On the news tonight, the lead story was about a burglary in the town I used to teach in.  They mentioned the road, a short little 1 mile road that I used to drive on regularly, and I thought "oh shit."  I know every kid on that road, and there’s quite a few.  I sort of crossed my fingers and watched the news story, and when they got to "3 juveniles" I already had 2 names in my head, and then I saw the profile of JE, hands cuffed in front of him, as he ducked into the sheriff’s car.  The third kid arrested was TD, a kid I’d had as an 8th grader in my first year of teaching.  I called my coteacher and found out that the third was SM, another kid of mine who graduated last year.  All three, my kids.  All three, tough, street-smart kids that I fucking adored.  Two of those kids adored me back, as evidenced by my collection of ‘favorite teacher’ letters. Fuck. I cried.

Here’s the story from the news.  I’m sure there’ll be more details in the paper tomorrow.  I do know that the school was on lockdown, because they couldn’t find TD and there were rumors that the guns and ammo that had been stolen were taken on school property. (It would make sense, as that’s the shortcut between SM’s house and the other two’s homes) JE and TD are in the youth center tonight; SM was released to his parents.

These aren’t just any kids. None of them are, but especially JE and SM. I had them for two years, and they were two of the toughest kids ever. I still have JE’s contact numbers in my mental rolodex, and SM’s mom’s email address, because I was in that much contact with them.  I tried to contact them when things were good, because I had to contact them a lot when things weren’t good.  I dropped off homework to JE’s grandma (Mom is MIA, and dad in prison in AZ), once I dropped off a holiday-party-to-go because JE was too sick to attend, and the kids missed him. They put together a bag of brownies and chips and candy, and the napkins and paper plates, and I dropped it off to gram, who just couldn’t believe that the kids would do that.

Here are some links that reference these guys: (TD was referenced in my old journal, but he was in high school last year, so not mentioned here)

This entry, the part about the dance, the SM and JE were the two ringleaders to drag me out on the floor.

This one (look for the one by JE), and this one are about JE.

This one is about SM.

I really rarely wrote about school, just a few kids mentioned here and there, and that accounted for about 1% or less of all my kid interactions, as you can imagine.  A few names popped up more often — K&A, Geoffrey — but that these guys even get mentioned speaks volumes for how much I dig these kids.

When I talked to Deb, she mentioned that the principal commented that "two of them were yours, right?"  And no, asshole who doesn’t KNOW what goes on in the school, actually, ALL THREE were ours.  Apparently Deb replied with "NOW do you see what we meant about being stacked with the behavioral kids?"  Seriously.

It wasn’t that my program turned these kids into criminals.  If anything, the only reason this never happened until now was because of our program.  I am certain that it is no coincidence that within 6 weeks of starting high school, these guys were arrested. Just, FUCK. It’s sad.