Focusing on the Good

One of my ninth grade girls asked to go to the bathroom today. She came back high. It was her birthday. She had a little balloon and gift bag on the floor next to her desk. I pulled her outside and she admitted that there were girls smoking in the bathroom, but that she didn’t do it. I told her I had called school police yesterday on a boy, but I didn’t want to do that to her on her birthday…but not to come back to my class high ever again.

It just made me so sad that a ninth grade girl is smoking pot on her birthday. When I was in ninth grade, I was writing autobiographies, played Miss Hannigan in Annie, obsessed over school projects. I wasn’t smoking weed in the bathroom at school.

But maybe I was just different.

I wasn’t living in poverty. I didn’t have to deal with gang mentality on a daily basis. I didn’t feel the need to escape.

I was having severe abdominal pain the other day from stress. I don’t know how much longer I can do this.

I had all my students write persuasive essays about why I should keep up the blogging project after students were downloading weed as screensavers and women in evocative poses with their legs spread.

Most of the students are good. They argued that they never get to use computers, that their typing is getting better, and that it was cool to have their writing online to show others. They said it wasn’t fair for them to be punished for a few students’ “dumb” behavior. They made commitments to make sure their neighbors were on task.

So I must keep focusing on the good. Because they do deserve it.