Printer-friendly versionJohn was in my eighth-grade class. He was a rascal and my favorite kind of student. He was rambunctious and smart as a whip. And he and his family lived in poverty. His favorite memory of middle school is when I gave him detention time after school.
“Why’d I get this?” he exclaimed.
“Because you’ve racked up four deductions for talking and disrupting class,” I calmly said.
He looked down at the detention slip, “Well, OK then.”
It’s one of our favorite stories.
This weekend, I de-friended him on Facebook because it breaks my heart to see his life. I did everything I could to get him to college. He now works at a farm and drinks his earnings at night.
When I moved to a high school position, John was in my class again. During a unit on careers, I worked on him to consider college. I saw his intelligence and wanted him to have a better life, a good job he enjoyed and a chance to support a family and children. He’d be the first in his family to get a college degree. He could break the cycle of poverty. It was a project for two years.
He lacked self-confidence. He worried that he wouldn’t fit in. I knew he could do the work. He’d proven it many times by consistently earning As on assignments in class. I talked to him one-on-one about going to college. He resisted the idea vociferously. But toward the end of our careers unit, he said, “You know Mrs. Blevins, you’ve almost persuaded me.”
We talked about him fulfilling the requirement for the A+ program that offered two free years of education. He did his tutoring the next school year. Senior year, I bugged him to death and got him to sign up for the ACT test on a waiver since he got free lunches. His mother completed the qualifying paperwork. We filled out applications to several colleges that required no application fees. He didn’t have the money for the fees. I thought about paying his fees to some of them but waited to see where he wanted to go for sure. I was excited. It was going to happen.
One day he proudly showed me an acceptance letter from a college. He couldn’t believe they had accepted him. He was doing each step I asked but was cracking jokes and very uncomfortable with all of it. I could see he wanted to go but he just didn’t feel like he belonged.
We hit a snag with the financial aid. I encouraged him. I told him that he could get a part-time job and a small loan and it would be fine. He was scared through and through. I encouraged until I was blue in the face.
The morning of the ACT he texted me he was sick and unable to go. I have a feeling he was emotionally sick and it manifested in stomach problems. That was it. After two years of encouraging and gently prodding and assisting in any way I could, he didn’t go take his ACT. I regrouped and focused on getting John into the local junior college. Then his efforts stopped.
He still hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s working on a farm for minimum wage. He’s posting his drunken party pics and it makes me sad. That’s why I had to de-friend him. It hurts too much. I thought I could make a difference and help him get off the path of struggle and poverty. I feel like I threw the lifesaving device again and again. But he wasn’t able, or willing, to catch it.
Perhaps our efforts will resurface in his subconscious someday. Maybe he will see the value of the intellectual challenge of college. It’s only been a year. I’ll send a message with a friend, again, that if he needs any help I’m here.
You never know.
Blevins is a high school English and journalism teacher in Missouri.
Comments
Bless you for making the
Bless you for making the effort! We would all love to have the ability to reach them all... but despite our best efforts, many will remain overwhelmed by their demons... fortunately many do come to their senses in their early to mid 20's and manage to turn the ship around... Keep up the good fight! It is worth it... and you will impact MANY more lives than you will ever know.
Thanks, Jim. I really
Thanks, Jim. I really appreciate your encouragement, more than you know!
Kim, It was/is a good thing
Kim,
It was/is a good thing that you encouraged him. I can see why it would scare him as well. I don't think you should give up trying. I can say I went through something similar. My father was the person in my life who wanted me to go to college. I kept putting the topic off because I was not comfortable with this, and I felt that I was not smart enough to even go. One day, reality hit me. I think this will happen to your former student.
I enjoyed reading this little post :)
Thanks for your comment,
Thanks for your comment, Tracy. So glad you had your dad there for you and I will keep trying!
You can not give up. My
You can not give up. My situation is very similar to your student's. I believe it is a process that is ongoing. I felt ashamed, worthless, and undeserving. If I did not try then I could not fail at something again. My whole life I had been told what an awful person I was and a mistake from the beginning. I also resorted to drinking, as a means to forget my life. Although, I am proud to say I finally listened to a very caring person in my life, who had been trying to get me to listen for YEARS. I finally decided that despite what everyone else in my life had to say, I deserved better. I was out of high school for about six years when I made the decision to go to college. I was still VERY AFRAID! I am extremely proud to admit that I recently graduated from college with my degree in education, with Summa Cum Laude honors! I am now working toward my master's degree in counseling. I am determined to help kids just like me realize that they too deserve better! Please don't give up on this individual.
Thank you Kim! I have
Thank you Kim! I have friended and am meeting him for coffee when school gets out. Thank you so much for your encouragement!
Friend him again. This is
Friend him again. This is not about what hurts you - it's about his future. When he makes the decision to move forward, you'll be there to give him a leg up. Be the adult here, and be ready to usher him into adulthood when he's ready to make the move. I didn't step from high school directly into college - many of us just aren't ready. But now I have a masters in education, and my mission in life is to help young adults get what they need from education like I was helped. I think this one will make that step - it may not be in the direction you think he should go (he may go the voc route or into an apprenticeship instead of traditional college) but when he's ready, he's going to need help, and you've already positioned yourself to be the help he needs.
Right now my house is full of nontraditional college students. One (the girl who became a stripper when she left high school) gets her degree in Computer Science next year. She's already been recruited to work for Intel. One (basically raised by wolves) gets his degree in advertising in a few months. And one just joined IATSE, the stagecraft union and is working in the field she loves. None of these people were 'college material' but with help, they have all been brilliant in their own ways. Like you say - it's only been a year. Keep the lines of communication open.
Thank you, KC. You are right.
Thank you, KC. You are right. It is about his future. I will friend him today.
"I’ll send a message with a
"I’ll send a message with a friend, again, that if he needs any help I’m here"...don't wait too long. Your efforts are appreciated!
You might disagree with me,
You might disagree with me, but I'll say it anyway: this post does not belong anywhere near a website that's titled--in large, colorful letters--"Teaching Tolerance." You did anything but teach tolerance here, from the details provided.
This young man did not want to go to college, and yet you pushed, nagged, and cajoled him into it, because you apparently could not see the value in other kinds of education or life experiences, or the value in the work that's done by what we elites call "poorly educated" people. People who do not go to college are just as good, usually just as intelligent, and just as valuable, as those who do. People who do not go to traditional colleges fix your car and keep it safely driveable; configure and fix your computers; grow, harvest, and cook your food; remodel, repair, and clean your home; deliver your mail and packages; cut and sew your clothing (not to mention sell it to you); beautify your yard (and the lush landscapes of the colleges you hold in such high esteem); defend your country; build the commercial buildings, roads, and other infrastructure that you use; and drive the public and commercial transit you trust during your commute.
In these times, we are surrounded by disillusioned twenty-somethings who cannot find jobs and are crushed under school debt. They believed this fantastic tale we spun for them, that college made them better people, that no exhorbitant price tag and no amount of debt is too outrageous a compromise to be part of this club of better-paid elites. They gobbled it up, their eyes shining as they internalized our sentimental goo about how "you can be anything you want to be" and "don't think about the costs, just hold on to your dream, and get some loans." More and more college graduates are moving back in with their parents, because the only jobs they are able to find do not support independent living. More and more college grads are aging out of their parents' health insurance coverage. The American Dream of the easy path to college and through to prosperity is dead, but we're still selling it to America's youth like the pet shop salesman stubbornly peddling a dead parrot in the old "Monty Python" sketch.
You could not have been less tolerant of this young man. You prodded him toward something he openly told you wasn't right for him, because it was what you wanted. He probably would have thrived in a trade or perhaps a tech school. When he turns out not to be up for the path you chose for him, you disdain him, claim that he's wasting his talents, and drop him from your Facebook contacts.
The idea that young people are wasting their talents unless they pursue a traditional college education (and economically enslave themselves to cover the risibly overinflated costs of one) is offensively intolerant.
I agree to an extent with
I agree to an extent with this. I know your heart was in the right place, but we cannot push our values onto others. He has to come to terms with that he values most in life, and right now he may not be able to mental do so. He needs to know that wheter he goes to college or not he is still a valued individual. College is a road people must be willing to take, not pressured into. You opened his eyes to a possibility, that is all we can do.
Wow Gigi. You read a lot into
Wow Gigi. You read a lot into this post that's just not here. I was encouraging him to go to a two- year Tech School that he had chosen to earn the A+ program for on his own. He was not well-liked by other teachers and I saw intelligence in him underneath his mocking. Is your post tolerant of ideas? We have a word count for posts and they are edited so the wording is not all mine and it was hard to write about a two-year journey but I wanted to because I felt the need to share the struggles of teaching in a rural poverty school. From your wording, it seems you might have a chip on your shoulder from something in your life for such a diatribe. I know he is capable of more than shoveling horse manure. I don't think that makes me elitist or intolerant.