Out of the Blue (and Other Colors)

He is impulsive.  He is explosive.  He is dangerous.  His school records read like a child psych course listing as many acronyms as any textbook glossary.  His rap sheet goes back six years beginning around age ten:  Assault with a deadly weapon; B&E; Possession of narcotics; petty theft...  He poses as a gang-banger, with all the requisite tattoos and colors.  He automatically hates anyone who likes red. He is my blue student.

When this kid first appeared in the program where I teach, I was nervous.  A morning staff meeting cautioned my colleagues and me about his blue reputation.  We were instructed to use extreme caution.  He was the worse of the worse, a serious offender, and we were told to watch each other's backs. We should keep him away from the kids who like red. 

Before classes began that morning, I scrutinized my room.  On one wall was a poster with big fat red letters, and opposite it 20 red-bound books form a line-up on my middle shelf.  The white dry-erase board had my red class rules posted on the bottom right:  "No cuss, no touch, no throw, no dis."  My name was boldly sprawled across the top. In blue.  I re-wrote the rules in purple, and hid the sharp wooden wedge I sometimes use as a doorstop. 

The first incident occurred midway through the morning.  The blue student, a short crazy-haired boy with street muscles and long spiky fingernails, challenged another boy who wears dred locks and is said to like red.  A desk was thrown, insults were launched, but hyper-alert staff prevented further escalation.  The second day, during the morning shake-down, a razor was removed from the blue student's socks.

He quickly confirmed all the data in his confidential file.  In the three months since his introduction, I have seen some behavioral progress, but when he is absent, I am more at ease.  He was out ten days after a street melee resulted not just in his arrest, but also in the arrest of his mother.  They had been fighting side-by-side.  Another time he was gone for nearly two weeks after we sent him home with the flu.  My classes are easier to manage during his absence.

This student reads on a 7th grade level, and his writing reflects his limited abilities.  Even with the academic accommodations I've implemented, he is not a willing student.  After I try to explain simplified assignments, he responds with scribbled doodles.  He tags everything with his street name, and signifies affiliation with the coded totems and symbols of his neighborhood. 

 Once, when he was too sick to sit in my classroom, I stayed with him while he waited for his ride.  Puny with a fever, he asked me if I believed in hell.  I answered that I thought hell was a state of mind that prevents people from loving themselves.  He asked me if I loved myself.  When I said that I did, he asked me if I hated him. "Nope."  He wondered why I didn't.

This student, still capable of manic outbursts and vicious moods, has become more manageable in the classroom.  Because he failed most of his recent finals, he will remain with me for summer session.   Occasionally, he pays attention to my instructions and almost completes a worksheet.  Once he cried while listening to a "This I Believe" essay that talked about gang graves and the colors of their flowers.  Later he cussed me out.  

Last Friday, after a successful week, this student was among eleven others who were rewarded with a field trip.  Accompanied by two more staff members and me, they visited a community art center.  Most of the students, though glad to be off campus, were not enthusiastic art patrons.  They would rather have slept through a Disney flick than waste recreation on art.  They demonstrated their collective disinterest by regularly interrupting the patient guide with questions about lunch.  They didn't care for the black and white photographs.  A small inner gallery displaying Florida landscapes wasn't nearly as fascinating as the electric shock issued from a nearby metal handrail.  A color photo exhibition circled a polished corridor where everyone emulated boogie boarders, hip-hop ganstas, and renegade skaters.  Everyone, that is, except the blue student.

 He studied each image, examining the grainy texture of one, the dream-like focus of another.  Absolutely engaged by the swampy landscapes, he asked questions about the artist, about the light, even about the paint.  The colored photographs evoked more questions: "Is this in Miami?  Are those feathers or flowers?  Is that lady laughing or crying?  Do they get money to do this"?  During lunch, he was quiet.  Contemplative.  His face, usually either sleepy or irritated, seemed composed.

 A brief lecture about color mixing introduced everyone to paint and Bristol board.  Most of the students flirted with simple experiments, some more successfully than others.  The blue student created a mountain landscape and in its center he painted a single flame.  He added a road, played with grassy brush strokes and the transparent qualities of water.  His palette included red.  It was in the flame, added to the sun, and splattered flower-like in the grass.  The perspective was flawed; some of the colors were muddy with an errant drip here and there.  But it was the most breathtaking thing I saw in that art center.

 The blue student was the last student of whom I would ever have predicted so stunning a transformation.  His epiphany was real, was honest, was palpable.  He wondered if his probation officer would permit him to take a painting class. Before we left the art center, the guide took a snapshot of the blue student's piece.  He had painted his name across the bottom right corner.  It wasn't blue, or black, or brown.  His juicy letters were conspicuously rendered in crimson.  My blue student had discovered the rare quality of red.

Today, out of the blue, he asked me about Frida Kahlo.