At the top of my blog, I wrote that societal ills affect the most vulnerable populations first. Even though I wrote it, I am understanding it now more than ever. The past 3 weeks have been truly crazy. One of the missions of the school is dropout prevention. But we've been kicking out kids left and right. Right now the tone and environment of the school is the worst that I have ever experienced. Talking with the principal, she was saying this is the worst that she has remembered...and she has been there 35 years. Just in the past month, we expelled 1 kid for drug dealing and being high in classes, 2 kids suspended for almost fighting, and 4 kids expelled for fighting. And I believe more expulsions are on the way. Girls are getting pregnant left and right.

As bad as it is right now, I want to believe that good will come from this. Students and staff want to make things better. We have been trained in restorative justice and this is a situation where we really need it. Kids weren't moving on having circles, but this is the light under their and our asses to make it happen. We are fortunate to have a process to deal with our situation. In response to the situations, we have had 2 student run talking circles. The one last Thursday was intense because it involved more staff and more students. I went to both of them. A lot of emotions were put out at both of them, but the Thursday one had people crying.

The stories that kids tell me about their lives boggles my mind. It often really puts my life into perspective. The things that they go through... I'm not surprised that they aren't into their education. When families are scraping to get by...it's not shocking that kids don't want to read.

But back to what I was saying about societal ills...it's the economy. The ones with the least are having to get by with even less. Funding and budgets are getting cut. People are losing their jobs. The ones that continue to work are working like slaves because they have to do the work of more people and they are happy just to have a job. People with impressive resumes are competing for jobs with people with high school degrees. People looking for just anything. People aren't buying and so businesses aren't expanding. I wonder where the bottom is.