You Know You're in the Ghetto When...

As I pulled up to school this morning, I noticed the
custodian trying to clean graffiti off of the gym doors. It was a bad word and I assumed that was all I would see. Well, I then turned the corner onto the ramp of my portable only to see "F**K WBE" spray painted in very large letters (the picture was photo-shopped because of content and WBE are the school initials). I notified the secretary so that she can have the custodian begin working on this. He scrubs for quite some time and unfortunately, it looked as though he hadn't scrubbed anything.

When I picked the kids up in the morning meeting location, they were already talking about the graffiti on the gym doors. I told them that they also sprayed our building and that the custodian was working on cleaning it off. They became very upset that someone wrote that work on our classroom. I had kids yelling:
"Who was it? I want to beat them up?"
"Why would someone do that?"
"I bet it was a 5th grader! They're bad kids!"
"I don't understand why someone would spray paint the school."
And my favorite..."Whoever did it doesn't have very good handwriting."

I ignored the kids who said they wanted to beat up the vandal because the vandal probably needs a good butt kicking (although I imagine a vandal would probably be able to hold his own in a fight).

I admired the kids who wanted to know why anyone would vandalize the school. I sensed their pride in going to a school that doesn't look like the ghetto.

I giggled under my breath at the child who blamed it on a 5th grader. (He's most likely right...they don't like to follow rules.)

And I just plain laughed out loud at the kid who didn't like the vandal's handwriting. Even after the initial comment, he continued to harp on the bad handwriting, "I guess anyone would have bad handwriting if they were using spray paint. I bet it's hard to do your best handwriting with a can."

The maintenance team finally cleaned the bad word off of our "precious learning building" (aka portable) and things got back to usual when walking down the ramp...well, sort of...they still talked about it (see above comments).

I thought my portable was the last of the graffiti...again I was wrong...I later learned that another phrase was tagged on the back of the cafeteria, "RIP Pimp" (or something similar). I just keep telling myself that there is something very charming about all of this "ghettoness" where I work...well, that and the kids!