Teaching in Triage
By:  Emily Alberty

Originally posted on Buckeye BATs Blog - https://buckeyebats.wordpress.com/2016/09/23/teaching-in-triage/

As posted in the public Facebook group Cleveland Caucus to Reclaim Our Schools/CLE                                                             UnitedRank & File Educators (CURE).

I wrote this last March, after looking outside at the school playground and seeing the Cleveland                                         police seemingly reenacting the events surrounding the death of Tamir Rice.

I feel like every day I see posts from teachers about current or former CMSD students who                                                          have gone missing, been shot, or have been killed. Our city and our babies need help. I had to get                                           this off my chest.

“Cleveland is a war zone,

and classrooms are the triage.

Teachers are the doctors,

to students who are on loan.

“Get to school. You can make it!”

But will their life be taken?

Walk past the memorial,

and let us give you a tutorial.

Another Cleveland kid who did not make it.

Schools are hospitals.

Poverty and violence are the infections.

Breathe, bandage, repeat.

Do they have food to eat?

Cleveland students are in this.

Why are test scores low?

Because Cleveland kids are taking blows.”

[The author of this blog saw this on September 21st. BUT the author of this blog finds it worthy to point                              out that the original post was made on August 29th, 2016…. PRIOR TO the unacceptable (and unnervingly       similar) death of 13-year-old Tyre King in Columbus, Ohio.]