I Care

This whole "going back to work" thing has really taken over my blog. It's really taken over my life too. Sorry if you're getting sick of it, readers, but there's just no other way.

Anyway, this week a couple of things have come up that reveal to me what kind of teacher I am. When I taught elementary music, I never really saw this side of myself, but it's coming out in a big way now that I'm in the middle school.

I have a student who enrolled just after the start of the school year, I think it was the third or fourth week of the first grading period. I'll call her Jodie. She's a very sweet young lady, timid and a tad overwhelmed. As she got used to me and the things we do in choir (like solfege, and a tongue twister warm-up song we do nearly every day), she settled in pretty well, as far as I could tell. Yesterday at the start of class, Jodie came up to me with tears in her eyes and told me it was going to be her last day in choir. The school administrators were changing her schedule to take away choir, her only elective, and put her in a second language arts class. She's already in two math classes.

As soon as my classes were over for the morning, I marched down to the office to get to the bottom of Jodie's situation. Sadly, hers is a story of homeschooling gone wrong. Her parents pulled her out of school in 3rd grade to homeschool her, but they hadn't really done much to educate her. She's struggling in all areas except for my class. The sad truth of it is that Jodie is a bright girl who has not been given the educational opportunities, and now she's suffering.

But how can it be right to take her out of the one class in which she's feeling connected? She's doing great with choir, catching on to all those things that overwhelmed her at first, and she's succeeding. Jodie is very responsible, being among the first to turn in forms (including her choir T-shirt order and money). She strikes me as the kind of kid who will do what she has to do, if she's given the opportunity to do it. If the principals and counselors want to demoralize this girl and ensure that she hates school, this sounds like a good way to do that. I left school yesterday just sick to my stomach for Jodie. I just wish I could blink my eyes like "I Dream of Jeanie" and fix everything for her.

At my other school, the student I've mentioned before, let's call her Molly, wasn't in class. I heard from the other students that on her way to class, she was tripped by another student and after recovering from the face-plant, she cussed out the tripper and was caught by the assistant principal. After class, I went looking for Molly, and when I couldn't find her, I tracked down the AP who caught her. Turns out he sent her to in-school suspension for the rest of the day as a punishment for the cursing. (He also sent the other student to in-school suspension for the rest of that day and two additional days.) In looking for Molly on other occasions, I have her schedule for after my class memorized, so I went to the teacher where she was supposed to be, got a message from the teacher about work she needed to do, took it to her in ISS, and had a brief conversation with Molly. I didn't ream her out for what happened, I just told her that I missed her in class, and that I heard what went down. (No pun intended.) She smiles when I talk to her one on one now. In the last week she has really softened in class too. She doesn't glare at me as often, and we've actually had some productive rehearsals. Amazing...

I was really worried about Molly when I realized she wasn't coming to class. And when I heard what happened... I felt bad for Molly. She didn't ask to be tripped. Her response to it wasn't appropriate, by any means. But she's had a rough life, and she was defending herself. Plus she's been in ISS so much (in the past, from what I hear), I wonder if that's a productive way to handle the situation. I'm not saying I know what the right thing is. If Molly is going to learn to respond to this situation appropriately, she needs to be able to trust the AP enough to go to him and report the other student. As it is, his sending her to ISS damages that relationship, making it harder for her to go to him in the future. He may go (or have gone) to her later to repair that relationship and give(n) her advice what to do next time. Oh well. All I can do is all I can do.

Molly and Jodie are as different as night and day, and their situations are polar opposites. Both of these situations are ones where I wish I could fix it for their sakes. I care about them. I care more than I expected to care. It's not that I didn't care about the elementary kids who came through my classroom all those years ago. I think that seeing my students every day makes a huge difference in the relationships I'm able to have with them, and it ups my investment in their lives. That's where eternal impact takes place. This is my calling.

******** Update - 10/5/09 *********

Jodie won't be allowed to come to choir at all. I could just cry. In fact, I have.