The CAT Speeches #10

( From the Net )

This isn't a very happy story and more common than I'd like to hope,
which bums me out even more. I used to teach high school in the inner
city and taught a class on college readiness. I followed freshman
until their senior year, guiding them to make sure they made the right
decisions to get into a competitive 4 year college. There was this one
girl, C, who came from an abusive family. Seriously her mom was a
nutjob (e.g. physically hit this girl, locked her in the shed as
punishment, withheld food and clothes just because, revolving door of
boyfriends that mistreated C, etc.) and child services had to get
involved a lot. C had a lot of shit going against her: no support,
illegal status, really meek and downtrodden personality, but she was
smart and worked hard. She had a shining quality to her that I can't
describe, I felt if any kid was going to make it out of the
neighborhood, she would with some guidance.

After a lot of intervention, other teachers and I were able to
convince her the only way out of her hellish life was college. She had
been working at Burger King since she was a freshman and her big dream
was to become a manager there and be able to afford her own apartment.
NO. She was going to go to college and doing something more with her
life than managing a Burger King in the ghetto. As teachers, we
definitely wanted this for her but the painful quality about C was
that she knew her life was going nowhere and yet she had taught
herself that she could be okay with it, she felt that's all she
deserved. It took literally years to make her feel that she could be
capable of something more, and that she could attain it.

And she did. She got into her dream university, a highly ranked state
school with a 20% acceptance rate. We were able to work out a good
scholarship for her and loan arrangements. She was set. And this was
after a LOT of work, I literally had to appear with her in family
court and the teachers banned together to hire immigration lawyers for
another issue. Some teachers housed her when her mom would
periodically kick her out, we had fundraisers for her college
expenses, the whole shebang. We waded through a lot of crap and we
tried our best to support her, and I felt in the end we got her to a
good place.

Then the school went to shit. There were a coup and upper management
fired our principal, who with all his flaws cared about his students
and had built the program from the ground up. About 3/4 of the staff
left or was fired and the ones who didn't return (myself included)
were told not to contact the kids and not to come back to campus.
Legal shit and everything. So we didn't, at least not until the
student was 18.

I lost contact with C but I felt pretty good about her chances. She
was more confident and self-assured as a senior than I had hoped for,
and her team had created a solid foundation for her to start college
in. I was worried, but had high hopes. Besides, a teacher she was
close with was still employeed with the school and I didn't feel she
would fall off the wagon without support, so to speak.

About a year after all this, I ran into C at a grocery story. She was
working there now. I took her out to coffee during her break and she
told me she never ended up going to the university. She got kicked out
of her home, was homeless and couch surfing for a while. She
graduated, but never showed up for college orientation. There are a
bunch of logistical reasons, like her mom kicking her out and then
shredding all the incoming mail from the university, but I think the
school collapsing and all the teachers leaving really undid a lot of
personal growth for her. She lost her drive and her hunger. She didn't
think she could do it anymore. She was back to Square 1.

Anyways, she Facebooked me a couple months ago for an update and told
me she was slowly getting her life back in order, going to community
college, saving up, etc. I'm not sure what the moral of the story is
but I guess the most unexpected thing I learned from it all was that
none of the work we did really mattered at the end, at least in the
way we teachers had hoped. She's still in the neighborhood with a high
school education doing minimum wage jobs. A couple of us tried to
reconnect with her and get her started again, but it's really hard to
get kids to listen to you when you're not their teacher anymore.

She was definitely appreciative and really grateful for all that we
did for her, but at the end of the day she didn't believe in herself
enough to take that next life step. And there was nothing more we
could have done to change that.