Saturday, October 16, 1999
I had a relatively quiet week at SMS with little interaction with anyone. Right now the m.o. is to lay low and chill out a bit. To catch up on what happened in the last week I need to regress a bit.

As usual, my department chair cannot figure out how to evenly distribute the newspapers that come into the school. Last week she got 150, I got 0. We are supposed to get 75 each, but when I asked her for some papers, she simply said that I couldn't have any. After a brief consultation with the principal, some but not all of the newspapers were sent to my room courtesy of the department chair.

Last week, I received this question from a student: 'How many moon do the earth have?'
Obviously, we all know the answer, but this child stated the answer was '2.'

On Friday, we had a teacher's workday which was only half a day because of the hurricane which let us out early. From what I heard, other schools were let out prior to our dismissal, but we were held for some unknown reason.

The workday allowed me a chance to go and rap with some of my colleagues. One of my colleagues, Mr. Martin, is a typical New Yorker who claims he has seen it and done it all. After a stint as a veteran teacher in the Bronx for over 20 years, he has been at SMS for about 10. Martin wasted no time grabbing my ear about what he perceived as the problem at SMS.

'The problem is, that the principal is a do-nothing racist mother fucker who surrounds himself with a bunch of fuckers who don't do shit either.' Wow, this was some powerful stuff.

Martin continued, 'You see, he is on proscription (a situation where he is constantly being monitored because of his past fuck-ups) this year and he is about to get his ass booted for being such an idiot. One of the reasons that he is on proscription is for the number of lawsuits initiated against him by the faculty at this school.' He continued, 'You are not a team leader because you are the most competent, which I believe you are, but a team leader because he needs a token white person in that position.' This concept was not new to me and had been conveyed to me previously by one of the A.P.s at our school. What surprised me was Martins' frank assessment of the situation.

Martin continued by telling me that a number of teachers from SMS have already gone to the region superintendent and to the teacher's union to complain about the way our school is run. It made me realize for the first time two things. (a) I was not alone in feeling the way I had been feeling and (b) This is deeper and bigger than any bitching that I could do.

So now I'm at the point where I think it may be best to simply stand on the sidelines because the shit is going to continue to hit the fan weather I do anything about it or not.

But I cannot shake some of the things that Martin said. Martin claimed that certain teachers had engaged in serious misconduct by fighting in front of other teachers, students. He then stated that the only reason that they did not lose their jobs is because they were black. He continued by stating that the bells don't even ring on time because black people are running things in the office. He said that if a latin or white were running things, at least the bells would ring on time.

Martins' assertions about teacher misconduct and the bell schedule are true to this extent: Yes these things happened. However, I do not think that race had or has anything to do with the decision making. At least I hope not.

As I recall the situtations from last year regarding teacher misconduct I am reminded of two major incidents. The first is the Charles incident. The second is the Blackburg incident.

Stacy Charles is an attractive and assertive black teacher at my school. She routinely has few discipline problems because when she does, she merely threatens the child by stating things like, 'I ought to knock your eye right out of your head.' Last year, Charles got romantically involved with another teacher Betters. Betters unfortunately at the time was engaged to be married and later was alleged to have made out with a student. However, that is just background for this story.

One day, Better's girlfriend came to school and went to Charles' classroom. Ms. Charles was confronted by the girlfriend who somehow found out about what had been happening on the side. Betters heard of this potential incident and raced upstairs. Now we have Betters, Charles, the girlfriend and a class full of children waiting to see what is going on. It went down like this:

Girlfriend motioning towards Charles - 'Tell her what you told me last night, Tell her!'

Betters - 'You weren't nothing but a fuck to me.'

Kids in classroom - 'Oh shit!'

Charles - Takes off her shoes and swings them at girlfriend and chases her out into the parking lot.

Girlfriend - gets in her car and drives away

Two days later, the police officer at our school investigates the incident and tells Betters that 'he better control his women.' Betters replies that the officer 'should mind his own business or he will kick his ass.' The officer responds by arresting Betters for threatening a police officer.

Both Betters and Charles keep their jobs.

The other incident involved Ms. Blackburg another attractive black teacher at our school who just happens to have one of the biggest and roundest asses of all time. Blackburg takes the kids on a field trip and leaves them to go have lunch with a gentleman friend. A few drinks later, she gets in her car and wrecks it coming back to get the kids who have not been chaperoned during the entire time. She gets arrested. In the meantime the children wonder where Ms. Blackburg is.

No investigation ever took place. The following week Ms. Blackburg again took the kids on a field trip and kept her job.

Yes, Martin was right, the misconduct did involve black teachers at our school. But would the response of the principal have been different if the teachers were white? I don't think so, but I think that it sure is strange but typical of how things at SMS are done. Maybe Mr. Miller is so desperate for teachers that he allows that kind of shit to go down.

Monday October 25, 1999
Another week and another run in with the bald headed fucker but this time it ends up being not too much of a big deal and nothing else has come of it.

The situation came from her paging me on the intercom requesting that I be the one to call a parent and inform them that their child is in In School Suspension. Imean, isn't that a fucking administrator's job? A desperate and ignorant parent got caught in the middle because just as the bald headed one refused to do my job, I refused to do hers. The end result was that she showed the parent several referrals that I had written (entirely inappropriate in my book/ student confidentiality compromised) which all contained the words 'persistent and chronic misconduct.' The parent alleged that I was a racist because in her words, those are 'Words to be used in describing a black person to a judge, not to describe her child.' Ignorant slut!

Anyway, I complained to Miller and he stated that he too thought that it was inappropriate for cunty to ask me to do her job.

Heard last week at SMS

Q: 'Why do you think white kids are killing other white kids'
A: 'Its that music they be listenin to'
Q: 'What about the gangstah rap you listen to?'
A: 'They be listenin to that Meryl Streep'
Q: 'Meryl Streep?'
A: 'You know, like Marilyn Manson or whateveah'

Yeah, I can see how those two sobbing pathetic creatures could be confused for each other.

Monday, November 1, 1999
Over the weekend, my wife convinced me to start working on a time capsule to bury on the school grounds. I was searching for a school project and this seemed like a natural fit. Both the principal and the kids agreed that this project would be a good idea.
I'm looking forward to seeing what the kids bring and how the community responds to it. Hopefully the media will come out for this show.

I've averaged the grades for the kids and the thing that stands out the most is how many kids are failing because they just don't try. I have about 66 kids failing right now out of about 175. The number should be higher because those kids that have D and C grades are really doing work that is below the passing level according to the grading scale for the public school system. I'm kind of in a Catch 22. Do I really fail over 125 kids? Last year out of the 70 kids or so that failed for the year, only 1 returned to SMS. The other 70 were socially promoted.

Tuesday, November 9
I had an interesting encounter with some students today. I was discussing the Y2K problem in another classroom during my planning period with some students. One of them stopped me in the middle of my lecture and stated, 'You need jesus.' I asked her, jokingly of course, 'who is this jesus,' and the response was as follows:'Who is Jesus? Jesus is a nigger who can take your life.' Another student quickly responded, 'You know, Jesus is like a moolie or a nigger.' I was pretty much speechless at that moment and knew that I was going to have to write that one down.

This morning at SMS we held an election for teacher of the year. As usual, things were done ass backwards with an weak attempt to do things in a parlimentary procedure fashion. The nominations were 'made and seconded' yet no one had even seconded the nominations. Anyway, they decide to vote on the damn thing, but then give the biographical speeches about the proposed nominees after everyone had voted.

I have had some unique experiences in the last few weeks and I feel as though I'm really trying to bear down on these kids and make a difference. I recently showed them some civil rights videos featuring Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, MLK Jr. and other great civil rights leaders. The kids would watch the videos and then ask me things like 'Who was that?' It made me realize that some of these kids are just not paying attention to anything at all. Then I got to thinking that perhaps I'm not doing enough by just being in the classroom - that I need to be doing more. For example, this week I was informed that our principal had actually returned some of the funds that he received, back to the district at the end of the last school year. I mean, you just never fucking return any money. Cardinal rule number fucking one! Based on these really inspiring civil rights videos, I felt that instead of dealing with parents just coming down to the school bitching about who did what to their kid, it would be so much better for these folks to get riled fucking up about the return of the money. My idea was to go around to each house in the school community and inform people and reinitiate a new grassroots civil rights movement, but not just about the schools. In my view, the community that SMS is in really needs to help itself, cause no body else really gives a shit about it. So why not develop a community revitalization team to go out and encourage these people to bitch and moan and eventually cause enough press to maybe change things a bit. When I pitched this idea to others, most people said to me that I was a dreamer and that this idea of community activism was broader than me - that it was an idea that wouldn't work because things a so damn desolate.
I don't know, maybe its just me, but I feel like I could be doing so much more. I mean, jesus fucking christ, I have a law degree, and it may not be enough just to be a classroom teacher. Yes I can impact a number of kids a day, and maybe not save all or any of them, and maybe there will be a day or a time when one or two will say 'you made a difference because you gave a rat's ass about me,' but I guess what all of this - and when I say all of this I mean my whole experience in education - what all of this has taught me is that I really would like to make a broader difference. Simply writing academic articles and teaching in middle schools in the inner city is fine, but I would love to make people's lives better, not for just the sake of feeling good myself, but to really make a difference with the tools that I have to encourage betterment and less suffering and a higher quality of life. I know I didn't listen much when I was younger out of arrogance and playfulness, so I cant be too damned picky about the kids, but the adults that I work with seem so fucking lost and apathetic and vulture-corporate like that it almost, and I do mean almost, makes me feel that you can't make a difference and change the world, but something inside of my heart tells me that I know better.