trying to deal with all this, Problem #2 picks up the wood model I bought from Ikea to decorate the room and takes it to his desk. This is what he has decided to take from me. Since he went to his desk, I decide to let him be and try to do some damage control in other parts of the room. By the time I remember that he has something of mine, I look in the back and ask James and Rymier, "Where's [Problem #2]?" "He left," they reply.

Admittedly, my blood boils, but all I do is shrug my shoulders. I can't show my anger in front of these kids and especially when the person who's responsible for my anger isn't even there. Somewhere in between all this, Problem #1 blessed me with another "Fuck you" when I told him to come to my desk so I could get him up to speed on what he missed in math. He went back to dramatic horseplay with Problem #5. Eventually he decides to walk out too.

As each day with my kids passes, I become more and more dissatisfied. Not so much with my children, but with everything on which they depend.

First is myself and my relative ineptitude as an educator. I don't know what I'm doing, my kids know it, and they're suffering for it everyday. Because of me, I feel like some of my "at-risk" kids are being pushed closer to the grave and the jail cell.

But then there's the system, the one that pushes children through grade levels like noodles in a spaghetti factory. I need to flunk some of my students because they will not be ready for the 7th grade next year, but I can't flunk them because of this rule and that reason, and such-and-such is special ed, and blah blah blah. Then they wonder why 50% of Philadelphia 9th graders actually finish high school in 4 years. I watch outstanding teachers everyday. I'm surrounded by them. I don't believe all the talk about "underqualified teachers" in urban schools. Here, I'm the unqualified teacher. These other teachers have systems, skills, and swagger that gets the job done day in and day out. They have the experience to control a classroom of knuckleheads and hoodrats (real talk) with so much as a look. The administration has this to say and that to say, but it's far too much talk and not enough action. The truth is that schools like mine need stricter rules of discipline and achievement. But instead, we make room for the flaws. Goals are set at 50%-75% when each grade is already behind 1-2 years in the first place. We can't focus on a student who walks around the classroom and won't take his seat cuz we need to concentrate on the fights in the halls. Well, maybe if we were more strict about keeping kids from getting out their seats, they wouldn't wander into the halls and fight each other.

But in the end, I look at the parents. Children, at their best and at their worst, are reflections of the environment from which they come. It is obvious that my students with the worst behavior do not have parents that, frankly, do their jobs as parents. When I was a kid, my mother kept her foot so far up my behind I could taste the leather on the toebox and the rubber on the soles. Who cares if I liked the teacher? Sit down, shut up, and do your work, Jonathan. Don't make me come up to that school. And to be fair, some of these parents are spread thin. They're raising 5-6 kids (literally) by themselves. But at the same time, keep your legs closed mami. Grow up, realize the bulbs of responsibilities that are aching for your attention, take the money for ur fresh weave and buy a book to read to your kid(s) instead. As my Lead Teacher says, "Get off the couch, stop watching soap operas, waiting for ur check to come in the mail."

It's harsh, yes. Before I stepped foot into Soufwest, I would've called such talk insensitive and out of touch. But I'm here now. I breathe it everyday. My Lead Teacher was born and bred in Southwest Philadelphia and her opinions are about as pungent as an overflowed toilet, but they're real. I watch my students spend their money every morning at the bodega on soda and bags of chips and have to argue with them between 8:15 and 9 every morning to get them to put the soda and chips back into their bookbags. Who eats Cheetoes at 9 in the morning? But then I think about sitting on the trolley at 7am and watching a woman get on the trolley with her two small girls and the black plastic bag that all the bodegas use. She took her seat, situated her girls, and opened up a bag of chips and started feeding a girl who couldn't have been more than 3 or 4 years old. I watched her as she did it and wondered, who told u it was ok to feed ur baby chips for breakfast?

Ignorance breeds ignorance just as intelligence breeds intelligence (and money begets mo' money). The sad thing though, is that population growth is exponential. And by such a law, decline is also exponential. So as babies keep having babies, more and more things keep getting lost, and more and more of the wrong things become glorified and taken as norms instead of exceptions, and I enter room 401 every morning and meet the faces of those exceptions who have come to view the eccentricity of their existence as a norm and injustice as a way of life.

Call me... who?