sometimes i feel like a motherless child

When a student tells you that she hates reading and writing, that she’s stupid, hates school, hates life, you have to use your imagination to figure out why. The simplest answer, and the most easily accepted by the teacher, is that the girl has had a history of bad teachers who have underserved their students, including this one. The flaw in this logic is that as a teacher with 35 students in a cramped classroom, you sort of figure that most teachers are not bad at all. They’ve been forced to work in the same conditions that you have, they’ve had the same difficulty reaching every one of the students in their classes, and they’ve probably felt like a failure many times because of it. Still, that’s the answer you want because then you can imagine that you’re Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society and that you’ll revolutionize your classroom through the use of strategically placed Whitman and Dickinson verses. As seldom as the “bad teacher” excuse is the real one, the Robin Williams solution is realized less frequently still.

Instead you learn things about your students through a variety of fora – journals, conversations after school when they volunteer to sweep your floor, and during parent teacher conferences. Today we conducted the latter and 18 parents (representing a paltry one-fifth of my students – more conferences Thursday…we’ll see….) came to speak with us. Today I learned why one of our quieter girls said things to me reminiscent of those concerns mentioned at the beginning of this posting. Her foster mother of 6 years told the story. Her mother has been in jail for the last 10 years, and all Michelle has talked about during the past few years is how excited she is to reunite with her mother. Her mother was supposed to come for her when she got out, and she got out two months ago. She came to Michelle in laughter and tears. They spent a magical day together. The next day the mother went upstate to reunite with her older daughter. Michelle waited for her to return again, only she didn’t….she said she didn’t want her daughters anymore and moved to Chicago.

I stand before a classroom of eleven and twelve year old children. One of them shows the scars of a fire that swallowed his home and the skin of his arms. Another writes poems for her father who is the super of her building and her hero. Across from her, a motherless child’s mother has left her for Chicago and a new life. She can’t understand the whims of immature adults, she can’t not take it personally, she can’t not bring it to school with her every single day, and she can’t not take it home to the woman who loves her as a mother but is not.

What is my role now? What would Robin Williams do? Whitman? Me?

Do I tell her that when I told my mother I was gay that she had a hard time wanting me, too? Do I cry with her, help her to grow strong? Do I simply forget it all and teach my lesson in the ignorance I wished for, blaming her past teachers for the fact she can’t read?

Whatever I do, I hope it isn't that last option, but it's so easy...