Notes from high school...

First, the irritating: There is a display case just down the hall from my room, and it's advertising a particular elective and encouraging people to sign up for it. It's a "Multi-Media" class and deals with web page design, etc... anyway, it was obviously put together by students, but I'd like to know just which teacher is responsible for allowing a page of large, bold green text to make it into the display unedited: "DON'T FORGET TO ASK YOUR COUNSELOR'S THAT YOU WANT SIGNED UP."

Arrgh... my sensibilities are assaulted every time I have to walk by that thing.

Okay, now the inspiring: I just got a new student in my "seminar" class yesterday. Seminar is something akin to "homeroom", and my Seminar is all freshmen. It is not an exclusively special-ed class, because Seminar is sort-of a melting pot or a cross-section. Anyway, this new student has been on homebound, and I am assuming that she probably had a baby, although I haven't officially fact-checked that yet. Yesterday we were talking about the Columbine High School massacre; most of these freshmen were in the third grade when that occurred, and most of them do not even remember it. I talked about it for a bit, specifically referring to Cassie Bernall and the biography of her that her mother Misty wrote immediately following the murders. If Cassie were alive today, she'd be twenty-two years old.

I asked my freshmen to think about being 22... where do they see themselves, what would they like to be doing, and what kind of person do they envision themselves being. I steered them away from the annoying "I want a new car, a plasma TV, a Playstation" crap, and instead tried to focus them on career and college, and even more specifically about their characters. "What are you doing TODAY that will matter when you're 22?" I asked them to write.

My new student, T., wrote the following:

At 22 yrs old I see my self studying to get my master's in communications/management. Being independant and working. Also trying to invest money to start my own bissuness. Putting in studio time toward my music also towards my poetry. Living in New York. If not that then in Law School studying to become a lawyer. Again working being independant. Also trying to look into law firms. Maybe living in Atlanta and possibly putting in time for music, poetry and writing. Personality wise I see my self being what I am now, honest, trustworthy, open minded and spontainious.

One of the things they encourage us to do as Seminar teachers is to be an adult advocate for our students, to pinpoint ones that might need extra assistance OR to direct the ones with extra potential into programs that can help them reach their goals. I felt my antennae twitch when I read T.'s page, so I took the paper down to the guidance counselors to alert them to her plans & visions. Hopefully she'll get plugged in somewhere... and in the meantime, I look forward to getting to know her in the next months.