School Community

The pair of them, brother and sister, marked into my room for academic updates on their children. He asked about students I took to be his offspring, but I'm fairly certain that most of the students (and there were several) that were hers were only slightly if at all related to her. A giant of a boy who generally cuts up in my class, and had better things to do than take any of his nine weeks exams, smiled sheepishly and cowered beneath her glare. She is a regular substitute at the school. A few minutes later one of her charges confesses that he sometimes cries about how he doesn't stay with his mom, but a minute earlier three adults had commented about how lucky he was that someone cared enough to stay on him about his grades.

The inclusion teacher who regularly works with students in my class room took her pregnant goddaughter to the doctor, since she stays with the teacher now instead of her mother. The same teacher kids around with the kids like she is one of them, but they seem to respect her.

I had two parent conferences (of the five or six that showed for report card pick-up and wanted to talk) with other teachers in the district, one with a high school teacher watching out for her niece, and one with the daughter of one of our cafeteria ladies.

The teacher who teaches in the room next to me calls nearly all of the kids by nicknames. They treat him like a brother, and he has insights and access into their hearts and minds that I couldn't build if I spent the rest of my life here.

The students are the children of the faculty; if you need a phone number, or need to know if someone has a phone, or need to know what's going in someone's home life, or who they run with, or whether or not they were involved in the town-to-town fighting that went down over the weekend, you usually know who to ask. Most of the teachers are from the area (the rare exception being those of us who have intentionally come to critical needs areas) and most of them will never leave. There seems to be an unusual conception of parenthood around here; adults are universal parents, and children find parents wherever they may be found.

Sometimes I feel like I understand, feel surrounded and supported and responsible within the community, and know that I can do something here. Hours later I feel like an outsider and a fraud and helpless against the forces that dominate my students lives.

The school community, though close-knit, is not exclusive. There is a niche available if you are willing to open your views a little, and accept the niche that opens for you, including laughing at your own strange habits, like walking fast and talking fast and looking stressed and not eating fried chicken. Most important, of course, is that you care. That alone is the deciding factor between belonging to a community and visiting one. If you love the kids, if you celebrate and hurt with them, and fight for them, even and especially when they won't, then you are theirs. The school community belongs to it's children.