Bullying

I was walking across campus yesterday when I saw one of my former students.

A side note before I continue: I am horrible with names. Horrible. I can remember faces and incidents and things people have written. I can remember arcane facts, random dates, and any number of stories. I can not remember names. My dad is the same way; although we sometimes suspected he was willfully misremembering names, now I'm not so sure. It does shed some light on why I was always petrified (PETRIFIED) of playing names games in elementary school. There were, what? maybe 100 kids in the entire grade and I couldn't remember names from year to year? So, I often see former students, and know who they are, but it will take me a good 10-15 minutes, or days, or a perusal of my old grade book, to figure out their names.

So, I saw this student walking towards me. He had an evil expression on his face, but I was prepared to say hi when he made eye-contact -- even if I couldn't remember his name. Well, he never made eye-contact. Kept walking right by like no one was there. Well, no one except the kid he said "snitch" to as he walked by.

It left me with a creepy feeling. I almost wasn't sure that I had heard it. I don't know who he was talking to, but I know enough to know that these kids do not take kindly to "snitches". Somewhere along the line, they learned that adults can't, don't, or won't help them and so are not to be trusted with information. It is definitely a gang culture -- us against them. And students, even if they are deathly afraid for their own safety or someone else's, thus resist telling an adult what is going on.

I finally realized? decided? to send an email this student's administrator at lunch. (I also finally remembered the kid's name.) I have no information. Don't know who was being targeted. Don't know what the situation is. The administrators get much more of the story and know more about what's going on, so I thought maybe he would know something. I didn't expect that much would happen, but at least there is evidence of something if there was an incident. Vague, but better than nothing.

At our staff meeting today, we watched a video of some of our students being interviewed about school. It was sort, and had bad audio, but it was OK. There was one clip of a boy saying the school should have more supervisors so there would be fewer fights. The producers said that every single boy interviewed said the same thing. They were all scared (consciously or not), although they didn't use that word.

After the meeting, I made sure that I spoke with the administrator about my email. He had not seen it yet, but we had a long conversation about who the child was, what I saw, and changes I saw in the student last year. It sounds like he is mixed up in some serious bidness -- and this is known not because of any "snitch", but because, although students don't believe it, adults notice things that kids are doing and he's making himself noticed.

Rach mentioned reading the book I recommended, Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun, and that itself made me realize that I needed to tell someone what I saw. My students are growing up in a scary, violent world. They need to know that someone is watching, because someone cares. It's probably not enough, but it's at least a start, right? Rach's post also reminded me of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and Angel, too, I guess. In both those shows, the humans take on the forces of evil, not because there is any expectation of winning, but because what we do as humans is try to make things better (or at least most of us do). It's not always about winning or odds or chances, it's about effort and connections. Consider Greek mythology, if you prefer classic references. The gods have all this power, and very little concern. The lowly humans, though, have all the concern and often are able to defeat the gods through pluck and determination. So, not to let the Spaniards feel left out, I'll keep on tilting at windmills myself, because these windmills really are giants.