Harper High School

Harper High School: The details in this report really stick with you, as much as you’d like to forget everything in it because it’s so upsetting. I can’t help but ask how a teacher could work in this school; it’s eye-opening and unsettling at the same time. I’m not sure how they do it. There was a big emphasis on the fact that students don’t choose to be in a gang, they just are (or something like that). What kept coming to me is the incredible stress these kids are under each and every day. The students keep these rules just to stay alive: 1. Know your geography (your part of the neighborhood determines what gang you’re associated with) 2. Never walk alone 3. Never walk with someone else 4. Don’t use the sidewalk 5. Don’t run if shot at 6. You can be shot at for reasons big and small (retaliation for a previous shooting, or a fight over a girl) and, finally, 7. Never go outside.  Stress this continuous and day-to-day cannot be healthy. I know that without a break from stress our bodies eventually go on to experience distress, which will lead to physical symptoms that will most certainly affect these students’ lives – emotionally, behaviorally, and academically. One student mentioned that he stays home and has been staying home for three years now. He doesn’t have friends and he avoids social structure altogether. He admits to feeling depressed. This may be a strange angle to take after listening to this report, but I worry about the health of these students. Also, what are the effects on the students after so many deaths of classmates? Each student knows, or knows of, a classmate who has died in a shooting. Some have even witnessed these shootings. What long term affects does this violence and trauma have on students?

On a positive note, I admire the efforts the principal and staff make on behalf of building community within the school. The security guards joke with students and so does the principal. There have been twenty-seven shootings in the last thirteen months (can’t remember how many died), so these teachers work to use all their “energy to keep kids alive.” I can imagine the teachers working extremely hard to build trust in the students that they will keep them safe, and also the trust the parents must have in them to send their students to school each and every day. Ok, now I’m worrying about the health of the teachers!

Teaching is an admirable professional; being a teacher working in a school district where she has to constantly be thinking about how to keep her students alive is even more admirable.