Where

This kid was sitting in my room, I realized it was his lunch time. “Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere?” I said. New teacher to the school, here is a list of things I didn’t know this morning: If not going to the cafeteria during lunch is a punishable offense. How to print anything. […]

Speak Tenderly

This week: the social worker was trying to talk to this woman with her eye swollen out of her head, the woman was thrusting her cell phone at this very young social worker demanding she talk to her dad. The hospital security guards talked about what to have for dinner. A college girl from Columbia […]

Niche

There was a hawk sitting on the window air conditioner, three stories up. There was me. But otherwise the place was dead.I kind of figured there’d be a lot of liquor bottles, but mostly the empties had held water or pop. Westport Junior High has been closed for a year. Across the street is Westport […]

Failure

If we’re too enlightened to beat up on the minority group of the hour, at least we have our school system to beat up on. I hear the phrase “failing schools” at least once a week, and last night Oprah went on a Godzilla-hits-Tokyo style hike through educational controversies. I watched skeptically, and barked at […]