In other words...

I had a premonition that morning as we waited at the bus station for my son to depart for the Navy. I had overheard a snippet of conversation about a teenager killed at a local mall and I knew before I heard the name that it would be a familiar one. I walked over to the crowd discussing the incident and I asked if the local news had listed the victim's name.

"Yeah, its in the local paper", a bystander said, passing me the paper. I flipped the paper over and the face smiling up at me made my heart stop. I did indeed know the murdered boy, he was one of my students. He was Vincent.

I can still recall my first meeting with Vincent. He sauntered into my classroom with a surety that all the world belonged to him. He was beautiful and the girls held their breath hoping he would gaze their way. I followed him to his seat with my eyes and watched the room ripple from his vibrant personality. Because I teach students with learning problems, I knew Vincent must have a learning disability to be in my room, however, I doubt anyone had ever explained that to Vincent. He had a self-confidence and arrogance that made him appear 23 instead of 13.

Vincent was very ingenious and bright. He often was bored with regular class work and he would lead me and the whole class into wonderful debates on various topics. Sometimes I felt he was doing the teaching and I was the student. As the school year progressed, I learned ways to keep him focused and excited about school. He loved everyone and expected to be loved in return. And he was. He wanted acceptance by all his peers. To gain the acceptance of some of the tougher kids at school, Vincent had to hide much of his softer side.

I have taught in an inner city school almost my entire 12 years of teaching. Many times the school is the safest place for most of our students. This is due to the fact that so often the streets and neighborhoods are copious with violence. It was not uncommon during the succession of a school year for a student to be wounded or even killed during a fracas in the neighborhood but it was rarely a student who sat in my classroom. In the past , the students we lost to violence were older and more street wise. They were hanging with the wrong people and getting into trouble with the law. They were a fringe group of students that didn't seem to fit in.

Vincent didn't fit into that category. He was accepted by all groups at school and loved by everybody. I know of no teacher who had a problem with Vincent. He could be mischievous but still was very eager to learn. Many days during my conference period , Vincent would seek me out for help on an assignment. While he did have a reading comprehending problem , I felt the tutoring sessions were a chance to talk. He loved to talk. He had so many ideas about what life was and where he fit into it all. He would ask questions , some I didn't know how to answer, "Why does God allow suffering, Why is age based on 12 months instead of 24," I would find myself in the library trying to find books to help him with his questions. He seemed to cram 90 minutes into each hour.

Toward the end of the school year I realized that Vincent was "madly" in love with another one of my students, Marion. The kids teased both of them unmercifully but Vincent and Marion took the teasing with a grain of salt and basically ignored them. Now when Vincent brought a lesson to work on, the conversation always ended up on Marion. I listened and tried not to be too judgmental, but I did inject some sage advice," You have plenty of time for romance Vincent, you're only 13. You have your whole life ahead of you. Rushing into things too fast will get you into trouble. I think you are far too serious about this girl."

His reply was his old standby, "Ms. G, your imagining things again." He said this to me often, it was almost a private joke.

School ended and summer brought bright days. At the beginning of the next school year I waited to see what changes the summer had placed on my students. They all looked older some looked wiser, but Vincent looked harder.

Oh, he still had the smile, charm , and wit of the old Vincent, but his eyes didn't sparkle. He didn't come to me for help on my conference and any overtures from me were politely rebuffed. If we passed in the hall, he looked the other way. I tried to talk to him a few times but then I got caught up in the first of school crazies and put it on my back burner of something I needed to do later. I felt I was being too hard on him. He was a teenager, after all, they are suppose to be moody.

About two weeks before the incident at the mall, Vincent came to school with his hair plaited into cornrows. To answer my amazed look, his classmates said the hairstyle meant he was in a gang. I just refused to accept that as the reasoning behind it, I felt he was just trying to be the center of attention. I made him stay after class and I encouraged him to tell me whatever he wanted. I would be his confidant. I told him I believed in him , trusted him, and cared about him.

Vincent laughed off my concerns and told me no worries. I asked about the new hairdo and he proceeded to take the braids out. Just a joke, he said. I looked in his eyes and saw sadness, real heartbreaking sadness. "Why are you so sad, Vincent?" I asked, leaning forward to gaze into his big brown eyes. "What's going on?" "You are so different."

"Oh Ms. G, you are imagining things again." he said. The smile almost reached his eyes.

And I believed him, the conversation drifted toward typical middle school fare and we talked about his plan for the school year . As he left, I remember thinking I had been silly to worry.

Two weeks later I looked at he newspaper and saw his face smiling up at me. It was an old picture of Vincent, from 5th grade. He looked so happy and full of life. The article stated that Vincent was with a group of boys at a local mall when his group was approached by another group and melee broke out. Reports were not clear about what started it but Vincent was stabbed and died in a shoe store where he had ran after being fatally wounded. A shoe clerk held him until the ambulance arrived, he died before he could be taken to the hospital. The clerk stated his only statement was " I don't want to die".

I wasn't imagining things, Vincent was gone, and in someway I felt that I had failed. I knew he was different, he was hanging with the wrong crowd, but I didn't pursue it. Did I fail him? Wasn't it my job to protect my students? Should I have called his parents, the police, what would have been best for him? What would have saved him?

I saw Marion, Vincent's girlfriend, at school about a week after his funeral. She asked to talk to me privately after school.

We hugged, cried, and said how much we would miss him . We laughed at some funny things he had said. During a pause she told me that she was expecting his baby. I must have looked shocked because, she reached over and patted my hand. This child, a girl of 14, was comforting me when I knew what turmoil she was facing. I asked if her mom knew and if she had been to the doctor. I told her to let me know if I could do anything and we hugged again. We talked awhile longer about general things and then she left to go home. Before she walked out the door, she turned and said, "You know Ms. G, Vincent always said you were the only teacher that really gave a damn and he was right." I cried after she left. I cried for Vincent, Marion, his unborn baby, and all the other children that had died prematurely during my tenure as a teacher. Many times in the past I had sat in the teacher's lounge and nodded affirmably when a fellow teacher would comment on a hardened child's violent death. " We knew he was headed for jail or hell." or, "Live by the gun, die by the gun." What a sorry excuse for a teacher I was.

The rest of the school year went by in typical fashion. I thought of Vincent often and wished I had paid more attention to the warning signs. I tried to watch all my students for signs that things were going awry. We encompassed new topics into our reading session, newspaper stories, peer relations, and drug awareness. School should never be just books and test. It has always been about the children. A favorite quote of mine is from the movie "Teachers", when JoBeth Williams tells Nick Nolte, (or maybe it's the other way around) The students are not here for the teachers, the teachers are here for the students.

It was toward the end of the school year that I had my epiphany. I walked into a local pawn shop to purchase a used stereo for my teenage son.

While I waited to be helped I glanced around the show cases . I spied one that was full of gold charms. Looking in the case my eyes misted when I saw a gold charm with the name Vincent spelled out. But what made my heart stop was in the slot above the charm with Vincent was another gold charm. This one said HOPE.

I bought the charm and I wear it around my neck. I realize that, no matter what the media implies, what other teachers say, or what the children tell us themselves, we can't give up on children. This world is no longer, children friendly. It is a big, vast, scarry place and they need us to show them the right roads to travel. They need our love, trust, and our hope. They need us to give a damn!!

I will never know for sure If I could have done anything to stop the path Vincent chose. But I do know that while he was with me, he felt trusted, safe , and cared for. I still have hope for our children.

And as long as we can hope for the children there will be hope for us all.