I feel really bad for the circumstances of my students too. At my second school, it was really upsetting how many kids were robbed or even killed on the way to school or around the school. While it could be a tough work environment at times, realizing how unsafe the school could feel for the kids was especially difficult.

For some reason, this piece reminds me of all the rites of passages to teaching in a hood school during my first year of teaching. I was so idealistic and completely neglected the need for street smarts and self-preservation. I wrote all my kids Christmas cards and put a dollar in them, not really something I was supposed to do but just to show them how much I appreciated them. Two of my more difficult students took all the cards, opened them, and took the dollar out of all of them. I neglected the fact that most of my students could barely read or couldn’t read the cards at all based on their academics, so what is a really sentimental message didn’t reach anyone if the student couldn’t read the card. That same year, one of the kids who took all the dollars out the Christmas card took my phone off my desk. “Oh, he’s definitely going to give it back, we get along and there’s no way he’s going to take his teacher’s phone,” I thought. The next thing I knew, he’d left the classroom and left out the school. I never saw the phone again. At least it wasn’t my car or anything, but now the memory is a great reminder to have enough street smarts to keep phone, wallet, and keys on hand at all times.

I think it’s sad thinking about how successful so many of our kids could be if they grew up in more privileged situations. The kid who stole my phone definitely outsmarted me at every turn. He could make a very good businessman or do well at anything he applied himself to, but at the end of the day, everyone does what they need to do to survive, and that effect is really amplified in the hood. We don’t live in the hood— we drive by and work there. You can’t blame people for doing what they need to to survive in a world that’s been largely abandoned and economically disinvested.