Words

Been working at Echo Glen lately, which sounds like a summer camp for rich kids but isn’t. It’s where they send the “bad” kids to keep them off the streets and teach them respect and manners and algebra.

I’m certified as a substitute teacher now, a whole new role. Before, I was circulating, working with the kids one-to-one while someone else managed the room. Now that’s my job

I’m alone in the room with seven boys, all eager to learn something other than Language Arts. How to challenge the teacher? What can we get away with? How far can we push her? My first class is all about that, and I learn as much as they do.

Next time will be different. Next time I lay down the rules at the start. I’ll give them one cue each and then they’re out. Keep my promise. Send their butts to the office. Make it a Class Two if they deserve it. I’ve seen it done and it works. Send one out and the rest settle down.

I have absolute power if I choose to use it. Just push a button and my word is law. “William is coming up,” I’ll tell the office and it will be so.

I squirm to have that power. It itches like wool on bare skin, but the truth is, I believe in it. These guys got the way they are and got where they are because no one contained them. Maybe someone berated them, abused them, argued or yelled or neglected them, but no one stood firm and said, “You can’t do that.”

Funny how well that works. I said it to an out-of-control teenager in a public school lunchroom, a kid who was yelling and pushing and actually threw someone to the ground. A kid I’d never seen before. A kid twice my size. I walked up to him, looked him in the eye and said, “You can’t do that.”

“OK,” he said in a small voice, and slunk away.

These boys need that, too

In my next class I lay out the rules first thing, besides letting them know that I like them. I set a framework and something happens.

We’re reading Langston Hughes, a great choice for these kids, ‘though they don’t see it yet. They start out looking at it like schoolwork, nothing more. Today we endure poetry ‘til the bell rings. What you either avoid or knuckle under and do.

Defiance, avoidance, or compliance—these are all they know. I want them to learn what can be truly their own. I want them to know that they, too, can speak and that their words have power. I want them to know they can create something. A poem, a business, a life that is not under anyone’s thumb. Ownership, not just compliance. 

I ask for a volunteer to read a poem aloud. Gustavo reads it beautifully. Fluently and with expression. They are starting to listen.

Next there’s one called The Negro Speaks of Rivers and I ask what they think of that word. The black kid in the back grimaces. He says it’s as bad as the other N word. I tell them when I was little it was the polite word, and his eyes get big.

 I pause.

 “I grew up in a very white world,” I say.

They are quiet.

“The only black person I knew was Mr. Brown, my sixth grade teacher. One day he stopped class and told us a story. He told us what it was like to be black and traveling through the South, where he couldn’t count on a gas station selling him gas. He’d have to ask very, very nicely. May I please buy some gas? It was the first time I saw a man cry.”

Damon raises his hand. “What’s it like to be white? And what’s white history? We always hear about black history, but what’s white history?”

 Can’t help it, I laugh.

 I answer the easier question because how do you tell someone what’s it’s like to be white? Do I say that I got every job I ever applied for, was welcomed into any place I wanted to rent? Bought a house with the help of my parents and the blessings of the bank and my neighbors? Do I say that police don’t stop me for no reason and if I’m speeding they usually let me off with a warning? Do I tell them that, present company excluded, I don’t know anyone who’s in prison?

I skip all that and answer the question about history. What is white histor

“It’s what gets called just ‘history,’” I say. “It mostly leaves out people of color. It mostly leaves out women, too. It’s all about the white men. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson—those guys. What you probably got in school, right?”

 Jaden, who’s been doodling like mad, looks up at me with huge brown eyes. He looks questioning, vulnerable. Friendly, even

Then the bell rings and they’re gone.

What just happened here? Did I accomplish anything? Maybe.

If what we can’t say owns us, then maybe what we can—and do say—sets us free, even a little bit.

*I changed the names of the boys for their privacy.

**photo by Jerry Jaz- Thanks, Jerry!