School's Just Started and Students Already are Considering Dropping Out

I was a teenager once, and I know there were days when I'd rather be hanging out in the park or on someone's front stoop rather than sitting in a classroom that I had not prepared for and didn't want to be in. As a matter of fact, I will confess that I actually did that on some days but thank goodness I was a cheerleader which meant I had to be back in school on time for cheerleading practice every afternoon. It was also a blessing in disguise that the football coach was also my Chemistry teacher, and if I didn't make it to his class, I ought not be seen on the track surrounding the football field doing cartwheels or summersaults. He would lay into me just like my mother or father would and not only would my parents find out I was a truant for the day, but everyone in the school would hear about it. How embarrassing. Being bored in school was worth more than the anxiety one felt for getting caught for skipping school. It was a reality most students faced except for those who decided that school was not for them.

In the District, where I attended school from kindergarten to the 12th grade, the DC public schools opened their doors just three weeks ago. But every morning, in my neighborhood, students begin gathering about 8:30AM, just 15 minutes before the school day begins, and they hang in front of stores and businesses taking puffs from tobacco wrapped marijuana and smoke until they lose track of time. It may be as late as 9:30 AM and dozens of them gather and sit on the stoops of businesses and pass their joints one to the other, take a hit and blow billows of smoke into the air, so much so that the entire block is saturated with the smell of pot.

This morning, not unlike other mornings, I approached the young men and advised them in the most polite but firm way I could that they were frustrating me because I believed they should be in school. And I advised them that I called the school to let the principal know that her students were hanging in front of business, getting high and showing no real urgency to get to school at all, let alone on time. The guys moved and pretended to make their way in the direction of the school building until they changed course. The girls just kept on doing their thing, smoking, taking blue and green extensions out of their hair and just talking about who knows what. When I approached them, it was not long before I was told I needed to mind my own business. What I explained to one young lady that as long as they were standing in front of my establishment, I was minding my business and they should move on to school. One word led to another until I also informed them I had called their school to inform the principal that their students appeared to need assistance in getting there to the school building. "Why would you do that," I was asked. "Why don't you just mind your business and leave us alone?"

I get it, I told them, but I can't ignore my future standing in front of my building wasting time and getting high. "Why are you accusing us of getting high. We're not smoking nuthin'!" And they were right, they weren't smoking then, but they had been.

To be honest, I was just as shocked as they were when a police wagon showed up. It was my fault, they said, as the two officers, a man and a woman, urged them to move on. If only the police were as polite to my son when he stepped of the curb at Wilson HS after the school denied him entry for failing to bring his ID. Before his foot touched the street below the curb, he was detained and sent to the school for truants where he was required to report for two week. I didn't receive a call until two hours later telling me where they had sent him. These kids just got to saunter away and the police pulled off before they had progressed one block. But in that one block, one of the young ladies hollered out to me, "Bitch!" She then stuck her middle finger up at me and repeated, "Bitch!." I hollered back, "Go to school. Just go...to...school!"

Being called a bitch by a young girl who could be my granddaughter bothered me, but not as much as another young girl who said to me that she would rather drop out than go to school. In my frustration, I asked her, "Well, why don't you do it?" And in she responded, "I'm trying to drop out now!" Unlike her friends who she walked away from, she made a u-turn in marched in the opposite direction of school, as if she had made up her mind that today was the day.

Tomorrow, it will start all over again, as it has for the past three weeks. Students will walk from home, get off of buses and jump out of their parent's cars to go meet up with their friends and who puff the morning away.

Maybe you can remember friends who were totally unfocused and lacked the desire to go to school and didn't. And, it wasn't long before we knew what happened to them...nothing! They ended up on drugs, pregnant, homeless, unemployed or maybe even dead, or but for the grace of God they were saved and found their way back on track to a meaningful life with a job and an education, and grateful for second chances.

I wish the best for these kids and while I was a bit jilted, I was not annoyed by the expletive hurled at me. As disrespectful as it was, it did not hurt me. I was more hurt over their disinterest in school at such an early period in the school year than any word could cause. But seeing them head towards school relieved my of my angst and I led myself to believe, without any proof, that they were headed to the place they ought to be.

I sincerely believe that we have to intervene in the lives of our children and resist doing what she so wanted me to do and that was to go and mind my own business. Our children are our business if we truly believe they are also our future.

I'm looking forward seeing my girls tomorrow to find out how their day went today.