I Hope I Never Fail You

Last night as I was laying in bed drifting off to sleep, I started thinking through my life. Listening to my youngest daughter make little baby sounds in her crib, in the night light lit room, the chapters on Motherhood became the focus of my thoughts.

I'm pioneering through my own motherhood journey. Sure, there's endless books out there in the world for me to read or countless mothers to seek counsel from... but this is still my own journey, my own adventure, my personal world. Where my children rely on me to make their world sparkle, keep turning, continue on without flaw.

I take each day and make it the best to my ability. Nourish and nurture and cuddle and cradle.

And with the overwhelming wave of never wanting to fail my children, I began recollecting my first year of teaching city children in a parochial elementary school.

It was by far the most challenging of all my years of teaching, both before and after that year.

I had thirty-three students all of varying degrees of academic ability. Fourth grade. And all had seen far more in their short lifetime than any child should be expected to at that age.

One of my boys was angry. His anger did not have a good outlet. He was smart and talented, but his anger consumed him. Angry about his home life. Angry that his older brother was in jail for murder. Angry that things weren't better for him. I spent many a day trying to figure out how to break through that barrier... a brick wall he built out of hard emotion to block out anyone that might come wandering past his heart.

Despite my understanding of his anger, there was still necessary discipline that had to be implemented. And that discpline often did not sit well with him. Shortly after the start of the school year, his brother was released from jail. What kind of influence and impact would this put on my student? I soon found out.

As I walked back this student's desk during a lesson of the day, he had written out a death threat for me. How he wanted me dead. He wanted to kill me or have me killed. Naturally, knowing that his brother had just been released from jail for murder... I was a little nervous and had to think for a minute on how to handle this situation. I suppose given the situation I could have had the school involved and had the police called to talk through the matter with the child.

Instead, I gathered my composure - knowing he was confused - and sat down with him while the other children were out playing at recess.

"I noticed you were pretty angry about me disciplining you."

He sat angry and silent with his arms crossed and his body tense. Eyes enraged.

"You're a very smart boy, and surely you know what you were doing was wrong. You also know I couldn't very well just ignore it."

Silence.

"But what I'd really like to talk about is what you wrote. Do you know what you wrote?"

"Yeah."

"So, you would like me dead? You want to take my life away?"

"Yeah."

"Do you know what that means? To take someone's life away?"

Silence.

"It means that I no longer would be breathing. No longer would I be able to wake up every morning and have breakfast and come to school to teach you things. No longer would my family be able to love me and enjoy my company."

Silence but with open eyes.

"You are strong and you like protecting your family, don't you?"

"Well, yeah."

"Well, my husband is the very same way. Think about how he's going to feel when I go home and tell him someone wanted to take my life away. That someone wants me dead and that he can't protect me any more."

The walls begin to crumble and he begins to cry.

"You and I are going to have disagreements on things. I'm going to do things that are going to upset you at times. And you're going to do things that upset me at times. But that doesn't mean I don't care about you. I care about you very much and I would hope that when we disagree on some things you won't let that anger make you so upset that you want to take someone's ... take my... life away because that's forever. You can't give someone's life back after you take it away."

He sits silent with tears running down his face for a couple minutes. I wait.

"I don't want you dead. I'm really sorry."

I truly hope that boy, now man, is living a peaceful, happy life somewhere. And that the anger he once had has been put to rest.

Another student of mine that same year, also consumed with anger, very much struggled with finding value and self-worth in his world.

He was the result of an affair. An affair his father had with a 16 year old girl. An affair that had blinded eyes cast upon it by the wife of the boy's father. So with that, the boy lived with his father and step mother (if that's what you'd call her?) and would see his biological mother one weekend a month. The mother that raised my student gave him very little acknoledgement as she hated him because of what he represented. The father had anger control issues of his own and had had cases brought against him for improper relations with his older daughter and physical abuse against his wife.

One day, like so many others, my student was angry. He was tired of being picked on for being the smallest boy in the class. He was tired of any fraction of discipline. And while the exact trigger event escapes my memory, he completely lost his sense of control one day. Most likely it was after having spent a weekend with his birth mother.

He started shoving desks around the room. Throwing books. Throwing papers.

Screamed, "You are such a white b-(bleep)!!!" at me while throwing more things.

I sought assistance to control him and calm him. His father was called.

I really wish, looking back, that his father had not been called.

The boy's father showed up at school. Walked into the classroom like an eerie calm before a storm.

The entire class apparently knew more than I did about the boy's father and they all sunk in their chairs upon his arrival. I stood quietly.

The boy's father gave a lecture to the class about respect and proper treatment of an adult. His eyes were glassy and his smile seemed nearly senile. It was an odd feeling standing there... feeling the energy being contained behind the man's unruffled appearance.

He looked at his son, who was standing next to him cold and collected with eyes that had such deep hatred looking out from within, and told him to apologize to me.

The boy let out a soft spoken, "sorry", from a body of crossed arms and tensed muscles as if protecting himself.

At that moment, I didn't understand it. In the next moment, I would.

The crazed man being kept hostage within that man of false tranquility was finally released.

He gave his son a smile that was joined with a furious gaze and we all proceeded to watch this little boy have the near life beat out of him as the father did not feel the "sorry" he gave was proper.

I was scared watching this boy being flung around the room. I was frozen with fear. I wasn't quite sure what to do. I hated seeing what I was seeing. The students sat scared but with a sense of familiarity as if they had seen this sort of occurrance before.

The boy's father stopped and plopped his son in front of me.

"I'm very sorry for what I said and it won't happen again" with eyes full of fear and tears running his face.

"Now you go sit down, Boy. Don't make the school call me again. I will come back. You know I will. And you don't want that."

And with that the father walked out of the classroom. No one said a word for the next few minutes. I wanted to put the little boy in my lap and rock him and tell him I was sorry. I wanted to rewind time and erase what just happened. I wanted to rewind time even more and have this little boy born into a loving family that would cherish him instead of torment him.

I truly hope that boy, now man, is living a peaceful, happy life somewhere. I hope he is valued and loved in such a way that even the most valued and loved man would feel envious.

Another student of mine that year, was a boy who was shuffled from one foster home to the next. His father was never in the picture and his mother very much prefered her syringe over her child. He was angry. He wanted his mother's love. He was so tired of going from one family to the next. The boy had a horrible social worker - one who couldn't keep an appointment with me for the life of her. I never knew if my day with my student would be one filled with tears or one filled with anger. I just took each day as it came with him. He hated me. He loved me. Bitter sweet. I tried my best each day to give him my all. He tried each day to break me and test my strength on if I too would leave him or give up on him.

One day he was playing with a small bouncing ball in class while I was trying to teach. He was bouncing it and making as much of a disturbance as he could. I asked him numerous times in passing to put it away and to pay attention. He would toss me that "I'm so testing you~" smile and continue on. When he has mustered up enough of an audience where the disruption couldn't be looked past, I had to stop my lesson and directly address the situation. Naturally, this was exactly what he wanted. However, he wanted me to get upset. He wanted to make me angry at him. After all, it's what he was used to with the other people in his life. It was a call for a response... he wanted attention. If he wasn't going to get it through love, well, through anger and frustration was at least some sort of attention in his eyes.

I just calmly continued to ask him to put the ball away... and when he refused, I explained to him that the ball now belonged to me and that he needed to hand it to me. He continued to refuse. I continued to calmly ask for it. Then he smiled at the class, and looked me in the face, and put the ball down his pants and moved it about and then walked it to me and held it out for me to take. It was vulgar and gross. It was for shock value. I kept composed.

"Well, now it needs to go into the trash. So please bring it over to the trashcan and throw it away. Go on. It belongs there now after such a display."

I didn't raise my voice. I didn't yell at him. I wasn't going to take the ball, nor let him keep it... and his eyes filled with tears and he threw the ball away.

He rarely tested me after that, but sadly, his foster homes kept changing more often than the weather and his school work suffered tremendously.

I truly hope that boy, now man, is living a peaceful, happy life somewhere. And that he has a family that looks up to him and that there is a strong sense of committment there.

While there's so many more children from this one class that I could write about, each with a touching story, there's one child that I'd like to finish this post with.

He was being raised by his grandparents. His grandmother was a sweet, old, woman. One who didn't know how to read or write. His grandfather was a drunk. And such a long term drunk, that he had no whites to his eyes... they were bloodshot and yellow. A quiet man, but my student said he wasn't so quiet when he had really been drinking.

When my student's mother was put in jail for drug use, the grandparents took him in and raised him as their own child. The father had never been in the picture. This was really a blessing for the boy. His grandmother started taking classes to learn how to read and write so that she could help my student with his work. I was coming in to the scene, as this was now fourth grade, and they took custody in first grade.

It was obvious that the boy suffered from Fetal Alcohol Effects. He knew his mother was in jail. He asked about her often. He tried very hard with his studies, but his mind was not focused on academics very often, and when it was, his frustration was high because he simply could not do the work... even when I modified it for him. But nevertheless, he tried. He tried until he cried most days. And even then, he continued to try. He would tell me how he wanted to be smart and wanted to be a good reader and wanted to get all the math answers correct.

And if my heart hadn't already broken so many other times during that school year and would continue breaking even after the coming event I'm going to tell you about, it truly broke in half when this student asked me one simple question.

We were studying a lesson in Health. It was the chapter about drug and alcohol use. It was a normal lesson that you'd expect for children - don't do drugs. Drugs that aren't prescribed by a doctor are dangerous. Drinking too much is not good for you and is dangerous. And then there was a section in the chapter that explained how doing drugs and drinking while you're pregnant is very dangerous for the baby. And how it can affect them even after they are born.

As the lesson wrapped up, my student walked up to me fidgeting...

"I have a question."

"Ok, what is it...ask away..." I said, being completely unprepared for what he was going to ask.

"I'm stupid because my mom did drugs and drank when she was pregnant with me, aren't I? I know she did drugs and drank a lot. Is that why I'm stupid? She's in jail for drugs and drinking. Did she make me stupid?"

And I really didn't know what to say at first. Probably because my heart was in the process of breaking into a million pieces for this little boy who struggled so hard with his studies yet seemed to have such a sincere grasp on life.

He continued to stare at me with his eyes filled with tears and his fidgety body with his hands running over the top of his head and his feet shuffling on the floor from side to side...

"Well? Did she? I mean, I love my mom, but is she why I am like I am?"

I put my hands on his shoulders to steady him a bit and look him in the eyes.

"Your mom loves you very much, and she didn't make you stupid. You are very smart, you just have to work a little bit harder sometimes. And that's okay, because we all have to work harder at some things than others. We're all different that way. We're all good at some things and struggle with other things."

I gave him a hug and sent him on his way.

He turned back to me when he reached his desk, "You know, I am smart...I'm just different."

I truly hope that boy, now man, is living a peaceful, happy life somewhere. And that he has found every little thing he's good at and has been recognized for it and made to feel special and bright.

I want to be a solid foundation for my children, for my family, for myself. I hope I never fail.