One of my kids got 10 years in prison....

Mouths hit the floor and heads starting shaking in denial when I gave out the next speaking assignment. The hands of worried students started flailing in the air with a thousand questions and I took them one by one. “Ms. Thompson, don’t you think that is a bit much?” “Ms. Thompson, my parents will have an issue with this assignment.” “Ms. Thompson this assignment goes against my religion.” “No…have your parents call me, and what religion do you practice?” Were my responses…

I gave my students one week to write their own obituary. We talk about how to define, establish and flourish your legacy 24/7. I informed them that I chose this assignment in order to celebrate their current and future lives. Often, as humans, we wait to celebrate someone’s life when people die. NO! Like Kanye said, “If you admire somebody you should go ahead and tell ‘em, People never get the flowers while they could smell ‘em.” I don’t want my kids, or anyone else for that matter, to wait until someone passes to start celebrating life or expressing their feelings towards loved ones. It’s absurd, shiftless and a little out of order don’t you think?

I wanted to see how far their vision would stretch in this assignment and what they see themselves doing in their lifetime. There were 2 requirements. 1—they had to deliver the speech in third person 2—they were not to tell me when or how they were going to die (because I felt like that is what was freaking them out). Once I gave them that speech, most were cool and got really excited about the assignment.

One week passes and it’s speech day.

Talk about an emotional day! I learned that several of my kids’ parents were doing life terms in prison. I learned that one of my children currently lived in a shelter. Many of my kids had lost a parent to death. Many of my kids were dying to get out of the projects after school. A few kids envisioned themselves graduating from Ivy league schools. Many of my kids stressed that they got married and had several kids by the same spouse and lived in a house far from the projects and left behind a host of grandkids who became inventors of various items. One girl busted out crying during her speech because she now was at peace because she was now able to see her grandfather up in heaven. I was in tears in the back of the classroom. I was NO GOOD!

However, in one of my classes that is mainly full of horny, fake gangsta boys, I had a different experience. Although I told them NOT to tell me how they were going to die, a handful of them passionately said that they lost their lives at the age of 32 in a drive by shooting, but that their creative tracks and music still lived on for 50 years or so. Another student said that after he graduated from college he started to sell drugs in order to pay back his college tuition and ended up getting 10 years in prison for drug possession and armed robbery. That same student said that after he got out of prison, he lost his wife to a terminal illness and became a single father. After he revealed that he would later battle depression for 12 years, he found the love of his life 5 years prior to his death. (I was thinking that Ron Howard has nothing on these vivid future screenwriters and I was also thinking was this someone’s story in his family?)

Then, one of my students said verbatim, “Tim leaves behind 5 kids by 4 different women and a Cadillac for his mama.” He proceeded to look up and say, “yeah, boy”. The class erupted in laughter and a few of the boys bigged him up and said, “that’s my n*gga…playa for life!” My heart sank to the ground, but I decided not to interrupt his speech, especially in front of the entire class.

My mind started racing with thoughts of “why are these boys praising the concept of having multiple children by multiple women?” “what have they seen in their lifetime to make them think this is cool?” “Why are my boys envisioning their life ending at the young age of 32?” “Why do they envision themselves dying so violently?” “Why are their life visions so short and narrow?” and “Why are they selecting Tupac’s legacy of a tragic death but the longevity of his music as a blueprint for their life?”

It was entirely too much for me to address in the last 3 mins of my class, and I still have not addressed it. I want to set aside about a week to address the multiple topics and bring in cool, ambitious African-American men in my class to talk about the importance of living a worthwhile and dynamic life. How to be a responsible, respectable and prosperous man and the importance of placing value on things that appreciate in value instead of depreciate and how to properly address a woman. The list goes on and on…

Then one of my favorite kids, Rob, stood up and had a refreshing, yet simple life he envisioned. He said that he went on and graduated with honors from high school, attended FAMU on an academic scholarship yet earned a track and field scholarship after walking on the track & field team. He said that later he graduated with an engineering degree, married his college sweetheart, became the CEO of Microsoft and then later created his own software company. He went on to retire and move down to Florida with his wife and then spent the rest of his days walking on the beach and making weekly trips to his mailbox to receive the newest pictures of his grandkids that his prominent kids would send him. Talk about warming my heart after hearing a day full of dismal visions!

Was I saddened because my vision of what I know my kids can do and how they see themselves differ so greatly? Was I saddened because the world in which they live in was clearly a different norm from what I grew up in? Was I saddened because my kids, compared to the kids in this world, have success at their fingertips but choose not to see or obtain it because life beyond the projects and a better life than their parents is not stressed? Was I seemingly happy to hear from Rob who had what would be considered by many…achieving “the American Dream”? “What, really, is the American Dream?” and “Why are some of my kids even afraid to dream because what they have seen so far in their lifetime is a nightmare?”

So many thoughts raced and still race through my head and I think the assignment affected me more than it did them. Where and how do I begin to realistically shed light on the dark tunnel in which they figure is their future. Today was an overwhelming day… Help….