A Note for Derrion

Originally, I had planned this post to be a positive one. A sort of reflection on my first four weeks of teaching in Chicago. I regret to inform the potential readers that this entry is tinged with sorrow for the loss of a CPS pupil. This boy was beaten to death outside of a South Side high school - the story has been all over recent news.

The news was brought to my attention on Monday afternoon during my prep period. A three-sentence memo, the bluntness of which hit me like a punch in the stomach, gave me the gist of the situation. A boy was beaten to death during a gang fight and it was altogether likely that some of my students knew him. I quickly searched for the incident on Google and was shocked to find that there had been an amateur video taken at the melee. A video that chronicled the hectic final minutes of a life not yet begun. Against my better judgment, I watched the video and was absolutely aghast. Gang violence erupted suddenly and with brute force. I swear it could have been a seen from a Scorcese movie. But this was too real (if there is such a designation). Because I recognized the area and the school, I could not help but be personally drawn into the incident.

I do not teach at this particular school, nor have I met the fallen student, and yet I was unable to reconcile this loss in my mind. It is difficult to explain, but for the rest of the day, the only thing that I could think of was that this could have been my students. Working with "high-risk" youth (even though they do not describe their own lives with these sociological qualifiers) requires you to break down the boundaries that you might have drawn in any other profession. But, in doing this, the bonds that you create with your students are similar to those that you might create with your own children. You leave yourself vulnerable when incidents like those of the past few days actually occur.

When many people see these stories on the news, the reality of the situation does not quite resonate. But when your job is to guide the children who serve as fodder for these news stories, the reality is inescapable (and indescribable). Now...I may have issues with one or two students on different days, but if anything like this ever happened to any one of them, I would not be able to fathom my own response. I never want to see my students as possible gang members or as being prey to that influence, but that thought is always hanging in the back of my head like a cobweb.

I guess the point is this. The world will never get to know Derrion and that is a damn shame. No questions about that. But, can we use this as a moral imperative? Can we finally stand up and fight for the safety of our children? Can we finally admit that, maybe our social policies are not sufficient to provide adequate safety for our children? Maybe the question is not "can we" but "will we".

In summary, this is my note for Derrion. A note that is brimming with the deepest of sadness for immense loss of a family as well as the state of affairs in education today. Let us not continue to make the mistake of thinking that this sort of gang violence is simply the result of petulant youth. Let us finally begin to make amends for the years of social oppression that feed this sort of nonsense. Let us EDUCATE our children, if only for the education that Derrion will no longer have.