Constructing Kasun, Educator

I can understand better why a few of my students are so damaged, so broken, so unable to look in the mirror and believe there’s someone alive looking back at them. I just finished reading Luis J. Rodriguez’s Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. and can see many parallels between some of my students and the life Rodriguez described living.

I met Rodriguez at a book signing at a conference in 2002. He read from his book of short stories he had just published. I read the stories and was intrigued, but I had no idea this man had lived through so much as a gang member. While the stories are interesting, now that I’ve read his first book, which describes everything from the way he messed his pants in school because he didn’t know how to tell the teacher he needed to use the bathroom to how he shot at people and witnessed acts of violence that only make sense to people who have been robbed of the ability to see a purpose for living. So I’m left wondering why I didn’t read this book before. YES, I know gangs are bad. I know they provide a sense of community for people who see few alternatives to gang life. But this book somehow dissipates the dissonance in my head about how someone could really want to join a gang.

One of my students, I’ll call her Mordida, bit another very sweet girl yesterday. The police were involved. She bit and kicked and pulled out clumps of the kid’s hair. One school official commented, “The victim is lucky she still has her bicep, the bite was so strong.” This student was AWOL earlier this year, then came back to my school and has made appearances about once a week. Two days ago she showed up and whined, “I don’t have anything in my journal–I’ve hardly been here. I don’t know what to do.” I felt angry. She didn’t know about all the great writing we had done because she was busy doing whatever she does… I know she arranges some of the infamous “skipping parties” a lot of our students (especially the Latino students) go to to get drunk, maybe stoned, among other things. I asked her calmly, “A que veniste?” I wanted to know why she bothered to show up to class. She really didn’t have an answer, at least not one she could share with me.

So yesterday after school she jumped a sweet, quiet girl I know who has only arrived in the U.S. about four months ago. This morning the school found out about it. I checked the electronic attendance. Mordida had an all-day excused absence programmed in it. Funny, I thought. Security and administrators were involved. The victim hadn’t arrived, either. Then Mordida turned out to be at school after all, just there to find her friends and cause more trouble. She had called her own absence into school, and she must have faked an adult voice well enough to convince the office staff it was really her mother.

What I understand about Mordida is that something is very wrong with her world. She has been in big trouble for the five years or so. Somehow her world must be as corrupt and polluted as Rodriguez’s was. I don’t know if she’s in a gang, but the lifestyle she’s following is just as dead-end. Rodriguez’s world was (and in some ways still is–it’s our world, too) a place where injustices were perpetrated by all the people with power. Rodriguez’s high school was two in one–one for the affluent kids, another for the poor kids. Sounds painfully familiar. Mordida knows which school she belongs to. I guess I can see why she wants to lash out against it–just bite whatever comes along and hope that will provide some flavor to her painfully dark life.

No, my school isn’t a place where most students are afraid of what might happen to them because of gangs. Most of my students don’t know people who have been killed in gang violence or drive-by shootings. But there are some students who flirt with these dangers, and some of them, like Mordida, fall quickly into patterns of behavior with no easy exit.

I know I have a couple students who I’ve lost recently, and I think I’ve lost them to shame.  I also feel my own shame about not being better, more of a teacher, for them.  I’ll start with the students.

“Brenda, [not her real name], please come back to school,” I implored on her family’s voicemail.  I had caught Brenda on the phone before when I called about her attendance.  Once she assured me she was sick and staying at home.  One or two other times I had left messages.  “I know it’s difficult here for you sometimes, but we need you here.  Please, just come back.  I want to see you, and the other students want to see you.  Come back.”

Part of me wanted to get angry.  A few years ago I would have said, “Hello, this is Ms. Kasun.  Brenda is a very smart student, but please make sure she comes to school.  She is risking her future by not coming.  What’s more, she’s failing my class and several others because of her absence.  Please call me if you have any questions.”  My voice would have been a bit shrill, and I would have felt self-important in the message.  Skipping my class was somehow a personal insult.

But now I know better.  The world my students swim in has little to do with me.  Brenda told me that she likes my class and a couple others but hates one or two.  We talked about why it was important for her to come to school.  She told me her boyfriend, a recent dropout, insists she come to school so she can graduate.

I guess other forces have a more powerful sway on her.  I have emailed her counselor and made my last efforts to try and tell her to come back.  No more guilt-trips, just a plea to see her again.  All I can guess is that the shame is too big for her to call me back, or too big for her to show her face for now.

I called another student, Paul [again, not his real name], who is likely to be expelled.  He has been very angry in my class, sometimes with others, sometimes with me.   The same student has lived through war atrocities as a child that I can’t begin to imagine.  He’s bright, funny, insightful.  And now he’s almost gone.

His phone always worked before when I called.  This week I tried a couple times.  I couldn’t even leave the message I wanted to.  “Paul, we miss you at school,” I would have started.  “I know you did something you’re upset about, but I’ll still be your teacher,” I would have said.  But instead, I got a ring, ring, answer, click.  I’m guessing he saw the district phone number on his caller identification.  I tried again.  Same thing.

It’s possible there was a real phone problem.  But I suspect the power of shame for what Paul did–allegedly threatening security personnel and exploding in class, refusing to leave–kept him, or even his family, from wanting to discuss the matter with school personnel.

And there’s my own shame in this.  Shame for my limited attempts to make these students’ lives better.  Shame for a school system that doesn’t hear and understand these kids.  Shame for our collective impotence as a society to help kids who are hurting.

Finally, today’s Washington Post published information about a UNICEF study on child welfare.  The US ranks #20 out of 21 wealthy countries in child welfare.  Somehow I’m not surprised.

Yesterday I took several students to a conference at a university after school.  Below is a letter I’m going to share with them tomorrow about the experience.

Dear Students,

Yesterday you showed me that you can be very, very good.  I don’t mean well-behaved, I mean “good” like how I want my own kids to be some day.  “Good” as in wanting to do what’s right and not being afraid to do it. 

I was nervous about the entire proposition of taking a group of students to a university to hear a panel of speakers from Africa who have lived through war.  It was a university discussion for university students after school hours.  Would you all be up to the challenge?  At the same time, I was excited by the theme of the conference, transitioning from victimhood to peace-building.  That’s exactly what I hope for all my students to do–not to consider yourselves victims in a country that isn’t always fair to immigrants and their families, but to rise above it.

Now I know some of you didn’t want to attend, and others unfortunately couldn’t.  That’s ok.  I think if you had come, you would have followed the example of the other students.

So after the difficulties of getting the funds for a bus and finding out how many of you might be able to attend, we were set.  Some of the other ESOL students and Black Cultural Alliance (BCA) students wanted to come along, and we set out with one of the BCA sponsors.  I wasn’t certain any of the students would like the conference.  What if the speakers were boring?  What if the bus didn’t show up on time?  What if one of the students got lost?

But none of those fears were valid.  Instead, you were model students.  Better yet, model people.  You filed neatly through the hors d’oeuvres line like refined adults at a cocktail party.  You sat and listened respectfully, attentively, throughout the more than 90 minutes of discussions.  Like you, I was riveted by the discussions.  A woman from Rwanda not only fled her home country during the genocide, she spent three years in a refugee camp in another country only to experience another war that broke out there.  Another woman lived through years as a child soldier with the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda.  She described the initiations into being a soldier—killing others and watching others be killed.  Others spoke of different atrocities.  And they all spoke about the need to forgive and the need to take the power of their pain and turn it into victory over war and death.  I was amazed at their courage and inspired to act. 

After the conference, many of you introduced yourselves to the speakers.  Some of you have lived through similar tragedies already.  And you keep coming to school, committing to become someone better than you already are. 

All of the speakers said we can do things to change the world.  Many said you can write letters to senators and representatives.  We’ve already done that for other issues, and we can keep writing.  But they also said we can join up with and start our own organizations.  Some of you said you’re interested after the conference.  I know you really mean that, and I hope we’re good enough teachers to help lead you to find your way.

Thanks for being such good students.  You make me want to be the teacher you deserve.

Warmly,

Ms. Kasun