A sobering moment

As I've said before, I sometimes substitute teach at charter schools in south central Los Angeles. I'm not going to discuss how I feel about the charter schools themselves; most of them are hit and miss, much like most public schools. However, I do find myself in interesting situations from time to time. One eye-opening experience was helping to teach a few classes for special ed students, which involve a melange of students with varying conditions, from students with disabilities such as blindness, autism and deafness, to students with behavior issues and trouble paying attention.

A few weeks ago I experienced the most intense of these classes to date; I won't name the school, but I guess on hindsight I shouldn't have been that surprised. The class had about 8 students, with a teacher aide and me as the substitute. The aide basically ran the class as she knew the students, how to handle them, what the lesson plan involved, etc. The students were all boys, and a good half of them were aggressive, loud, profane, and very argumentative. They would threaten the aide and myself repeatedly thoughout the class. The aide had told me before that they were all "bluster", but it was still a bit unsettling.

There was one kid in class, let's call him "Arthur", who sat very quiet and proper, not engaging in the antics of the other students. I couldn't tell if he had a condition or if he was just a little geeklet. We were doing a lesson on the students' home environments, and what they would change if they could. Working on this inspired this student to start asking me a series of questions. His eyes squinted, and he got very serious. "Why do we live in a neighborhood where it's not safe to walk down the street in broad daylight?"

Then he looked at me and asked, "What does it mean when somebody says that their heart is filled with remorse and regret?"
"What do you do if your mother keeps moving your family to bad neighborhoods with gang members on every corner?"
"People say that I should forgive and turn the other cheek, but what do you do if the people you forgive keep betraying you and committing the same bad things over and over?"

Amidst all of the hubbub of the aide and I trying to calm the other students down and do their work, I was trying to answer and discuss these very serious, sobering thoughts with Arthur. He had such an earnest, heartfelt look on his face that it struck me to the core. Later in the class I saw one of the rowdy students holding him against the wall and pretending to spray him in the face with a classroom tabletop spray cleaner. Arthur had on a forced grin, trying to act as if he was in on the joke when it was obvious that he was very uncomfortable. Though I do everything I can not to touch the students, I gently but unmistakeably forcefully separated the rowdy student from Arthur and took the spray bottle away from him.

What was even more amazing was that the aide said afterwards that "the students did well today!" Driving home, Arthur's words stuck with me. I felt like Prezbo thinking about Dookie in "the Wire." Edie said if he hadn't had any family, we'd probably have to adopt him.