I spend part of most work days circling the school. One of our primary treatments at the school where I teach is walking. Ideally, walking outside. Down the front steps, around the corner of the building, where the church’s sanctuary is, and under its overhang, where a fence protects extra junk that we tell the freshmen includes “dead bodies.” Up from there, past some piece of building infrastructure that includes a giant switch.
“If I flip that switch, will all the power go out in the whole building?” a kid says.
“No,” I say. I’m three years into alternative school teaching, and I have learned about shutting up.
Past the stone Virgin Mary praying. Past the plants that have tin markers with handwritten nametags. Past St. Francis, whom I point out and try to get the kids to remember. If you know one saint’s name, Francis is a solid choice.
Under the fir trees with their tiny berries. I say to a kid, “Ah, these smell so good.”
“I don’t have a sense of smell,” she said.
“Well, I guess sometimes that’s an advantage,” I said, trying to stop myself from imagining what kicks to the head or other horrors might have taken away the tart scent of pine trees.
I have learned to shut up, and sometimes it’s best just to walk behind the kid a ways, or in front a ways, and let the walk, and the fresh air, and the trees and remaining flowers hanging on do the work.
Usually by the time we go back in, my student is calm enough to go back into class.
I have a student who makes absurd announcements. He tells us he is from Russia. He tells us he ordered diamonds from Argentina, but they got stuck in customs. He has girlfriends in many countries. He says he has $700,000 in the bank. He has a Lambo.
Trust me, no one at our school has $700,000 in the bank.
Now, we are an island of misfit toys, and I love that. I am a misfit toy. We have kids with screws loose, wires still electrified and flapping in the wind, tempers fed by underground gas lines, kids who automatically contradict everything you ever say. But we figure it out.
Even on the island, telling crazy lies for months, for years, is frowned upon.
Possibly my students value the truth more than others, since many of them have been lied to or manipulated. They generally view the world as a very difficult place to manage. Certainly school is very difficult to manage. That’s why they’ve been sent to us.
This week, on a walk,a kid turned the corner, and before I could do anything, he smacked a daddy long legs off the outside wall of the building. There are always tons of daddy long legs in that area. Half of the spider was on his palm, and half of it was on the sidewalk, wiggling and probably screeching in agony in some spider register we could not hear.
“What?” he said.
“That was mean. That spider didn’t hurt you. He caught mosquitos for us.” I don’t know if this is true.
“Whatever,” he said.
This same kid has expressed deep empathy. When Trump said people in Springfield were eating dogs, he was outraged. “They don’t eat dogs! That’s racist! I’ve been there.”
After I dropped him off, I ducked into another teacher’s room to tell the spider-squishing story. I had to get the awfulness out.
When I was a kid, I had a book called Be Nice to Spiders. I found it quite challenging. I was afraid of spiders. The book shows the value of all creatures by showing what I had thought: spiders catch insects that annoy us. They are worth it.
The next day, the fabulist was again spouting nonsense, and one of my quieter kids said, “Are you trying to fit in? Is that why you say that stuff, so you can feel like you fit in?”
I held my breath.
“No! I don’t care about fitting in! I don’t care about people!”
What I see at school is a constant reminder that people are both horrible, randomly violent, bitter, aggressive, and at the same time, tender, thoughtful, and scared.
On Friday, I brought in our new class pet, a yellow Betta fish. “Do you want to put him in the water?” I said.
“Yes!” he said.
He lowered the cup to the tank’s water level, and slowly poured the fish in. He gazed at the tank and grinned.
Details changed, identifying elements rearranged, for my students’ privacy.
Going On 