In the first month of my student-teaching, two kids got stabbed right outside of my classroom. The school went on lockdown. The police, fire department, and paramedics were called. My master teacher and I kept teaching as if it was normal. Actually, it was normal. It didn’t surprise me — I was student-teaching at the same high school I went to 7 years before. To tell you the truth, it just reminded me of an old friend.

When I was in high school, my friend Luis came late to soccer practice one day, and our coach was livid. He asked Luis why he was late. Luis, who is now dead, replied, “I got stabbed after school and had to get stitches.” He turned his head to show our coach the sutures in his temple.

Our coach wasn’t livid anymore.

The two kids who were stabbed when I was student teaching ended up being okay. And I stayed on to begin my career at my old Alma Mater. I’m starting my fourth year here, but hardly a day goes by that I don’t think of those two kids, lying on the sidewalk, and the paramedics patching them up. In the mornings just before work, I park my car right next to where all the blood was, and in this way I can’t help being reminded about the harsh realities of public school teaching.

I go to a lot of teacher workshops, and they all tout themselves as having all the answers a new teacher needs, if you can just follow the system. They say they will give you real advice about how to succeed in your classroom—but instead focus on theory, tell feel good stories about how successful the speakers are, and laud their new vocabulary strategies.

Usually there’s some pretty good stuff, but what I never seem to find is the actual practicality in any of it. There I am, an open folder in front of me with The Marriot on the cover, and my fifth cup of bad coffee. I’m usually sitting next to a bunch of first year high school teachers, their eyes still puffy and red from crying the night before, praying they will learn something that will keep their kids from lighting things on fire. The speaker, who used to be an elementary school teacher, who only enters classes as a guest speaker these days, tells us to discuss with our table the importance of Multiple Assessments. Instead, we go around the table and joke, “I should probably teach them something before I get to assessments.” Or, “I just wish all the bracelets in my class weren’t on everybody’s ankles.” (If you don’t get that joke, you might not need this blog). At the end of the workshop, we return to our schools and put the Marriot folder in one of our cabinets, and never see it again. At the end of the year we throw it out.

No one ever seems to address what it’s really like in a high school classroom in a low-income neighborhood. Not the media, not the State, not the District. No one admits to what’s really going on, at least no one writing the books, or running the workshops. In my first year, I wanted someone who could tell me how to teach in the ghetto. Please, I thought, just tell me how to teach kids who are ghetto. If you don’t like that word, then I guess you’ve never lived here. This is what it’s like at my school:

• The riot police are called two or three times a year, and come on to campus in full gear with body-sized shields and black clubs. That’s cool for them, but I’m out there dodging Gatorade bottles being thrown at my face in nothing but slacks and a sport-jacket.
• I once pinned a kid to the ground after he beat the hell out of another kid inside my doorway. The kid struggled to get away, and swore he would get me. Two months later a security guard mentioned in passing the kid was the biggest gang leader in the city. Wish someone would have told me that earlier.
• I literally walk through a gang of Surenos to get to my classroom in the morning — through them — they actually have to part to let me through.
• I used to barely be able to fit 32 students in my room. Now my class sizes are 38. I cannot describe the insanity of asking anyone to teach anything to a classroom full of 38 teenagers from a bad neighborhood (I should know, I grew up in it).
• I have a “no-grill” policy in my classroom.
• The teacher who taught in my room before me got beat up by a student who used the receiver of the telephone to hit him in the head over and over. I now use that phone every day.
• Sometimes I go to work, and wonder if I’m going to really get hurt.

To tell you the truth, I’m not trying to impress anyone. I don’t even think my school is that bad. It’s not as dangerous as a lot of schools I could name in the Bay Area. I have friends that teach in New York, and what they deal with sounds twenty times harder than what I’m doing. If what I’ve written surprised you, you’re probably not a teacher. None of my colleagues would be surprised about what I have just said. This is our everyday job. We talk about these things over coffee, like most people talk about the weather.

This blog is a space for Real Teachers, where we can talk to others who might be wondering if they are crazy to be doing what they’re doing—because no one out there seems to understand the true state of our schools, and our youth. If you feel there is nobody out there who understands what you face every morning, you might want to keep reading. I know what awaits you when you park your car at 7 and walk to your room—and I won’t be forgetting it anytime soon.

Because when I walk to class in the morning, I still see the blood on the pavement.

And I still see my friend’s face.