k-12 student safety & Politics
While strolling through and covering my nose, I thought of my students when I was an inner city teacher. I taught in the highest crime ZIP Code in Milwaukee. If this pathetic assemblage of protesters got their way and their slogans became reality, would my former students receive justice?
I recall one young man who told me that he never skipped school because it was not safe to stay home alone. He was over six feet tall and old enough to stay home legally, but the monsters that lurked in his neighborhood were very real. Several times that year, we went into lockdown because thugs threatened to shoot up the school.
One day near the end of the year, I brought my students outside to our fenced in rec area, when a few gang members approached the property. One spit on my students, and I had to call security to get students inside safely before a brawl broke out.
More than any “ism,” it was an ever present specter of crime and violence that oppressed these students. Our school had plenty of resources, new books, and plans for a major renovation. Most of my students wanted to succeed, to go off to college, and to escape poverty but gang activity, theft, and violence pulled them down.
