I spent most of the 90’s teaching Creative Writing in an arts-centered middle school in inner-city Baltimore, MD. If you’ve seen the HBO series THE WIRE, then you have a pretty good idea what it was like where I taught. Poorest part of the city. Highest crime rate in the city. Highest murder rate in the country during some of the years I taught there. A 70 percent unemployment rate for adult black males in the city. Almost 100 percent of my students lived in public housing. Almost 100 percent of my students qualified for free lunch and breakfast, as well as free bus passes. Probably half of the students I taught had been passed along year after year in elementary school, without learning to really read. Even literacy was impoverished on the west side of Baltimore.
All my students were black, and I am the whitest white person ever to walk the planet. As I’m writing this, I can think of a thousand stories of my Baltimore adventures y’all might find interesting. For a long time, I couldn’t talk about my exploits there to anyone but Suzanne. Let’s just say teaching in an inner-city public school is not the best job to have if you are bipolar. And boy, am I bipolar! But I think I can talk about it now, so I’ll make a point to share Balto stories in the future.
But for now, suffice it for me to say that one of my 6th Grade students drew and colored this fine picture as a Christmas card to me, in 1994. His name was Deonte, and he gave it to me with such pride. He truly meant it to represent joyful holiday wishes for me, even though it more accurately represented his deadly neighborhood. I have treasured its unique perspective for all these 25 years.
I share this “Christmas card” with you here, with one of my A CHRISTMAS STORY Bow Ties o’ the Day. I still remember when Deonte handed me the picture as I was leaving the school building for Christmas break. When I saw it for the very first time, all I could think of was, “You’ll shoot your eye out!”