Friday, March 17, 2000
Best line I heard today was an explanation for why a student was kicked out of class: 'Cause she was giving head to this boy.' I asked the student to repeat her answer and she said the same thing, but elaborated in this way: 'She was on the floor between and underneath this boy's legs but the teacher told her to stop suckin.' Who said that puberty comes slowly? A child opened up her book today and noted that there was a candy bar stuck to the inside cover. Some pages had been ripped out of the book and others had notations inside like, 'fuck you,' 'suck my big black dick,' and the ever popular 'you faggot.' The kids treat the school like a fucking city dump, but then again, their community is one giant shithole anyway. Who says these kids aren't learning? The administrators of this school have started on a newfound crusade to try to understand why teachers are so apathetic. Perhaps it is because of the deliberate indifference of the administrators to the problems that the teachers face, or perhaps it is just that they teachers aren't trying hard enough. You decide.

Tuesday, March 21, 2000
The day started off on a wonderful note - the department meeting. Unfortunately, our department chair was her usual self; ignorant and on a destination to nowhere. It is amazing how this woman can rattle off such inartful commentary when morale is at the lowest point of the year. This person has a real bad habit of losing important items, like your Midterm Exams, your textbook inventories, and your book orders and then asking you for them a third and fourth time. The meeting ended and I encountered a student in the hallway. He said to me, 'I heard that you were not too well behaved in middle school.' I replied that he was correct. Then he asked me, 'so were you like always grabbing girls titties and touching their asses and stuff?' I could not think of an appropriate reply that would satisfy this child. Later, I was asking the children to imagine what life was like after the Civil War in the 1870s. The kids began to recount a typical day for a person starting with the morning hours and daily duties and responsibilities. When I asked the kids what a person would do upon waking, one child raised his hand and said, 'If you're a baser, you wake up in a cardboard box and put that crack pipe to your mouth and take a big hit.' Other kids quickly reminded this young lad that the time period was the 1870s. Upon reflection, the same kid raised his hand again and said, 'If you're a baser, you might not wake up.' Most of the kids however, understood that a person's day might not be as convenience oriented as a day in the year 2000. One child, Ray, reported that you would get a chicken to lay eggs so you could have breakfast. The next logical step after breakfast was to go to the bathroom, Patricia stated. Derrick then asked how they wiped their rear ends after going to the bathroom. Ray replied, 'with the chicken - they wiped their asses with the chicken.' Jarod then yelled out among the laughter, 'Then you got real problems with a cock in your ass.'

Monday, March 27, 2000
4 Days til spring vacation! I can already smell the sand and the waves lapping at my feet. Grades are due in the next few days, so it should be a real treat to average grades for all of the children. On Friday, at the end of the day, a major fight broke out in front of the office between two girls. Students gathered around the girls and started chanting, 'Beat that Ho!' 'Beat that Ho!' over and over again. One teacher remarked that it was reminiscent of a scene on the travel channel. Tuesday, March 28, 2000 The worst part of my job was experienced today when I had to tell a mother that her child never made it to school. Her mother and I both fear the worst. It is not uncommon to start the day like this and it really threw me off. The girl was last seen walking away from school in the morning and has not been heard from since. Hopefully she is staying at her boyfriend's house or something like that, because I would hate to think of the alternative. Field Trip Day. We took the kids to Smack High today, right in the heart of the hood. This is where most of the kids hope they will be going next year. The two most noteworthy things about Smack High are (1) The state champion football team and (2) The high number of students who do not graduate. The freshman class will number 1100 next year. 350 will graduate. It was nice to see some of the kids from last year who had grown like 8 inches over the summer recognize me and stop and chat. The funny thing is, it was the kids who absolutely hated me who were the first to tell me how great they were doing. I saw one kid out in the hall yelling at a teacher and recognized him as a hallway fixture from Shitsville. Some things never change. Prior to leaving, the girls put on their orange and brown lipstick, and straightened out their weaves as much as possible. One girl stood up and said that she didn't want to be the one to tell me, but that some of these 'whores in the class are hoping to get some digits (phone numbers) from their trip to Smack High.' Then the girl proceeded to open up her blouse two buttons to reveal her racy training bra. The presentation that Smack made to our kids was embarrassing. Our kids laughed the string quartet right off the stage. Many of our kids had never seen a string quartet before and didn't really appreciate classical music that much. Other groups were shouted down by our kids whooping it up. It was typical Shitsville. On the school bus ride to Smack, the kids noted every crack house along the route by pointing out such gems as, 'My sister's baby's daddy lives there,' and the ever popular, 'there goes that lady's house who lives by the train tracks - she always be wearing the same clothes from last week.' It was a learning experience all the way there. Upon the return, it was utter pandemonium because the kids pretty knew that the day was over with. How could we possibly offer more meaningful instruction than that which they received from their trip to Smack?