The Left Behind

Unpaid interns need flexibile work.  Last year, this work took the form of afterschool tutoring. 

I was first placed with a fifth grade student at a High Point elementary school.  This child fell squarely in the "difficult" category.  Difficult, and clearly in need of special attention/intervention.  The first (and only) day that I worked with him, I was having him read aloud.  Testing indicated that he read at a 4th grade level, and the passage I had him reading was at the 3rd grade level.  Four sentences in, the child became frustrated.  I watched helplessly as he stood up, ran over to the wall and began punching it with his fist. 

When I finally got him calm and back in his chair, I realized his knuckles were bleeding.  After a quick trip to the school nurse, we got back to it, but getting him to do any more reading was out of the question.  So we talked.  We played tic-tac-toe.  I found the child to be incredibly sweet when he was calm.  He was also very smart with games that involved words or strategy. 

Still, his behavior troubled me so much that I later emailed my boss to tell her that I couldn't provide the kind of education he needed.  I was not a trained educator... tutoring was something that I signed up for to help me pay my bills.  The next group of kids they assigned me to were just perfect: easy, kind, and hard working.  I felt absolutely fine with passing the troubled kid off to a more experienced tutor.

Skip to today.  My former boss emailed me to let me know that the child I had "passed off" had been through three tutors during the previous year.  He had dropped from the tutoring program stopped after being suspended for pulling the fire alarm multiple times in a day.  He had been arrested (ARRESTED!) three times since, and was already facing expulsion from middle school.

This hit me hard. Even with my little knowledge about troubled kids, I knew the signs.  He was aggressive, resistent, and angry.  And I, like apparently lots of other people, had just passed him off as someone else's problem.

I know I can't be the person to save everyone, but hearing about this particular child has been weighing heavily on my heart.  Why?  I'm not an elementary educator.  I teach adults and teens about sex, relationships, contraception, birth, and breastfeeding.  I am no counselor, I am no school teacher.  I know many amazing teachers who work with troubled kids like this, and it's their passion.  They would have been able to handle this child, which is what I assumed would happen once I passed him along. 

Of course that hadn't happened.  Other people had taken the same approach as me.  And here we are... the kid is 11 or 12 and already has a record.  He is on the fast track to becoming yet another troubled-child-turned-criminal.  A statistic.  Had I passed him along because I truly didn't think I could make a difference in his life, or because I just plain didn't want to try?

This child is a prime candidate to just be written off like this.  He's African American and lives in public housing.  He is in a school where the average class size is 30.  He lives with his mother who works two jobs and is never around.  He has a social worker.  His teachers know him as a trouble maker.  So do the tutors.  All the red flags are there, and yet we pass him along to the next person.  Someone else's problem.