I was teasing the kids who were absent on Friday (so was I). I got to one girl and she told me that she was embarrassed to come because she didn’t have the project they were working on. I asked why not. She said her in-recovery meth addict father got super drunk and destroyed their house. He broke the computer her project was on by throwing it repeatedly against the floor.
She’s staying late and we are going to be talking for a while. I hope I get to help this one.
When I was a kid, it would have been incredibly useful to me to just have a single one of my teachers have noticed that my family situation was very bad, to tell me, although there’s little I can do about it, this sucks and you don’t deserve to have to deal with this. Plus, not all of the world is this way, and with faith and work and diligence, you can arrange your life after high school so it doesn’t include any of this. It’s not fair that you have to do this extra work, but it is possible.
Oh yeah. Done. And… she’s queer. Apparently most of her family has already disowned her for being queer. We spent a while talking about how blood doesn’t make a family. She’s a neat kid and I hope she will keep talking with me in the future cause it sounds like he loses it about once a month.
Oh, and her younger siblings are all in foster care because of the issues. Why the fuck she is still in the home I don’t know. She turns 18 in March and I hope she has a way to get the fuck out right away.
I applaud you and your intent.
We all do what we can do: you help high school kids, my sister rescues stray animals, and me? I fix the computers folks like you need to do good works. I would have no clue where to start with either kids or animals.
Boy howdy do I need the computer help. 🙂
her hubby is quick to note he’s a software guy, not hardware
I have a very strong feeling that you have an incredible impact on your students…