Autumnal sighs

With the return of crisp, New York fall weather, and the breaking out of things like corduroy pants, blazers, and scented candles (mm, I just bought a spiced cider one at a 40% discount) comes the cessation of all classroom angst... just kidding! This morning again found me in tears after my period 3-4 darlings decided to have a paper ball fight in the middle of class. Three of the latin boys and three of the black boys were the instigators and I sat there as though I was witnessing a bizarre postmodern West Side Story.
I think of Jonathan Kozol, who so idealizes the inner-city youth he befriends, and I wonder where I'm going wrong, and then I get angry at him, the Jewish socialist Harvard grad (it's like looking into a chromosomally-innacurate mirror) with a superb anaylsis of the problems and a lack of concrete solutions (this latter point was pointed out to me by the guy sitting next to me on the train home from Boston, also a first year teacher in the Bronx).
I hate the way my energy ebbs, the way I lose my sense of humor in the midst of frustration. I think next time this happens I might just let them have their fight and then make them pick everything up afterwards, and hopefully it won't happen again (but these are not the kind of kids who have anything to get out of their system, their systems are full to overloading with hypoglycemic, sugar-rushed, miserable, sexually angry and frustrated hormonal, racial inferiority complexes) and I am the small white snot-nosed Manhattanite newly-minted grad who is thisclose to giving up, shutting my classroom door, and never coming back. I don't hate these kids, I really don't, but I don't know what to do. I don't even remember how to have a sophisticated discussion about a book or poem anymore, and I miss even the slightest intellectual challenge.
I think I'll go light a cinnamon spice candle.