Lambs and Wolves

Three more days and my summer program is over. It’s been a fun few weeks. It sucks that I’m not going to see these guys anymore... their regular teachers are very lucky to have them in class, they are great kids.

When I was explaining to my father the program, he very simply broke it down for me. “It's Lambs vs. Wolves.”

Wow. That blew me away. With those four words he summed up the entire reason for the existence of this summer program.

In NYC there are probably five to seven or so “specialized” high schools. These schools are where you want to go when you DON'T WANT to go to my school. Bronx High School of Science is the “best” and most well known. Brooklyn Tech and Stuyvesant are two other schools.

As he was talking about it he mentioned two schools mere blocks from one another. Both are in the area of Lincoln Center. One is Martin Luther King Jr. High School... the other is the LaGuardia Arts High School. If this means nothing to you, LaGuardia Arts is the “Fame” school. You know... the one where the kids burst out of the school and dance in the streets and on cars, etc. Well, this doesn’t really happen. Why? Because the MLK kids would kick the crap out of them, and according to my dad, they do it anyway quite frequently. In fact, the ass kickery has been such a problem, that they have had to stagger the release times of the two schools.

But that pretty much sums it up. These specialized schools are parents’ last hope of keeping their kids “lambs” for just a little while longer. Otherwise they HAVE to become wolves. It's a matter of survival.

Towards the end of the year, my school had an orientation for 9th graders. I happened to be kicking around when the parents and kids were filing in. (Actually, one batch of orientation was happening in my room, and of course, my room being a mess, I didn’t know about it.) While the parents and kids were coming in, I noticed a good number of white kids. When I talked to a co-worker about how many white faces I saw, he said bluntly, “Oh yeah? They won’t be here next year.”

For as decent as I think it is, I guess my school is a school of wolves.

The white parents will more than likely send their kids to private/Catholic schools if their kids don’t get into these specialized schools.

So it’s legalized segregation. White kids "escape" and the black/Spanish kids feel crappy about their schools. Of course there are black/Spanish kids in the catholic schools, but they are still “minorities” there. Basically, according to my students, they have said in so many words, if white people (kids) don’t like it, it’s shit. Which is depressing to me, because I do like my school. I want all my kids to feel safe enough to remain lambs for as long as they want.