I read an article about a middle school that had gang influences, broken homes, and students with severe emotional trauma. It was very familiar to me.

In my middle school years, it was fun but it was also a hard time also. I used to go to school everyday and it always smacked on the morning bus. It was full of gutter people that I knew from elementary and people that I didn’t know, but we all was cool with each other until they all starting getting into it with each other or people. When I first went to middle school, there was a lot of gutter people and they all was doin’ the fool.

I remember I was doin’ the fool [acting crazy] in my classes. The teachers—fah show—didn’t like me because I always was talking or kickin’ it with the associates. We used to sneak off campus, go get some food and go to the cuts to smoke and drink. When I got in the 7th grade, I became one of the targets to get kicked out, but instead they just suspended me for the rest of the year .

When I reached the 8th grade, it was an all-out war zone of sets and I was a part of the South Side Mob, until everyone start acting shaky [scared]. Then people started fighting their own friends. Even I fought my own friend. After the first quarter, there started to be a lot of ladies fighting each other and putting other ladies’ female business out there .

There was people that had parents that didn’t care about them. I realize now that a lot of young teens come to school with serious problems on their minds. Back then, I thought it was none of my concern. I am older now and I realized a lot of the people I hung out with in middle school had one parent that tried to work hard to support their child, but maybe the son don’t have a father, or their mother is on that tool that tear you apart.

My problem was that people thought that they could get on me because I was one of the shortest guys there. I never knew that the people I hung out with all my life were natural born killers. But they will always will be my associates, because they respect me.
—Charles Miller, Jr

This blog was written during a New America Media Education Reporting Fellowship for Youth, which was funded through The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.