Brooklyn Blogette

TIme goes so quickly...I still feel like I am gearing up for a new school year and I am coming up on Thanksgiving!
What's going on?
School has been amazing/hectic. Yearbook is up and running (and it's going to be awesome!). My students are super talented amazing artists that aren't quite convinced they need English class to live their dreams. They're coming around. I am very persuasive. I am a member of the curriculum mapping committee and will be facilitating a professional development meeting for my department on Tuesday. I am working with the Inquiry Team in addressing the needs of the Senior African American boys-ensuring they get accepted into and stay in college-basically developing lessons and programs to give that specific community all the resources they need to be successful. I chaperoned a field trip to Six Flags Fright Fest that was an AWESOME opportunity to get to know the kids better and show them my fun side...all in all, school is great. Sometimes, I am a bit lonely. I don't have my posse of buddies from my old school, my department is MUCH smaller and not as like minded. I am trying to create an island for myself, but I get sad.

A student of mine from my old school was shot and killed in October. It was on the news every night. They have video of it and they are trying to find his killer. I understand. But it's hard to watch someone you love be shot every night on NY1.

It was hard to be away from Brandeis. I wanted to be there to help his friends, and to remember him with his teachers, and just be a part of the community. I felt like I had abandoned all that I had loved...It was a difficult time. I cried all night when I found out...and I burst into tears on my walk to school twice.

You think about these faces, the faces of kids at desks, bent over work, looking up at your board, staring out the window dreaming. These faces that seem so vibrant and funny and full of love, even when they are a pain in your ass...When I can't sleep at night, I see faces. Kids I needed to talk to and forgot. Kids whose parents I need to call. Kids I suspect are being hurt at home, Kids I worry have made the wrong friends. Kids that can't read but try hard. Kids that can read that don't try hard. Kids who have given up. Kids who want more. Faces of Kids.

I can't think of his face and not cry. When you argue with someone, when you talk to them everyday, when you praise them, when their successes feel like your own, you love that person. You love every kid that sits in front of you because you don't have a choice. They are your life. They make it difficult, they make it funny, they make it terrifying and sad. And you love them. I didn't realize how much until I lost Suzette in May. and now Brian.

Suddenly, all of my kids seem so fragile and temporary.