Youth Radio’s Rekia Jibrin (REH-kee-uh Jib-RIN) teaches humanities at a San Francisco Bay Area high school for students at risk of not graduating. Earlier this year, a student from her school was shot. It’s not an unfamiliar experience for some teachers in urban areas. That’s because teens and young adults who live there are often victims of violent crime. For students and their teachers across the United States, violence can be a daily reality that doesn’t just disappear when school resumes. May 18th on NPR/Weekend Edition
8:49am-
It’s Monday, and I walk into my school’s main office. There’s a line at the copy machine. It’s jammed again and I’m teacher number three. “Hey Queen,” says one teacher, “did you hear what happened over the weekend? One of our kids was shot 8 times.” Now she’s whispering. The student was shot 8 times at close range as he waited at a bus stop. I abandon my copy project and walk into the school courtyard, re-imagining my day.
9:15am-
I step inside my classroom. Amid a disarray of side conversations, a skinny arm shoots up from the crowd. She asks if I heard about the shooting. I nod. Funerals have become a social event, my students tell me. They no longer go to malls to buy outfits for the next party. They tell me they socialize while buying funeral clothes they will wear for lost young friends and family. I look down at the reading I had planned to talk about today. It’s W.E.B. DuBois on double consciousness: “this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others…." Looking into my students’ eyes, I wonder what they see.
4:58pm-
I climb onto the city bus, heading home. I ask the driver how he’s doing today. He says he can’t complain. I have a complaint I say in my head—a complaint about tragedy. Teachers and administrators need to be honest about our limitations in meeting the unique learning needs of students who live in violence, who hope to escape lock up and despair. We absorb the trauma around us because we listen to our students. And in the process of listening, we assure them that they are seen. And still, I can’t wrap my head around what’s happened. Eight times at close range, and still alive? Will he survive the shooting? Two young men step onto the bus and ask for a transfer. In baggy jeans, white Ts, the teenagers move towards the back seats. Will they survive the shootings?
11:18pm-
I’m tired. I think back to the morning—when I caught sight of the principal across the courtyard, out of the corner of my eye. He was on his cell phone, his body hunched. I remember the security guard unlocking my classroom. Turning to him, I asked how he was doing, given the news of the shooting. For ten seconds, his body relaxed, his face softened: “I’m doing alright, I guess. Yeah. I guess I’m alright.” He was still thinking about it.
We are all still thinking about it, still living it. Tomorrow, some students will fill in bubble sheets, others will listen to a lecture, or write in a journal. And soon, another Monday will come.
For NPR News, I’m Rekia Jibrin
Back Announce: Rekia Jibrin (REH-kee-uh Jib-RIN) is teaching high school and pursuing her doctorate at University of California, Berkeley. If you want to join Youth Radio’s network of educators, go to youthradio-dot-org and click on the Teach Youth Radio link.
