By Gregory Michie
Mara took the form and glanced at it. At the top of the page, in capital letters, it read “Zero-Tolerance Agreement.”
I don’t think I’d ever heard the phrase “zero tolerance” when I began teaching in the Chicago Public Schools in the fall of 1990. That was before Paducah, before Jonesboro, before Littleton. But even before school shootings became a regular item on front pages and nightly newscasts, the idea that schools were dealing with a frightening new breed of violent, amoral youth was beginning to take hold. Newspaper and television reports of rising crime rates played alongside stories of drive-by shootings, gang-related murders, and children killing children. During my first year in the classroom I remember listening to an older colleague’s running commentary as she read a magazine article about youth violence. “These kids get worse every year,” she said, shaking her head. “They’d just as soon shoot you as look at you.”
Lumbering, baby-faced, and–to use his understated description–“kinda chunky,” Julio was an eighth-grader who liked school a lot more than it liked him. He’d had little official academic success during his elementary career, but he showed up every day, cheerful, eager to learn what he could, ready to give it his best shot one more time. I didn’t know him that well, but I sensed that he was a kid with a huge and generous heart.
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“It’s a big one,” he said, a hint of worry showing on his face. “A real big one.”
“OK. You wanna tell me why?”
