This is not the first time.

I’ve been chewed out in the principals office before. Ok several times before. Ok, ok, several times a semester from first grade until (and I kid you not) a month after I graduated.

It’s still miserable, in case you’re wondering.

It happened enough that when Ms. Smith was my AP, she would say

“Mr. Carr please report to the office…you’re not in trouble”

so I wouldn’t come tearing into her office all distraught, ready to blame whatever it was on the teacher next to me.

Something felt off. I was worried about students. I started to notice patterns of behavior that seemed, well, off. I’m not talking like students messing around in class (that’s what 6th grade kids are supposed to be doing). I noticed things that, by themselves, weren’t worth mentioning; stuff smeared on desks and computers, kids wiping their gums or pinching their noses a bunch. I thought maybe some kids had dilated pupils?

There’s a “pupils’ pupils” joke here somewhere… 

Students would suddenly seem,

I don’t know, elevated.

Like, zooming and spacey at the same time or something. And I swear I heard a girl slur her words a handful of times.

At the time the only thing I was convinced of was that the Civics SOL was coming up way too fast. Students were not ready and review was umm… not going super great.

I wonder if it’s possible to re-teach the entire course again in three weeks?

I kept noticing.

I asked a few folks to pay attention, to see if they noticed anything different.

I mentioned it in passing to the School Resource Officer in the lunchroom

and

Thursday, the week before, I stopped by Dr. Jones’ (7th grade AP) office and explained almost exactly what I just described. 

Title I schools

tend to churn out teachers

or they’re used as a stepping stone to somewhere else, a ‘better school’

OSM is no different, the place is a revolving door for teachers and administrators.

I was at Smith for seven years.

I worked there on purpose and told anyone who asked.

I’ve seen the administration turnover four times.

I’ve seen the school labeled accredited, unaccredited, on academic probation, in danger of making the state’s list of chronically dangerous schools, and more.

I was the most senior member of the History Department

and the first one back in the building after COVID lockdowns.

Until recently, you could drop my name certain places in South Norfolk and it would get you at least a couple of good stories. My life was part of the fabric of that community.

My wife and I learned a long time ago that one of the best ways to love and serve a community is to care for its kids.

In order to for students to grow up to be healthy adults, they need to be healthy kids first. They need more consistent, caring adults they can trust in their lives. It helps if they’re afforded the opportunity to be a kid in the first place.

But for many young people in South Norfolk, school is really the only place they get to be a kid.

Most of my students are grown after 4PM.

They pick up siblings, look after grandparents, and grab groceries from the corner store on the way home from school if they can find the list in their backpack.

They live in an adult world and are forced to grow up too soon.

They’ve seen too much,

know too much, and

live in a constant state of survival.

Drugs come out of that adult world and tend to leave a lot of pain and despair in their wake. If there’s even a chance that kind of harm is headed towards people you care about, it would be impossible not to try and prevent it. 

People know this about me. If it’s me saying that something is off, they know it’s not feckless or guesswork.

They’ll pay attention because

I’m the one saying it.

I couldn’t shake the feeling.

I mean I had nothing,

but I kept noticing

so I had to do something.

but I straight up refuse to criminalize kids (not to mention, teaching the right to due process is literally part of my job).

I looked into it. Turns out they make these surface contact wipes that can test surfaces for trace amounts of narcotics.

I found 'em on Amazon, they weren’t expensive and they’d be here in two-days.

Easy. "Buy Now."

I showed up on that Monday morning after being out on Friday and noticed stuff smeared on the desks in my room when I walked in. 

This was the third time, the second time in a week. I pulled the Amazon package out of my bag. The surface contact wipes came over the weekend, I figured I might as well.

I took a wipe out and used it on a desk in the second row. Nothing.

Phew. 

I opened a second one, just to check.

Stef would tell me I should read the instructions...

I looked at the back of the package, "Open Sachet and wipe over surface"

What the hell is a sachet?

I wiped another desk, in the sixth row this time. It turned bright blue.

oh shit

I turned and looked at the first wipe, it had started to turn blue so I grabbed the package again and read: "An immediate BLUE color change indicates the presumptive presence of Cocaine"

oh. shit.

I immediately texted Dr. Jones (well Stef, then Dr. Jones) and ran across the hall to get the science teacher on my team.

"Mom!"

(that’s what I call her sometimes cause she always looks after me, cause I always forget where I should be and when)

I made her come watch as I tested another desk. We both agreed, I had to report it.

There’s an unspoken rule at Smith that you don’t run unless there’s a brawl…

So I sped down the three flights of stairs and made my way through the halls towards the front office looking like Mr. Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

When I got to Williams’ office and sat down, I asked if Brady and Dr. Jones had spoken with her and where I needed to fill in gaps. Williams glared at me. She said she hadn’t been in the earlier meeting with Ms. Brady and Dr. Jones, that she needed to understand the full nature of what I was reporting. "I want you to start from the beginning Carr."

So like I said,

Straight away, Williams redirects our discussion toward classroom management,

"kids can’t do whatever they want… it has to be some classroom management" and that what she is hearing is that you were “suspecting substance abuse” occurring “while being supervised by you.” 

It doesn’t make sense, she knows how I run my class. She did my last teaching observation and left after five minutes because she didn’t ‘even need to see any more’

I don’t play like this, ever.

She knows that.

It’s not like I’m over here trying to get attention all the time…

I try to fly under the radar as much as possible when it comes to admin involvement. In fact, the most admin ever hear from me is when I stick my head in their office to ask: “is there anything I can do to be helpful right now?” I’m pretty sure that’s the only thing I’ve said to Williams all year.

So why is she being straight up hostile?

Instead of treating it for what it was: a teacher reporting a serious safety concern — the conversation turns into:

…OVER AND OVER AGAIN

Whenever I moved toward “testing” or “evidence,” she slammed the door: “protocols,” “stay in your lane,” “its not for you to investigate.” She told me plainly that I didn’t “have the right to test kids”

(which is obviously insane)

How would you even do that?

She framed it as not following policies and procedures—administrators, security, nurse involvement, Officer Sabattis. 

So this is a “major problem,” but also stop trying to figure it out…

Instead of focusing on whether kids might be exposed to narcotics, she’s repeatedly telling me I was out of line for even trying to figure out what was going on. I explain that I simply didn’t know I “could not test the surface of something” in my own room. She replies:

"You did not notify an administrator to do a proper investigation outlined by Chesapeake Public Schools.” “You can’t do what you want to do.” “You need to stay in your lane.” “You have to follow protocol like we all do.”

She bounced between ‘why didn’t you report sooner?’ and ‘why didn’t admin investigate sooner?’

At one point she questioned why administrators didn’t investigate earlier if I felt this way on Thursday, but elsewhere she emphasized urgency in mandated-reporting terms—saying we’d passed a 24-hour window by Monday.

That back-and-forth is called a lose - lose situation for your boy.

Either I should have escalated faster (and I’m late), or the building should have acted sooner (and they didn’t).

For me, it was way more simple:

Over and over, she pressed for specific student names and specific observed behaviors. Very early she literally hands me a pencil and says,

“Let me get you a pencil. Mark the ones we’re talking about.”

I kept trying to explain that I don’t have proof, that it’s a pattern of behavior but more than anything,

OR

She incessantly asked for names.

Over and over, she kept telling me I needed to name names

Look, I don’t know much, but I do know when someone is telling you to put something in writing, that makes it certain.

And I wasn’t certain of anything.

Over and over and over she asks me to name names. Put the concerns under those names. Put it in writing. I need a list of names. Get me those names…

At one point, she pins me. I described a situation that communicated why the concerns might be valid apart from the positive test result and because the situation was so specific, she pointed out I had to know those names if what I said was true. So, against my better judgement, I named three kids. Williams also took a sheet from a legal pad with my classroom observations that she later claimed was a list of students.

She ended the meeting with:

“Imma need those names, Carr, so we can make sure that everything is good in your class and your kids are good to go” and “I am going to need you to write up exactly what those concerns are beneath the names of those three… and what the suspicions were that you had.”

I never did.

I knew damn well that list could easily become “Mr. Carr accused students of drugs” “Look! He made a list”

Actually, Williams still tried to do that.

but not until after the (first) criminal investigation