Day #45

The kids are just jerks. I mean, not all of them, but most. And sure, many of them have damn good reasons to be jerks. Junky parents, dead parents, jailed parents, abusive parents, gang-banger parents. I know all this, but it doesn't make it any easier to deal with.

I tried really hard to relax last weekend after a brutal week. I thought I got myself back into a quiet frame of mind, and that I was going to let things slide off my back and get back into positive momentum.

But the kids are so hostile, so whiny, so confrontational, so insulting, and so rude--and perpetually so--that it saps any desire I have to be compassionate and I find myself yelling and acting like a lunatic.

There's a sixth grade field trip to the Walters Art Museum tomorrow, and a very nice young woman from the Museum came to give a little talk about Greek mythology to the kids ahead of time. The kids were jerks to her. Last period the school counselor gave a presentation on graduation requirements and the kids were so rude and disrespectful that she closed up shop and left a half-hour early, leaving me in the lurch with a bunch of rowdies and no plan as to how to kill the time. I killed the time by letting them have it, both barrels. My main man Cherry Bomb said "y'll made Mr. G upset. Y'all need to be ashamed." And then the rudeness commenced anew.

I heard about an opening at a Title I school back over West Side, near the Book. This school is well-run and meets AYP annually and they have few disciplinary problems because kids are lined up waiting to get in and parents make sure to do what they need to do to keep their kids in the building. I have an in with the principal over there because she interviewed me before and hired me (before losing the position due to enrollment cuts and casting me adrift to land back at the Book before getting transferred to the March).

I thought about taking my weary ass out the March and back over West. I surely did. But can I in good conscience abandon kids, even if they're jerks? No. Not quite yet, anyway.