I Thought Snake Plissken Was Dead

You guys already know about the new high schools in the district, but did you know about the high school inside a high school? In one of the wings of one of the new schools sits the Journey Center. Its purpose is to provide an atmosphere for those students who need to learn at their own pace. You know, traditional school just isn’t their thing and that’s probably why they don’t thrive in such an environment. Or it could be the fact that their lives consist of marathon sessions of on-line gaming and huffing glue (a former student of mine is now over at the Journey Center), but it is probably the difficult school environment thing.

Due dates are soft. When a Journey student decides to work on assignments and for how long is entirely up to the student. How that works beats me. I guess the Center’s principal, uh, I mean the academic liaison, has it figured out. Hmmm, there’s always something fishy about a position that’s been given a fancy title.

A former colleague of mine, who now works in the school where the Journey Center is housed, reports that she hears frequent crashing sounds and loud music coming from that wing. Every once in awhile, she thinks she hears firecrackers too. Frequently, she has to stop kids who bolt from the area. The most common scenario is that one kid is chasing another with some sort of school supply weapon—a tape and marker nunchucks, post-its folded into throwing stars, or a good old fashion rubber band lasso.

I just know that one day, maybe during 1997, the school district’s superintendent’s plane will crash land in the middle of the Journey Center, an anarchic state of degenerates. His only hope of rescue will be a decorated education hero turned criminal who has twenty-four hours to recover him and in turn, be pardoned for his crimes. The problem is that the Duke of Journey Center (played by an Isaac Hayes type) has other plans. Hey, this would make a great movie!