A Week In The Life Of A High School
BY NANCY GIBBS

Everyone has a story from high school, sketched out of memory and myth. The myth reflects the faith that we all have a chance to invent ourselves, and high school is the lab. We enter, still children, for this sweaty, four-year experiment, and if we are brave and lucky, we race out the big double doors that graduation flings open onto the rest of our life. Sometimes we don't even think to look back at the ones who got lost along the way.

The stakes are so high, the experience so searing that in retrospect we sometimes polish it up. These are the best of times; you'll remember your prom as long as you live. Tuesday pep rallies for Friday football games; band practice and the fall musical, Young Life and the Key Club and the astronomy class that met at midnight to watch the cradle moon rise. Even the pain looks poetic from a distance.

The vast majority of our kids, the ones we love and never read about, make it through high school intact, without incident. They do the reading and sing in the choir and bag groceries after school and buy the class T shirt and don't pierce anything below their ears. And yet everything that happens to them is huge. Everybody matters: the teacher who hoists students' ambitions up to meet their potential, or the one who just ignores whatever they say until they stop saying anything; the nurse who takes students into her home to keep them from falling apart; the classmate who teaches loyalty; the coach who instills some discipline. Sometimes the lessons inside the classroom are the least of it.

Look inside a high school, and you are looking in a mirror, under bright lights. How we treat our children, what they see and learn from us, tell us what is healthy and what is sick--and more about who we are than we may want to know. Dylan Klebold lives here, and so does Cassie Bernall, and they can't help showing us what's on their mind, because that's the nature of teenagers. So come in only if you want to learn. All they will give us is a glimpse, but even that may knock the wind out of us.

It is easy to understand, even before Columbine but certainly since, why the adults in a high school could conclude that their most important job was less to teach kids than just to keep them safe, hold their hands, feed them, shape them, show them right from wrong. In loco parentis is just the beginning. In loco all the rest of us as well. Politicians and reformers can talk all they want about standards and vouchers and academic performance, but the people on the front lines worry about a lot more than test scores. MORE>>

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Web Photo Supplement : Inside Webster Groves High

MONDAY: Security, cliques and a navel ring

7:10 A.M. School Security: Always on the lookout for signs of trouble

7:30 A.M. English Class: Do you reach for the sky, or just get by?

10:36 A.M. First Lunch: The tribes of Webster

7:30 P.M. School Finance: The high price of civic pride

TUESDAY: 7:33 A.M. The Auto Shop

9:40 A.M. Senior Seminar: And what was that about college?

9:40 A.M. U.S. Studies: Hester Prynne, meet Muhammad Ali

11:10 A.M. School Spirit: All our heroes are created equal

12:45 P.M. Faculty Meeting: Always preparing for the worst

1:20 P.M. At The Party: Never too young for a beer buzz or a smoke

5:30 P.M. On The Job: Taking care of business?

11:59 P.M. The Longest Day: Being an overachiever means little time for sleep

WEDNESDAY: 6:15 A.M. The Early Bus

3:30 P.M. Mental Health: On down days, try talking to a teacher

6:30 P.M. Matt's House: Trying to help a self-destructive teen

7:00 P.M. Faith: Students for Christ

7:01 P.M. Home And Away: A football star dangles on the edge of manhood

THURSDAY: 8:30 A.M. Cafeteria Lady

3:30 P.M. The Basement: The Church Step Dirties find refuge

6:00 P.M. Teen Romance: Many find friendship and sex without dating

10:52 P.M. Astronomy: A teacher who will stay forever young

11:00 P.M. Softball: Remembering five who died

FRIDAY: 10:45 A.M. School Library

6 P.M. Football Game: Come on, everybody, clap your hands

TO OUR READERS

For the complete version of this Special Report, check out the Oct. 25 issue of TIME, available on newsstands from Monday, Oct. 18

TIME.COM COVERAGE
Search for TIME Daily stories about today's schools

POLL: Are students getting a better education?

POLL: Are schools taking enough steps to ensure the safety of their students?

NEWSFILE: Guns & Violence

TIME ARCHIVES
The Back To School Primer
SEPTEMBER 13, 1999

A Curse Of Cliques
There are good reasons to form tight-knit groups. But in America's high schools, they can be harsh
MAY 3, 1999

How to Spot a Troubled Kid
What should parents and teachers watch for? And what promise do drugs hold for treatment?
MAY 31, 1999

The Tale of Eric and Dylan
The perpetrators of the Littleton massacre were caught up in a strange friendship, full of foreboding and anger. Could their parents have done anything about it?
MAY 31, 1999

WEB RESOURCES
National School Safety Center
Training and resource guide for preventing school crime and violence

Coalition of Essential Schools
National network designed to increase student achievement rethining school priorities

Educators Net
Directory of web resources for educators, and those interested in education

Communities in Schools
Connects community resources with schools to help young people learn, stay in school, and prepare for life