What This Blog Is About

This blog is about what it is like to teach in a ghetto school, and more specifically what it is like for a substitute teacher to do this.

The school where I am a substitute teacher is fairly large -- 2000 students ? -- and has a student body about 80% African-American. Perhaps another 15 percent are Hispanic, and the remainder is divided between Asaians and Caucasians.

Make no mistake about it, it is a ghetto school. Most of the students come from poor families, many of them one-parent families, and most probably families from which no one has ever been to college. The kids wear what I have come to regard as a "uniform."

The boys wear extremely baggy jeans with embroidered pockets and sometimes embrodery decorating other areas of the pants. These pants are worn very low. One can usually see an expanse of brightly colored underwear showing at the top of the student's butt. The pants are also so long that the wearer unavoidably walks now and then on the cuffs, which quickly become ragged and frayed. The tops are usually very loose-fitting, sweatshirt-like jerseys. In short, the boys dress "gangsta-style." It is clear that most students who wear other types of clothing are considered "out of it" nerds.

The girls usually dress in very tight-fitting jeans, lots of costume jewelry, and tight T-shirts that show off how sexy they can be. The variety of hairdos is nothing less than staggering, with lots of braids, lots of weaves (artificial or real hair from someone else, hair added to what the wearer actually possesses).

In visiting some African-American friends a month ago, I was told that the school is so "ghetto" that they would not allow their own children to attend it, and instead sent them to private school.

This, then, is part of the setting of the stories I have to tell.