Sunday night, I did something I almost never do because it’s typically so depressing: I watched the local news. And as expected, I ended up depressed. Somewhere around 8 people were shot and killed Memorial Day weekend in Baltimore, upping the year’s murder total by about 10% in one weekend. And the names of one of the slain was the same as a kid who used to be in my advisory period, until he was expelled for fighting our school police officer. I immediately began searching online for information, and saw 2 people had been killed within about a 10 minute walk of my house, including an 18 year old kid with that name. The only thing was, the first name wasn’t spelled the same, not that that means much. After all, when the girl from my school died in the house fire, it took several days for the paper to start spelling her name correctly.
I put my administration on alert, and by the end of Monday, they were able to confirm that our former student was not 18, but 16, and eventually that he alive and well, thank God. Still, dozens of unknown teachers lost a former student this weekend, so I can’t really celebrate…I just don’t happen to be one of them.
Alan, online. 