No to plagiarize Socrates But I know That I don’t know And that’s something. I grew up here When the hate was quieter I grew up here When phones hung on walls. We had our violence Our rumor and spite But it wasn’t hand delivered To every person in the school Our shame wasn’t posted on youtube And watched in a huddle Three desks down. We knew things were Bad Most of us dropped out Fell into meth and handguns Died in our best friends houses After our parents kicked us out But we didn’t carry every evil thing In our pocket to look at. We didn’t have it screamed at us. We grew up and watched the world fall apart. It’s been broken since you got here When I was your age “I’d take a bullet for you” Was something you said to family or friends Not something you had to calculate Every time you walked into class But I’m saying it here. You deserve safety and hope and respect. I’ll do everything I can To give you that And a chance to go out and fight The dark we didn’t see coming And I’d be honored To fight it Alongside you.

She felt her ears turn red, as she was squashed by a group of preschoolers. Some were crying, some were asking, some were quietly staring. They all needed her but she did not know how to help! What a helpless feeling that was.

Time was ticking and it felt like long hours have passed since she had entered the children’s room and stood like a statue. Now that she has entered the battlefield of interactions and caring she will have to fight her shyness off. She took a deep breath and said “Hello darlings, I am your new friend Helen. If you are sad I will give you a cuddle. If you are happy I will smile with you. Whatever you are feeling I will feel it with you. Does that sound okay?”

She felt the glowing warmth of smiles on little faces ushering her with confidence, though a little voice peeped “I am hungry Helen”

“I’m not going to tell you again. Put your phone down!”

She was the third student this week that had to be warned against texting while driving and the third time I was ignored. I thought teaching high school English had been challenging but it paled in comparison to being a driving instructor. The youthful ignorance of my students was overshadowed by their arrogance.

“I can’t put it down,” Sarah protested. “I might miss out on something.”

“You might get into a car accident.”

“Yeah? So what if I do?”

For a moment, our car swerved into the opposite lane of traffic. Using the dual controls installed on the passenger side of the car, I pulled on the steering wheel while pushing hard in the brakes. When the oncoming dump truck passed by, the driver leaned on its horn. It masked the obscenities muttered under my breath. Another accident avoided, our vehicle slowed to a stop on the shoulder of the road.

“You really don’t understand how dangerous it is, do you?”

“I don’t think it’s as bad as you say it is,” she replied without taking her eyes off her smartphone. “What’s the big deal?”

The private school I taught at had a smattering of students who acted like they were privileged, as if the rules didn’t apply to them. A few months back, when the class president got in trouble for vandalism, the arrest was voided. All subsequent punishment from the school vanished as well. Not a surprising outcome when his father, a benefactor of the school, promised to build a new library. Expected but still unfair.

“Your parents aren’t going to bail you out every time you get in trouble.”

Sarah rolled her eyes before she replied. It was the only time she looked away from her phone.

“Of course they are. You wouldn’t understand. You don’t have kids. That’s what parents are for.”

“My students are my kids. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for any of you.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

Her dismissive attitude was as irksome as the response itself. The verbal shorthand felt disrespectful. She couldn’t be bothered to spend an iota of intelligence to formulate a better reply, just as she couldn’t put down her phone. My grip tightened on the steering wheel. I looked out the windshield, at the road that lay ahead, and caught a glimpse of Sarah’s future.

I stomped on the accelerator. Loose gravel sprayed out behind the car until the rear wheels found traction. The quick start garnered a brief glimpse in my direction but not much more. When the speedometer passed forty five miles an hour and continued to climb, Sarah finally looked up and asked what I was doing.

“Sacrificing one to save the many,” I replied.

While my right hand guided the car towards a telephone pole, I reached down with my left and unfastened her seat belt. On impact, the airbags deployed but Sarah launched through the windshield. She took her final breath on top of the hood.

When the police arrived and asked for an explanation, I said, “She was texting and driving. I kept telling her not to but she wouldn’t listen.”

3 weeks before summer vacation and the end of the school year a teacher with the principal to discuss what to do with the problem girl in their class

“Principal Layla do you know why this girl keeps causing problems for me, I have been tormented with her antics half the school year I can’t figure it out if may be she just Born this way?”

The principal returned his answer “what types of problems she makes in the class”.

“She’s disruptive to the me when she is ignored even for a little while, I try to meet her needs but I can’t stay with her all the time. Strangest thing is she was generally a good kid until after Christmas break.”

The principal pulled out a note with hearts all over it from her drawer and presented it to the teacher this is a note that came from “your so-called problem Child I’m going to be honest I know the other side of this argument and it doesn’t look good for you.”

The teacher objected “what do you mean doesn’t look good for me it shouldn’t be looking good for her especially her grades now.”

The principal retorted “think just for a moment why is her grades going down now that you been seeing her more often, I know you make an effort to connect with all of your students and I commend you for it but this may have been a step or 2 to far.”

The teacher looked shocked that the principal knows enough this far. “I…I..may..be at fault I admit but tried to..”

The principal stops him “tried to keep things professional but that doesn’t seem to work in relationships now does it, do you know what 12-year-old girls do to compete for love.”

No.

“They write letters, love letters and I’m sure you receive some that you probably threw in the trash. Which is a good move by the way otherwise This meeting would be accompanied by armed staff and a pink slip rather than a warning of being too close. You know what I mean by being too close right”.

“I think so… Um could you enlighten me a little bit “The teacher said this wondering how far the principal knows the secret he keeps all however the next words from her mouth confirms his answer.

The principal read from the note and said “you and she met at the Christmas school play and after some good times you began to date her even make love to her that is of course i’m talking about her mother”

The teacher ignored the embarrassment he had in his head and asked one curiosity “principal what is that slip of paper you’re reading”

The paper the principal had looked like it was torn out of a journal

The principal said “I’m glad you asked this is from the student the so-called problem Child. It seems she’s been keeping tabs on everything that’s been going on ever since her heart got stepped on by her own mother so she has been not thinking straight for months.”

The teacher now fully realizing what he had done “ohhhhhhh fuck what do I do”

“Besides not sleeping with her mother, maybe we could all have a meeting together along with the counselor and maybe we can mitigate some of the damage but the rest is on you and how you deal with your relationship with the mother”

The teacher left out of there flustered he was glad he get to keep his job but he wonders rather if it was worth it starts lingers he gets ready to leave on his date.

The door handle jiggles and the room gets cold. Cold to the touch, almost - as if the silence piercing the room had never heard of gloves. The barricade against the door - the tower of chairs and desks and glitter from yesterday’s art unit - is the only thing standing between an AR15 and Mrs Montague’s 4th grade class.

Mrs Montague is an older woman. She has taught 4th grade for over 35 years and has never cared to do anything but teach. She is flippant with “I love you”s and gold stars and tries only to make each of her students feel known. She has no children of her own, but the 16 huddled around her feet - the ones with tears streaming down their balled-up, bruised knees - have no one else expect for her, and frankly they wouldn’t want to be with anyone else.

She turns to her class and decides the silence is far too cold (and the screams from next door should not be the last thing these kids ever hear.)

“My God, y’all deserve so much more. And of all the lessons I’ve had to plan, I wish I never had to plan what to say in this moment. But know that I love you. I love you simply because you have changed the world - mine and everyone’s else’s sitting around you. Hold each other’s hands and squeeze them tight, if you must. Close your eyes and please. Please. Do not open them.”

And she hums the class’s favorite song. And the class sings along. And the door crashes open. And the chorus is never sung.

“Hi, excuse me?”

My back straightened, and I looked over my shoulder.

“Yes?” I responded. I opened the cabinet door, the newly-bought beakers crammed on each shelf.

“Do you know-” His voice came out a strange garble. He cleared his throat. “Do you know where Mr. Johnson is?”

I turned to him, the boy on the other side of the science lab.

He stood in the doorway, his hands gripped around his backpack straps like a lifesaver out at sea. Every limb was close to his skinny frame, taking up as little space as possible.

I looked at the clock - it read long before the first bell.

“Mr. Johnson should be here soon.” That wasn’t a lie, knowing his schedule, but I had no way of confirming.

The boy, familiar but with no name attached in my mind, glanced around the room.

“Is it important?” I asked.

“Um, well…” he began, his feet shuffling up and down like they wanted to run out from under him. “I need help.”

I stepped towards him, instinctively looking behind him as if to see some commotion happening in the otherwise-silent hallway. “Help? Are you okay?”

Not looking at me, he turned away slightly, enough to make me stop moving. My tennis shoe squeaked on the tiled floor, like an untuned violin chord.

Something light grey covered his cheekbone. A shadow? Nothing stood in the way of the fluorescent lights to cast anything on him, no matter how weak.

I blinked, then again.

It was a bruise.

A recent one, too, outlined in a soft pink.

My muscles felt tight.

“Can you tell me your name?” I asked softly.

“Ryan.”

I smiled, although it probably looked watery. “Well, Ryan, you can call me Miss Mendoza.”

The only noise we could both hear was the ticking of the clock, constant droning easy to tune out. I could tell by the way his jaw clenched, his skin seeming to tight around his face, that his heartbeat must be loud in his ears, louder than anything else this school could do.

“Ryan, why don’t you come sit down over here,” I said, gesturing to a few stools near me.

Hesitating, he then headed toward me, hunched over.

I tried to appear calm. “You said you needed help?”

The buses wouldn’t pull into their loop for some time. I knew that the only students around this early would be practicing for the swim & dive team, or rehearsing for the “special” choir, neither of which I believed him to be a part of.

“It’s… Well, it’s-“ He pulled his phone halfway out of his athletic shorts all middle school boys seem to wear. I leaned over, expecting him to show me something, but then he slipped it back in, like it held a dirty secret.

An awkward silence.

“It’s my dad.”

His fingers picked at the phone case, and his worn sneaker tapped against the inside of the stool’s foot rest.

At my three years at this school, this public middle school in a New England town for the top 5%, the only injuries I’ve seen are kids showing up in casts they got after falling off a sail boat or twisting their wrist during tennis. Students never got into fights and only weaponized words and isolation, something they thought teachers didn’t have a radar for.

One girl tripped over an undone shoelace and smacked her nose against the countertop last month, leaking blood the janitor still has to use bleach on the spot. The chemical smell was still obvious even hours later.

I’ve never seen bruises in this building.

Not how I did when growing up, in a place nothing like this.

I sat down in the stool beside him, not used to the wood compared to the spinning seat at my desk.

I didn’t say anything. I just stared at the same tile he seemed focused on, his eyes glazed but wide, as if he were playing the same memories again and again like a video on a loop, numbing his brain with time.

My breathing matched the ticking on the wall, and after some time, my body felt one with this room - this room that I never made mine, only left up the inspirational and instructional posters and the artificial skeleton that the last teacher left behind.

“Miss Mendoza?”

I looked to him, and he finally met my eyes.

I smiled again, this time feeling warmth I’d sworn to keep away.

I started the day like any other. I walked to my desk and plopped my bag on my chair. The class was empty but soon enough I knew that would change. Before class started I prepared the desks with today's assignment. Not that It would matter much in the end. The bell sounded throughout the halls, and I started feeling my daily dread. I still didn't understand why it was that I chose to become a teacher, a Highschool teacher at that. I was always the timid type, the one to shy away from awkward social interaction. As the last ring of the bell silenced, a sea of teenagers pooled out into the small classroom, each taking a seat where they liked, not bothering to glance at their teacher standing in the front to greet them. I began my attempts to speak, " I-If everyone could s-settle down now..." I stopped and looked around. No one had heard me, they were all occupied doing what they pleased. Some were digging in their bags while others had mindless conversations with their neighbors. The majority pulled their phones out to listen to music or to watch their favorite show that just released the latest episode. This sparked my daily dilemma, I thought to myself again as I have many times before. "How am I ever going to get their attention?" I've always just tried to teach over their chatter, in hopes that some may pick up on my words but I was growing weary. Standardized testing was drawing nearer and I was afraid my class would have the lowest scores. So I sook out for an alternate solution. I pulled out my phone and searched, " How to get noisy students to pay attention?" Scrolling through the results were things I hadn't even thought of yet.

1. Turn lights on and off.
2. Make a loud noise and/or assert dominance.
3. Create a fun lesson plan. After making up my mind by getting inspiration from these results. I walked over to the wall and flipped the switch. At that moment the classroom sounded all at once with sharp inhales of shock but then finished with silence. It was the quietest I've ever heard of them. I flipped the lights back on and walked back over to my post that stood in front of the monitor at the front center of the class. Suddenly I felt great confidence within me, and I spoke out loud and clear, "Today class, we will be writing short stories!" The silence still lingered all eyes fixed on me. "On your desk, you will find a paper and a prompt. You'll find that each of your prompts will be different. However, I will put a list of keywords on the board that all of you must have included in this assignment." As I finished my instructions I watched as faces lit up and pens ran across their papers. It seemed as if everyone was brimming with ideas and ready to spill them out upon the page. Never before now have I felt like a worthy teacher. A teacher who deserved respect or authority, but today I proved to myself that I can start taking the steps to become a teacher who is worthy of all of that. At the end of the school day, I left for the first time driving home with a wide smile on my face and my heart full of excitement for the next day.

“Hello class, this is my first day as a teacher and I just want to go to know you all today,” I said in a high pitched voice than normal. I was just here in this exact class only four years ago, why does it feel so different? “Alright, I’m going to start and then we can go from front to back in introductions,” I announced before continuing, “ I’m Salish Bloom and I’d love for you to call me Salish, I just graduated from collage last year and believe it or not, I was sitting in one of those desks only four years ago,” I said with a smile.
A chorus of ‘cool’s’ and ‘wow’s’ echoed around me. This is good, interaction, I was really worried about them not wanting to connect with me.
As we went through introductions I felt good about the way I was handling my first day, it was going a lot better than I thought, until the next class.
“Hello class! I’m a new teacher here and I just graduated from college, I’d love to get to know you guys today!” Silence. Well this is awkward I thought as a fidgeted with my fingers. “Alright, not a talking group, that’s okay, we can just sit—-in silence—-without talking,” I said uncomfortably. Thought out the whole class my students sat there in silence as I talked. Why was this class so different than the other on? I didn’t let this discourage me though, I will figure this out. As I drove home from a very long first day I thought back to my first day sitting in the desk in that room and how I felt so alone. As if I couldn’t talk to anyone because the space between each desk was so big, a plan entered my head immediately. The next day when my second class came in went to the principal’s office and asked if I could use tables instead of desk. He instantly agreed once I gave my argument and had someone help me move them in. “Hey, thank you so much for helping me with these!” I said to the teacher about my age. “No problem at all!” He said with a smile. Once we finished we stood in silence until He broke it, “would you want to meet up for coffee sometime? Sorry, that’s kind of random, I was just thinking, you look new here and I’m new here so it could be fun to get to know each other,” he rambled. My laugh echoed in the empty room, soon followed by his. “I’d love to! What’s your name?” I questioned. “Awesome, I’m Beck, how about you?” He replied. “Hi Beck, my name’s Salish, nice to meet you,” I answered with a big dummy smile on my face. “Can I get your number—-to plan for coffee of course,” he asked. My smile somehow grew bigger as he gave me his phone to put my number into. “See you soon, hopefully!” I said as Beck left the room. Everything was going to well for me so far! Hopefully this class will too. I not only improved the seating but instead of talking to the whole class, I talked to individual people instead and seemed to be working great. The future in this school is looking so good, I thought to myself as I cleaned up my desk after class.

———————————————————-—— Hey, this is really just testing this out for the first time, I didn’t know how the app worked so I was kinda just messing around with the prompt and it really sucks haha

As the room, starts, to fill, with the pitter, patter, of feet Gazing around, curious, looks, who will I, today, meet Eye to eye, contact, is exchanged, with silent looks Heavy, burden of knapsacks, and tons, of large books

The silent, shuffle, of going to your, wooden, hard, seat The i phone, is spookily, silent, as the music, looses its beat Put all electronic, devices, up here in this wooden crate It’s time for class, now, we all don’t want ever, to be late

Ok, teacher, you have our attention, up here and cool Please start teaching us, like you learned in school

One by one, they were all taken.

It started on a bitter winter morning, the type that causes rasping coughs and miserable colds. Entering my classroom, there was 4 or 5 students missing- but that was expected. However, as the day went on, more and more kids were vanishing. It started of slowly, barely noticeable but by lunchtime, nearly half the class were gone. I continued to teach, unease filling my bones but still gave no indication of my discomfort.

But then finally, I had had enough. It was near the end of the day, and there was only nine pupils left. I hadn’t even noticed anyone disappearing; one minute they were there, the next gone. Storming down to the head teachers office, I noticed how empty the building was- like a ghost town. The walk was uneasy, and knocking at there door caused a loud, rattling echo. The door creaked open, showing of an deserted office with a still smouldering fire. The building was empty.

I walked down to my car, and started it up. Driving home was worrying: I saw only 2 cars and little to no people. Finally I reached my empty house. The news was blaring when I walked in, which was peculiar- I was sure I turned it off? Then, something flashed up.

Missing kids, it read. Thousands of missing children disappeared from secondary schools today, and no one seemed to notice till it was to late. Teachers also appear to have gone missing- or found dead in homes. I shivered, hiding under a blanket. Then heard the creaking of steps; and a high pitched scream and walking around. That’s how I knew I was next.

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SORRY, THIS IS REALLY BAD HAHA. I JUST WANTED TO GIVE IT A GO PLEASE DON’T JUDGE LOL XX