The Tutor
M, in the privacy of her New Orleans ghetto dwelling, was tutoring a kid in her so-called spare time after her full time job as a medical consultant/grant writer and her second job as a professional tutor for less than stellar performers from the surrounding suburban ghettoes.
My back was to it while I checked email and posted my latest self-absorption and this kid was getting cut no slack at all. M does not humor punk ass bitches and this kid was standing up to the test in admirable fashion despite the fact that we should all be volunteering for literacy programs, each and every fucking one of us. Money is great if you got it, face time is better. The kid is a very bright survivor of a totally fucked up New Orleans educational system and I'm happy he could understand as many words as he could but that's only because I have heard worser. U hoid me?
A couple of kids on the border of adulthood came in making exaggerated shivering noises and M shushed them while I called them pussies and pulled up a picture of the snow encrusted mansion of my future. "Pool's in the back," I said. "Got a heater in it? Should have a heater," was the extent of their marvel.
I asked the one near adult if he had completed the online job applications M had brought up and left for him to complete while she was at work and he shook his head and I said, "you're meat." The other near adult youngster affects a harsher look, which is perfectly suitable for the neighborhood. You would be afraid of him if you passed him in his context, and I knew he wanted online after me so when I finished I said "go ahead," and he wouldn't make a move. I interrupted M and said "P wants online" and she looked at P like he a piece of a man and said, "when's the last time you did a dish in here or lifted a finger to help in anyway?," and he looked away ashamed but ready to smile his way out but M preempted that with, "don't you even think about giving me that smile." He didn't. I suggested to the other youngster maybe he could fill out those applications. Then I left to go back to my own adjacent ghetto.
I was on the front porch heading for my truck parked in front the house and a voice called out from the street and I wish my sight wasn't so fucked up but it is so I just went to meet the voice and by the time I stood in the middle of the street I saw it to be Shelton so I said hey. He was shivering.
"You cold?"
"Yeah I'm cold," he said. Said he was waiting for his father to come pick him up. He was really shivering.
I didn't know what to say so I said, "You want me to give you a ride?"
He didn't get exasperated with me being a dullard, he just said, "No, I'm waiting for my dad."
He shivered some more and told me of some flu-like symptoms, which didn't sound nice, and I asked him what kind of car his dad drove. He said it was such and such a make and model and that it was like the car Mama D used to drive.
He said he had passed by my house with a friend a few nights previous and he said he had said some nice things to his friend about my abilities as a ghetto renovator.
"What time?" I asked.
"Oh, it was late," he said.
"I go to bed early," I said.
He shivered some more. I said, "Do you want to sit in my truck and wait?" He shrugged off that suggestion and said he was going to wait in the barbershop. I nodded.
"Stop by sometime if you see the light on."
"Ok," he said.
I've been traveling to all the neighborhood elementary schools this past week with the Kealing Jr. High principal, assistant principal, and parent support specialist - talking about the PTA and the big changes coming this next school year. This is Mark Henry's Jr. High - which is becoming a middle school next year- meaning that the district is adding a 6th grade to the 7th and 8th. There has been all kinds of debate - is this good for 12 year olds, is this bad...
Kealing is a tense place - right in the heart of East Austin, poorest part of the city, and it is home for the AISD Jr. High/Middle School Magnet Program - meaning that kids in the district who are 'super bright, really gifted and talented, etc. " can get a college prep education in science, math, and language arts at Kealing Jr. High, but no other.
I guess the idea behind Magnet Programs is that they are a way of desegregating districts - a way of encouraging the upper/middle income families in the district to send their kids to a school whose feeder schools are all in very low-income neighborhoods, i.e. lots of distress, crime, and low performance. Of course, the outcome is not integration, but a campus where the inequities and tensions around class and poverty and race and ethnicity in Austin are all intensified, resulting in a place of distilled strata - a place where it is quite clear where there has been privilege, opportunity, resources, etc. and where there has not - and where the percentage of neighborhood kids who get into the Magnet Program (there is an application process that is not unlike college entrance stuff) is heartbreakingly low.
My rambling - no particular point other than I am moved by the fact that there are people like you and M trying to be extra resource, extra voice and push and opportunity and community. So much homicide and loss in so many forms...
Points are not required, thanks for your input. For sure, no easy solutions, or in fact no solutions at all in the clean and tidy sense but the value of effort should not be underestimated. Even though I am lately obsessed with that idea that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" I still feel involvement is probably the way to go. So kudos to you for your Austin involvements.
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M, in the privacy of her New Orleans ghetto dwelling, was tutoring a kid in her so-called spare time after her full time job as a medical consultant/grant writer and her second job as a professional tutor for less than stellar performers from the surrounding suburban ghettoes.
My back was to it while I checked email and posted my latest self-absorption and this kid was getting cut no slack at all. M does not humor punk ass bitches and this kid was standing up to the test in admirable fashion despite the fact that we should all be volunteering for literacy programs, each and every fucking one of us. Money is great if you got it, face time is better. The kid is a very bright survivor of a totally fucked up New Orleans educational system and I'm happy he could understand as many words as he could but that's only because I have heard worser. U hoid me?
A couple of kids on the border of adulthood came in making exaggerated shivering noises and M shushed them while I called them pussies and pulled up a picture of the snow encrusted mansion of my future. "Pool's in the back," I said. "Got a heater in it? Should have a heater," was the extent of their marvel.
I asked the one near adult if he had completed the online job applications M had brought up and left for him to complete while she was at work and he shook his head and I said, "you're meat." The other near adult youngster affects a harsher look, which is perfectly suitable for the neighborhood. You would be afraid of him if you passed him in his context, and I knew he wanted online after me so when I finished I said "go ahead," and he wouldn't make a move. I interrupted M and said "P wants online" and she looked at P like he a piece of a man and said, "when's the last time you did a dish in here or lifted a finger to help in anyway?," and he looked away ashamed but ready to smile his way out but M preempted that with, "don't you even think about giving me that smile." He didn't. I suggested to the other youngster maybe he could fill out those applications. Then I left to go back to my own adjacent ghetto.
I was on the front porch heading for my truck parked in front the house and a voice called out from the street and I wish my sight wasn't so fucked up but it is so I just went to meet the voice and by the time I stood in the middle of the street I saw it to be Shelton so I said hey. He was shivering.
"You cold?"
"Yeah I'm cold," he said. Said he was waiting for his father to come pick him up. He was really shivering.
I didn't know what to say so I said, "You want me to give you a ride?"
He didn't get exasperated with me being a dullard, he just said, "No, I'm waiting for my dad."
He shivered some more and told me of some flu-like symptoms, which didn't sound nice, and I asked him what kind of car his dad drove. He said it was such and such a make and model and that it was like the car Mama D used to drive.
He said he had passed by my house with a friend a few nights previous and he said he had said some nice things to his friend about my abilities as a ghetto renovator.
"What time?" I asked.
"Oh, it was late," he said.
"I go to bed early," I said.
He shivered some more. I said, "Do you want to sit in my truck and wait?" He shrugged off that suggestion and said he was going to wait in the barbershop. I nodded.
"Stop by sometime if you see the light on."
"Ok," he said.
- jimlouis 1-31-2004 5:45 am
I've been traveling to all the neighborhood elementary schools this past week with the Kealing Jr. High principal, assistant principal, and parent support specialist - talking about the PTA and the big changes coming this next school year. This is Mark Henry's Jr. High - which is becoming a middle school next year- meaning that the district is adding a 6th grade to the 7th and 8th. There has been all kinds of debate - is this good for 12 year olds, is this bad...
Kealing is a tense place - right in the heart of East Austin, poorest part of the city, and it is home for the AISD Jr. High/Middle School Magnet Program - meaning that kids in the district who are 'super bright, really gifted and talented, etc. " can get a college prep education in science, math, and language arts at Kealing Jr. High, but no other.
I guess the idea behind Magnet Programs is that they are a way of desegregating districts - a way of encouraging the upper/middle income families in the district to send their kids to a school whose feeder schools are all in very low-income neighborhoods, i.e. lots of distress, crime, and low performance. Of course, the outcome is not integration, but a campus where the inequities and tensions around class and poverty and race and ethnicity in Austin are all intensified, resulting in a place of distilled strata - a place where it is quite clear where there has been privilege, opportunity, resources, etc. and where there has not - and where the percentage of neighborhood kids who get into the Magnet Program (there is an application process that is not unlike college entrance stuff) is heartbreakingly low.
My rambling - no particular point other than I am moved by the fact that there are people like you and M trying to be extra resource, extra voice and push and opportunity and community. So much homicide and loss in so many forms...
- aga (guest) 2-26-2004 4:16 am [add a comment]
Points are not required, thanks for your input. For sure, no easy solutions, or in fact no solutions at all in the clean and tidy sense but the value of effort should not be underestimated. Even though I am lately obsessed with that idea that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" I still feel involvement is probably the way to go. So kudos to you for your Austin involvements.
- jimlouis 2-26-2004 7:38 pm [add a comment]