In response to the several people who have expressed their dismay at the lack of a recent blog update, I have this to say:

BLEAH!!!!

If you people want to plan my lessons for deranged high school freshmen and grade their grammar-free papers, well, good! I’ll just go and blog myself silly. If you don’t—well, then, I’ll just fart in your general direction.

Teaching at Carver—that’s George Washington Carver Vocational and Technical High School, or Carvo in ‘50s parlance—is a constant reminder of everything both wonderful and horrible about modern Baltimore.

The building is fifty years old this year. It needs help—not badly, but enough. The windowshades are ripped; there are cracked windows. The roof holds, though, and the heat works. This is more than might be said for big high schools in other cities. On the other hand, City College—“THE” city high school, home of Baltimore’s best and brightest—is twenty-five years older than Carver, and has immaculate marble stairs and an auditorium full of graffiti-free seats.

Where’s the wonderful part? Well, we had “Back To School Night” tonight. One of my freshman students showed up with Mom in tow—and Mom was one of my former co-workers from T. Rowe Price. Baltimore Syndrome strikes again—the biggest small town in the world. And one of my seniors showed up with HIS mom in tow. A very elegant lady, she is. We spoke for a few minutes and it didn’t take us long to discover that she grew up in the parish that my father attended back in the ‘40s. After the two of us had finished trashing the modern alterations to Corpus Christi, we had decidedly bonded. I’ve promised, before the season is out, to come to the fund-raising bazaar at St. Pius V, and I’m sure that I can expect her—AND my student—to show up for the annual Sauerbraten dinner sponsored by the Gentlemen’s Rosary Society of St. Alphonsus.

Underlying the happy circumstance of these encounters is the horror that I find with other students—the sweet little senior girl who can’t read very well because she’s a hapless victim of fetal alcohol syndrome; the guy who’s still a high school senior at twenty-one because he ended up in jail for two years and is now making a desperate effort to straighten himself out. How can I possibly issue a bad grade to someone who makes this kind of effort? But—if I don’t hold them both to a standard, who will?

This whole thing is still decidedly on the weird side, and I can only take each day as it comes. Something discouraging happens every day, but at least once weekly, a ray of light shines on Bentalou street. (You Auslander, that’s pronounced Bentlow.)

For now, I can do nothing more than write lesson plans, raise the Calvert black-and-gold every morning and hope for the best.