My decision was not driven by the job as much as the place. The Delta has its charm, but it takes a very special brand of person to withstand the humidity, the heat, the general negativity, and the bugs the region houses. Blaming the region itself is too simple; it was my isolation within the region.

But now, in Washington, I can no longer complain about isolation. It’s a vibrant city full of professionals and young people, ethnic food and museums, friends and acquaintances. It has everything I missed while in Arkansas.

There’s often a disconnect between what we know and how we cope. I understood, almost as soon as I decided to leave the Delta for DC, that living in a new place would not relieve me of all my anxiety. It’s true, I’m still nervous about my career, my general happiness, my finances. But I must admit, having friends and free things to do makes some of that anxiety melt away.

This first week in DC (and, I’m slowly starting to realize, the first month in general) was tough. I was depressed after leaving the Delta, an uncomfortable place that, with belated pride, I called home for a year. I miss my students; I have self-addressed envelopes for some of my favorites (yes, teachers have favorites), and I’m planning on sending them letters toward the end of the summer. Still, the students kept me on my toes, made me laugh, challenged me, and opened my eyes to what life was really like in the Delta. I think I’ll miss them for a while.

Some of Clarendon's finest

A student takes out his rage on Mr. Pepper

At the top of Sargent Mountain in Acadia National Park, ME

I went back to LA and spent some much needed quality time with my four parents and Logan, who has grown into the coolest person I’ve ever met. I took him to a water park in LA for his birthday, and we had a blast people-watching (aka searching for the ugliest tattoos and cellulite) and shooting down slides. We played laser tag at his birthday party, and I schooled some of Logan’s friends and temporarily blinded some unsuspecting innocent bystanders.

Logan: The Man, the Myth, the Cutie

I spent the July 4th weekend in Baltimore with Mimi, Katherine, and Jake. Jake hosted us at his parents’ house on the bay, where we sailed, swam, barbecued, and drank with Jake’s friends while watching the fireworks explode over the water.

On the roof in Baltimore

Last weekend, we took a roadtrip down to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina to visit Callie’s boyfriend, Lt. Thomas Palmer. A weekend on a Marine base didn’t sound like the most fun, but the ocean view was enough to change my mind. The water was warm and the waves were raucous, though not quite tubular. And we grilled some mean chicken wings.

Honey-chipotle glazed chicken wings

So, in short, I’ve kept myself busy. And now, I’ve got an internship on the horizon at a DC communications firm. I’m pumped to have a job that forces me to write, because, although I update this only once every month (if that), writing is my creative outlet.

This last part has been the most difficult for me. I’ve told a number of students and coworkers: teaching a subject is relatively easy; it’s acting as a warden and disciplinarian that’s weighing me down. I spend half of my day reminding kids to turn in their homework, and am still astonished that, after 10 months, some kids still do not come to class with paper, pencils, or backpacks. My management style, however, has evolved. I used to yell. A lot. Students thought it was funny, I thought it was ineffective and uninspired, and it didn’t yield any results. Now, I keep my cool. It’s not easy, though.

The other day, I overheard a student, Drew, call his friend a “dumbass.” Drew is a difficult student. He has a 33% in my class for this last grading period. He shuts down at the mention of discipline, and he’s having trouble grappling with the fact that he’s no longer a child. He does not follow simple, concise instructions, and he’s generally a disturbance in my classes. It’s obvious to me that something is happening in his home life. He was fine in February, but since then has precipitously declined. He has burn marks on his wrists, and he’s carved his initials into the back of his left hand, where his scars scab over.

Swearing is an unforgivable offense in my classes, so I proceeded to write a referral to the office. When I heard “dumbass,” I did not react. I wrote the facts of the event on the referral. I calmly asked him to step outside. I instructed the class to wait. I joined Drew outside and handed him his referral.

“Drew,” I began. “I heard you call Xander a name in class, and you know that is not allowed in this class and in this school.”

“Man, I don’t even care. Just shut up and let me go.” He was already tearing up.

“Drew, listen to me. I want to explain something to you.” He ignored me and tried to reenter class to gather his things. I put out my arm to try and block his entry, wanting instead to have a conversation with him outside and try to understand his situation. I was careful to not put my hand on him — this year, a teacher at my school grabbed a student and severely bruised his arm. Swearing might be unforgivable. Physical force is indefensible.

Drew tried to push through my arm. It didn’t work, so he forcefully whacked my arm out of the way. There was no calm Mr. Pepper now. When Drew reentered the hallway with his backpack, I instructed him to step against the lockers.

I raised my voice. “You will not put your hands on me or any other teacher ever again. Do you understand me?” I was not calm.

He teared up again and walked to the office. Twenty minutes later, the principal summoned me to his office for a conference. I gave my side of the story, and I desperately wanted to hear his. Drew was silent. He was suspended for 5 days. He will now miss my semester exam, and he has no chance of passing my class. Drew understood that his actions led to his punishment. He called an adult to pick him up and started to cry.

I understand that discipline requires consistency. I do not regret writing him up or being responsible for his severe punishment. He put his hands on a teacher.

However, this is a student who needs someone to talk to, someone to brighten his day from the darkness that seems to permeate everything that happens outside of school. I couldn’t provide that for him. And I know it’s not my job to do that.

What makes me upset now is that there is very little teachers can do to affect students positively when their personal lives teach them to live negatively.

In the end, it was the isolation. I am the only foreign language teacher, and therefore had no one to advise me about my teaching. I often feel like the only teacher with the gall to address offensive cultural ignorance, whether it’s calling all Latinos “Mexicans,” expressing disbelief or surprise with the term “gay,” or imposing Christian doctrine on the school’s lone Jewish-ish person.

Within the Delta Region, I am in one of its westernmost sites. My closest friends from Institute are across the Mississippi River. Arkansas roads being few and far between, a 70-mile trip takes two and a half hours — a drive not even close friends can justify every weekend.

The closest movie theater, Supercuts, and Bank of America are an hour away, in Little Rock.

A corps member at my school once told me, “Life’s simple, man. You do something, anything. If it makes you happy, you keep doing it. If it makes you unhappy, you move on to something else.” And that’s what I’m doing now. I’m moving to Washington, D.C. Hopefully I’ll find a job soon. And I’ll be living with Mimi.

I’m alternately scared shitless and thrilled by the prospect of being unemployed in a new city. But isn’t that what being a twentysomething is all about? At least, that’s what the movies tell me. And I wouldn’t be ashamed to take a waiting job in D.C.

All of this scary, exciting stuff doesn’t make leaving a place after a year difficult. I don’t doubt my decision — I would have been miserable next year — but announcing the news to the faculty and my students has been more trying than I predicted.

Phoebe, the pregnant senior, graduated last night. On her last day of school, I gave her a letter expressing how much potential I saw in her, and how she would be a wonderful mother. Mostly, though, I wanted to tell her that she was meant for great things in life besides motherhood, and she should never stop aiming high. Phoebe wrote me an e-mail later that afternoon:

“Thank You!! Those were some very inspiring words. The class could get a little boring but I stayed focus. I enjoyed the class and the little since of humor you tried to have. I thought you liked my attituded lol and I Thought it was a check in here 4real. Thanks for the motivation.”

She always had a well-developed “since of humor.”

Then, I told the College Club members. The Club has dwindled down to three devoted members, all girls, who happen to be the most motivated, involved students at the school. These girls began the year stating they were “home-bodies” and believed they would stay in Arkansas — for college and for life. I aimed to break that mindset. We drafted college essays, researched out-of-state schools, and filled out scholarship applications. Frankly, the Club itself was mismanaged and unfocused; Club meetings usually devolved into airy conversations about travel and weekend hijinks. But I continued to urge them to explore their options, and explore the world.

When I told them I was leaving, they got upset. Kristina, the artsy junior, didn’t talk to me during the following Spanish class. At the end of the class, she told me, “I’m painting you something, Mr. Pepper.” It turned out to be this:

"I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things."

On the back she wrote a note:

“Mr. Pepper -
You have taught me to fly. You’ve taught me freedom that I can get away from here. You’ve taught me faith in myself and in my art.

I can’t thank you enough. You’ve been a huge inspiration.”

It’s things like these that make leaving here difficult.

But these conversations have a surprisingly different tone than they had at the beginning of the year, when I began most of my classes with crash-course lessons in Islam and the Middle East. Trying to debunk common misconceptions about a quarter of the world’s population is no easy task; “Muslim” is often equated with “terrorist” in my small Arkansas town. So my initial lessons covered minarets, the Five Pillars of Islam, and the percentage of extremists within the Muslim world. It didn’t seem to do much, but at least it introduced new ideas.

Students started to understand that Islam, like every other major religion, has sects. After covering the First Amendment in my class, we read about the protests in Tennessee and New York over proposed construction of mosques. I was pleasantly surprised to find that most students — not all, obviously — argued in favor of the construction. They became angered that mayors and other politicians would act so vehemently against a group simply because of their religion. “Mr. Pepper!” one particularly passionate girl exclaimed that day. “I mean, we here in America cause we wanted some freedom of religion. Why can’t they?!” It felt good.

It’s amazing how so much effort on my part can yield such miniscule results in my classes, and how quickly those results can be ripped away from you.

This week, I began a lesson on government influences and public opinion. One day was devoted to interest groups, my favorite example being the National Rifle Association (it’s an issue all of my students can relate to, from hunting to gang shootings). This day also happened to the be the one day my principal came in to observe me. Mr. Carson is an overbearing man with Coke-bottle glasses and bald head, towering 6’5″ and threatening “licks” with his stare. He sat in the back of my room and listened as I explained the NRA’s unofficial slogan, “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”

My students chuckled at this idea. I went on to describe how the NRA wanted to frame gun rights in a new way after the shootings at Columbine. “The shootings at WHAT?!” one student interrupted. Feeling old, I told my class how two students in Colorado came to school with assault rifles and pistols and killed many people before killing themselves. My principal sat and watched.

“Why did they shoot those people?” another student asked.

I hesitated. “Uh…I think they felt alienated at their school. Bullied. And they thought the only way to solve their problems was through violence. They were disturbed young men.” I looked at my principal feeling a little helpless. I should have had more confidence.

“Well, you see,” he began in his thick, Southern drawl. “Some people, like those young men, don’t value life. Many people in this world,” standing up, rising to his massive height, “especially those people in the Mid East, don’t value life. They think that, you know, strapping bombs to their chests will get them to heaven, but it won’t, as we all know. They just don’t value life like we do.”

My lesson was just hijacked by a partisan principal, flying my (relatively) unbiased lesson into the ground. We had gone from school shootings to Islamist extremists in a split second. The kids nodded in agreement.

It’s hard to get a point across to any of my classes. It’s even harder when the adults around you seem to be doing everything in their power to undo what you have done.

TFA recruits some of the most accomplished college graduates in the country, people who have shown responsibility and resolve in their lives. These energetic people are placed around the country in its most underserved communities. In this respect, TFA brings diverse backgrounds to areas in which homogeneity is the norm. At my school, the biggest disservice to our students is the lack of resources for out-of-state opportunities post-high school.

NOTE: I could go on for hours about the incompetency at my school, the lack of communication between administrators and teachers, the inability to plan ahead, and the implicit expectation for teachers to bite off more responsibility than is listed in their contract, but this issue is one that I find most detrimental to Clarendon’s most motivated kids.

I began my College Club to address this void. The college counselor has endless supplies for in-state schools. Although an Arkansas college is better than no college, I think that our most driven students, those who could represent a depressingly underrepresented portion of the country in an Ivy League or other top-rated university, are not given the chance. I agree that we must know how to improve classes and curricula for all students, regardless of skill or reading level. However, I don’t want to see Clarendon’s best and brightest settle for less than their potential.

Kristina is one of those students who needs this attention. She has a 4.0 GPA, a difficult family life, and she works in her spare time to earn extra spending cash. She’s a star in my Spanish class; after a month of class, she was asking her Spanish-speaking customers which flavor of ice cream they wanted by means of circumlocution. And as one of the 8 members of the Clarendon College Club, she has opened up and expressed her passions for a number of topics.

On her brag sheet, Kristina wrote that she’s most proud of her “artwork.” Plenty of students have boasted about their “art,” and without rejecting their claims, I’ve passively congratulated them, then quickly forgotten about it. Kristina revealed that she has a portfolio from her AP Studio Art class, and I started to notice her sketches – Tim Burton-esque owls and mannequins – in the margins of her Spanish worksheets. I told her to bring her art to our following Club meeting.

Working with Photoshop, Kristina has produced some of the most interesting photography I’ve seen from a student. I researched summer programs for fine arts in the surrounding states: Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, Tennessee, and Louisiana. She didn’t know these types of programs existed.

Opening up my College Club’s eyes to the thousands of colleges and universities in this country that could best focus their studies has been a rewarding experience. And this is why TFA is a valuable organization. These students would not be exposed to different opportunities available to them. Although tuition and family pressures are enough to turn these students away from the programs and colleges that could help them the most to achieve their full potential, TFA corps members bring diversity to regions that need to see it the most.

A friend asked me yesterday, “Even if you show them these opportunities, aren’t there systemic issues, social ills and economic concerns, that must be addressed before anything substantial can happen?” And the answer, if I didn’t give it to her then, is a resounding yes.

But in my classroom, social ills can’t bother me. Instead, I must focus on what I can influence. And for the next two months, my focus will be on Kristina and her fellow Club members.

GOD

But this makes my experiences over the last month seem inconsequential when they were most certainly not. Just this past week, I realized that spring has sprung at Clarendon High School, and emotions are running high. Or maybe I’m just becoming more of a hard-ass.

I rarely “write-up,” or refer students to the office, opting instead for the gentler one-on-one conference in the hallway. I have been under the naïve impression that frank, honest conversations will get through to each kid. Now I realize the power and value of the principal’s imposing stature and pain-inducing paddle.

In the first month of this semester, I wrote up 3 kids. This past week, there were 5 write-ups.

I surprised myself this week when I accepted corporal punishment as a necessary evil. I maintain that spanking and paddling are not effective means of behavior management, but only with the caveat that these means are not employed from birth. In other words, my students have been paddled since pre-kindergarten, and it has conditioned them. Some students do not respond unless threatened with corporal punishment because it’s what they know. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from this experience, it’s that you can’t change the culture you’ve been thrown into. All you can do is adapt to it.

Thank you sir, may I have another?!

So that’s exactly what I’ve done. Students have quickly realized that I will no longer be lenient. It’s not quite zero tolerance, but there are unforgivable offenses. One of those is swearing.

One of the smartest girls in my 8th grade class also has the worst attitude. She was thrown off the basketball team for talking back to the coach. She once screamed at me in the hall as the principal was passing by. He escorted her to his office, and she returned with a sore rear (she apologized, then requested to stand by her seat for 5 minutes “until it stops stinging”). This past week, she uttered an unforgivable word during class, a vulgar word often direct at homosexuals. I took her out of class and wrote her referral.

While the class review our material, I lectured her on the history of the word — how it refers to the sticks people used to burn heretics alive — and why the word is so offensive. I was shaking with rage as I interrogated her, “How do you think your father, the minister, would feel if he knew you were using this language in school?” She smirked and responded, “He probably be mad.” She was getting increasingly embarrassed and defensive, and after a few more minutes of my ill-advised speech, she exploded. “Why you so offended, Mr. Pepper?! Are you a fa*got?!” My face turned red and I rushed her to the office and dropped her off.

She got one day of in-school suspension, a punishment equal to that for sagging one’s pants in the halls.

Although the principal didn’t understand my complaints when I discussed this blatantly unfair comparison, it’s not going to stop me from calling this girl’s minister father and arranging a conference this week. Let’s see how she behaves in my class then.

Via whitehouse.gov and its Powerpoint presentations during the SOTU

These are some figures that keep me going at my job. I’ve admitted to people recently that I’ve considered quitting a number of times this year, but I stay because I want to whip my students into shape and make them see their potential. For the last few weeks, I felt that I was finally seeing that potential.

And then comes today, which dropped another bomb on my head, and made me feel helpless here. According to Peer Health Exchange, ”One in five sexually active teenage girls becomes pregnant every year.” That one happens to be in my Spanish class. This is not a girl who hid in the back of my class. She’s the star. She’s the brightest, most intellectual and dignified student I have. She’s acts like adult, even if she really isn’t. And at my school, that’s a huge achievement.

My girlfriend, Mimi, is a reproductive and women’s health advocate. Her work has opened my eyes to issues I had never considered before: the violence committed against women and girls, the abysmal state of maternal health care in most underdeveloped nations, and the dire need for comprehensive sexual education worldwide. These are international issues I mostly associate with third-world punchlines — Sudan, Ethiopia, etc. But when these issues slap you in the face here, in the US, it leaves a mark.

Pregnancy in my high school is celebrated. I mean, how can you not congratulate someone when they reveal that? I hesitantly congratulated Phoebe when she told me the “good” news privately after class. “Yeah,” she sighed. “Thanks, I guess.” I was taken aback; most students would have already chosen a name and a wardrobe, and would be counting down the days until they could take maternity leave from high school.

“Aren’t you excited?” I asked.

“Mr. Pepper,” she said. “I’m too young. It’s too soon.” I couldn’t agree vocally, but my eyes did the talking.

“Well, at least you have your boyfriend for support,” I conceded. He was older and employed.

“Mr. Pepper,” she repeated, quieter. “I don’t even know if it’s his.”

Phoebe could be destined for great things. She could be a writer. She could be a community organizer. She has people skills and intellect and curiosity and a sharp wit. She works at McDonald’s to make money on the side. She’s unusually blunt with her teachers, telling them regularly that she needs more work. I hope she can keep up now, with morning sickness and fatigue.

I drove home with my housemate, a second-year teacher. I told him about Phoebe. “Oh yeah, get used to that this semester,” he said knowingly. “Last year, 50-60% of the graduating girls got pregnant before the year ended. Since then, I think almost all of them have kids.”

Teenage pregnancy in this region usually results in a grandparent adopting most of the responsibility while the new parent trying desperately to cling to childhood for a few more years.

I see a vicious cycle here, where young women with potential to change a region and a way of life become stuck because they’re too far from the nearest Walmart to buy condoms or they’re too embarrassed to go to the gas station to get them for fear of seeing an aunt that lives down the street.

I want to be the teacher with a basket of condoms on my desk, the one who encourages students, every day, to be careful, but more than that, to be smart. Students are going to have sex. All I want is to give them a little education on the matter.

But here, as an educator, that’s impossible. And that breaks my heart.

For more information, see these websites. Please link to more if you know of them.

• Peer Health Exchange
• Planned Parenthood
• Advocates for Youth
• Facts on Sexual Education in the United States

There were two events which led me to this conclusion. First, I watched the entire series of Freaks and Geeks this past week. To begin, I suggest that everyone indulge in 18 episodes of one of the best television series ever produced. There’s an episode in which one of the “freaks,” Nick, expresses his desire to be a famous drummer, that drums are his passion. His friend Lindsay asks him why he doesn’t practice more. Simply put, Nick is always high.

Now, I’m not always high, but that’s how I feel. Being high was Nick’s excuse. Being busy is mine. And just like every other skill we develop, writing takes practice. Since coming to the South, I’ve felt my writing skills slowly deteriorate.

Secondly, NPR is having a short-story competition. The rules are simple: under 600 words, write a story in which a character cries and a character laughs (it can be the same character). Now, although my story will probably be compared to stories from REAL writers who practice their skill, I’ve decided to put something down on paper and see what happens. I’d love some feedback on the story I’m writing, so if you have any free time to read 600 words, let me know. And I’m not looking for praise, I’m looking for brutal honesty.

One potential hitch: The competition is being judged by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a MacArthur Fellow, Nigerian immigrant, and all-around badass writer. She’s given the competition a bit of advice: “Sometimes the best fiction comes out from a very light touch.” And she’s definitely right. My writing, and my emotions no doubt, is often too big and obvious. I criticize movies and books that incessantly beat you over the head with symbolism and cliched analogies (see: Black Swan and the color scheme. I get it. Black and white. Move on, Darren Aronofsky.).

But in my preliminary drafts of stories to enter, my writing feels painfully unoriginal. My inspiration has come mostly from my experiences in Arkansas, from the things I’ve learned about my students and about myself. But the last thing I want to do is write about myself — it would come off as angsty, unambitious, and ultimately uninteresting — so I’ve decided to focus on my students. And when experiences in the Delta slap you right in the face (as I’ve chronicled here and here in my blogs), it’s hard to write stories with a “light touch.”

And now that I’ve done my writing for the day, it’s off to lesson planning.

Just keep writing, just keep writing

Last week, during basketball practice, Sarah fainted and was rushed to the hospital. She was treated for dehydration and extreme exhaustion, kept overnight, and given a full-body MRI. I was convinced, at the very least, she would be diagnosed with diabetes.

On Monday, she returned to school, complaining of weak knees and light-headedness. There was no conclusive diagnosis from the doctor, so she insisted on returning to basketball and cheer practices that afternoon. I advised her, “Sarah, maybe you should give your body a rest. I know you want to participate, but you need to relax for a day before coming back.”

“O Mr. Pepper,” she responded. “I’m fine. My legs are feeling better after I ate the cookies the administration brought me.”

I’ve had this crazy expectation in my head since coming to the Delta: I’ll be able to change a kid’s life and put him or her on the road to success. Maybe it’s one of the mistakes I made early on. You can’t have any expectations. You need to come in with a positive attitude, work hard, and roll with whatever comes your way. But I’m having some trouble rolling with the sorry state of public health at in central Arkansas.

The Center for Disease Control’s website illustrates the obesity rates in our country, and as you can see from these graphics, Arkansas ranks among the states with the highest rates of obesity and diabetes prevalence. Our superintendent recently distributed an article to the staff which reported that Arkansas has the highest rate of childhood malnutrition in the country.

Sarah isn’t the only one. The other day, the school nurse was weighing and measuring the 10th graders. I reminded all of my students to go to her office at some point during the day. One of my seniors, a brilliant student, sighed with relief. She said, “Thank God I don’t have to go back there this year and get lectured about how I’m obese.”

Then there’s Miss Baker. Miss Baker is a middle school science teacher. She’s overweight, she has pallid, pasty skin, and she regularly bemoans her blood sugar levels as she pricks her finger and tests her blood during our lunch period in the teacher’s lounge. When I met Miss Baker, I thought she was at least 45 or 50. She is, in fact, only 29. Her appearance — skin, weight, gray hair, and generally lethargic demeanor — represents the biggest problem I’ve seen in the Delta: lack of knowledge about personal health.

Miss Baker will often tell me that her blood sugar levels in the morning exceed 300. Normal is somewhere below 150. She’ll get depressed by this figure and make herself feel better with a Mountain Dew. She complains that she’s just too tired to go on a walk after work. If she’s not indulging in a school lunch of mashed potatoes with gravy and fried chicken, she’s microwaving not one but TWO Marie Callendar’s potpies to inhale before the bell rings.

Miss Baker entered the lounge with some sweet tea from the cafeteria on Friday. She took one sip, grimaced, and exclaimed, “Wow, that is the sweetest tea I’ve had in a while!” The diabetic continued to slurp it down, slowly transforming her grimace into a smile.

She makes audible eating noises while she chews, like a tiny rodent squeaking with each chomp. This is a symptom of her ever-worsening asthma condition.

Our principal is a large man with severe diabetes who drinks four to five sodas daily. He, Miss Baker, and Sarah are all teasing Death.

The Walmart cashier, with whom I’ve developed a conversational relationship, always looks with wonder at the fruits, vegetables, and whole grain bread I have in my cart. “I’m not a fruit person,” she’ll explain. “I don’t understand how you can eat that stuff! Just eat some chicken and pizza!”

I can try to get students invested in their education, to speak another language, or to aspire to something greater. But if these problems persist in the Delta, there soon won’t be anyone else to inspire.