SOUTH CENTRAL: Rafael was inside the store

when the gunfire broke out. It was around 3:30pm, La Calle Central was swollen with uniformed kids walking in crowds, coming home from school. The younger boys all had red-stained fingertips from the Flaming Hot Cheetos and the girls tucked their chins into their friends' shoulders as they whispered and laughed, whispered and laughed.

The first shot. The shooter missed his target. The car was still moving and the shooter tried again. More shots, more bystanders. The boy just kept shooting.

Five students in total were shot, three adults. Rafael's younger brother, Manuel (both are students of mine), told me about the girl next to the girl who was shot. He knew her. She fainted, he said. She had a concussion. This was said slowly, clearly, letting the word stay in the air almost in a mark of reverence.

The shooting took place right by the library where I tutor on a Wed. afternoon. Just across the street. I used to tutor on Wed. afternoons last year, arriving at 3:30pm in the front of the library to meet my students. Five students, five children were shot last week.

And as I saw my own students process it it was a scary thing. They didn't seem afraid. They discussed it as someone discusses a point of interest in the course of a week. For shock value, maybe, but I sensed some excitement. A bit of a thrill, but not fear. I wonder if they are too young to feel like it could have been them, or if they are too used to all this madness to see it as unusually horrific, or wrong. I wonder...

South Central: The words came slowly

Both to me and the students I tutor.

For months our talk has been normal, surface-level, light-hearted.

Lately the flood gates have broke.

"My dad hit my sister."
"My brother is in jail."
and today, "A man was shot on my street corner....it was a gang."

Slowly, they talk. And what am I to say? I can't ever seem to find the right words. I try, "I'm so sorry______, that shouldn't have happened." "That must have been very scary." "Are you OK?"

Sometimes, I try to be a mother. "You need to be careful when you're outside...You probably shouldn't play outside." "Does your dad hit you too?" "Be careful."

What I want is to run some sort of Harriet Tubman-esque underground railroad and get them all out, all away, all safe. I KNOW they won't all make it. One specifically. And here he is, 8th grade, about to enter the notoriously gang-ridden high schools of South Central, and all I can say is, "let's examine our context clues." "Here are our spelling words for this week." and "No, 'spiteful' is the closest opposite to 'loving,' given the options."

And the student expects that. He doesn't tell me about the gangs, or his fears about entering the high school, or the fact that he isn't allowed to be outside his house anymore because he expects me to do something. He doesn't. And isn't that sad? He expects nothing from me but 1.5 hours each week.

And so, as I leave South Central almost every week my benediction is "Be careful," hoping that they can tip-toe around the land-mines for one more week. That God will save them.

There is something rumbling in South Central lately. It's hard to explain. The news recently said it was a "war zone," but more than that there is an uneasiness, an edge that I noticed today. For the first time since I started spending time in SC, I felt fear as I walked out to my car.

Last week was the two street blockade.

The week before was the public drug dealing at the bus stop.

But it's next week I'm worried about. It's what is rumbling under the surface. It's what happens when people pull back, when sub-security structures (i.e. gangs) step forward, and when those who can flee, flee. It's what happens to those who can't leave, or those who won't---the ignorant, tough, spit-fire youth and the children who get in their way....

South Central: In his words...

Today as I was tutoring, I was a bit sad because I hadn't had any "add-ons" that week, or the week before. And then I met Peter. Peter's mom wanted Peter to be tutored in writing, the librarian said. Peter pulled up a chair, "I'll sit here," he said.

"Peter, why don't you write me a story about a boy named Sam. Sam can be anyone, do anything you want. Just tell me about him."

About 30 minutes in...

"How do you spell "crokay?" (how he pronounced it)

"You mean the lawn game?"

"No, CROCKAY--- the DRUG."

Peter's in the 5th grade.

And I about doubled over when I read his final story. It was phenomenal. You just can't get much better than this.

And so I'll share it with you. In his words:

"Sam was with a spy work he was under cover. In high school he was sent to find out was selling drugs to minors. He had a lean it was some one that like to wear black and green shoe lases. He was not sure so he we to ganges to see if they wear black or green shoe lases so he can join it. That is what he knows so far.

Sam found out the gang it was DX. They wear green. One of the person was triple H and his partner X-pac but the leader was Shown Michels. that gang made Jese James and bily the kid look like a bird. You mess with one you mess with all. There rivals with Mister machman and his son Sane macham. This is the persons in the gans in DX and there rivals.

Sam joined DX and was called sandman because he plays in the sand a lot. He found out who was selling the drugs. It was X-pac he was selling crochan. Sam told him you can go to Jail for doing that. He said "so" then all of a suden the machmans started shooting. X-pac was wounded and then Sam called LAPD and then X-pac went to Jail and DX hated the machmans and sam. Then one year later they shot sam and left a note saying "Sand man had it coming." The End. "

And this is what happens when you ask a fifth grader who has spent his childhood in South Central to free-associate....Thoughts?

South Central: Today it was Alex

the first grader, whose mother came to the table. She did not speak English, but she moved her son closer to me. Teach him. Can you teach him?

It has become a regular part of my Tuesdays. I have a steady group of students, but almost every week there is a new addition to our circle, a totally random person that somehow finds me, independent of any program or agency. Peter has joined on. He seems quite proud of that, actually. Others come and go. But they come to me, usually brought by their mothers, and I am amazed.

Today, this mother approached me with her baby, her first grader. She did not know me and I cannot imagine how she heard of me or what she thought, but she came to me as though I was a doctor and her son was terribly sick. She handed him to me, proverbially speaking, and she left him. Before she left, she sat him on the chair, took her coat and placed it behind him, kissed him, and told him she would be back for him. His mother thought tutoring with me was important enough to approach a stranger, offer her son, trust me, and leave.

Alex, the sacrificed son, looked at me. I had told the mother that, of course, her son was welcomed to join us, but I tried to explain that my group had two sixth graders and one third grader and that we'd be doing things a bit advanced, or rather a lot advanced, for her son. But she wanted him to stay. And he, amazingly, from the beginning tried to jump in to our discussion on inferences etc. He listened and woudl stop me when he didn't know a word and ask me to tell him what it was.

And I love it. But today, with three kids already at the table (the imposed max from the agency) and the kids all struggling to understand their lessons and me being stretched too thin to help as much as I should, I had to, for the first time, tell his mom at the end of the session that it might not work out as a regular thing. I knew that by keeping him there I would be holding back my other three students. I wanted to offer a Saturday lesson, but I knew I barely have time for what I'm doing right now... but you want desperately to do SOMETHING.

So that's just ramblings.

But here's some thoughts to leave you with:

1. I got to sit and read The Cat and the Hat with Anthony last week for the first time. He'd never read it. He's in the fourth grade.
2. Today, I explained what the Big Dipper was. NOBODY in my group knew what it was. It makes sense, since nobody in LA sees stars in the sky.

And I saw this writing prompt and I thought it was interesting...so I'm tossing it to you:

What makes a better leader, a person that people love, or a person that people fear???

South Central: The feeling of hopelessness...

This quarter, I spend two afternoons/early evenings each week in either South Central LA or East LA. And this week as I was leaving South Central I recognized I'd been feeling heavy this quarter (not in literal pounds, though that's also probably true). From the moment I get out of my car in South Central I feel it, and though the week progresses in South Pasadena, I cannot seem to shake it. It is a feeling of hopelessness--in fact it isn't too difficult to describe, though I'm pretty positive I wouldn't have understood it before. It is hopelessness, above all it is a feeling of being trapped, of exclusion, of judgment, of a mighty hand pushing you under. And deep down, there is frustration and even a muffled anger.

I am not illiterate. I was not raised an ethnic minority or in the lower socioeconomic class, but for some reason I feel this intensely now (though it may also be the result of other things). Perhaps it took the past few months to feel integrated into this gang-ridden, poor, illiterate community here, but the mindset is hard to take. It says with me. I feel it when I wake up and when I go to sleep.

A couple weeks ago, Ulises didn't come to tutoring. He's my oldest student (8th grade) and he struggles with the language. He is also the only kid whose parents don't take him to tutoring class. Each week, even though we end sessions at night, he travels to and from the library alone with his scooter. And almost every week he was early.

Because he'd missed two sessions, I called his mother. She said he had called and was on his way. He never came. The mother and I talked a couple times that night, and I can remember her voice as she said, "I need to find him" (in Spanish). Ulises, the boy who was worried about starting high school because of the roughness, of the gangs, had either gotten into some sort of accident, or he'd started down a bad path. Ends up he'd started on the path.

The next week I saw him I could only tell him he needed to stay on the right path. I couldn't say anymore because of the weight, perhaps, because I felt anything else would be futile or judgmental. I haven't told my kids they can be anything they want in a really long time.

This week as I got out of my car I was greeted with the usual smell of urine in the parking lot. I grabbed the sticky handle to the library and found a table behind the teenage girl telling her friend that so and so better not be the baby's daddy (if memory serves correctly.) Then I saw the teen boy running around to all the girls and kissing and hugging them. And I saw the girl I had helped in the beginning of the year (5th or 6th grade) drawing closer to him.

And as I left I found myself sandwiched in a crowd of people, the smell of weed only lessening as I made it out to the loud night air.

South Pasadena: Socialized Numbness

I was subbing last week for an angelic third grade class. Seriously, this was the class you imagined in your head when you thought of all that education might be.

But that is beside the point. The point, my friends, is that a little boy started to cry when he was playing kickball. I was with a group of girls and missed the full details, but from what I could piece together, he felt a play had been unfair. He started to cry, right there, at the injustice of it.

Now, surely it's possible that it wasn't an unjust play, but as the PE teacher tried to shush him, and get him to forget about it, I realized something. We are socialized to be numb to injustice.

Children are ACUTELY aware of when something isn't fair. They feel it INTENSELY. When you teach them, you won't go very long until you hear of some unjust things. People taking people's toys. Children not liking other children. So-and-so not smiling at me today. Not getting to be line leader when it was your turn.

The response from me, and most teachers I believe, is to shush them. We tell them that "life's not fair." Maybe we don't use these words, but we basically tell them to "buck up" because sometimes "we don't get everything we want."

But sometimes it's not about getting what you want. It's about seeing that something genuinely isn't right, isn't fair, isn't just. It's about feeling it so deeply and connecting with it. It's about people telling you not to feel for that injustice, to brush it off, to get used to it, to not whine when things aren't right.

And then we get older and we wonder why we're numb. We wonder why people see injustice and continue eating their chicken and rice dinners.

Maybe we didn't start out numb. That's what I'm wondering...

South Central: The Joy of Teaching

This, my friends, is A. He is my favorite student--one I tutor in South Central. We had our last meeting this week (he had finished his state funded 35 hours) and we took the post test. His score jumped from a 43% to a 75% (on the 4th grade CA standards test) after our time tutoring together. His English grade in school jumped from a C to an A. And he was beaming. His father was happy, and A. was so happy his father was happy. And I was happy. We were all really happy, happy people.

Sure, it may have been that he was better at time management on this test (he actually finished in the post test, and I don't think he did on his pre-test), but regardless, I'm really proud of him. He works so hard, his parents are so diligent, and he is such a joy. I wish you all could have met him.

Los Angeles: The Art of Writing

Today I posted my students' final grades after FINALLY finishing their term papers. And I had a few good moments of comic relief when reviewing them. So I thought I'd share some excerpts--not to maliciously make fun of them, but to give us a walk down memory lane of all those term papers we wrote in college...though it should be noted that these were FINAL papers for this course (like a term paper) and not some quick assignment....

In Their Words_____________

"The last and most important issue that can harm the human race is the fact that Global Warming would increase the disease factor in our society. If everybody started to develop diseases, than it would be somewhat impossible for doctors and scientists to develop a cure for them to survive because there woulde be new cases of diseases for them to focus on. This could lead to everybody in the world developing a diease and almost 90% of the human race that has been diagnosed with a disease would end up dying and the entire world would be empty with the exception of a few people that were strong enough to fight the disease and overcome it. But if this were to happen it would be the worst disaster in the history of our world. This catastrophe woud probably be the worst just behind the distinction of dinosaurs. Everything in the world would be contaminated so those few people that survived the disease would end up developing a new case from this contamination and their immune systems would not be able to fight it and therefore lead to death as well."

(flawless logic.... ;)
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"Pollution is a big problem globally as well, and there are many efforts going towards putting it to a stop. One main concernbrought upon by pollution is global warming. For the past few decades, researchers have noticed that all around the world, the temperature has been increasing every year. This is due to the amount of pollution put into the air. All the immigrants coming to the United States definitely does not help the cause. Many of them live in the outskirts of the cities, or in rural areas. They camp in the hills, living in tents and sleeping on the ground. They leave all kinds of trash and garbage behind, polluting the environment unnecessarily. Because of these immigrants who are polluting the earth, our planet is now experiencing the greenhouse effect."

(This paper in general was very offensive, but this connection btw global warming and immigrants in the US was too priceless to not include--so absurd...)
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"The world has come to believe that males are the most dominate ones, but the NRA organization has not forgotten about the females. Instead they also persuade women to be supporters of citizens owning guns. Medlock states, "NRA supporter John Lott explained in a speech at the University of Texas School of Law that his size and strength advantage would make it easy for him to rape a member of the audience unless she had a gun." (p. 10). this explanation opens the eyes of women everywhere and convinces them that they need lethal protection against criminals."

(What!??!?!)
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"Most of the people who control the government are wealthy Caucasian men. They are elitists. None of them have ever given birth."