Note to my readers:  This post contains profanity.  Get ready.
 
Recently I've been asking myself why I am doing this. I don’t know exactly what "this" is, I just know "this" feels right.
 

I know this too. I know some of us--the adult “us” working in schools-- care. Some of us do not. Some of us just want to “give ‘em our eight” and get the heck out of there. Kids just piss us off.
 
Oh no, not the gifted kids! Not the kids with involved parents. They can be real pains in the behind too, but we’ll suck it up and make nice with those kids. Frankly their parents scare the crap out of us.
 
No, I am talking only about the kids we’ve given up on. I am talking about the kids whose names make us roll our eyes and snort derisively. “Oh her…"
 
 I am talking about those pain-in-the-ass kids You know the ones: the girl and boy having sex in the bathroom; the eighth grade boys selling weed to the sixth graders: the tea-bagging bus riders.
 
I am also talking about the girl whose dad just lost his job. He’s drinking way too much. He’s screaming at her. What a fucking burden. She’d rather spend the night any where but with her dad. She’s decided to stay with her boyfriend. At least for a short while, he makes her feel good.
 
 She’d rather close her mind--thoughts and hopes are way too painful-- risk sexually transmitted disease and forget her troubles with a toke of marijuana than spend another night at home with a drunken father.
 
She hasn’t slept. She’s late to class. She looks like hell.
 
Let’s greet her with a resounding, “Late again!?” Let’s assure our voices drip with the sarcasm to which she is accustomed. She’s used to that. Let’s not let her in.
 
Let’s certainly not put an arm around her and say, “Hey, how you doing?” with any sincerity WHATSOEVER.
 
She might respond, “ I do not give a SHIT about you! What about me? What the fuck you gonna do about me-huh? I am IN YOUR FACE with my disrespect. I will push your fucking buttons! Don’t let me into class.
 
Yeah, I’m late. Make something of it bitch! Fuck you! You don’t care about me. 　
 
I don’t know that I am lost. I don’t know that if someone does not do something fast, I will die. I will die emotionally first. I will die in other ways later.
 
I am 15 years old."