Today is Thanksgiving Day.
Two weeks ago today, as I was welcoming my students to school, a man and two women came into the school with one of the female students. The student looked distressed and the first thought that entered my mind was that she had been caught by the truancy officers, or had violated her probation (assuming she was subject to it) or some other minor infraction of our rules.
Not long after this, we got an evacuation warning – “You have 90 seconds to clear the building” the caller had said.
As I am charged to do, I immediately went to the rear stairway and monitored the students and staff filing out, calmly, but curious, into the chilled drizzle of an Ohio November morning, and then made a round of the building to make sure no one lingered behind.
As I exited the building, I noticed one of the students being put in a police cruiser in the parking lot. I had no idea why this might be, but surmised that it was the person who had called in the evacuation scare. I thought to myself, “He’s going to pay a high price for a stupid prank.”
I was so wide of the mark that I couldn’t even see the target.
A short while later, while we were still waiting to return to the building, I heard that one of our students had been shot while waiting at the bus stop that morning. Once we got back inside, I immediately went to the website of the largest local news station and looked up the article. Sure enough, one of our students had been taken to the hospital for gunshot wounds received in a confrontation at that morning. Fortunately, according to the article, the EMS responders did not think the wounds were life threatening.
I went on with my day, musing over the coincidence of the shooting and the evacuation.
The student who was shot is one who, at first meeting, I had been in a confrontation. We have rules that state students are not to wear head apparel or jewelry, and, in asking this young man to take them off, I had triggered some other issue that had caused him to ignite.
This is not unusual in our facility. In fact, it is more the rule than the exception. Our students are mostly inner city street kids who have been thrown out of every other educational facility they have attended and who are there to try to learn a new way. But old ways, especially street ways, die hard and it takes time to turn them to a new way of thought and action.
When I learned of what the young man had been dealing with and the likely reason he had reacted the way he had that morning, I went to him and explained that I was not his enemy – which I simply was doing my job and I had no intent of picking on him. He accepted my explanation and apologized for his reaction and we began one of the most interesting relationships I have ever had with a student.
This young man, as I describe him, occupied his own, unique position in the space/time continuum. He was known to talk to himself in very animated ways, permitting whoever else might wish to listen in to do so. His topics, even in conversation with others, often took right-angle turns to entirely different subjects that made perfect sense in his train of logic but which were unfathomable to the outsider. He expressed himself in his own, totally unique way and cared not at all that others might not understand.
He was not, I must add, mentally deranged or insane. He was, very simply and very contently, himself.
He was an excellent student, had notable talent in art, cold talk on levels of sophistication that were impressive for a 17 year old, and still managed to be one of the most well-liked and most popular students in a school of more than 300 students.
While I normally maintain a very strict division between my school life and my private one, I determined to go to the hospital that evening, after classes to see how he was doing.
About 2:00 p.m., I walked into a classroom to tutor three students in math – in my position, I visit nearly all classrooms and teach all subjects – to find one of the students, a young woman, crying. I asked her to come into the hallway so we could talk privately and, once there, I asked her what was wrong.
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