Exhaustion

Today one of my girls came to me to talk about why she’d missed yesterday. She’d been at the doctor and found out she’s two weeks pregnant. We talked about how she felt, the father, her parents’ reactions… It quickly became apparent how little control this fifteen year old has over her own life. “You know you can’t smoke or drink while you’re pregnant?” I asked her. She looked down at the ground. Oh, geez. “You have to eat healthy, too.”

“Oh, yeah, the doctor said. My favorite fruits are pears, and apples, and mangoes—“ as she started listing a laboriously long string of fruits, I stared at her and wondered what kind of life she, and the fetus inside her, can possibly have. She sat down to finish an essay. Here’s its ending:

I want to be a children’s doctor, since I’m going to have one on my own in 9 months, I want to learn what to do when he/she is sick, I want to care and watch as he/she grows and becomes something in life like I did. And tell he/she that he/she has every opportunity to do what they want, become it and enjoy, I want to make him/her proud.

But that’s me, don’t do as I did just do what you need and do what you want later…

In my fourth block, a difficult student whom I’ve worked really hard with and had huge successes with cussed me out pretty badly. One eensy step forward, a mudslide back. At security’s appearance, he released a torrent of “fucks.” If I got paid ten dollars for every fuck he dropped, I could afford to stay a teacher in the state of North Carolina.

I walked into school yesterday morning to see a dear student from last semester huddled in the office with his mom—he’s been getting bullied and came home with a bloody nose from being punched in the face— waiting to see if he would feel safe in school again.

This week I have heard, from students in a variety of private conversations:

 “I’m always hungry because we haven’t had any food in the house for two weeks.”

“Why I hate the police is they always accuse me of being a slut when I try to get help.”

“That other time I got beat up I was so glad they stole my bike because then I got a new one.”

“You know, Ms. W, my dad’s an alcoholic.”

“I’ll be straight, my brother’s actually in jail.”

It’s Tuesday, and tomorrow we start midterms, and I want it to be the weekend already, because right now I feel very, very tired.