Starfish

    How do I explain the last two weeks? What would you do in my place?

    I am currently unemployed. I receive less than half of my income as a teacher from unemployment; in return, I am taking a course in entrepreneurship with the intent of opening a specialized electronics business with Jack as soon as we having a working prototype. I’ll be writing about this when it’s done, but I am slipping further and further into debt each week. When the taxes are due on my house every three months, I have to use my home equity loan to pay the bill. I’m broke. Christmas is going to be very sparse this year, although a cash gift from a relative is going to make a few small, token gifts a possibility.

    I taught math in an inner city public school for two years, until I got sick last spring. This school was (and is) a special and unusual place; every student is routinely told that they can and must go to college, and, eventually, they believe it. It’s a relatively new school, admitting its first class of freshmen five years ago. The students in that class (last year’s graduates) were all accepted to at least one college. The second class, those funny, crazy, talented kids who populated my tenth grade math classes during my first year there, is now the senior class.

    One of them (let’s call her Amelia) hated me, even considered me her enemy, for the first half of that year. I was demanding, requiring her to serve detention (and do her math homework) for goofing off in class. Then, we broke through. She had some minor accomplishment and I praised her as thoroughly as I had previously chastised her. She’s very smart but has a boatload of baggage; she was in the foster care system for several years, through ninth grade. During this time, she had been convinced that she would never amount to much. As a tenth grader, she was finally living with her parents but they have serious problems (serious mental instability and drug abuse are only a small part of the family’s litany of problems, although her parents truly love each other).

    Neither parent ever attended any of the school’s “mandatory” events, like student-led family conferences. Three times each year, students are required to formally present all of the information that would normally be disseminated at a parent-teacher conference. Amelia made those presentations but she always had to find someone to cover for her missing parents, usually a teacher. Amelia is not a saint; she had a short period of promiscuity and other illicit experimentation, but, in my non-expert opinion, it was acting out. She has never has stopped trying to improve herself since we finally convinced her that she has a bright future.

    For a year and a half, we talked at lunchtime and after school. She confided in me. When her family threw her out for going out to a party, she called me. We found a friend who took her in temporarily. She eventually moved in with another family member. When she was raped by a “friend”, I took her to the hospital for treatment. We texted frequently after school ended. Last year, when her guardian’s house burned down, I picked her up and helped her to decide what to do for the immediate future. She moved back home a few days later and stayed there through the summer. I took her for a summer job interview, which she had no difficulty obtaining. I frequently gave her rides to and from work when her parents refused.

    She’s now a senior in high school, being scouted by Ivy League schools. After an argument in September, her mom threw her out of the house, again. This was the fourth time (that I know of); each  time, she was out of the house for at least three months. She’s been out of her house for well over half of the last two years. She went to her boyfriend’s house, but that wasn’t good; they fought constantly from being in such close quarters. His mom asked her to leave after the boy was disrespectful to the mom.

    Once again, she called me in distress. She had nowhere to go. She is seventeen years old, too old for social services to want to be involved, but too young (and too poor) to get an apartment on her own. She cannot go home. What would you do? What do you think I did?

    I’m broke. However, I believe in starfish. There’s an old story of a girl at the beach who finds stranded starfish, gasping, twitching, and dying, as far as the eye can see. At first, she is horrified, then she starts picking them up and flinging them back into the ocean. Another person, walking in the opposite direction, asks her what she thinks she is doing; she cannot save them all. The girl replies, “I’m making a difference for THIS one!” as she flings a starfish into the water. “And THIS one!” as she flings another.She saves as many as she can.

    I may not be able to save all kids, but maybe I can make a difference in the live of just one. Do we really need (and can society afford) another inner city high school drop-out, on and off welfare and in and out of trouble for life? I believe that this kid is going to be a force in the world but whether a force for good or for ill will be determined this year. Amelia is my starfish. I won’t be substantially more broke with her in my aquarium.

    PS.  I’m sure she’ll hate the pseudonym!

    PPSS. Happy Thanksgiving!