In Jail, Pencils Are Weapons

Today, I opened my classroom door to a surprise. Diego was back! He put his arm around my shoulder and said, “It’s good to see you again.”

One of the best things about being a teacher is when students come back. Some of those homecomings are more significant than others. Just a 10^th-grader, Diego wasn’t back to tell me about his college life, his career or kids. He was back to tell me that in juvenile hall, where he’d spent the last three weeks, he had found out he loved to write.

We spent hours together every day last year because he was in two of my classes, but I rarely saw his written work. Diego revealed himself to me through his hushed comments in class. I had to lean in to hear him and could rarely get him to repeat for the benefit of others. But I could see his brilliance.

One time he was convinced that the paragraph he was writing was terrible. He crumpled it up, threw it in the trash and walked out. I un-balled the paper, read it and graded it. I even returned it to him as if he had actually turned it in like everybody else. His writing wasn’t perfect, but the content was smart, articulate and deeper than the ideas of most of his classmates.

A well-known drug dealer, Diego’s street life took over this year. Within the first weeks of school he was already missing several days and many assignments. Two months ago, when it was clear he had dropped out, a colleague and I went to his house to make one last effort to get him to commit to his education.

It wasn’t until I was in his apartment, a bunk bed nestled in next to the refrigerator, that I noticed how thin he had become. We spent an hour— my colleague, Diego’s mom, and myself—trying to convince him to try school again. He just kept saying, “Nah, nah. I don’t want to.” Like so many undocumented students, he just couldn’t see the point of working so hard at something he’d be denied after high school. My colleague said, “Diego, look Ms. Thomas in the eye and tell her that you aren’t coming back to school.”

He looked at his feet instead. “I can’t do that,” he mumbled. When he finally looked up at me, he said, “I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll be there.”

We left his apartment elated but not fully trusting it. Diego did show up the next day but not until after lunch. Within a few days he was playing cat and mouse again. It wasn’t long before he was back on the streets and arrested for something I still can’t think about.

But today he was back, waiting for me, to tell me he had found that he loved to write. He looked like himself again. He’d put some weight back on his 6-foot-1-inch frame. His eyes were clear with the clarity of prolonged sobriety. In jail, pencils are weapons, so he couldn’t have one. When they took his pencil away, he found that he needed to write.

Diego didn’t offer to show me his writing, and I think it might be a long time before he will, if ever. But we agreed that he can come sit in my room during my prep period and write when he needs to. Before he left, he said, “I’m sorry, Ms. Thomas. You trusted me.” He couldn’t say more. He was crying. There were others nearby.

So far behind in school, he’ll turn 18 as a 10^th-grader and have choices to make. I may not get the opportunity to help him become a better reader or writer because not everyone is ready for what they need when it is offered. Sometimes the thing we don’t want to happen to our students is the very thing that must happen to them in order to activate change. The trick is to never stop waiting and to celebrate change when it comes.

Thomas is an English teacher at Life Academy of Health and Bioscience in Oakland, Calif.