Drama

First hour. My composition class is working in the lab. Another teacher has some of her kids in there too. We hear a loud ‘bang’ as if it is a gunshot. We look into the hallway. A sophomore is storming down the hall. A glass panel on the hallway door is shattered and crumbling to the floor. His girlfriend glares at him as he stalks away. All that was missing was a trailer house and some chicken wire cages for the cock fighting ring. It’s seeing crap like this that makes my cynical and jaded.

But it’s been the same crap from these two since last year. One time I was going down the hall to make copies. I saw the same couple arguing. She was in tears, and he didn’t care. The hallway was packed and neither cared; their drama and antics didn’t embarrass them one bit. At one point she told him, “I want to be treated like I’m a fucking human.”

Who says that? If one of my creative writing students wrote that dialogue, I’d say it was too cliché to ring true. But that is the problem with some of our lower class student population: the clichés have become true. They have watched too much reality TV or seen Dad beat Mom up too many times or been pulled over with Dad while he gets a DUI (see yesterday’s blog) too many times.

A little while later after the “fucking human” comment, the girl begins crying hysterically and slides down the locker and crumbles on the floor. I should have helped her up and gotten her to the counselors. But I’ve become so cynical that I know how vile she is and didn’t care to help her. I wanted to take her aside and give her a dose of my reality - “Listen, quit acting like you’re on a damn soap opera. You’re a sophomore. You have the rest of your life for this drama. If you act like this now over your punk ass boyfriend, what happens when you get knocked up or divorced or busted for dealing meth? My mom died before my eyes and I didn’t cry and crumble to the ground, and I had every right to. Get a grip and quit acting like white trash.”

Am I too jaded for this job? Sometimes I think so.

But then as I was talking to the janitor as he taped up the broken window and classes let out, I had 20 kids ask me what happened. I joked with each one that I had taken someone’s head and rammed it into it for ending a sentence with a preposition or for not turning in an essay. Their smiles told me that I must be doing something right to reach kids.

But, still, sometimes I gotta wonder.

It amazes me at the gamut of kids here. In a span of just a few hours, I’ll go from seeing a student break a window over one the millionth fight with his girlfriend to having a class where most of the students proof read their free writes! From kids who are here solely because the law says so and because their friends are here to kids who crave to learn and care about their education.