In this poetic piece, we seek to represent our unfolding understandings, dilemmas, and epiphanies around working within, and at times against, practices that get named school discipline, classroom management, and the day-to-day realities of “dealing” with those “troubled kids.” We focus on the ways in which disciplinary practices are often racialized, as the bodies of already targeted children are “interpreted” through a lens of pathology and criminology. The poem is presented in four sections with each section representing various voices that we have encountered in our work in public schools in a district we name the White Mountain Assimilated School District in the state of Southland.
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