trio

where i grew up there was a catholic kid and a black kid. everyone else was "regular". there wasn't much diversity. no jews. no muslims. i work in a school where kids come from everywhere and worship every way possible. it never stops being interesting to hear the languages and the ideas that come with them.

today i found two boys wandering the halls. 9th grade boys, one of mine and one i know because he's always in trouble. you should know that generally when 9th grade boys at my school get in trouble, it's not for stabbing someone or using drugs or anything horrible. it's for being too ridiculous to be in a classroom or for cutting a class when a sub is there. here's the cute part. when these 9th grade boys cut class, they don't go anywhere. they just roam the halls. more often than not, they stop and talk to..... teachers. i'm not kidding.

9th grade boys are a needy bunch and they don't get enough attention when they have to share a teacher with 30+ other kids. they are babies. they are babies who are annoying the security guard to death. she is more sick of them than she is of anyone else today. she has told them fifteen million times to go back to class. this last period of the day is my prep. this is when i have meetings, plan my classes, grade or wander the halls. today i am wandering. already today i took these same two boys to the dean's office for some issue that started earlier in the day and spilled over into a class where i work as a support teacher. one of them is victim from an earlier entry titled, i think, "fight". these boys don't mean any harm but always seem to cause a little chaos.

i am annoyed and round them up. in my most threatening voice (which a child explained earlier today is not at all threatening) i tell them to follow me if they want to live until the end of the day. they follow. they want to live and they want to know where i am taking them. i haven't decided but we walk to the library, which is a room slightly larger than my own classroom full of books available when i was in high school. these books cannot be checked out. the library is out of service. there are six computers available for students but most don't work and they rarely print. the library seems like a good idea. there is a teacher behind the old library desk on a computer. another teacher is working at a computer in the student workstation. there are two students in the room. one is a companion to the two i've dragged in. another 9th grade boy.

these three boys happen to be muslim, but not all the same sort. one is from the sudan. one is egyptian and one is from a country that happened when that whole soviet union thing went bust. i do not know that they hang together because they are muslim. it is more likely that they share a similar goofiness borne out of being at a stage in their lives where they consider punching a form of affectionate communication. they are incredibly goofy. they never shut up. never ever. these are children who do not get upset when i yell at them. i put the two i brought with me at separate tables and tell them to read quietly and avoid my nerves. i tell them i'm going to knit because it's my time off and they better not interrupt me. one boy grabs the harry potter in his bag and another browses the atlases and almanacs. i knit. the boy who was already there is playing a video game that looks like it was designed for teaching third graders something. it is hideous.

harry potter book looks over at my knitting, wanting to know what i'm making. it's a dress for a baby and it's peach silk. he is impressed. they are all impressed. for some reason high school boys are impressed with knitting. especially baby clothes. they use words like precious and adorable and beautiful as though they keep words like that in their mouths all the time. i want to check something about slavery for their projects so i sit at the computer next to crappy video game kid. pretty soon the other two are on the other side of me pretending they know how to hack into the computer and change the password. they don't. i point this out as sarcastically as possible.

they have a yearbook from when they were in 8th grade. the photos are just over a year old but they look like little babies in their posed photos. they flip through, comment on who used to be fat and who never did homework. they flip to a page with two muslim girls. there may be more but one is wearing a head scarf so she's obvious. they point to the girl below her and say, "what a shame." she isn't wearing a head scarf. most muslim girls at our school, especially egyptian and albanian ones, don't cover their heads. most girls wear jeans and t-shirts but a few wear head scarves. it is common enough that it is no different from barrettes. i look at the girl. she looks very shy and scared. she is beautiful. the boys look sad. one of them explains to me that muslim girls are supposed to cover their heads. i know this already but i say, "oh." he wants to explain further. SHE covers her head, he tells me. the others nod. very serious. but not that day.

the boys know she has pressure from her parents to cover her head and pressure from her friends to remove her scarf and they weren't judging her. they looked at her photo like she was a bird fallen out of a nest. i don't know where they found it in themselves to be so serious about a girl who couldn't possibly know what they were saying. in my class they call each other "homo" and "fat" and "retard".