I want to teach tomorrow.
I want to get up too early and drive to school...eating my breakfast in the car.
I want to greet each of them as they walk in...hoods up, blank stares at the ground. "GOODMORNING!" I'll say, much more cheerfully than I really feel.
They'll crack a smile back and maybe...just maybe...it would be the start of a better day.
I would be patient and understanding and firm and intellectual...analyzing why they act the way they do, slowly creeping towards the answer that will allow me to finally reach them.
Forget reaching them...I'd settle for being able to manage them at this point.
Tomorrow would be the beginning of less chaos and more...I don't know....normalcy?
Is that even possible with kids that go home to homeless shelters and crack head parents and this week's foster home?
Tomorrow there would be no swearing or kicking of chairs...no threats of 'shooting up your house' and maybe, if we're lucky, they'd forget their plastic bling and cell phones at home.
Really, I would just love to be with them tomorrow. To talk about honoring a man who died so that they could drink out of the same water fountains and use the same restrooms as I do.
They need to be empowered.
They need to realize that they can be so much more than this.
Instead they will roam the streets, as they do every afternoon...trying to act so much older than they are....
I will sit restless in a coffee shop...planning and scheming for some way to get through to them. I will figure out a way to be more inspired and more renewed and Tuesday they won't know what hit them.
Even with that....
I still wish I was teaching tomorrow.