Archive for November, 2010

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Field trips

November 22, 2010

It’s the week of Thanksgiving and the community is busy cooking more turkeys in a week than most of us will in our lifetime. Many of these are being prepared for a local homeless shelter. All the women were missing from my class today. Someone said they were out together getting their hair done. I wonder what beauty school they went to or if a salon donated their services. It’s the first I’ve heard of this in my many years teaching at this site but no field trip would surprise me. Sometimes this place does feel like summer camp for felons. One wonders why anyone would ever leave.

Bart left this weekend. He didn’t seem restless on Friday when he was in my class. Sometimes a resident will leave just before a holiday to try to see their family or their dealer. Last week Bart drew me a lizard resting on a melting eyeball for the small gallery I have of student artwork. He might still be using his drug of choice, LSD. Bart claims to have taken LSD more times this year than the number of turkeys we are cooking.

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School supplies

November 12, 2010

 

One of my former students returned this week. Bart was in my class in 2008. I remember him getting close to taking his GED right before taking off. Everyone likes Bart. Barely out of his twenties, he makes eccentricity seem cool right down to his blond mohawk that turns into a long pony tail. Since I last saw him Bart has been working on expanding the holes pierced in his ears. Yesterday he walked in with two AA batteries in each lobe.  “Have a look in your junk drawer, Ms. P, ” he said. He wanted me to find him something else to put in the holes now stretched to nearly an inch in diameter.  “Inside I used chess pieces,” he said of his time in prison. “Queens because the kings were too big.”

I try to withhold even the simplest supply request lest word get out in the community that I am soft and can be milked for goods. I never let parolees use my office phone or borrow money, not even a quarter. If you give an inmate a paper clip in prison you can lose your job. It’s a matter of safety and security. Here are some items I did give out this week: pencils to do math problems, an envelope to send for official GED transcripts, a rubber band to hold together a student’s dreadlocks so they don’t fall in his eyes during computer work.

Stuffing your ears with batteries can’t be good. So I found a dried-out orange highlighter in my desk and gave it to Bart. The next day he came in to class with the highlighter’s plastic orange barrel neatly cut into fat, hollow pegs that he proudly wore in each earlobe. Then he watched a skateboard video on Microsoft Encarta. I saw it was too late to ask for my highlighter back.

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