Neema Avashia - Angel’s World

 

So, last November, on a Friday, two of my former students, Chris and Nami, came back to visit. And in general, that's not weird. Kids know Fridays are open office hours, come back, check in with Miss Avashia. But this Friday was different. They weren't just coming back to chit chat or do homework, they were coming back to grieve. I didn't really know how I was going to do that with them. 

 

That was weird for me, because I'm a civics teacher, and that means I spend my whole year teaching kids about their rights, and how government works and how to be an engaged citizen. They see me as this demystifier. And so, even after they graduate, I get texts, “I just got stopped by the cops. What do I need to do?” Or, “My mom's trying to go get her citizenship. What should I do?” That's our relationship. I'm used to knowing the answers, or if I don't know the answer, I know how to get it. But earlier in that week, we had all discovered that their former classmate and my former student, Angel, had been killed in gun violence in our neighborhood. 

 

Angel was this goofy, funny kid. He loved everybody in his class. He made funny faces and told corny jokes. He baked me a fruitcake the day before Christmas, which-- who bakes fruitcakes anymore? [audience laughter] He was not that you ever think any kid is going to end up in that situation, but it just would have never occurred to me that that was going to be the situation. We were all reeling, and he was the fourth former student who had died for me in a year. 

 

And so, they were coming back. I felt this pressure of like I'm supposed to take them through this, but I'm not through this. I don't know how to do this. For the first hour, it didn't matter. They were sobbing, and my shirt was soaked and that's what we did for about an hour. But they're also adolescent boys, and humor is their go to cope. And so, after about an hour, it went from crying to telling stories and then to telling funny stories. They started to tell me about how, at the end of their eighth-grade year, they had this plot to spray paint the principal's car. 

 

This particular principle only lasted a year. He was kind of a dictator. He liked to pick fights. He would suspend kids for wearing a hood. Kids didn't like him, teachers didn't like him and they wanted revenge. So, Angel decided to go buy some spray paint. But he bought black spray paint and the principal's car was black, [audience laughter] so this plan was not going to work. And Nami, at that point in the story, and I didn't know this story until then, opens his bag, and he pulls out the can of spray paint. And he's like, “I've been carrying this around all week. I don't know what to do.” And I say, I think I know what we should do. I think we need to go tag something. [audience laughter] 

 

You should know that I'm not just a civics teacher during the day, I'm like a civics geek at night. In Boston, we have an app called Boss311 where you can report things like, “There's a downed tree. Come, fix it.” [audience laughter] Or “There's a dead squirrel on the road. Come, remove it.” I am obsessed with this app, and I report things all the time and I read other people's reports. [audience laughter] Kids know this about me. They know I don't drive more than five miles above the speed limit. I've never used any controlled substance or any uncontrolled substance. I just am pretty square. They know this. 

 

And so, Chris, who's generally very quiet, is like, “What? You're suggesting that we go do something illegal right now?” He was like, “I don't think I understand. You're our civics teacher. You're not supposed to do this.” What they didn't know, is that for the previous eight months, I had been trying to meet with city leaders, with the superintendent, with street workers, with anyone I could get to listen to the fact that in Boston last year, 16 young people under the age of 19 were killed. It was a massive spike. More than a quarter of the homicides in the city were kids. And of that, four were mine. 

 

I was doing all of this advocacy, and it wasn't doing anything and it also wasn't helping me. I didn't come away feeling better. And then, there was this spray can, and I was like, “Well, nothing else has worked. [audience laughter] Being a civics teacher and using those strategies hasn't accomplished anything. So, here's a spray can, and maybe we should use it.” 

 

So, it was dark. We'd been talking for several hours. We went behind the school, and there was a concrete Jersey barrier that the cops had put out to prevent people from doing illicit things behind the school. We were about to do an illicit thing. [audience laughter] We basically took turns tagging the barrier. And in Boston, I don't know if this is true in other places, when young people are killed, their friends in the community create a hashtag. So, we tagged #angelsworld on the barrier, and we put our flashlights out on our phones, and we lit it up, and we got a broken desk, and we turned it into a tripod and we took pictures of ourselves. 

 

Chris was like, “Angel would fucking love this.” And he was like, “Oh, sorry, Avashia, I forgot that you were my teacher for a second.” And I said, no, you're totally right. Angel would have fucking loved this. And in that moment, that hierarchy between teacher and student, it just flattened. We were just mourning, and we were trying to figure out how to connect with Angel and how to connect with each other. 

 

So, we took our pictures, some with me in them, some without me in them. And as we walked to my car, so I could drive them home, I said, you better not post the pictures with me in them on the internet. That shit could get me fired. [audience laughter] Because at the end of the day, I'm still their civics teacher. Thank you.