A Student's Urgent Request

Even beyond teaching, the safety of our students is a teacher's most important responsibility.

I have helped considerably one particular student in one of my classes considerably. When an error occurred on his grade printout that made him ineligible to play football for the school, I went to the coach and showed him the error so the student could be reinstated. I have worked long hours trying to get his multiplication up to par (yes, he is making progress). He knows I am on his side.

Normally he wears his hair in corn rows. His eyes seem to be focusing on two diufferent places when he looks at you. He wears a gold "grill" over his front teeth, and is especially proud iof the new one he just had made.

Several days ago two students I didn't know appeared at the class door and tried to push their way in and start a fight with him. I was sitting in what amounts to a wheelchair, unable to do anything, but the teaching assistant and one of the security people who saw from a hallway that there was trouble prevented them from entering.

He is in the last class of the day.

On Friday about a half hour before the end of the class and the end of the school day, he got up from his desk, went to the back of the room, and wrote a message on the back of a sheet of paper. Very casually, he brought it up to me at the front of the class while the other students were copying material into their notebooks.

"There are some people who want to shoot me after school. Can I leave fifteen minutes early ?"

I nodded "Yes."