This one was a crier

I had my second parent meeting of the week yesterday afternoon. Yes, there are nine days left of school and yes, all of a sudden people care. Parents and students. But what I thought would be a hostile meeting turned out to be more like a therapy session.

I have a student who came to me from Angela mid-year. Ang realized that she was "too high" to stay in intervention. She was the second student I got from Ang, the first worked out very well. He came, he started getting As, he never said a word. Then came the girl. First day, she started giving me attitude. She stirred up trouble in the class, she refused to work, she wouldn't stop talking, she chewed gum constantly. When I gave her detention, she skipped. I called home and things got a little better attitude-wise. But she wouldn't turn in any work.

She failed tests, she never did homework, etcetera etcetera, and squeaked by with a D. Not so this quarter. Thus Mom coming in. And before I could even set down yesterday, Mom was crying. There's a divorce, a move to Nevada, and a defiant thirteen-year-old who's died her hair black, gets pornographic emails, etcetera etcetera. This is not the little girl this mother raised. And so we talked (well I talked, it was translated, mom talked, it was translated). More tears, from both mother and daughter. And we left with her thinking about doing some make-up work for my class. But I stressed to her that as a teenager, she gets to make the choice and decide if it's a good or a bad choice. We'll see come Monday what she decides.

Another first yesterday - the first time I've ended a parent meeting getting hugged by a parent. Mom just seemed at her wits end but I am hoping, in some small way, we helped her, the two other teachers and I who sat there in that meeting. But, as it is with all my kids, I'll probably never know. I wonder, as I look out at my 90-some-odd students, what they'll be in ten years, fifteen years. Will they be okay, normal adults living normal lives? Will they be gang bangers and drug runners? Will they be alive or in jail? Will they be the spectacular human beings I tell them every day they can be? God, I pray so. Literally.