Visit Seven

            As I walked by the school football field today, I realized a remarkable thing, an idea which had not manifested itself before; I was feeling a sense of excitement to enter the building. I had started to like Roosevelt, despite its numerous imperfections. When I walked in, I made a quick stop in the upstairs bathroom where I found fatastic artwork of middle fingers and guns, and beautiful excerpts of poetry on the walls, such as “teach get fucked” and “Shit yo Class”.

            I started walking down the stairs, when a student began walking in the opposite direction towards me. This kid who was as skinny as he was tough-looking, rocked dreds and baggy jeans. He looked at me with a menacing stare that said I was lost.

            “You go here,” he asked with a bewildered expression.

            “ I teach,” I responded.

            When he heard this, he suddenly jerked upwards and changed his facial expression to a more respectful, neutral face. He then nodded, and politely went on his way. I realized then that the mere presence of a teacher-title, empowered me. When I was a simply a young-looking, white person in the hallways, I was a threat and a potential enemy, but when I was a teacher, I was an authority. I was boss.    

            When I reached Mr. Spike’s classroom, I began helping two especially motivated students with recording themselves for a commercial they were making. When the bell rang, I was then given the momentously tedious job of sorting the more than 80 mp3 recordings.

            After finishing, I proceeded towards Mrs. Quik’s new Creative Writing class. It was no longer the group I had been working with all year because at Roosevelt they run a semesterly class schedule, meaning electives like Creative Writing are on the quarterly schedule.  As I walked in to the class, I had high expectations, but to my surprise when I looked inside, there was only one girl present.

            Quik said that this was typical of the new class. She said that the class roster changes on a daily basis, and the come and go of students made it impossible for her to give any classwork that went beyond that period.            

            She said that she didn’t need me for obvious reasons, and so I decided to head over to Mr. Kim, the journalism teacher’s room. The one girl walked me up to his classroom. On the way to his classroom, I asked the girl if she wanted to go to college, and she said yes, although she didn’t know where. I told her that she should go to GW, and she snickered.

            “I’d never get in there,” she said. “My grades are ok. But Roosevelt ok, doesn’t mean much.”

            In Mr. Kim’s class, I found two students quietly reading a newspaper. Finally, I was at a newspaper class. Kim introduced me to the two students, telling me that they were 2 of the typically 5 students who are attentive and active participants in the class. There are about 11 students total, he said.

            The class started discussing articles from the Economist, and the students showed an impressive amount of interest. They then began writing a movie review on a movie they watched the weak before, called Shattered Glass. It wasn’t the best writing I’ve ever seen, but it was significantly better than what I had seen out of students in other classes. I think Kim was leading a good lesson.

            During the period Kim brought up that he was probably going to leave the following year, to go to Law School. One of his students asked him why he was leaving, and he didn’t quite know how to answer it.

            “I’m not really a journalist,” he said. “I like writing, but I’m not a journalist.”

            The answer seemed easy enough, but it didn’t fully answer the question. In my opinion, Roosevelt was Kim’s version of a year at the Peace Corps, the “Red Cross,” or “City Year”. I’ll bet he never anticipated staying at the school. Compared to some of the other teachers I had met at Roosevelt, Kim was significantly more qualified to teach. He was smart, and confident, and to be completely honest, probably too good for Roosevelt.

            I imagine this happens to a lot of the potentially great teachers at this school. They come in, optimistic and eager to get started, but then realize the barriers they are up against. They probably realize that it would actually be easier and far more profitable to change profession as Kim says he will do.

            On his way out, he offers one of the girls half of his snickers bar, and even gives her his umbrella for the night. This school is going to miss Kim next year.

            He then walked me down to the Spike’s room. On the way down, I saw the teachers standing outside of the door of their classrooms, and asked Kim why they were there. He said that the teachers were asked to stand by the doors in between all classes, to make sure the students were not causing any trouble.

             It made me think of my ability to turn the skinny thug from the stairwell into a polite young man, merely by saying I was a teacher. The administrators of the school theorize that a similar thing will happen when the students see teachers lining the wall. At the end of our walk, I asked Kim if I could teach a class, before I left, and he said that I could teach the next week that I came in. Excited, I said goodbye to him, and walked towards Spike’s room.

            When I reached his room, I found the students all locked out, and Ms. Quik banging on the door, key in the hole, but not budging. In frustration, Ms. Quik flapped her hands violently before charging down the hallway to get a janitor.

            I proceeded to try and jar the door open, after she left when a kid behind me told me not to bother.

            “We go to black school,” he said. “Shit just don’t work.”

            Not quite sure how to respond, I smiled and agreed that Roosevelt had its problems. I offered my critique of his argument.

            “I’d say door maintenance is significantly more related to money than color,” I said. "I've never met a racist keyhole."

            “Same thing,” he said. “Black is poor around here. Good thing I’m Hispanic.”

            He then proceeded to ask me if I wanted him to break in. When I said no, he sighed, and offered leaving as an alternative. Unfortunately for him, I denied that suggestion as well.  Eventually the janitor showed up and broke in to the door with a screwdriver.

            “I could’ve done that in half the time,” the kid said. 

Visit Six

            Tourists made me late today. There was a high school model UN conference on the GW campus so children, as loud as they were pubescent, were running around in every direction I turned. On the metro, the case was no different. On the blue line, they surrounded me, most likely going to the capital for a tour.  When I reached my transfer point at L’Enfant Plaza, I nearly ran off the train, ecstatic to finally escape the MUN kids. I entered the green line train to Greenbelt, and took a seat in the backrow. As I sat there, I started thinking about how different these two lines truly are.

            The blue line, connects most of the wealth of the city. From the shopping centers of Eastern Market  and Pentagon City to the tourist sites of the Capital, the Smithsonian, and the Arlington Cemetary, to the GW campus,  people on this train are wealthy. The green line is different. This train connects the rest of the city; Real DC.

            Both trains have their own set of  similar characters every day. On the blue line you tend to see fat tourists with cameras hanging from their necks. On the green line you see young men with tattoos and chains from their necks. On the blue line, you see loud obnoxious collge students (or high school MUN kids). On the green line, you see middle aged men, wearing nikes playing loud rap music from their flip phones. On the blue line, you see scarves and ties. On the green line, you see doo-rags. It’s less than a 30 second walk from one train to the other,  and yet they are drastically different.

            It was only a half-day today, so I was only going to be at school for two hours. It seemed to me, like nobody was doing work either. One kid was sitting around doing nothing, so I walked over to him. When I confronted him on doing nothing, he said that he wasn’t even scheduled for fourth period, which was half the day. I asked him if he wanted me to give him work, and surpisingly, he said yes.

            - “There’s a fire in your gymnasium,” I said.

            He looked at me with a bewildered expression.

            - “Huh?”

            - “This is a journalism lesson,” I said. “Pretend I’m the chief of the fire department, set up some questions and then interview me.”

            He shrugged his shoulders, and responded with a quick “ok.” He then began typing five questions or so before calling me over. The interview went well, although he broke character a few times, and asked questions to Evan Koslof, not Mike Wallace, the “chief of the fire department.” I asked him what he planned to do after high school, and he told me that he knew he wasn’t interested in college. When I asked him why not, he said that he wanted to go to the Navy, and then go into law after. As we continued on with the interview, I really started to feel like we were making major strands. He then went to “get a drink,” and didn’t come back for 25 minutes. Oh well, for major strands.

            He then left, for the final period, and I was left once again with nothing to do. One student named Cesar was working on an application for a job, called the United Alliance, when I offered to help him craft a resume.  He had never made a resume before, so the exercise proved to be pretty helpful for him. I showed him how to manipulate words to make ordinary things seem more important than they actually are. For example, I showed him how an office assitant could become a “Student Liason to the School Administration” or how a four year football player could be a “Four year Varsity Athlete in Football”. I also started to show him how to write a cover letter, although the bell interrupted the process, and he was gone a couple minutes later.

            The day was short (less than two hours for me), and relatively unproductive,  but at least I helped two people, and that made me feel somewhat positively about my work that day. After the bell rang, I headed for the door, and began walking down the bumpy streets, peppered with construction sites.

            As I was walking towards the metro, I witnessed a pretty odd interaction. There was  group of nearly 20 people standing on a street corner. They were all black men whom looked to be between the ages of 18 and 24, and they all wore hoodies of various colors. To me they didn’t seem to be doing anything suspicious, but as I walked near, a cop car started backing up slowly toward them. Two officers then jumped out of the vehicle, one of which was a skinny Hispanic man, while the other was a large white man. The first officer told them to move down the street, to which nobody responded. It was at this point that the larger officer chimed in

            - “Are you fucking deaf or retarded,” he yelled. “Get the fuck down the street. I’m not fucking around.”

            The mass of people,  mostly high school kids dispersed in all directions, including these three men in hoodies, who suspiciously dispersed in one direction on their own. When I crossed the street, I turned around, and watched the scene develop, staring directly at the large cop. He looked straight at me, and then back at the others. I pulled out my phone, and continued staring at him, as if to say, “I dare you to beat one of these people while I’m watching.”

            The people dispersed, and the police officers then went into the car, before driving down the road, behind the suspicious people who ran away. It’s interesting that in order to get a police officer to treat you well, all you need is a pair of nice shoes and a polo. Here’s my way to fight crime. Give every low income person a nice shirt and a watch. It might not lower crime, but it will certainly lower incarcerations.