Chicken Pecking and Cartels

   Typing this all with my left fingers will be a special unseen treat for all of you. Bitterness aside, a few weeks ago I had the opportunity...no, let me back up. I, for some CRAZY reason, decided I'd join the PE department in Vegas for their CTE training and workshops instead of staying and working in my classroom for a staff development day.Besides factoring in the major hotties bound to be there, I'm a coach and I minored in PE in college so it worked. What I wasn't expecting was coming away from it scarred in every way possible - and feeling completely sheltered.
   Our second workshop choice? Mexican Drug Cartels. "What the crap does THAT kind of workshop have to do with being a PE/Health teacher?" is the question I'm sure you're all thinking. Don't worry, I asked the same one. But as I walked out the door of the high school that day, I was almost mad and afraid for those who didn't get to go to it.
     After listening to a session led by a member of the LV Drug Force who coulda snapped me in half with his little finger (while successfully wrapping my friend around it in the process), I left the session having seen a beheading, brains on the ground from a shoot out, heads and limbs draped in trees around and on top of an ATM machine, and a number of other shocking images. Granted, they had a full disclosure and warning about such graphic images, but that didn't soften the blow any. How is it that there are 13 drug cartels in CCSD and I was oblivious to it?
    On a positive note, I did leave armed with the knowledge that my students who had any John Deer, White Scorpion, or Ferrari symbols on their clothing, body, or cars belonged to one of the 13 drug cartels prominent in Vegas - but it was more unnerving than comforting. I left that session only to have an African American Las Vegas Metro Cop preach/yell in my face about the other gangs in Las Vegas and how his son stabbed his leather couch to death, weaved with more disturbing images like the video from the Columbine shooting and other school shootings, then ending with listening to an eightish year old kid calmly confess to shooting his father to death and that a teacher had shot himself in the head for receiving a bad evaluation just the day before. What was going on?! Then, last but not least, onto the last session to listen to a woman say "bodily opening"  and "penetration" repetitvely in a sexual assault class.
   Why we didn't go to the dance classes or nutrition for teens is beyond me, but somehow I left glad I hadn't! Call me sick or think what you will, but how many times has ignorance and being oblivious led to terrible things? What bothered me most was how sheltered I felt. I've spent my whole life making fun of Utahrds and dealing with no-brain Molly Mormons who are the epitomy of sheltered. And there I was, a small town Nevadan who served a mission in the murder capitol of the world, feeling exposed to "the real world". It took me a full 32 hours to feel the shock leave my body completely and to realize this hypocrisy and reality. Why do people like parents, the government, even religions, shelter those they are over? Is ignorance really bliss? Then why is knowledge power? Cleave unto every good thing, right? But does that mean you shouldn't be knowledgeable about the world you live in?
    Just last week one of the nicest boys in my class was suspended for having gang related material in his backpack, a gang I would've never heard of had I not gone to this workshop. I find the most ignorant people on this planet never watch or read the news or have any idea of what's going on in the world, yet they, whoever "they" is, says that we're better off that way. So does the soceity in the book I'm reading with my freshmen, Fahrenheit 451, a soceity closely modeled after Hitler's Nazi Germany. And look what happened to them.
   Yes, I was in shock, and yes, I felt scarred, but what do I feel now? Empowered, and somehow more protected! So yes, cleave unto every good thing, but know your enemies. Secret combinations aka gangs, mafia's, what have you, are secret for a reason, and I'm not advocating that you go out and study their practices or live amongst them, or try and get an interview with 'em, but educate yourself enough for the good of others and protection. Should you live your life in a way to steer clear of evil? Absolutely. But don't you have to know what the evil is so you can make a plan to never go near it and overcome it?
   I'm glad I went, and I'm glad for a career with continuing education. I will also be glad when my arm is healed and I can type my usual 93 WPM...too.