Taking the Bully By The Horns

A student came to me today trying to avoid getting into a fight. Well, I'm not sure she "came to me." I happened to be sitting in the administrative area on the second floor which happened to be outside of her gym class. She popped her head in and said that the same girl she fought with last week, was still trying to fight her again today. When I asked her why, she shrugged her shoulders and said, "I don't know miss, I guess she thought she didn't win." I wanted to laugh. A little. I said, "you mean she still thinks she has something to prove?" She shook her head. Affirmative. What ensued next was a bizarre course of events. I sent an email to the man who serves as the Dean but he was not around until the afternoon so that went..nowhere. She said she wanted to call her father and that led to this lovely dialogue when he requested that I get on the phone.
"Look, I'm about to come up there and go wild on that school. You mean to tell me there is no one at that school who can take care of this? Why is that girl trying to beat up on my little girl? Why is she IN that school? She should not be there. My girl is trying to do the right thing by going to summer school and y'all don't even have anyone there who can protect her? Ain't no security up in there?" I tried to explain that I didn't know the other girl's point of view. I tried to explain that I was pretty new to the school and that the best thing I knew how to do was to keep his daughter with me until someone who knew what was happening could deal with it. But the man, this father, was so frustrated and I was a lovely pin cushion. I gave him the main school number. Must have worked because one of the AP's came later and I know that at the end of the day, the girl was escorted home by an adult. I also happened to see "the other little girl," waiting for her outside of the school on her cell phone.
When I hear bullying, or cyber-bullying, I don't think about these sort of situations. I think about hurt feelings, or scared, wounded egos, but I don't think about physical--fight-or--flight type fears. Yet, that is what is happening. That is part of a real attendance problem and not just at this school. The kids need help learning mediation but they also need to attend a school where safety issues can be handled safely and smoothly. This is not the case in most under-resourced, under-staffed schools. The kids are scared. It's hard to see it on the surface with the maddening levels of bravado. These guys are so puffed up, they make a French chef's souffle look saggy and tired. Hard to remember that it really is just bravado. Underneath there is fear. Underneath there is insecurity, hormones, the desire to learn and grow and even some pride and accountability (it's just so buried that it can be demoralizing and very hard to find at the end of a super long day of negativity and at least on the surface, hopelessness). And, yeah, I'll admit it--I think of the term as a white kid's problem. But. It. Isn't. So, what can schools do about this? What can under-staffed, under-funded, over-taxed schools do? Offer mediation. Yes. I've seen some pretty decent programs, with not-so-huge an overhead cost or drain on the budget because eventually you get peer-to-peer mediation. Parent education. Yes, I guess, except that from what I've seen, the apples aren't falling far from the trees. The parent today practically threatened me and I was protecting his kid.  But, yeah, I suppose it can't hurt to remind parents that all of these stories have two sides. Most of the time the bark is bigger than the bite. How many metaphors can I mix in here? But there's a larger cultural issue at play too. Is there? I think there is.
Is the right way to settle a disagreement to punch someone in the face? Or to try and talk it out. Our country, heck, the world doesn't seem to know the answer. The diplomats continue to try to negotiate peace while the armies on all sides drone the heck out of civilians. Schools are just microcosms of the macro. The stakes are so low, what else is there to fight for? Many of their parents are out of work, the graduation rate is less than 40% (yikes)! They forecast a future that mostly includes death before 21 or pregnancy or diabetes or a horrible combination of these factors. By 9 am these kids have had red bull, lattes, donuts, chips and a bagel and cream cheese for good measure. Who wouldn't want to fight? (Don't get me started on urban malnutrition, I throw up a little every morning watching them eat). True story. So, what CAN we do? What ARE we doing? What would YOU do?

It's Spirit Week at our school. This means watching as teachers run around desperately trying to impose a sense of pride where there is none. There is Twin Day, and Back in the Day Day, Mismatched Day (a day I truly can't comprehend) and Pajama Day (my personal favorite as I can meet the dressing requirement with little effort). For the students, it becomes an excuse to not wear their school-issued uniforms and promote gang colors and thug fashion. It's a week where enforcing no hats and colors is nearly impossible and I pretty much let anything go rather than argue. The successful part happens on Friday when the kids participate in a basketball game and the cheerleaders show off their skills--the only problem with it this year was that it fell on the same day as the start of our winter holiday so many staff members, myself included, had no desire to stick around and cheer. Apparently, this date was chosen so that photos could be taken to meet the yearbook deadline. These pictures are needed because the President of the Parents was "offended" by the previous yearbook as it did not prominently feature her child. According to this parent, the yearbook was "racist" because it only offered pictures of students in clubs or on the water and did not feature kids in the classroom. Had I been at the meeting where this opinion was voiced, I would have left the room. The woman who has worked on the yearbook for the past two years has given up most of her life to try and create memories single-handedly in a school where chaos and uncertainty reign. I've heard that this woman dispenses the word "racist" like Pez but I'd never imagined she'd taken it quite this far. Why she is encouraged to remain on the Parenting Committee is a feat that could only happen in Bushwick. We have no parent involvement or we have parent involvement from parents whose limited education and values require careful footing on very shaky ground. I try to stay away from those monthly meetings as they reek of foul play.

But on Valentine's Day for the third year in a row, I organized a contest and had a reading. This year, the reading went really well. It was in the library and the poet shared the stage with the students. The students really enjoyed reading their poems, the hot chocolate simmered in my hot pot and the marshmallows made it have that wintery kid-like touch. Some students really let their spoken word skills out and the student pride factor was genuine. Sure, I offered extra credit to the kids who showed up and there were one or two kids who were there just for that, but most of them got roped in once they sat down and had some cupcakes. A few kids even read the sonnets that they had written for my English class and that made me swell with pride. The best part was that a few teachers got up and read poems, adding to the mix, and raising the level of sophistication somewhat. There were kids from all four years and several from multiple schools as well which really made it something special. I felt proud of the kids and the staff who showed up to be a part of it. I was grateful that it wasn't a total flop and that in fact lots of kids attended and asked for more.

End of the semester! The first semester is the long semester so I am pleased that it has finally come and gone. I put together a packet of the "best" sonnets of 2007 and stuck a copy in the principal's mailbox today. Sure, it felt a little self-promotional, but I am feeling that I have no choice if I am going to attempt to create a new position for myself. In looking over the number of students who completed the assignment, challenging though it was, I felt pleased because the completion rate was pretty high given the challenge--typically more give up and quit than actually try and muddle through. I was pleased by the outcome. Sharing the sonnets out loud was a real pleasure. By taking the names off of the work and distributing copies, the kids were all interested in trying to discover who had written the good ones. They were so attentive and gave wonderful and constructive feedback to the authors. Also, they really were proud of themselves for conquering something that they initially found so perplexing. My favorite ones mirrored Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 with a real urban school flavor--shall I compare thee to a pair of new Jordans? Or my love is like macaroni and cheese?

As a review for the final exam (which will take place tomorrow), we played Jeopardy today. I am always astounded by how competitive and excited the student become when we play these games. They bicker over the rules, they are sure that I am biased towards the opposite team, the points aren't fair or aren't elaborate enough... it's so funny. Meanwhile, I get a decent chance to look at what I think has been learned and what has been missed completely. It seems to me that the debate unit sunk into their brains as did the sonnet and poetry unit while the library skills and bibliography know-how seems to be lost by the wayside. Vocabulary and grammar are somewhere in between. As unbelievable as it may be, several groups of students STILL were not able to tell me that a noun is a person, place, thing or IDEA. I fear that the exam will be too long and too difficult for a great many of the kids but I also think it is a very fair assessment of the material that I've covered and will show me how much has been absorbed. I am pleased with it overall.

One of my students had a horrific meltdown this week. Her mother is in a coma from a car accident, her uncle was shot by a cop and her father recently had a leg amputated. It's hard to believe that this is true, but according to her advisor, it is indeed. No wonder she is not so keen on school. This is one of those reminders about just how irrelevant school can be for so many of these kids. They have so many other kinds of traumas and other responsibilities to contend with. Last Friday, one of my students was freaking out because she was going to be late to pick up her brother after school and it was snowing. Another student is struggling with a serious drug addiction while his father seems to be abusing him and is an alcoholic--the poor kid was already removed from living with his mother because she abused him too. Such disasters. It's hard for me to take any of the academics seriously when looking through this lens.

I told one set of parents who came up today that I thought their son was dangerous--he seemed indifferent when four teachers told tales of him nearly blinding students as he throws things across the room. He admitted to an anger problem but did not seem to want to do much about it. He is so manipulative. I felt sorry for his parents. Actually sorry for them because clearly this boy is not going to fulfill their hopes and dreams.