Losing a good person

I had this one student. He was an amazing kid. He lived a crazy life. His biggest enemy was himself. He didn't think that he would live past 24 years old. His environment was leading him to a quick death. He got into it with a female student and now he is out of the school. I was really bummed to lose him. He needed the safety and stability of my school to restrain himself for his own good.

"Jesus on the lean donkey is the emblem of how the rational intellect must control the animal-soul. Let your spirit be strong like Jesus or the worn out donkey grows to a dragon." -Jelaludin Rumi

This girl tried to step up to him like she was a guy and she got punked. He threw some silly putty right into her face. Since he went there, he's gotta go. I know that girl and she likes to talk some shit. There are certain people that you can't go there with. This kid is one of them. Once again, I'm not condoning what he did...but she got her karmic result from talking shit to the wrong people.

Now this kid talks shit too. No doubt. He's an angry angry young black kid who is brilliant but his anger runs him. He witnessed domestic violence against his mom and yet he's misogynistic. No father in his life. He's been in juvenile hall and we got him with an ankle bracelet. He doesn't have 3 squares a day and has no money in his pocket. He has to hustle for what he wants. I was giving him noodle bowls and pop tarts. He doesn't feel that he has control over his life. He was scraping by and decided that he if he was going down in this world he wasn't going out like a little bitch. It was so hard to watch a brilliant kid whose justified anger coupled with a tall frame and dark skinned blackness conspired against him. Society and family life had traumatized him. He needed therapy. But people feared his large framed angry darkness. The kid was always respectful to me and 100% honest. Dead honest. No filter dead honest. I was trying to get him to code switch and it was happening.

I'm saddened because I fear for his life. 105 murders in Oakland so far. 80%+ of the students in my class have lost someone close to them by violence. My school was a place he was safe from the crazy streets and his personal life. He once said to another teacher he would rather die than go back to prison and lose his freedom. Good luck G.

Haters!!!

The present fucking zeitgeist is anti-LGBT. Unfortunately, this plays out in my school too. We've had some racist and homophobic language written on our bathroom walls. For example, there was one writing specifically stating that one of our gay students gets it up the butt. Then we recently had "Faggot ass niggers go home!" and other wonderfully written phrases. In response to this, I started up a Gay-Straight Alliance to deal with the homophobia and try to make the school safer and more secure for everyone. Unfortunately, we encountered a significant amount of resistance from the parents of the students in the GSA. Apparently, Christians aren't too fond of homosexuality and don't want their kids anywhere near a GSA. Of course, their children in the GSA weren't gay because... there are no gay Christians!!!

Anyways, I recently had some speakers come to a class to talk about being gay and the issues they confront. I wanted students to meet some gay people and humanize their situation. Get it across to people that it isn't ok to be hateful and intolerant. Well apparently some students couldn't deal with this and took to telling their mommies. Then I find out that the school got called because a parent was pissed off. She wanted to know if we were going to show the other side of the story and wanted to come in and speak on the Christian ideal. My coworkers talked to her but I didn't get the chance cause I was on a field trip. When I got back, the student came up to me and told me that his mom wanted to speak to me. I called her on the phone and talked to her and asked her what she would do if "Faggot ass niggers go home!" was written on the walls of her school. She didn't have an answer for me. Once again she wanted to know if I was going to present the other side of the story. This was absurd to me because heterosexuals weren't the victims. No one was hating on heterosexuals. So what, if I'm going to teach about racism I should bring in a neo-Nazi??? Fucking ridiculous! I bet that if "Fucking Niggers go home!" was written on the wall, people would be outraged and want to do something to make it better. But if you put the word faggot in front then it's ok because it's really referring to the homosexuals and not really the racial part of it.

When I was talking with a group of students about the homosexuality and their views I found it very interesting when one student that was Christians said to me that his religion taught him to hate gay people. But he said that he didn't believe that because he had been around them and didn't find them to be any different than anyone else. All week long it rang in my head him saying that his religion taught him to hate. It's incredibly ironic that a figure as loving as Jesus has spawned so many "followers" that are hateful and intolerant. I'm not a Christian but I know enough about Jesus to know that he wouldn't like being used to justify violence and repression.