Christmas break is over. Happy New Year everybody.

My buddy F… picked me up at the airport in Memphis and we bs’ed about vacation. We drove into a late afternoon sun and as usual I gazed thoroughly impressed by the large expanse of Delta sky. The blues melted into faded pinks and big puffy clouds slowly meandered over the scorched landscape of barren cotton fields. I had been dreading my return to the Delta. I had nightmares during break, bundled up stress in my lower back and an overwhelming sense of dread to be returning to these painfully neglected lands. However, a remarkable event occurred late New Year’s Eve early New Year’s Day that has reawakened my reason for coming to and living in the Delta.

It was shortly after midnight, we had just crossed into 2007, and we were driving back to Shelby to hang out at the farm. We stopped at Double Quick and drove through the ghetto; mind you all of Shelby is a ghetto. We passed through one of many sets of projects on the way back. We passed and saw multiple individuals hanging around late night…UNLOADING CLIPS OF BULLETS INTO THE AIR! This is not cool. I don’t care that it is New Year’s, set off some fireworks and put your weapons away. Nowhere should people be on the street with concealable weapons wantonly firing bullets into the air. Add to the image younger kids (ages 13-16) running around. A group of them headed to a section of apartments pulled off the screen and threw open the window and dove into the house. Who knows who else is in that room? Maybe there are younger siblings? How many of them…one, two three, possible six, seven, or eight. I have a student that has ten siblings and twelve people live in the two-bedroom apartment. The scene was straight out a ghetto thug movie or a comedic rip-off like Friday. Either way, as we drove home we were all re-recognizing why we are here.

You cannot learn when people are firing bullets outside your window. You cannot sleep well when people are jumping in and out of the window in the middle of the night. This is not a safe supportive comforting environment. Children should not live like this. No wonder some have difficulty focusing or have bad attitudes or don’t care about school. I had forgotten the reality of the situation for many of my students. I had become extremely jaded dealing with school politics, listening to constant complaining, and experiencing pervasive hatred and incompetence. It is about the children, this is my primary concern. Tomorrow we go back to school. There will be no guns in the classroom. There will be love. We will hold hands, sing Kumbya (sp?), and love each other. We will hug trees and eat granola. I don’t care. There will be no weapons and no hate. JESUS!!! People shooting guns, c’mon. These are children. Well, I feel a renewed sense of purpose. I am not dreading my job or being here. In fact, it’s pretty freaking cool.