The Common Denominator Online: Matt Wennersten

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Class Notes
	We are all to blame for gangs (Published October 20, 2003) By MATT WENNERSTEN

If you’ve listened to Top 40 radio recently, you probably heard the Black Eyed Peas ask "What’s wrong with the world, mama?" It’s a good question. Milton R. Sagastizado, 20, was shot and killed on Thursday, Oct. 9, approximately three blocks from Bell Multicultural High School in Columbia Heights, as part of a 15-minute running gun battle between feuding Latino gangs. Later that week, a 16-year-old freshman at Cardozo Senior High School and a 17-year-old were charged with "assault with intent to kill" in connection with the shootout.

While the gun battle was taking place, hundreds of Latino students were peacefully learning at both Bell and Cardozo, oblivious to what was taking place on Mount Pleasant Street. Shortly before the end of the school day, Bell’s principal made a brief announcement that an "incident of violence" had occurred and that students should proceed directly home via alternate routes that avoid Mount Pleasant, instead of participating in after-school activities. Walking home from work past yellow police tape, the immediacy of violence and death filled me with tremendous fear for the lives of the children my colleagues and I teach every day.

The two high school boys charged in the shooting have slipped through the cracks. Worse, they’ve involved themselves in a group of criminals, have likely committed crimes and have compromised their futures and more importantly, the futures of their victims. It’s terrible, it’s shameful and, hopefully, the two young men will receive justice – and, if guilty, punishment and rehabilitation through the court system.

What is more shameful is that those two are not alone. According to police, individuals involved in the killing of Milton Sagastizado had earlier in the day been rousted from a "skip party" where roughly 15 kids had been hanging out together at a house instead of going to school. Across the city, go into a high school attendance office and ask how many kids are not present. Subtract the number that can be accounted for: out sick, in court, attending a funeral. Then subtract those absences that while not excused, are known and explainable, like the ambiguous "family emergency" (too often a high school age kid missing out on their education by staying home to look after a sick sibling so the parent can go to work). What you’ll find is that the number of unaccounted for kids is still a lot bigger than zero, especially if it’s raining or if it’s a Friday.

Every veteran teacher knows that some kids slip through the cracks. They stop coming to school. They get caught up in something. In Columbia Heights, increasingly, that "something" is a gang. And why not? When school is not a priority, when family is not available, a gang becomes your family. Imagine a group bonded by mutual admiration, love and respect, a group that looks after its own, that shares its own culture, its own customs, common interests and common traditions. Isn’t that a family?

Police Chief Charles Ramsey said he was outraged by the callousness of the daylight shooting. When we are reminded of it by incidents like this, the callousness of kids who commit unthinking violence outrages all of us – and also the callousness of parents who have allowed their children to raise themselves, to make their own decisions about what to do each school day, who are so busy working or satisfying their own needs that they don’t know what is going on in their child’s life. I would argue that while there might always be one or two young people in any neighborhood who intentionally put themselves beyond the reach of even the best, most loving parent, there is much more that we could be doing.

We are all to blame for this. Yes, it is immediately the fault of the individual families who don’t spend time with their children, who don’t supervise their kids’ activities, who don’t know or don’t care when their sons and daughters are going astray. But a community is nothing more than the people who make it up; within that group of people will be great parents and not-so-great parents, great kids and kids on the edge of chaos. Like it or not, we’re members of this Washington community, too.

The next day at Bell Multicultural High School, Friday, grief counselors and social workers met with students who were upset by the incident, perhaps knew participants in gang activities or who were struggling with their emotions due to similar past episodes of violence or loss in their own lives. Many teachers directly addressed the facts of the shooting as part of instruction and gave their students a chance to openly express their thoughts on what occurred and why it occurred. For the students in those classes, there could be dialogue on choices and sensible decision making, emotional support, an understanding of the consequences of gang activity, meaningful connections with a positive adult role model and all the things that people take for granted in a healthy adult-child relationship. In addition, the school employs full-time staff to teach life skills and anger management classes, as well as gang intervention and teen pregnancy prevention programs. If anything, Bell is overachieving at helping kids make good decisions about their lives. Yet all these programs have been in place before the shooting, and in the past year gang violence has worsened.

I wish I had solutions, a magic pill that I could give to all of my teenage students that would keep them on the straight and narrow. Heck, I wish I had a solution to how to engage all my kids on a daily basis in learning math, let alone fixing other challenges in their lives. I can, however, observe that the tragic death of a young man, the shooting of a bus driver and the probable incarceration of several more young people didn’t happen by chance. We need to continue to think on this. By the time the issue of The Common Denominator that contains this column is published, this shooting will be several weeks old. Let’s not forget about this one.

Also by the time The Common Denominator goes to press, the 16-year-old Cardozo student may be charged as an adult, and if convicted, he’ll receive a sentence up to life imprisonment. Let’s not mistake this, either. The young man is not an adult. No 16-year-old is. In many ways, a 20-year-old isn’t an adult. There are lots of days when I don’t feel like I’m an adult. I know my kids need family, consideration, community. I know this because I need it. If we don’t provide it, a gang will.

Later in their song, one of the singers in the Black Eyed Peas says, "I feel the weight of the world on my shoulder, as I’m gettin’ older, y’all, people gets colder, most of us only care about money makin’, selfishness got us followin’ our own direction." I know which direction the two implicated young men are going in. What about the rest of us?

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Wennersten is a third year mathematics teacher at Bell Multicultural High School in Columbia Heights and a graduate of the D.C. Teaching Fellows program (http://www.dcteachingfellows.org). Please send stories, comments or questions to mwenners@yahoo.com.