Case Closed

"I'm one of those niggas you just can't help. I don't want nothing and you can stop wasting your time on me," says Lacee*, my 17-year-old student. I quietly wonder if he can hear my heartbreaking, or the see the tears welling up in my eyes; and they so desperately are seeking release. I look to the lead teacher to my left, Sharon, and the look on her face tells me everything I need to know: Yes, he's serious - and I've already given up on him.

I guess I should start at the beginning. My internship as a theatre teacher at Lake Clifton High School officially began four months ago. Upon entering the school on my first day, I felt like someone had trapped me in an eerie scene from Lean On Me. Students sat on the front steps on the auditorium smoking cigarettes in the middle of the school day, and in the atrium, I was greeted with the pungent smell of grape dutches and ganga. I quickly switched into my "inner city" mode as I realized before hitting the office, that these kids would rip me and my Southern Belle charm apart if I didn't get it together.

When the after-school arts program began thirty minutes later and the participants began to stroll in, I began to promptly look for the crew of MTV's Punked. Was this a joke? My "students" were 17 to 21-year-old young adults who for whatever reasons, hadn't or couldn't graduate from the three schools located on the campus.

Now, for those of you who don't know, Lake Clifton is no longer one high school. Instead the city thought it a profound idea to divide the campus and put three different schools within the confined deteriorating walls. Reach Partnership, which by far is the "elite" of the campus, educates children from 6-12th grades. Heritage High School isn't far behind, and the demon seeds of Doris M. Johnson bring up the rear.

In those first months, Sharon was so unreliable that I never knew what to expect. I still remember my first day teaching the children alone, due to Sharon going through her first trimester of pregnancy. In a word I was...PETRIFIED. These kids were straight inner city Baltimore born and raised. A good bit of them had been raising themselves for years, so they had no respect for authority because in their world- they were the authority. I quickly realized that I couldn't be timid or become transparent.

First, I refused to answer questions about my age. What would these "students" do if they realized I was only a mere 21? - only 9-12 months older than them? Right- run over me. And plus, with me being female, all the boys were hanging off me trying to figure out if I was young enough for them to have a chance...or old enough to teach them something new. I purposely kept them in the dark and the boundaries have been all the more clearer for it.

Secondly, I began to enforce every rule and put a few in place of my own. There was no foul language. No cell phone use during activities. No interrupting scenes by walking in and "dapping up" all your homeboys individually while actors were on stage. I quickly realized that my strongest opposition wasn't even from the "kids." But rather, from Sharon. "You can't tell the kids they can't use their cell phones- this isn't school so we don't have that authority," she would say. If it wasn't that it was "Sometimes the way you talk to the kids is very stern. And they don't like it." She even went as far as to bring it up my manner of discipline and the way I dealt with the kids, their issues, and their attitudes in a staff meeting. "Alexis can be very strict at times, and sometimes the way she talks to the kids can be really...harsh and she does it with a smile- that's what scares them," she says in her whiny pregnant voice. The program director quickly says "Do the kids respond to it? Does she get things done?" and with a quiet "Yes, its effective," the case was closed.