I'm sad.

[no_hypocrisy]

I substitute teach at a local elementary/middle school. Today was the Seventh Grade.

I've been teaching since 1980 and am quite familiar with the psychology and socialization of seventh graders.

The school is very diversified: African-Americans, Carribean-Americans, Asian-Americans, Muslim-Americans, Puerto Rican-Americans, etc. Very few white kids.

I try to engage the kids, just to do their class work. I don't shout. I don't disrespect them. I give few directives.

But at least half of them choose not to work. If anything, they rebuff their assignments. There are so many of them, it's hard to prevent them from being consistently loud and disruptive.

I've tried to get the vice principal to back me up but in essence, he knows he's overwhelmed unless someone's going to get hurt or really out of control or someone left to go to the bathroom and hasn't returned.

What makes me depressed is I look at the pictures of the Little Rock Nine, climbing the stairs to enter the school with the faces of whites, distorted in hate, yelling at them. They were brave to fight for their right to be educated. My kids have given up already. Two years ago, I taught them in fifth grade and they were ready to work. Not so much anymore.

They won't let go of their cellphones and the school won't insist on having the phones put away during class.

These kids will continue to high school. They mock authority. They will have bad encounters with police and employers and other figures of authority in the future. They don't believe in self-control and self-discipline.

I don't know how their regular teachers can be in the same classroom with them on a daily basis.