Wednesday, February 02, 2005
I got horrible news about one of my students today. She has been gone from class for a few days. Then the guidance counselor came and confiscated all of the daily newspapers. Later, when I looked at them, I realized why. My student was in the paper. Let's just say it had something to do with a stepfather, child-protective services, and a suicide attempt. Sadly, I am sure you can connect the dots.

This is the girl I had written about who I sort of thought had a crush on me. She was always hanging around me. She came really early to school every morning, but another teacher yelled at her for doing that (it is technically against the rules to be at school before a certain time) and she stopped coming. When I was thinking about her today, I suddenly wondered if she had been coming so early to get away from him. When I thought of her being told she couldn't come to my room anymore, I just sort of wanted to throw up.

There was a picture of the stepdad in the paper. When I found out what had happened, I just sat in my room (during my planning) and stared at it. I thought about how if he happened to walk through my door at that moment, I really think I could just kill him. I know it isn't helpful to wonder, "How could he?" but that is all I can wonder.

Now I am supposed to be writing two papers for my stupid online classes and I just feel incapable of it. I'm so tired of feeling so helpless in the face of my students problems. No wonder they aren't paying attention to what the antecedent of a pronoun is. Jesus.
¶ 4:22 PM