Just Not A Good Week

This week, I got more of a taste than usual of what some of these kids have to endure outside of school.

Yesterday, less than an hour after learning about our seventh grader passing away, I got a message from my girlfriend saying that one of her students was in the hospital.  He had been stabbed in the back by his mother’s boyfriend while trying to defend his mother.  Not much is known about his condition at this point.

This morning, when I arrived at school, I found a flyer in my mailbox seeking any information on the whereabouts of one of our middle school students.  Some of the evidence seems to indicate that she ran away, but obviously this is pretty worrisome, because this is a rough city period, let alone if you’re a 13 year old girl out on your own.

I had a number of students report today for exam make-ups.  Some of them had ridiculous excuses for having missed their original testing time, but some of them had legitimate issues.  Two of my students have missed time in school due to their mothers being locked up this week.  Another student missed his test date because he was moving his belongings from his mother’s house to his brother’s.  I don’t know the details, but it sounds like big drama.

As for me, I’m still on the ropes.  Maybe it makes me a crappy person to be inundated with so much strife, yet so wrapped up in my own personal issues.  I’ve been trying hard to see what arrangements could be made at a school level to make my job more manageable.  I’ve been lobbying hard for some relief.  To my administrations credit, they have my back, in principle.  I think they actually seem to understand how fragile I’m feeling at the moment.  They know I might not last the semester.   But in practice, there’s not much they can do, and I take them at their word for that.  And I believe they’ll do what they can to help me keep it rolling for as long as I can.  In some ways, I guess this puts us almost back at square one.  But, if nothing else, I’ve been very upfront with where I stand, so I think we’re all on the same page.

All this, and I still have another semester to go.  June seems so far away…