david taus

Kids These Days

music: Bjork- Homogenic

It’s a quiet Saturday morning at the 1-2. I woke up around 8:30 and lied in bed for about an hour this morning before getting up, listening to the trickle of cold rain and snow just feet from my head and trying to flush the week out of my head. Then a shower, some food, a mug of teccino, and here I am. The Day Of Rest. I’m almost there.

The insides of my head are almost quiet for the first time all week. I spent last night plowing through the last dozen or so papers my students handed in last Monday and despite feeling completely hollow for grading papers on a Friday night it was good to finally put them to bed. It, admittedly, was a horrible assignment: instructions were ambiguous at best and content was low. I’m sure it was a wrenching experience to crank them out, but guaranteed, kids, it was even worse to read 60 of them and see the same omissions and errors every single time. A glaring indicator that I messed up somewhere. The papers were only one of the factors that contributed to a strained existence this week. It didn’t help that the band (err…not a band really…those guys I’m making music with) bagged on our Wednesday night and our Sunday afternoon jams this week. Or that I missed the window of opportunity for Spring Hat League. So trickles away my weekly meditation exercises. The weather was also brutal-slush freezing and bitter cold. To think we are only 10 days away from the equinox…

The strain this week was really no different than other weeks, perhaps less so, but for some reason I was rubbed raw by the nuances of teenage struggle. This week I glimpsed some pretty fresh wounds covering one kid’s lower arms and wrists. I participated in a team meeting that was to decide the future course of a kid’s life in which he was there but spoken about as if he were not. I squelched a venomous exchange (which later, I’m told, turned threatening and violent) in which cases of unwavering homophobia reared their ugly heads. I watched a couple kids realize the odds stacked against them and more or less give up on themselves. I caught a case of plagiarism and handed out 0’s, which will most likely bury students mathematically and psychologically for the rest of the term. I returned work to a student who put more than everything they could into something that wasn’t good enough and watched their eyes water and lip tremble. I talked a kid down from a panic attack and/or a respiratory arrest as the paramedics came. I witnessed a kid reveal that they were bipolar to their class. I witnessed another kid reveal that they were abandoned when they were two and have gone through three families since. I excused absences because of court dates, I did not excuse absences because of oversleeping. I tried to do some educating somewhere in there. Public school: the last great urban social service.

More than anything else, I want these kids to become good people one day. I want them to be able to provide basic needs for themselves, I want them to have an open mind, I want them to be able to solve problems without violent thoughts or action, I want them to give a damn about something other than themselves. If that can happen I’ll be happy with what I’m doing regardless of their understanding of evolution or homeostasis. Sometimes I think that given a backpack, sleeping bag, tent, some gorp, and two weeks on trail I would have a much easier time accomplishing these goals but somewhere along the line I decided that I have to bring the water to the horse. I’d also like to thicken my own skin to it all a little more, to be able to spend those two minutes in between bed and sleep not thinking about the incredible struggle in which these teenagers are engaged. David: please forgive if Missa Toss doesn’t have it in him to function normally on a Friday night.

Now, however, it’s Saturday. The rain has slid into snow. The world is dripping. I’ve slept a good 8 hours but could probably sleep another 8 and not feel rested. I have aspirations to pick up my guitar for the first time in a week and play a little, possibly do some recording. St. Patrick is in town from NYC; perhaps the good graces will lead him to my door some time this afternoon. In the meantime, I have a stack of quizzes to grade and a week of lessons to plan.