My OPEN LETTER TO THE pResident

President Bush,

The question has been asked; how can George W. Bush earn your vote? Do you really want to know? I am more than happy to tell you. I am a schoolteacher. I teach in a school with more than 80% on free or reduced lunches. WE have multiple gangs thrust in my school and daily we have to purge the walls, desks, and textbooks of graffiti. We have multiple gang fights daily. Kids don't care about school in fact, when they do come they see it as opportunity to further advance their gang cause. Just yesterday I had three gang symbols carved into my tables, a pot plant drawn on my door and a member of the gang Crips tell me he wasn't my fuckin puppy when I asked him to pick up the trash he had thrown on the floor.


Our building was built in 1953. It is all brick and most of the school has no air conditioning. With four fans in my classroom and all the windows open, the indoor thermometer indicated the temperature was 124 degrees at 2 pm. Kids can not concentrate in these situations.

You want my vote? Come teach in my classroom for three day with no secret service to protect you should you have the need to step in the middle of two 200lb members of opposite gangs. Follow my script to meet the standards you are so proud of. And since each teacher receives only one box of copy paper to last the year, you have to bring your own if you plan to just give them worksheets. It is better to have interactive lessons, but you have to keep them quiet because it is so hot in our rooms we all have to keep the doors open.

Do the hallway duties required to prevent someone getting murdered. Just yesterday, a little scrawny boy was slammed into the corner of an open locker and bled down 2 hallways and required 15 stitches in his head. He will not name names, so we have no idea who did this to him. Passing period is quite exciting. I am sure your hawkish attitude will enjoy it.

If at the end of those three days, you survive and actually agree to fund schools better, or even find a way to provide just my school with air and better supplies, and do so on a national level, you might have my vote.





(never in my wildest dreams would I even think he would do this. He will never get my vote, but hey its a cool concept. He would NEVER last...he would shit his drawers and run)

do you teach in?

wish to say

and in her school there has been the same types of occurances.

school has been in session 2 weeks and we have probably had 25 fights both boys and girls

this is a typical day. Some days it is worse

school programs are doing.

Kudos to you for being strong enough to hang in there... I know I couldn't handle it. Thankyou from all of us of weaker constitutions.

I formerly taught in a school that was similar to yours. Then we got a principal who absolutely would not tolerate the kind of talk you put up with from that student. Fortunately he had the power of an also new superintendent to enforce zero tolerance. He also installed a very strict dress code. No colors that could be associated with gangs; red or black, were permitted.
If you don't have competent or committed backing, your school has no chance no matter HOW much money they throw at it.

numbers. See we are but one of 12 comprehensive HS in our town.

High school was reserved for the academically talented. Other kids quit at 16 (or even younger) and were apprenticed to trades. Some kids are simply not interested in learning theory. We need to respect this and teach them practical things.

Appoint me dictator, and I'll open small trade schools, each with a general specialty, for those kids who aren't academically talented. A plumber, hairdresser, line cook, air conditioning tech, and a dozen others can open their own shops and do very, very well if they are taught the things they need to know to do so. Keeping them bored out of their minds in history, literature, and higher math classes does them no good, and adversely affects the kids who are there and interested in these subjects.

The US is one of the few industrialized countries that does not do this, and we and our children are paying the price.

Now I can hear believers saying these kids won't be well rounded. Well, what are we doing now except turning them off to things they may be interested in as they grow older and find themselves left out of some conversations? Let them be governed by aptitude and choice.

One size doesn't fit all.

you should propose that~

for the weekend