Smith Girls

2001

Mixed Media

I've been wanting to write about the canine crap I have to dodge on the 100 yard dash I make monday through friday coming and going to work. Fake dog crap can be funny if you're sophmoric, or perhaps if your 12, but I haven't been able to spin this shit into funny. Friday I was teaching and I told the kids that artists and writers are good at what they do because they pay attention to the details, and I mentioned that I always notice the dog shit, which isnt really even much of a detail cause its always there and there's always a surplus. Their 'do now' was to list 15 things they notice about their environment/community.

 Teaching in impoverished areas has been my career for the past few years, and anyone who talks to me intrinsically understands my commitment to social justice education. The past couple years I have seen a plethora of fucked up shit, the first school I worked at in New York was so underserving its students the DOE had deemed it failing and it was closing, the second school I worked at was worse and a few months later, the DOE decided to close it down as well. It's depressing to be a teacher in failing conditions, but work is work and I get to go home to conditions that arent failing. My kids don't. My family falls short of ideal, but opportunity in my life runith over. Without speculating or passing judgement on the relative level of fucked-upness my students live with or how much love they have in their lives, I know with absolute certainty I would never want to walk in their shoes, live their lives.

This year I wanted to break the cycle of working for failing schools. Im a good teacher but I felt like if I was going to make any lasting impact I would need to work in a school that wasn't treading water or sinking slowly. So I passed up jobs without strong leadership, jobs I felt would be another version of the ones I've had since moving to New York. Getting the job at Hyde I had to give up teaching High School, but I get to work at a school that entertains the goals of education.

 The first school I worked at was housed in a building that years ago, had been a prison. The second school I worked at felt like a prison. The building I work in now is far worse than either and instead of a red carpet laid out to welcome the students a genrous sprinkle of shit piles define their route. For all the tragedy I have watched my students face, it has rarely been so overwhelming I haven't been able to file it under character-building, it has always struck individual students in individual ways, and while all my students have faced adversity, it has never mounted to an endemic until now maybe.

 Sometimes when I'm walking from my car to the school entrance, I find the absurdity in the scenario, but I can't make dog crap funny, because when its your life, it just isnt funny. On friday 20 kids told me they paid plenty of attention to detail, they saw the prostitutes and whores on the street even though they couldn't spell either, they saw the needles and used condoms even though they didnt really know the significance of either, they knew who the pimps and dealers were, they were embarassed by the fact they lived and learned nearby a strip club, they saw enough to recognize they didn't live anywhere good. In a rare moment of self-realization and humility- they told me they hated where they lived, they told me it was inappropriate for them to have to grow up here.

 I've always been able to leave work and the challenges of the day at work, when the day is over I let go the insults and the mistakes. But how do I forget the kids who live amongst the various permutations of dog shit. Because selfishly, I don't want to know that burden.