Like I stated before, I won't even try to fill you in on my life here, rather I'll share one anecdote that highlights the complexity of this environment and these students.
Two weeks ago, one of our own students got expelled for bringing a knife to school. The complexity of the situation comes in the fact that he neither meant to harm anyone at school, nor did he mean to even bring it out at school. You see, the day before one of his friends had gotten jumped on the way home, so being the adolescent that he is, he thought that meant that he should protect himself. That meant that he should bring a knife as a defense mechanism for the potentially treacherous walk home.
Unfortunately, the knife that was supposed to keep him safe, got him kicked out of the safest environment he knows. If you're like me, you're wondering, "Wasn't there another option for the school?" While initially I thought there had to be, the reality is that there wasn't. The problem with gray lines is they get blurrier and blurrier. Then we're saying, it's okay to bring knives to school as long as you don't mean to use them at school. Pretty soon you're playing a game of whether or not you believe the kid when he tells you why he has the weapon.
The question that this situation brings up is how do we as educators protect our kids when they leave our classrooms. High School is a way out of impoverished conditions, but it isn't a survival guide for you when you're in them. We protect our students for 12, sometimes 16 hours a day, but those other 8-12 can do a lot of damage.
Perhaps there's a rationale for boarding schools, for completely removing the children from their dangerous environment, but is that simply leaving the problem for others to deal with, is that the same situation as a charter school taking kids from the public school without actually fixing the public school?
If not through out schools alone, how do we fix these communities? How do we take away our students fear of death and replace it with a thirst for life?
I don't know what school he's at now, nor how he's doing. But I know it's not as good as here. I know it's not as safe as here. And I know that his chances are diminished there. And that really sucks.
