Parental Advisory

I made a curricular decision today. I put a bullet in my students' dream of making their own movie. They had written a script. That had made props. They had even begun to rehearse. Cameras and an editor were in the works. We were even going to give them a premiere party.

But following directions and behaving were beyond them on this last straw of a rainy day. When one game gets tired another begins. Their parents have grown used to the phone calls. I had no other weapons in my arsenal so I had to push the big red button and make it all go boom. For my last month as their instructor they'll be doing and reading and writing drills in between tantrums and homework. Then the school year will end and we will most likely go our separate ways. And that will be that.

One of the things you learn the hard way as a teacher is that it's far more important to be feared than loved. I always saw myself as the kind of teacher that all the kids embraced, the one who folks fought to get into their classes, etc. But as I've thought about it, those were never the teachers who were my favorites. It was the ones who pushed us, who managed to show us other worlds, who encouraged us to strengthen our weakness by having the guts to want something different that stuck in my mind the most: Mr. Choppin, Mr. Wasserman, Ms. Thomas, Ms. Baltimore, Mr. Aubrey, Diane Brown and a few others always made it clear that they weren't taking any shit off of us. And we never tried them. We knew better. But that was a long time ago, a whole generation ago now. Now your kid can come to school looking fresh even when there's no food in the fridge. I wonder how that happened?

The little boys and girls who knew what dick and pussy were but couldn't find condom in a dictionary have brought forth an entire generation of problem children, some damaged by fate, but most by a lack of nurture.

I can say it openly outside of the jail that I love my kids, that I miss those who didn't stay in my program, that I try to give them room to operate knowing the hellish place where they're supposed to be learning. I sympathize with the mostly undereducated and single-parent homes they come from. I feel sorry that my girls most likely suffer from serious neglect on the other side of their front doors. But I have to draw the line somewhere. I have to think about my own mental health and the best way that I can help them from afar.

I often imagine the years ahead being much like the one's behind me, where once or twice a year I run into an old student who is usually doing exactly as I expected them to. Sometimes they've found success. Sometimes they've had three more kids and never finished the program (whatever it was). Sometimes they're proud to let me know what they've been up to. Sometimes they scurry away, embarrassed for some reason or another. If I succeed then perhaps they'll see my name in the credits of some of the shows they watch, see me being interviewed in some behind-the-scenes featurette. That success might validate all that I've tried to tell them. It might even make them regret the way they treated me, if they even remember.

But there is the chance that things won't work out for me in that regard. I'm preparing for that too. My plan Bs (though I've only taken one or two remotely seriously) will at worst put me on the fast track to tenure at a university somewhere before I'm 41. I'd kick out a few scholarly books through university presses and teach until I drop a la the late Dr. Pickens in the Morehouse English department. Even then I'd still be a success.

I guess I'm starting to put all my leftist views behind me. I'm no longer that person who believes that ever kid has an equal chance because I don't think it's true. Not unlike my father, I grew up with plenty of homeboys who were smarter than me. But they got to stay out later, when I couldn't. Their choices in music and movies weren't monitored. They played around in class. Robbed. Stole. Killed. Or just let themselves go. They made the choices that determined their futures, some of them at the ages my girls are right now. A child can only achieve its destiny of parents and teachers share the yoke. And that barely happens anymore.

I did get the bossiest girl in the class, my Connect Four buddy, to follow the rules today when everyone else didn't. That kept the warmth in my cheeks as I braced myself for the ugly days of adjustment that will follow when my class becomes just another form of detention. I have to make the parent calls that my bosses haven't when I've asked them to. 16 sessions of backlash. Oh joy! But no matter how much resistance they put up. No matter what I have to do and how I have to do it, they'll see me everyday to the end. For some reason that's important to me. For some reason that will make me feel vindicated. Out.