My One Regret
I haven't been teaching that long, and an experienced teacher once told me that if you have learned everything you need to know, then you are facing your maker. So essentially you will die when you know it all. Four years ago I was in my second year of teaching, and I think I might not have know anything.I had this student named Victor. This child was very intelligent, yet he rarely did any work and he failed all of his classes the year I had him. As a teacher, it was horribly disappointing, yet I had so many other students that I found it hard to focus on him, so I brushed him aside.
After about 7 weeks of school that year, he started coming to school smelling very badly. I used to be able to smell him from across the hall, and I knew how far away he was based on how bad the smell was. His team of teachers referred him to the health team, then forgot about him. He went back and forth from smelling bad to being tolerable. Every now and then we had to ask him about his bathing habits, but otherwise we just disregarded him.
Until his behavior went south. He went from being a student we didn't notice to a student that we wished would stop coming to school. He was downright mean. He was mean to the teachers, the other students, and frequently he was mean to inanimate objects as well. He was unpleasant to interact with, and the smell got worse. He was rude and disrespectful. So we started fighting with him. Daily. It was horrible.
We finally decided that it was time to start talking to mom. Yes, I know. We really did wait far too long to discuss his problems with his parents. I don't even have a good excuse. I used to make excuses, but I stopped. We were wrong that year. We passed the ball over and over with that child to the point where the ball became stagnant.
We set up a conference with his mom. She didn't show up. We set up another conference with his mom, and again she didn't show up. We called home and received a message telling us the phone had been disconnected. The social worker at my school finally scheduled a home visit with for this child and we all tagged along.
We were appalled at the conditions in which this student lived. The home had no running water, so they had all of their "toilet" things in the yard. They also kept dirty dishes in the yard which made the smell of the house unbearable. The home also had no electricity because Victor's mother had not been able to pay the bill. So the day we went in it was very hot in the house.
Victor's mother was morbidly obese. She had been bedridden for almost two years because of her size. Victor had been taking care of his brother and sister for those two years, without stopping to take care of himself. Victor's older sister had decided to move back in with their mother as well, making the total number of persons in the house seven. It was a two bedroom manufactured home, with no electricity and no water. I bet you can imagine the conditions.
We immediately called Child and Family Services to report abuse and neglect with this family. Victor's sister's boyfriend was horribly abusive towards Victor and his brother and younger sister. He refused to allow the smaller children to eat in the home, claiming that the older people needed it more.
CYFD decided tha Victor was fine and there was no need to take this child away from his home.
We threw our hands up and let it go. I can't save them all, so I stopped trying.
Over the course of that year Victor's behavior got worse and worse. He treated everybody so badly that he had no friends and even his teachers didn't like him. The other student's threw his backpack away daily because they claimed it smelled like it belonged in the trash. So everyday Victor dug his backpack out of the trash.
At the end of that year, I had been very fed up with this child, and I had had enough. He had spent a class period being particularly disgusting towards others, and I finally let my temper go. I told him: "If you fell off the face of the earth tomorrow, nobody would miss you."
I never saw that kid again after that. He stopped coming to school, and since there was only about a week of school left, I hadn't expected him back anyway. I felt very guilty over that remark. I have never been able to give up the guilt I felt for saying that. That boy was a child, and he didn't ask for his situation any more than I asked for him to be placed in my class. I had no right to say that, and I should have probably found another profession after that. However, they say you lean from your mistakes, and you better believe that I have learned from that one.
Over the summer I decided to look him up. His mother passed away the summer after I had him in my class, and CYFD finally removed him from that home. He had wonderful foster parents, and he had been going to school regularly. That is good.
We all have that memory of that one teacher that we couldn't stand. That one teacher that ALMOST made you feel like you weren't worth crap. Well, I was that one teacher for Victor. I hate myself for what I said to that kid.
Needless to say, I am far more cautious with my temper at school. I will never let my temper slip out of my mouth again. I will never allow myself to be that one teacher that helps a student learn how to hate school. I want to be the opposite. And there is absolutely no excuse for what I said. I could try to blame it on the new teacher in me, and that I simply didn't know better. OR, I could blame it on what a pain in the rear that kid was. OR, I could blame it on the alignment of the stars. But I can't . I was wrong. I was a horrible teacher that day.
I promise I have done, and will continue to do better.
posted by lobo5747 @ 8:24 PM
6 Comments:
Wow! That is such a sad story! I am also a middle school teacher, so I know how stressful some of the situations can be. At least it is a situation that can be learned from.
I had a similar situation when I was a teacher. I couldn't believe that the child lived in such awful conditions. First, the father had just gotten home from prison a few months before. The mother told me at a parent meeting that the father had gotten their 16 year old daughter pregnant. Things were deteriorating with the boy's bathing, etc., and I asked to social worker to make a home visit with me. When we got to the house the father(who was very frightening) was working on the car with his "boyfriend" from prison. Unfortunatley they had several dogs. Little did I know that the social worker had a fear of dogs. She was useless in the situation and totally frightened by what we were seeing. There was animal feces all over the house. It was a disaster. I realized that the child was really in good shape considering what he went home to.
That is a sad story - I congratulate you for telling it. I hope that teachers are more aware of red flags these days, but it is all too true that even when they are acted upon, there's not always a lot that can be done. I like you enormously for revisiting him, and for knowing that you were wrong, and most of all, for learning from it. I hope that I can do that too.
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