The Good Bad Kids
This week, I had the pleasure of volunteering as a facilitator of a creative writing workshop for a group of young men. They wanted to work on spoken word and rap (a post for another day). I haven't worked with that age group in a few years, and even when I had, it had mostly been kids from somewhat affluent families. Needless to say, I was anxious about my performance. When I got to the classroom, I learned that the program was actually an attempt to provide more constructive uses of detention time. In essence, these were the "bad kids." I was always a "good kid" in school. With the exception of my high school chemistry class, I never got in trouble for being disruptive. In all my years of school, I had only one lunch detention because I forgot to do my homework, and my teacher made me sit through my lunch break and do it. The funny thing is that some of my closest friends were the "bad kids." Several of my friends were familiar faces in the office, s...