If I kept a journal for real, I would notice that I feel like this every graduation season. This is the time that I most deeply reflect on my students. I always think about them - who they are, who they were when they were the age of my kids, and who they will become - but this time of year it hits me especially hard.
Today when I mentioned a student I was worried about making it to graduation, I saw the pain my co-workers face. I couldn't look at her or I was going to lose it too. Later in the day when the new mom told me she had to go home because no one was there to watch her daughter, I told her to go. This was just after a heart breaking conversation about why she couldn't walk in commencement because of her poor attendance, most due to the fact that she is trying to balance school and motherhood with very few resources. I started the day with a text from a student asking if I could pick her up for her classes. I told her of course, but I wanted her to know that she wouldn't be recommended for credit regardless of her grade because of her attendance. This young lady has been living on her own for the last two years. She stays at a friend's house because that is the most stable place for her to be. She has known for almost the whole year that she won't be graduating and the 3rd marking period of this year she earned the best grades she has ever received. Now I hope she will finish the school year because when we talked about why she would miss out on some credits she had worked so hard for we couldn't look at each other with the tears flowing. And then there was the conversation with a student about his obligations from the high school. He has fought so hard for himself. He is so close to finishing high school, something people told him he would never do, and I have to tell him that he owes $220 before he can walk in commencement and celebrate his hard work. Last week I met with a mom to tell her that we were dropping her daughter instead of getting ready to graduate her because her attendance has been so poor. I have another student who is so ADHD he cannot help himself and if he doesn't pass classes this quarter, he will be out of the program. A story for every kid...
And then tonight I get to tuck my little ones into bed and two hours later they are all soundly, peacefully asleep. When I check on them all my dreams and hopes for them come flooding in. All my fears for their future along with all the all joys I know they will experience slam into the echoes of my kids from school. When they were little, I know their parents tucked them in and had the same hopes I have. When I pick up the little boy who falls asleep on the floor and tuck him in his bed my heart breaks for the young man who had to help his mom move out of their house and live out of a hotel for a week not knowing where they were going to end up. That young man is now working to help support his mom and is putting his chance to graduation on hold. He knows what he is doing and how can I fault him when he says "but Mr. Ellis that's my mom..."
How do I answer the question from my coworker "What else can we do for her?" when we both want this girl to be able to celebrate her accomplishment of earning a diploma but she hasn't met the attendance requirement to participate in commencement. We tell ourselves that we did our part by bending the rules to keep her enrolled even though her attendance was a joke because we knew she could get the classwork done. (We even used her as a pry-bar to get other students to turn in assignments late so that they too could pass the classes.) We tell ourselves that we have to draw the line somewhere and she happens to get caught on the wrong side. We tell ourselves that the diploma is the thing to be proud of. We tell ourselves this because we know that truth is that it is going to take a miracle for our student's little girl to have anything better than what her mom already has. We tell ourselves we did the best we could because we did, but it didn't stop a young man from leaving school a month before graduation to go to work to support his mom.
We have to lie to ourselves because the truth is, although we did everything we could, it just wasn't enough. The funny thing is it is the lie that keeps me going. It is the lies that I tell myself that make me go back day after day, week after week, and month after month to the same place to play the same games with the same long odds because when what we have done is enough, the pay off is huge and it makes you believe that you really are making a difference. Maybe I am, maybe I am not, but I have to keep playing because I never know when the next pay off is coming.
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