parents

I don't know what I'd do without them.

I can't imagine what the lives of my students are like at home. Do they ever sit down to watch a movie together and share a bag of popcorn? Does their mother, or grandmother, or auntie ever ask, "How was school today? How did you do on the math test?" Do they even know their students are taking math? Do they ever go places together--the beach, hiking, even the mall? Do they have someone who tells them when it's time to go to bed or to say, "Sleep tight. See you in the morning"? Do they see their parents in the morning?

A student I knew for all of two weeks made my whole job worth it. She came in during the mornings to help me sweep the floor, stack up the books neatly, prepare the whiteboards, and--the best part--to read me poetry. She loved Maya Angelou. One day she came in and said that she read every poem in her textbook, and of all the poems, she liked "Oh Captain, my captain" best because it made her cry. Her dad was in jail; her foster mother called the police on her. She wrote me a poem about how hard it is to leave a friend and was gone the next day. I wish that she could go home every night to someone who loved her.