some high(and low-)lights of this week (mostly from the 8th grade)

1. finding out that Big Jay is actually 13, not 14, while writing his IEP. Not that this should make a difference, but somehow, the fact that he's got such a long criminal record already, is having sex and selling drugs just seems significantly worse somehow now that I know he's 13. Also, he tested damn near on grade level in math without having been awake through a math class or through the entirety of one in about two years. which means... special ed, not so much.

2. going to BJ's house after he and LJ cut out of school because LJ got in trouble for printing out pictures of guns in order to get BJ to finish taking his frigging IEP tests and completely and utterly wasting an hour of my life there as he completely refused to do anything and got so upset I actually came over that he tried to take his bike out to ride away (luckily it had a flat tire). This was a problem as he's under house arrest. I was kind of afraid he'd get locked up again before school this week. Luckily not.

3. being grilled by BJ's and LJ's friends today on my love life. LJ decided I looked like the type who dated women and men, and wanted me to tell them if I swung both ways. They spent the next half hour trying to get me to tell them something about my love (or more accurately, sex) life. BJ stayed out of it, and even sort of had my back.

"Yo, man, she's just going to say no to anything you say. Stop asking her."

I like him more every day. Except when I was at his house and he was a huge pain in the ass. But it definitely had some kind of effect. He told all of his friends about it, repeatedly. LJ wanted to know why I didn't come to his house. I told him if I hadn't found BJ at his own house, I would've checked his next. I actually had his address when I went over, considering it, but I didn't add that in general I'm more comfortable with BJ because he gets mad when I make an effort to check up on him (although I think he does appreciate it in the end) rather than tries to flirt... LJ probably would've asked me to sleep over (echoes of R's brother from last year... "You can borrow my t-shirt!"). They were all shocked I was able to find out where they lived. I guess none of them knew the school has their info on the computer system. This conversation immediately followed BJ telling them about how I drove over to his house and then a conversation about my car, with jokes about how they steal cars. They wouldn't, actually-- they like me, and among other reasons, my car is older and more beat up then the ones they get other ways, and I'm sure they know they would be prime suspects if anything ever did happen to my car. But still... not the most reassuring conversation.

So as LJ kept trying for the personal information...

"Boys, I'm sorry, that's just too personal. I can't talk about that with you."
"Yes you can! You know us, we're sharing, we're a group here. We wouldn't tell anyone, you know us better than that!"
"No I don't! You were just joking about stealing my car!"
"Oh, yeah..." they started laughing. "Whoops. You know we wouldn't do that, Miss."

5. wasting a full period on possibly the stupidest sixth grade drama EVER between one of my girls and three girls in another class, one of whom is dating one of the boys in my class. Making it worse, BJ, LJ, and one of their friends (who decided to help me grade papers during my prep... random...) walked in while I was in the room I use for resource trying to mediate so there wasn't a full on fight after school tomorrow, which is what was about to happen, and decided to watch. It was like trying to mediate a Jerry Springer show with interactive audience members. My sixth grade girls, particularly these ones, are very young for their ages, but they have a lot of attitude. They don't curse in front of me, and these particular ones are very careful about being respectful, but they have mouths like no others... not helped by the commentary from the boys.

"So then Ms. A, in gym, she called me a B! And she said she was going to, you know, f me up!"

"What's a B?"
"What's 'f' stand for? Freedom? She's going to free you?"
"Yo, that sixth grader's got some Eddie Murphy hair!"

I've had more productive conversations.

4. BJ and LJ's friend (not the one who helped me grade, a different one- in all today I had BJ, LJ, two of their friends whose names rhyme, and this last one wandering into my room to hang out. It's kind of a weird situation. They're probably cutting, but they're at least with a teacher when they're with me and occasionally doing something school related or at least having life lesson conversations when I can get their minds off sex or drugs. And they're not in the hallway or selling drugs in the bathroom. I like them, I don't mind, although it's kind of a pain when I'm trying to work with other students) in response to my refusing to answer questions. When they discovered I would just say no to everything, it became a game. You just can't win sometimes...
"Are you married? Do you have a boyfriend? Do you like men? Are you straight?"
You get the idea. The clincher:

"Do you like younger men? If I were older, I'd bang you."

I actually slipped up and cursed. "I don't ever want to hear that s*** coming out of your mouth again."

He feigned shock. I told Ms. Lez about it later, who's very close to that whole group of boys, and she had him come up later and apologize. He was obviously actually really embarrassed about it. That's way further than even LJ would take it. And he's actually a cousin to a girl in L's class that the other boys were pretty crudely talking about taking advantage of, and got upset about it. That made me forgive him and even like him a little more. Still think I've had my share of eighth grade for the week...

my gunshot wound is itchy

Whoopi showed me her gunshot wound yesterday. She needed to go to the nurse to replace the bandages on her back; she said it was itchy. It's a miracle she's alive; one of the bullets went in by her lung and luckily bounced off her rib and ended in her arm, where it still is. She was at her cousin's birthday party during a drive by. I couldn't stop hugging her. She got either embarassed or annoyed ("Ms. A!"), but I think she understands. She's probably gotten enough of it from her family lately.

BJ was here today. LJ made me promise yesterday I would take him to resource with me, so I told him if he brought BJ so I could do his IEP testing he could come too. Talk about awkward. On the way out of class, LJ started telling me how BJ was absent yesterday because he was arrested for stealing a motorcycle.

"I didn't know it was stolen! I just bought this four wheeler off this guy for like, four hundred bucks. I didn't know it was stolen until the cops were like, 'Got licencse and registration?'"

He had to leave early to go to court over it.

An hour with those two was enough to make me want to sample their various products... For whatever reason they decided to trust me enough to tell me about all their various exploits today, including their drug dealing. I tried to talk to them about it, but it's sort of a losing battle. Go to college, like me, so you can take a paycut! Really, it's worth your while... you won't get the cars, or the girls, or the new clothes, or the wads of cash... actually, it's a paycut... but, um, it's worth it, because...

The threat of prison is far enough off that it's not real enough; they're still kids, consequences like that are just not real to them. And I know some people reading this might think that the answer is to treat them like adults and charge them that way, but really, they're just kids, and that wouldn't help the problem, particularly in the overall community. That's the hard part. The threat of being inadvertently made gay while in prison might help. I didn't want to bring that up quite so blatantly, but it's coming. Probably tomorrow. They're about to kick BJ out of the school- that's as close as the consequences are real, so far. He really doesn't want to go. He tried to convince me today that he would be good and that I should try to convince everyone else to let him stay. I'm actually getting almost attachd to him, starting to like him in spite of myself. I don't really want him to get kicked out. And he's good, for me, anyway...

I had to give BJ a math diagnostic. LJ wanted to help. I was waiting for my vice principal to walk in in the middle...

"BJ, what's five times eight?"
"I don't know, man. I'm retarded in math. I don't go to math class. I didn't go last year. I liked Ms. Champion, in sixth grade... I don't even know who my math teacher is... oh yeah, Ms. M... "

LJ looked exhasperated.

"Come on, man. You sell eight nics, how much money do you get?"

A light bulb went on. BJ brightened.

"Forty!"

Math instruction through drug dealing. Hey, differentiated instruction, right? Meeting kids where they're at? I know more than I want to know, now. They told me about the various stuff they've gotten locked up for, showed me their wads of cash, tried to bribe me to fill in the test for them... At one point, LJ asked BJ if he had coke on him.

"Please tell me you didn't bring coke to school... If you did, I don't want to know, please don't bring it to my class. I don't want to know. Just please don't be so stupid as to bring it to school!"

BJ looked insulted. "No, I didn't bring coke to school! I don't deal with that shit. Oops, sorry miss, I mean stuff. Just weed. But coke, no!" He started emptying his pockets to prove it to me. Keys, money (a lot), wallet, condoms. I doubt the kid's touched a pencil this whole year, but he has condoms. *Sigh*. At least they're using protection... And hey, no drugs.

It got even better when LJ decided to start really hitting on me. He's gotten pretty flirty before. Calling me sweetie was just the beginning. Yesterday when I went to look for BJ, he reached up for a big hug (in class, although there wasn't exactly a great deal of instruction going on).
"How are you, Miss? You look wonderful. Amaaazing. Did you lose a few pounds? You look absolutely beautiful. Your eyes are dazzling. Can I come with you? You're so beautiful."
The thing is with LJ that he's a really charismatic, endearing, articulate kind of kid, with just that extra tinge of goof. So no matter how inappropriate he gets (and he does) it's hard to be mad at him. BJ doesn't have that kind of charisma, so he keeps it a little more under wraps. He still apologizes when he curses in front of me, and the most personal he's gotten is to ask if I'm married. LJ, on the other hand...

While I was testing them, LJ looked through one of my filing cabinets for the computer mouse. I told him to get out the candy I kept hidden in there. He pulled out some twizzlers and tootsie rolls.
"Want some?" he asked BJ.
"Nah, I don't eat candy unless it's bangin'. I only eat really good candy. I don't really eat much candy."
"I know what BJ eats..." LJ singsonged. I cringed.
"Don't..." I started, knowing what was coming.
"He eats girls out!" LJ sang. "You just don't eat candy cause you don't know what to do with it, like with girls. You gotta use it..."

He asked what I would do if a student, being younger than me, asked me out or flirted with me.
"Would you have them locked up?"
"Well, what do you mean by flirting? If they tried to do anything, yes, I would have them locked up. That's harassment or assault, and absolutely, I would have them arrested and locked up. If they just said something flirty or asked me out on a date, I'd just think they were being silly," I fudged. Can't say I was really prepared for the question.
"But you wouldn't have them locked up for asking you out."
"For flirting? That's just stupid. They would know that, too..."
"But you wouldn't have them locked up..." He looked me up and down. "Ha-ay..."

So yeah, weird. Then, an abrupt return to the candy topic...

"So BJ, you gotta do like this. Or Miss, with your boyfriend, this is what you gotta do," with a twizzler, licking it all the way up and down and sucking it suggestively, "tell your boyfriend to do like this, and then you do it..."

I gave up on testing soon after that.

MASH

Well, not exactly. But remember in middle school, those games where you had to categorize your classmates and future lives? Who was cute, who was hot, who you'd marry, where you would live... There's an infinite number of those games, MASH is just the only one I remember.

I confiscated a note a couple days ago from Chatterbox, my new girl who was my trade for Squirrel. She's not a bad kid, just kind of frustrating. She looked terrified for a minute and tried to pass it off to Cyrus. I told her I would have no problem writing her up for giving it to him and not me after I explicitly told her to give it to me.

"Okay! Okay!" she yanked it back out of Cyrus's hands.

I stuck it in my pocket without looking at it. While torturing kids by reading the notes in class is fun, it also leads to a lot more disruption and occasionally humiliation, so I rarely do. I just put them away and throw them out later, or in rare cases, if they're really good kids who are writing notes after they're done their work or something, will give it back at the end of class, sometimes without even looking at it (I usually only do that with Jazz and Kira, who both have near 100 averages, but I told them they were only allowed to write notes if they used proper grammar and spelling and used words other than "play"). This one I just totally forgot about. I don't even remember when I took it from her. I pulled it out of my pocket today. On one side is the list of categories:

girlfriend
marry
sexy
Dog
hommie
cute
chill

On the other side is the Girl list and the Boy list. I'm number 8 on the Girl list- and, I might add, the only adult on the list. Unfortunately, they hadn't actually gone through and categorized anybody yet, so I don't know whether I'm "hommie" or just "chill".

i got it covered

Went to the third floor (8th grade) to check for one of my students yesterday. Two girls stopped me- one is one of my resource girls, who I like a lot but feel for because she doesn't really fit into the school at all, and her best friend that she cuts with all the time that I am growing to loathe. My student was holding back her friend, who was about to fly into a rage because some girl in her class threw a water bottle at her while she was helping clean the room. It was one of the first times I've had to navigate a racial issue between students at the school. Both girls (my resource girl and her friend) are white, the girl who threw the bottle was black. The school has an interesting race dynamic, in general. It's really diverse, as city public schools go. I have no idea what the actual demographics break down to, but if I had to estimate based on the classes I've seen on a regular basis, I'd say it breaks down to something like 50% black, 30% latino, and 20% white, with a micropercentage of "other"-- there's at least a few asian kids, for example. In that breakdown there's a lot of overlap and mixing- Trish, for example, is white, but her nephew in the 8th grade is black, and they have been raised as brother and sister (fortunately for their overall quality of life, but unfortunately for me, they just moved into a house from a homeless shelter and so transferred schools. Luckily Trish has a fellow TFAer who is a good friend of mine at her new school, so I know someone's looking out for her). Lucky is very vocal about her puerto rican heritage but looks like a carbon copy of her african american father. I don't know how she's counted in whatever school census data there is.

Anyway, I mentally organize the white kids into one of three categories, or at least think of them as falling somewhere along a spectrum between these. There's the white racists, who are following in long intergenerational footsteps of families and a community that are racist, have white supremacist groups, and at some point etched a swastika on my blackboard. Then there's the white kids who culturally are not white at all. This year we're doing a school play of West Side Story. The cast, rather than being white and puerto rican, is black and of mixed latino heritage (mostly puerto rican with some dominican thrown in). There is one white child in the entire play, and he plays Riff, the leader of the Jets, otherwise all black. He's a good example of the type who assimilates; I've never actually seen him hanging out with another white student. His aunt, who was an aide in my classroom last year, is black; I wonder if a lot of the cultural assimilation of those kids (like Trish and Riff) has to do with being raised in poly-racial/ethnic/cultural homes. The third type is somewhere between, and those are the kids I feel for; they're not racist and so aren't accepted into the white supremacist cliques, aren't culturally integrated enough to fit in with the black or latino kids, although they may have friends from those groups, and there aren't enough of them, per class, to form their own cliques. Squirrel was one of those kids. He was transferred to another classroom when Gecko, Jamie, Pockets, Huffy, and Jellyroll (his nickname from his friends, I'm trying to think of a better one cause that one's pretty bad) jumped him and stole his stuff. All of the kids who jumped him were black but Jellyroll, who has a latino last name but whose mom is white, but I don't think it was a racial thing at all; none of them really even disliked Squirrel. I think he was simply an easy target for the side of young boys that wants to cause trouble, which is a pretty universal trait. Now that Trish is gone, Squirrel is gone, and my two potentially psychotic kids both passed through my classroom and were hospitalized, there is only one white kid in the room, Tory, who also falls in the middle category (not counting Jellyroll, I'm not actually sure what his background is). Tory luckily seems to have bonded with a couple of the other kids pretty strongly despite pretty different backgrounds (oddly enough she seems to be closest to Lucky, who otherwise seems to think that every white person is racist and, for example, once accused L of racism for temporarily confiscating a toy that was causing a fight in the middle of class).

The other thing I've noticed about the white kids is something apparent mostly in the special ed kids. The black and latino kids often have serious issues, are violent, oppositional, defiant, etc. Most of them, though, seem to be at least workable, or have problems that are understandable or are capable of managing them with time and effort and care. Cyrus is a good example, as is DJ from last year, or Bouncer. All, the year before I had them, had records that looked kind of terrifying on paper. Assaulting teachers (I still can't imagine DJ biting his teacher...), daily fights, oppositional to authority figures, etc. But then looking at their files, it makes sense. Torture, abandonment, molestation, transient living situations and homelessness, etc. Their behavior is mostly symptomatic of defenses they've built for mind-numbing experiences. But all three are still resilient enough to bounce back, and have (except for Bouncer, who's at a disciplinary school, but I think she would have given enough resources). While Cyrus is a pain in the butt sometimes, he's still mostly a happy, loving, good child.
When my mom went to begin teaching in an inner-city high school a few years ago with serious violence problems, another teacher told her to think of building relationships with her kids as a priority for safety.

"If someone walks into your classroom with a gun, you want to know that there is a kid in the room who would jump in front of the shooter and take a bullet for you."

My mom thought it was overly intense at the time, as did I, but it's a thought that has stuck in the back of my mind (especially recently as I actually now have kids that I think probably do carry guns with them). In my classroom this year, there's a couple of kids that I think might do that for me, but Cyrus is the kid that I know would. Whatever his problems, they haven't completely destroyed who he is, internally, and I think he's actually got a lot of nobility in his heart. He would have made a good knight.

The white kids in special ed, however, are a totally different ball game. Case in point Super-soaker, who was hospitalized early this year, after such stunts as covering people with gasoline and trying to light them on fire or kicking his five year old brother's teeth out. Then there's the kid who was in my classroom for a week due to legal issues and was also hospitalized (I think, he's not at my school anymore at any rate) after assaulting both his teachers before me and who was on something like four heavy duty anti-psychotic drugs. These are kids who are just totally past any resources available to them to help. Love and care from a teacher, which so far seems to be what kids like Cyrus most need, just does not cut it. Nor, evidently, does anti-psychotic medicine or round-the-clock behavioral specialists. I don't know what causes the difference in severity between the groups, and certainly this isn't true of everyone. Just an observation based on the kids I've worked with and know from around the school.

Anyway, while I was trying to deal with the two girls (really only one, the other one who's actually my student was trying to calm the other one down), I ran into Mr. Fart, the "art" teacher who farts on students as a classroom management technique. Because he doesn't actually make anyone do anything, he's fairly tight with a lot of the delinquent end of the eighth grade, and hears a lot of fun/horrific stories. This one, of the several he told me yesterday, was the best (and also involves a small bit of graphic language, while only a minute fraction of what I listened to the girls saying in the water bottle incident). LJ evidently came in with a big black eye, so Mr. Fart asked him about it.

"LJ, what happened to your eye?"
"I got rolled on."
"Well, why'd you get rolled on?"
LJ shrugged.
"I don't know."
"Well, who punched you?"
Another shrug.
"I don't know."
"LJ, a black eye is kind of a personal thing. Generally speaking, you know why you get one, and who the person is who gave it to you."
LJ looked around.
"Between you and me?"
"Yeah, between you and me."
"Well, I was fuckin this girl yesterday at her house, and her brother and his friends walked in on us. So they rolled on me."
Fart mulled it over.
"Well, LJ, I don't want to tell you how to live your life or anything, but uh, I wouldn't really want to be a pop at your age."
LJ shook his head in agreement.
"Naw, man, I got it covered!" he reassured him, and pulled out a long strip of condoms from his back pocket. The next line in school supplies...

Good always wins out over bad in the end

Follow up to what I wrote yesterday that I only got around to posting today... grading papers today, my students had to write whether they agreed or disagreed with various statements, then pick one and write a paragraph as to why. Whoopi's paragraph had the best example, hands down (she dictated to another student who is writing for her for extra credit).
Unedited:

I feel strongly about good always wins out over bad in the end like in real life like a guy shoots people and he shoots a girl and she reported him and he got caught and got locked up and she was good so I feel strongly about that sentence.

all that is so you would no I did my work!!

Last week was spring break. I took the opportunity to go to the other side of the world (Spain) and have as little contact with children as possible. My flight home was yesterday, so I took a sick day. It was actually kind of legitimate, since I started developing a cough Sunday night, although luckily it seems to be going away; if I get sick again this year I'm going to have to find a way to order a new body. I arrived home carrying a bit of emotional baggage to make up for all the physical baggage the airlines lost (including my cell phone... grrr...), trying to get mentally ready to get back to school.

Now, bit of background on what I thought I was coming back to. My primary partner teacher, M, who started out as the science and reading teacher for both my section and its sister section (L's class), has chronic health problems. She's been out of the room for what I think amounts to months, now, and the last few in a row. She came back for another staff member's baby shower, the day Maria told me she was running away from home the last period of the day, so I saw her only briefly, but she told me she was going to try to come back for report card conferences but would absolutely be back after spring break. (While I love M as a person, it was not the best moment of my year discovering she felt well enough to come to a staff party but not school...)
She didn't come for report card conferences, but I assumed, naively, that she would be back after spring break. Not so much.
The powers that be put in her place a while ago a long term sub working on getting his certification who's been in the building several years, who was previously subbing for an eighth grade teacher moved to another school a few months into the school year because of teacher/student ratios (my school has a lot of people who are legally considered teachers but are in actuality "support" staff, some who are terrific and some who are not, including grade coordinators who handle discipline and grade-wide concerns, and subject coaches. It's probably a system that should be in more schools, albeit with more accountability to actually helping the staff rather than doing CYA for administration, but it sucked for the kids who lost their teacher for no good reason they could see, mid-year, twice). But since she's been out, I've been planning for both my class and the other class and trying to take care of most of the administrative responsibilities for them, so Mr. Crush has something to go on, as being thrust in mid year not the best time to jump into to all of that, and even occasionally attempting science although mostly leaving that to him, trying to figure out how to do my job well in terms of actually meeting the needs of my special ed kids, and now also doing resource. Basically I've been doing three jobs rather than one, none of them particularly well-designed or very well supported. Fun.

I walked in ten minutes before the bell, and discover one of Mr. Far's kids (my roommate from last year) in the hall. She is probably one of the through and through nicest, sweetest, most innocent kids in the building, and I couldn't imagine her breaking the rules on purpose.
"Hi, Honey, what are you doing in the hall before the bell's even rung?"
She glanced at me guiltily, but had a good cause. "I just wanted to check if Mr. Far is here."
"Was he not here yesterday? I wasn't here."
"No, he broke his ankle!" She looked like she was about to cry.

Now, the last time Far was out, and I went in to check on his kids, since they are largely mine from last year, the rumors were already flying. The sub looked about to cry. Far's class is notoriously hard to deal with. My gift to him, from last year...

"How are you guys doing? I just wanted to check on you, because Mr. Far asked me to make sure you all had been doing your best today for your guest teacher," I lied. I actually had only stopped in because I had run out of the building to do an errand on my prep, and on the way back in heard screaming from his classroom window. I hadn't known before I walked in his room that Far was even absent. "But I somehow heard all this screaming coming from this room, so I wanted to make sure everything was okay."

A class full of fingers pointed instantly at Vandal, a kid I had last year along with Honey in the after-school program for kids who needed extra hours of school to make up for their low test scores.
"Naw, man, naw... it was him! I mean him!" Vandal protested, pointing at the kids he thought I was mostly likely to believe would have been screaming instead.
"Uh-huh..."
"So Ms. A, Mr. Far got arrested?" asked another kid out of the blue. A couple kids nodded and started whispering, but attention was definitely on my reaction.
"Arrested?" I asked, a little confused.
"Yeah, didn't he get into a fight?" Jekyll added. I looked at his face. He's grown up a lot this year from when he was in my class- I think having a male teacher, especially someone like Far, has done wonders for him, but thankfully his sense of humor hasn't diminished too much with his newfound maturity. He almost kept a straight face, but there was a trace of a smile underneath.
"Well, yeah," I decided to play along, "we went to a club last night, and there was a big fight. But when the cops came I managed to get away, but Mr. Far didn't, so he took the fall for both of us. I'm going to bail him out after school, so he'll be back tomorrow. But since he had such a rough day in jail, I want to have good things to tell him about you, not that you were screaming out your window."

Most of the kids instantly knew I was joking, especially since it was pretty obvious (I thought, anyway) that they had made up the whole thing. A couple kids, though, had completely not expected me to go along with it, and all of a sudden were taken aback with the potential that maybe it wasn't a hoax of their classmates. There was a look of suspicious confusion on their faces, but most of them knew me well enough to know I was joking after a couple seconds. Honey, however, who would never imagine a teacher would make something up like that, was devastated.

"Mr. Far is in JAIL?" she wailed. "He got arrested? Is he okay? Was he okay in the fight? He's not hurt, right? He's getting out?"

I didn't have the heart to keep teasing after that, and confessed that actually he just didn't feel well. But long story short, while kids are treasure troves of gossip, reliable info on teachers is not always their strong points, particularly gullible ones like Honey. So I took the broken ankle story with a grain of salt, although it didn't sound like the kind of story someone would have made up for fun.

I walked upstairs. On my into the office to sign in, I see Mrs. B, Melissa's partner teacher.
"Oh, Ms. A, have you talked to Melissa?"
"No, what happened?"
"She's in the hospital!"

Long story, but thankfully far from the kids' version I heard later, which involved her having a heart attack. The hospital part was true, though.

I sign in, go back toward my classroom, see Mr. Crush in the 6th grade office and stop to talk about what he covered yesterday with my class, as M obviously had not come back... As we start talking, L comes in. She looked kind of upset, and without too much of the how-was-your-break small talk, jumped in.

"Did anybody... talk to you about it?"
I was confused. "What do you mean?"
"About... you know..."
"Oh, M not being back?" I brushed it off. "Yeah, can't say I'm terribly surprised..."
"No, about... the whole hospital thing..."
"Oh, Melissa? Yeah, Ms. B just told me..."
She looked confused. "Melissa's in the hospital? No, I didn't hear about that, is she okay?"
"Yeah, I think... Wait, what are you talking about then?"
"The other thing..."
"Oh, Far? Yeah, I just ran into one of his students, I heard about that too. I'll call him later, but I'm sure he's fine."
She looked even more confused.
"No... you mean, you really haven't talked to anyone? I left you a message..."
"My cell phone got lost with my luggage. Long story, but I don't have it right now. What's wrong? What are you talking about?"

L took a deep breath. "Now, don't freak out."
I started to freak out. "What?"
"Just, before I tell you, she's fine. She's really fine, she's home, she's okay. Don't freak out, she's gonna be just fine."
It's amazing how the words "don't freak out" make you do exactly that.
L took another deep breath. I started to hyperventilate.
"Whoopi got shot."

Whoopi (so nicknamed by her classmates who think she looks like Whoopi Goldberg) is the girl who wrote the fairly incomprehensible birthday card that she worked on for three days from my post back in December.

"She what? Like, with bullets? From a gun?"
"That's why I said to not freak out... She's fine, really. She got caught in some cross-fire, and she got shot, on the news something like three times, but she's okay, she's out of the hospital."

I almost fell over. As mornings go, finding that my partner teacher who was absolutely positively supposed to be there after months of absence is nowhere to be seen, one friend has a broken limb, one is in the hospital, and one of my student has been shot three times, all before 8:10 in the morning, is not the best way to start. And I'm not really a morning person to begin with. Way to come back from vacation...

Whoopi actually wound up coming into school today. She couldn't use her hand- she evidently still has a bullet in her arm, but she seemed to feel fine. I couldn't believe she actually showed up. Granted, the shooting evidently happened the last day of school before break, which was over a week ago, but still... she has a friggin bullet in her arm. As everyone in the class was fussing over her in the hall, I helped her open her locker. Cyrus came up to us.
"See, Whoopi? I told you! Everyone's going to be all nice to you and give you all this sympathy because you got shot. That's why I want to get shot. I'm gonna go get myself shot in the head."

I looked at him and said dryly, "If you get yourself shot in the head there won't be any Cyrus for us to give sympathy to or be nice to."
Cyrus appeared to contemplate this for a minute. "Well... yeah, maybe. I guess so."

What disturbed me the most was the total normalcy of how he said it, for all the other kids as well. Getting shot isn't even a huge or life-changing event... Cross-fire is a part of life. A few weeks ago Penelope came in grouchy and snappy. In the afternoon she explained to me that she was just tired. There was a gunfight in her neighborhood the night before, and some bullets hit her house. The cops spent a significant part of the night banging around her house looking for the bullets.
"Stupid cops... I didn't get any sleep. It's not like we shot anyone! I just wanted them to do it quietly."

Penelope, is, incidently, trying to make up for weeks (verging on months) of apathy and indifference to school. She's a really special kid, loves learning about other cultures and is, when not beating other kids in a rage (which to be fair has only happened a couple times this whole year, though she's had other problems and evidently spent last summer under house arrest, I'm not real clear on why) actually really respectful and considerate of others in a way that I wish more adults were. Over break, as part of a reading program we're supposed to be having the kids do, she was the only one who actually recorded what she read, how many pages (145!), and even wrote a summary of what she read for me to prove that she actually read it. The only problem lay in what she read... I'm not sure how I'm going to pass this onto the reading coach...

The summary, with spelling but not much grammar edited, for your reading pleasure (consider it a preview, I'm sure they have it at Barnes and Nobles...):

G-Spot

The book The G-Spot is about a teen. She was 16 when she first heard about a man named G, and G was a pimp he got money from left to right. So she always heard this about him like one day he almost killed his cousin because his cousin because his cousin couldn't pay him his money so what she knew was that G was very strict about his money but as she got older she always heard things about him. She lived with her grandmom. Ok so shen she was 18 she and her friend wanted to go to G Spot the club G onde. Well, really her friend wanted to go but you had to be 21 or older to get in because it was a strip club. At her house she lived with her brother that was kind of mental but not too mental and one day she met G she didn't really know who he was until he told her and by then she had a crush (editor's note- the word she wrote is actually "clow" but I can't figure out what that is... "crush" is my best guess). So you know he got money so he told her he will help her get some money for her brothers school. So she love her brother and wanted him to finish his school so she went along with it.
Then they lived together started going out and then he was beating her.

but I didn't finish reading the story.

(arrow pointing up to her summary)
all that is so you would know I did my work!!

Have a good day (smiley face inserted here)