Pushout by Monique W. Morris

routine. At the time of our conversation, she had been in detention for a week and was feeling acclimated to her new learning environment.
    â€œOkay,” Deja said. “About seven, you wake up, get ready to come out and eat. You go back in your room for about another ten or twenty minutes, then walk over here to school. You go to that first class for about, like, two hours [and then] come back for a break for like, thirty minutes . . . we might go to PE or to the library after that. Maybe, if it’s our day. And then go to the other class for two hours. Then, go eat lunch, come back and go to this one last class. Then, we go back over [to the unit] and then it’s shift change, which means we get different staff. So then, we come out and we go work out for like, an hour, thirty minutes or whatever. We eat dinner. Take showers. Then we have an hour rec or whatever . . . you know, they might have a program set up forus. You know, volunteers come up or whatever. Weekends are different. We wake, we eat, clean our rooms, and then like, the staff might have a movie for us.”
    When I asked her what she thought of school in juvenile hall, she responded, “Well, I like that one teacher, she does take her time and listen. She’s really helpful and like, she . . . explains and she goes into more details, versus that other teacher where she just . . . I don’t know what’s her problem. . . . She just crazy or something.”
    â€œHow does she act?” I asked, noting that she positively responded to the teacher who she said “took her time and listened.”
    â€œIf you’re asking her too many questions or something like, if you keep asking her for help or something, she’ll get mad. She’ll make up a little thing, make a big deal out of it, and then try to write you up.”
    â€œSo do you ask questions when you actually need help?” I asked. “Or do you ask questions just because you want to know more?”
    â€œI don’t like to be bothered . . . I really don’t. I ask questions when I really don’t understand something. Like, I really just try to do it myself before I ask somebody else for help, and then later on do it to see if I got it wrong. . . . It would be better if [the teacher] were to help sometimes. She don’t want to help. She just want to give you work and expect you to know how to do it.”
    Again, the inability for girls to ask questions—clarifying or otherwise—was perceived as a problem by multiple girls getting their education in juvenile hall. Credit recovery was also a hurdle for Deja to overcome.
    â€œLike, every fifteen days, you only get one credit,” she said. “I almost didn’t pass the eleventh grade, ’cause I was just so far behind. [The juvenile court school] needs to fix their school system or something to make it like regular school because . . . you have this school and then when you go back to regular school, [it’s hard]. . . . If I were going to [another] school, it would have been harder forme to get all back my credits ’cause I was just so far back. I almost had to take night classes and everything. . . . I’m missing something [in here]! Like, I feel like [this school] just [takes] a lot from me . . . it wasn’t even worth doing the work.”
    Stacy had a more intimate relationship with school discipline. As a self-described “problem child,” she often responded to authority in a very negative manner. Specifically, she often called people at school “bitches”—teachers, students, and security guards.
    â€œWhy would you call the security guard a bitch?” I asked.
    â€œI had a pass to go to the bathroom . . . She [stopped me and was] going to take my pass . . . and then she took my pass! I looked at her . . . and said, ‘That’s hella irritating.’ Then she went to my class, so I was like, ‘Bitch, you’re hella