graduation - the sad part - ghosts

So, I went to graduation ceremonies at the school where I student-taught last fall. (I've decided to begin using a pseudonym for it--from now on it's Chavez, as in Cesar, since the real name is also a dead US activist of color). It's an "alternative" school and there were only about 40 kids graduating. It was an interesting variation on the usual ceremony. Each student was introduced by a teacher (of the student's own choosing), then each student said a few words, then each moved through the rows of teachers and shook hands with all of us (I was included along with the other student teachers).

Some of the teachers' speeches were inspiring, some were bizarre (esp those that were insulting in their compliments..."he finally got enough credits to graduate!" "What can I say about her, she's, uh, vivacious!"). Some kids broke down sobbing over a deceased loved one or a past suicide attempt, or over how grateful they are to the staff that helped them succeed, etc. It was interesting.

What I couldn't help noticing was that there were no—zero, zip, zilch—boys of color in the graduating class. How many out there would have benefitted from all the love and compassion poured out upon the white girls? (Not that I don't want white girls to receive compassion—that's not the point—the point is that ALL students deserve this support and compassion). I thought about a couple boys of color I know of, who have dropped out of Chavez High School, sometimes with the staff rejecting and giving up on them in exactly the ways that they did not do to the girls.

Lately I've been struck by the second, third, fourth, gajillionth chances that white kids get. I thought about how one of the white girls didn't even graduate, and she's *still* going to college in the fall! (Another example: I just read that the Dalai Lama's translator used to be a mean-spirited, sadistic, troublemaking teenager, but he straightened up once he got to Harvard. Generally, mean-spirited, sadistic, troublemaking teenagers who are not white end up in jail, not at Harvard, and not as the Dalai Lama's right-hand-man. Again, not that I'm not happy for the guy that he got a second chance, but, where are those second chances for some of my students?)

I've been thinking about poetry and/or art projects that could maybe express this sadness with more depth and less anger or (as dorotha would say) 'preachiness.' I keep thinking of all the graduations around town or around the country and all the missing faces of students who dropped our or ended up dead or in jail. Some kind of way to show these ghosts at their would-be graduations...