issue #02 pdf - Razorcake

I checked the rest of my students; they seemed under control. At least there were no visible projectiles.
WHY KIDS GO POSTAL
Danny came up to my desk at the
beginning of the class period and
asked could he please have permission
to go see Mrs. B, the assistant
principal.
"No," I said. "Not right now.
Now is not a good time. Go sit
down."
It wasn’t a particularly good idea
to allow him to leave my classroom
and be out in the halls. I could just
imagine my principal stopping him
to find out which teacher had the
poor judgment to let a student be
idle during class time, even though
all week the kids had been suffering
through the state’s standardized test
and today they finally got a break.
In his oversized nylon windbreaker,
Danny’s skinny body
seemed to shrink a couple more
inches. But he obediently turned
around and went back to his seat. I
didn’t pay him a whole lot more
attention after that. I was trying to
balance about a hundred different
things at the same time: take attendance;
figure out which kid needed
to make up what work; write up a
detention for the girl who was
chewing gum and then said she was
chewing on her tongue when I
asked her to spit it out; open up the
Grade Quick program and locate
six different grades from three different
files in order to fill in the
information for two students’
progress reports; e-mail another
teacher about a project we had due
for a night class we were required
to take if we wanted to keep our
jobs; stop to yell at three kids to sit
down, didn’t I tell them not to get
up without my permission and wasn’t
I already doing them a favor by
not assigning work today and
allowing them to have a quiet period?
Danny’s retreating back
flinched at the shouting, but he
should have known that I wasn’t
yelling at him.
Danny is one of those kids who
you could forget was even in class.
There are days when I forget to
check attendance and after all the
kids have gone home, I rack my
brains trying to remember if certain
kids had shown up in class. Most of
the time, when the
30
students are done with their work
and have started sneaking up out of
their seats, tossing folded notes and
throwing hair picks across the
room, Danny is impervious to it all,
engrossed in Harry Potter. He likes
to read, and he doesn’t carry a
backpack – he pulls one. You know
how flight attendants have the compact
carry-on luggage that rolls on
wheels? Kids at our school have
student versions, stuffed backpacks
on wheels, heavy burdens that they
cart around campus. It’s like
they’re going to the airport. The
other day, I even heard one kid
make a comment about another student:
"Look at her, she think she
going to the airport. Hey, Whitney,
what gate you flying at?"
In the back of the classroom,
most of my students were absorbed
in games of Connect Four and
checkers. A few of them were preoccupied
writing letters that no
doubt were grammatical and
spelling nightmares, but at least
they were writing. Four of the girls
were sitting in a tight cluster and
discussing Kimberly’s secret pregnancy,
which wasn’t so secret ever
since a teacher tipped me off about
Kimberly’s recent change from
tight little outfits to a baggier
wardrobe, and Kimberly herself
came by my desk the other day and
casually asked, "Ms. Vidad, what’d
you do if you knew one of your students
was pregnant?" I said, "I
would be pretty sad. And disappointed."
Because what else could I
say? Or do? How much control did
I have over these kids’ lives?
Not ten minutes later, Danny was
back at my desk. "Now, Ms. Vidad?
Can I go see Mrs. B?"
I knew the last thing one of my
bosses needed at this point in the
day and week was to have me send
a student up to her office. As befitting
my position on the academic
totem pole, I tried to screen the situation
before I bothered administration.
"What’s so important that you
have to go see Mrs. B, Danny?" I
asked.
Gravity suddenly had a very fascinating
effect on Danny. His eyes
got pulled down all the way to the
floor until he was staring at it
through his toes and he said, "I kind
of don’t want to tell you."
I checked the rest of my students;
they seemed under control.
At least there were no visible projectiles.
I said, "Let’s go outside and
talk."
Danny followed me and didn’t
lift his eyes from the smears of pencil
lead on the floor tile until we got
outside in the hall. I kept the classroom
door open a crack and waited.
"See," Danny began, "Well, uh...
Okay, um, me and David, we were
sitting in the back of the room yesterday
and, uh, Tina came over to
us and she started calling me names
and told me stuff like how come I
always act so dumb and why my
teeth all buttery and, um, uh, I
guess I made a comment like I told
her why she so ugly and, uh, she
reached over and grabbed me by
my shirt and scratched me right
here and she left kind of a big mark.
But, uh, I didn’t do nothing ‘cause I
don’t hit girls. And then you told us
it was time to go and she got up and
kicked me in the leg and she went
back to her seat and then I was talking
to my mom yesterday and um,
uh, my mom said that’s battery and
assault and um, uh, I should’ve
reported her."
Danny quit talking and stared at
the space above my right shoulder.
I could tell that the kid was scared
but the first thing that came to mind
was a long sigh and oh, shit.
Danny’s mom is a cop. The first
time I met her at a parent-teacher
conference, she came in fully
loaded with a billy club and gun in
holster, wearing a uniform that
stretched across her biceps and fit
snugly around her thighs. The
woman was solid. She looked like
she could easily bicep curl her son
with one arm and his backpack on
wheels in the other. In comparison,
Danny was a shrunken mouse of a
kid who got lost in the shadow
behind his mother. I could imagine
the interrogation after he came
home and told her what happened
at school. Where was your teacher
this whole time, Danny? What was
she doing? Why was this allowed to
happen? What were you all doing
in class anyway? Why didn’t you
report this or say something to her,
Danny?
I looked at Danny and I saw this
kind of nerdy kid who, through no
real fault of his own, was going to
find himself in high school next
year stuffed into a metal locker one
day when his back was turned during
PE, and all I could think of was
how my butt was going to get into a
whole heap of trouble. How I hadn’t
been doing my job and how I
could have let this happen. Why
this kid who would rather bite off
his tongue before he would tell a lie
feel like he couldn’t come to me
about another student’s attack on
him yesterday. It wasn’t entirely
my fault, but how come I felt so
guilty? Why should I feel so