A Wake Up Call

This week has been one of those when I have realized that I was put on this earth and placed on this path for a specific reason. I am here to support kids. Along the way I do a little teaching but it's really about supporting kids. That support comes in many shapes and sizes. Sometimes it's a little kick in the rear to jump start their academic career and make them realize it's all up to them now. Mom isn't here to hold your hand or help you figure out what you think or why you think it. It's your turn to stand up for what you believe. At other times that support looks a lot like counseling; questioning, giving choices, leading them to new ways of looking at the world. But most often that support looks a lot like mothering. Sometimes that's all we can do is just show these kids that they are loved for who they are and share the vision of who we believe that they can be.

I've said many times this year that my current team of students are quite a pleasure to teach. I personally believe that 99% of that is attributed to me having a sliver of an idea of how to go about teaching middle school English. Although it is an amazing group of kids there are several who are clearly in need of our loving support. There is one who definitely has issues with impulse control that has resulted in some academic issues. Then there is one with serious anger management challenges. We also have a little group of girls who have made some less than productive choices about attendance. Sometimes that's tardiness and others it's not showing up at all. Then there is the girl who challenged me on her class report card which has led to a much better relationship between the two of us. The magic potion on most days is simply a smile and greeting from me as she enters the room. There is the girl who was caught, in the words of the counselor, sucking face with a boy but evidently a little more than kissing was going on. I have a student whose mother thought I was humiliating her kid who I am just now beginning to soften up around. And now there is a student who following a call home thought he would get away with calling me a liar. Too bad about the invention of the speaker phone. We also have a student who I believe is clinically depressed who if left to his own devices would literally do nothing all day. And finally today was the revelation about a student who is living among drug sellers, according to rumor has a 19 year old boy friend and has been avoiding school.

Where do you put all this while going about the business of teaching the state standards of English Language Arts? This all comes before anything else. The smile, the how are you doing, the it's nice to see you today, the what do you need right now, the tap on the desk to reboot the brain. But what is more stunning than realizing that the face of illegal neighborhood drug sales and mental illlnes is sitting in my classroom is listening to the way that some other teachers respond to it. There are days that the hardest thing I do is have lunch in the faculty room. Kids are called names; lazy, slugs, rocks. They are ridiculed. They are kept from learning because of an over indulgence of punishment for a silly thing like chewing gum. I'm not sure how these teachers come to work everyday if they think so little of the students in the chairs. I am blessed to be working with a partner that is like minded. It could be a very lonely job without her.

So tonight while I am lying in bed as my brain unwinds and before I drift off to sleep I will "see " these kids in my mind and think once more about ways to support them, ways to give them what they need that they are not getting anywhere else. These are the faces of middle school students today; truancy, mental illness, illegal drugs, gangs, sexual behavior, language barriers. It is overwhelming on one hand but so simple on the other.