So I haven't been around much on here lately, and I've neglected talking to people on here who I really do enjoy talking to. Anyway, life has been insanely busy the past month after I got my new job, as well as pretty damn stressful, but it's also been a lot of fun.

As many of you know, I got a job as an Assistant Teacher at a school in a rough, ghetto section of Philadelphia. I work with first graders, many of whom come from the typical broken home scenario that infects ghettoized neighborhoods of inner cities. Many of these kids have behavioral issues that stem from all the stress they experience outside of school in their home lives, and that spills over often into the classroom. My main focus as an Assistant Teacher is working with the remedial-level kids in our class, of which there are many. A lot of these kids don't even have reading/math/writing abilities of kindergardeners, so I spend a lot of my time helping them hopefully getting to a level where they can participate in activities with the rest of the kids who are already at grade level. The hours are long, as I leave my apartment at 8 and often don't get home until 7, then go spend from 7-9 at the gym, and then fall asleep by 11ish.

My job is mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausting most days, but I've never been so motivated in a job before or believed in what I was doing. These kids were basically left behind by the rest of society, and not given much chance to succeed. I'm under no illusion that the majority of the kids I work with now won't be lost to the streets in 10 years when they get older, but hopefully you catch a couple who you help succeed in the long run. It takes a lot of patience to understand and adapt to how these kids work. The hardest part was that before this I was working at a summer camp for wealthy, white kids from one of the most affluent suburban areas of the country. The complete 180 to this job at an inner-city, almost entirely poor black school was difficult at first. But I'd much rather work with these kids than the well off kids who will get the best of everything regardless if I am there or not. I can see myself doing work like this for the long haul, and I'm glad I found something I am passionate about after deciding to ditch any potential career in policing.

On an ending note, some of you have asked about my story, The Gauntlet. I have another chapter written and self-edited but I'm not sure whether to post it or not. As I wrote chapter 3 and the unpublished 4th chapter, a lot of old emotions that I have long sense gotten over began to come back and remind me of old, bad memories of growing up gay. While my story is basically entirely fictional, all the emotions I put into my main character are very real and ones I've drawn off personal experience to put in the story. In short, I'd rather leave them in the past, dead and buried where they belong. How's that for a depressing ending?

And on a side note, the title of my blog refers to Alex Kotlowitz's book, There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up In The Other America. It basically chronicles the true story of two young brothers growing up in the crime-ridden West Side of Chicago in the late 80s. I read it in college and it offers an amazing lens of understanding into the world that many of the kids I work with now still live in.