values

My job with the school district provides quite a variety of new experiences for me as I am available to any school, elementary through high school (including a few charter schools), in several areas from the office and library to the classroom, kindergarten to special ed.

Recently I was called in to the ISS (in-school suspension) class at a middle school. I supervised six students who were assigned there for the day (some of them several days) for various infractions from truancy to fighting. One 7th-grader I’ll call “Pete” was there for stealing a bike. He didn’t want to walk home from school one day so swiped a bike from the bike rack and rode home.

I was astonished that he hadn’t thought through the inevitable consequences of his actions before he chose to do what he did. He is a sweet kid and seemed to need to talk, totally against ISS rules, but I could imagine how that last hour of 5 days of suspension would drag, so I entertained his questions.

“Have you ever murdered anybody?”
“No; I would be in prison, certainly not here in school with you!”
“Have you ever witnessed a murder?”
“No.”
“Have you ever been in juvie hall?”
“No.”
“Have you ever been in ISS?”
“When I was in school it was called detention, and no, I was never in detention.”
“Have you ever been on a jury?”
“Yes.” And I shared with him my experience on a jury for an aggravated assault case.

This seemed like an unusual line of questioning from a 7th-grader, even one with a “record” of sorts. He explained, “When my mom was a teenager she was sentenced to 12 years in prison for being an accessory to murder—her boyfriend murdered someone.”

And now I saw the bigger picture. In my somewhat sheltered life I have taken for granted the values I’ve been taught; I assume others have similar values, or at least some basic values. The sad thing is I don’t know if “Pete” really learned anything from his experience. If he did, I hope it was more than just, “I’ll be more careful not to get caught next time.”