As an educator, we deal with so many things. I’m sure a lot of us have dreamt of writing and collecting these unbelievable stories, so I’ve committed to creating a post once a month of some of the most outrageous experiences I’ve had an teacher/administrator in a series I like to call Educator Saga Series. Some of them are hilarious. Some caused me to reflect. Others are just too ridiculous to be believable, but they are all true. Let’s jump right in to the first one.

This summer was a wild one as you know. I worked for school in North Philadelphia that was experiencing lots of struggles academically, but had seen consistently shown growth over the past three years. It was a neighborhood school that had been taken over by a charter network, so all our students lived close to the school. When our leadership team convened for work, we realized that our enrollment numbers for kindergarten and some other grades were really low. This was a charter renewal year, and not meeting enrollment could put a huge weight on our chances. In order to meet budget, your enrollment has to hit a certain mark. If not, you either fall into a deficit or have to cut positions, and we needed to avoid all of these thins. We pulled out all the stops. We canvassed door to door, and called potential parents to come in and enroll for the upcoming school year. We also decided to throw an enrollment block party with food, games for kids, a moon bounce, waterslide, and a DJ. We pulled out all the stops. Parents could come in, enroll on the spot, and guarantee that they had a slot for their child. We were ready for the big boost we needed to solve this potential budget crisis.

On the day of the block party, I get to work early to help set up. We’re helping set up tables for enrollment and eating, getting electric set up for the moon bounce vendors, hooking up hoses for the water slide and making sure the space is ready to receive people. I’m running extension cords in to classrooms and helping get the music set up, while my colleagues and running around making sure we have everything we need for parents. About an hour before the event starts, a neighbor from across the street comes over as he sees us setting up, and speaks to our principal. Nothing could have prepared us for what he said. Apparently, the night before, two men were chasing each other through the neighborhood and shooting at each other. The police heard the shots, and began to pursue the two men. One of the men, threw his gun into our school garden, and ran off to escape. He didn’t call the police because he said it was “none of his business.”

Now, our school garden at this point is a monstrosity of overgrown plants and weeds, reminiscent of a small jungle, so the gun could have literally been anywhere. We immediately stop what we’re doing, call the police and tell them the story, and they come over to investigate and find the gun. While we’re waiting, a few of us canvas the garden to see if we could spot it. When the police arrive, I walk with them through the garden (I’m the only male school leader there at this point). We search for about twenty minutes, peeling through dead plants and trees, while families pull up to the event to register for school. No one seems to be bothered at all by police presence because the neighborhood is a high crime area. The music is playing, food is flowing, kids are playing in the moon bounce and water slide. The playground is crawling with little kids at this point, waiting on their parents to finish whatever they’re doing, and what am I doing? I’M LOOKING FOR A GUN IN THE FUCKING GARDEN. It became very clear to me that it would take more than two people to search through this garden, but no other officers came to help. Clearly, our search is becoming futile and the two of us are literally trying to find a needle in a haystack. It seemed like it wasn’t an emergency and for the life of me I couldn’t understand. Soon, the police officer gets exhausted with the search and decides to end it. I’m thinking he realizes that it’ll take more than the two of us to search, so he’s going to call in for reinforcement, but he did not. He makes a different decision and leaves me with these words.

“Hey there are a lot of plants and trees in here, so it’ll be really hard for us to find anything until all this is clear. After you guys clear it, or during winter when the plants dies, you can look for it. If you find it, just bring it to the station or call us and we’ll come pick it up.”

He literally left and we continued with the enrollment block party like nothing happened. Parents didn’t ask questions, and we didn’t make a big deal over it. We were able to enroll a large number of new students that day, so the event was a success, but for the remainder of the time, I was just in complete shock. He expected us to clear out the garden and search for a gun because he didn’t feel like looking, so it wasn’t a priority. SOMEONE THREW A GUN IN THE GARDEN AT AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL AND YOU WANT US TO FIND IT AND BRING IT TO YOU? Needless to say, the gun still hasn’t been found, nor has the excess brush been cleared from the garden. Is the gun still in there? Who knows. I know longer work there, so I don’t know how the story will conclude, but I’m gonna check in and see what happened. My theory is that the perpetrator came back and grabbed the gun in the middle of the night, so it’s no longer there. The sheer terror in thinking that one of our garden club students could be clearing weeds away and find a gun would keep me up at night, but apparently this was a normal day in the neighborhood.

Anyway, thanks for reading. More stories coming your way.