MLKJ Day

So, I went to see the perfect Martin Luther King Jr. Day movie, "Freedom Writers." It reminded me of my last two years of high school and that I wanted to be an English teacher to help inspire the students in the awful Los Angeles School District that language gives you a voice, writing gives you power. At least, that's what an inspirational English teacher taught me my senior year at Narbonne High School; if you can call it a high school and not a prison.

While watching this movie, I remembered stories my friends used to tell me about drive bys when they were trying to have birthday parties. I remembered friends bringing guns to school. I remembered seeing one friend stab a rival gang member during lunch time and then hide out in the girl's gym. I remember another friend coming back from lunch, having witnessed a dead body just feet from where she was going to purchase her food, but decided not to eat after what she saw. Yet another friend came, from an afterschool stop at McDonald's, to the girl's gym covered in someone else's blood, to hide from the police or whoever.

Fortunately, I never got hurt, never got scared. Just shocked, amazed, angry, sad, careful. I became "tight" with the people who might've hurt me. I came to understand them. I wanted to listen, to understand, to help. Maybe I didn't fully understand their experiences, but I came close to alot of the dangers and went through the same crappy schooling as they did. I was blessed with good parents and a good home, in a better part of town than many of them. I say them, but it was us. I am one of them, a product of the Los Angeles Unified School District, but an unusual one.

So, I suppose I still want to help, because I know how much difference a teacher can make, and "Freedom Writers" reminded me of that. I'm thinking more seriously about joining the "Teach For America" program so that I can actually get in there, get into the system and try to change things for the better. All it could take might be an understanding teacher who cares. That's what it took for me anyway.