Stories from HighSchoolLandia

Part I: Stories from HighSchoolLandia:


1) Watching a student who is so frustrated with school that within the first 10 minutes of class he got up, grabbed his notebook and started hitting the desk with it and saying, "I'm being a distraction, send me out of the room. I want to go home." School is so miserable for him that he'd rather get sent home, suspended, instead of writing down five vocabulary words and their definitions. How does it get to that point?


2) Talking to one of my newer students about her dreams for the future, which is to be a pediatrician because her five month old cousin died and no one knows why, and hearing her tell me that her own family members told her that its not possible for her to become a doctor. Just another one of the infuriating effects of poverty, racism, and the achievement gap that make up the list of daily tragedies I observe in my students' and their families' lives.


3) I had another student tell me that she wants to go to WashU, where I graduated from last year. The average ACT score at her school is a 14. You have to get around a 30 to get into WashU. I want to believe its possible (it is) but, goddamn, its not likely (I'm using the word "goddamn" a lot in the post because we had a great time in class reading the scene in Romeo and Juliet where Mercutio, Tybalt and Romeo fight and say "goddamnnit" a lot, much to my students' enjoyment).


4) Watching a student who is often not interested in class smiling and really, really engaging with me and his classmates while we made-up Shakespearean insults. He called me a "vain onion-eyed apple john." I called him a "bawdy, dizzy-eyed, foot-licker." Definite highlight of the week. The smile on his face was so big. I recently found out that this student mostly just bounces around living at his friends' houses.