Day 49

Montrise. He's yammering away during class. I try to shush him about a billion times, but that never works. Finally I sit next to him.

"Montrise, you promised me that once the second quarter started you would be a new man," I said.

"I know," he told me. "But y'all turned on the heat and now it make my chest hurt."

He turns to Nat and Rasheer. "Yo I took that toy and I hit my baby sister in her eye wid it."

"Montrise," I say, "You banged your sister in the eye piece with a toy? That's cold-hearted. You a straight-up G."

Now everyone calls Montrice "Straight-up G." Even Nat, who actually is a Straight-up G. Montrise is more like a cartoon squirrel.

TR and Billy fought round two today. TR got the better of Billy this time, so Billy bit TR on the arm and then stabbed TR in the forehead with a pair of scissors, drawing blood with both wounds. This violence was sufficient to have both students cuffed by the police and taken out of Science class, but for some reason neither was arrested nor even put out of school today. I think it's because they've already been suspended too many times. Once you achieve the suspension limit we have to keep you in school because otherwise you're not learning. Of course now these kids have even less reason to behave in school. We can't put them out, we can't detain them after school, we can't physically restrain or beat them, we can't fail them. So TR was back in class for Language Arts with a bandaged forearm and head, and Billy sat next to him at the same table.