All too often, students have to endure unspeakable tragedies and hardships in their personal lives. At the same time, the determination of students to get past it, along with seeing how they can help each other get through such tumultuous times, can inspire you and warm your heart.
Last Thursday afternoon, I was in my office during my early-afternoon planning period grading some papers when my phone rang. On the other end was Terri, one of our guidance counselors. "Alex, do you know where Jared is?"
Jared is a senior at my school. He's also my quiz bowl team's captain and a current student in my AP U.S. History class. I guess she thought that if anyone would've known Jared's whereabouts during the school day, it would probably be me.
"Haven't seen him since he left class, Terri," I told her. "He doesn't have a 4th period. Have you tried the media center? Sometimes he goes in there and does homework." She abruptly hung up. Jared tends to be a little forgetful, so I figured Terri needed to track him down to sign some paperwork for a scholarship application or something. I didn't think anything of it.
After school, another teacher and I were in my classroom watching the Olympics when my phone rang again. This time, it was the band director.
"Alex, did you hear about Jared's dad?"
My heart sank.
"What about him?" I asked, somehow already knowing the answer.
"He died. They think it was a heart attack."
Jared's father, who had left home perfectly healthy that morning to work at the county office as the school system's transportation director, died in his office two months after seeing his oldest daughter graduate college, and three months before he could see his youngest son graduate high school. Jared lost the father who taught him how to ride his motorcycle, helped him get his Eagle Scout, and pushed him to work harder and strive to be all he could be.
I don't know what Jared was thinking the moment he heard. All I could think was that I was tired of this happening to my students.
*~*
Colleen is another one of my quiz bowlers, a senior whom I've taught for two semesters and coached for three years. She's always cheerful, very funny (sometimes to the point of being vulgar, which I shouldn't approve of as her teacher but oh well), incredibly driven, and absurdly smart. She and two or three others have taken turns being ranked #1 in their class.
One day last October, during her junior year, Colleen came into my class visibly upset and shaken. Once I got everyone in the class working on something, I got her out in the hallway. "Colleen, what's the deal?"
She broke down. Between sobs, I made out the words "dad" and "cancer."
Through getting to know Colleen and her family from quiz bowl, I knew that her dad was in his seventies - needless to say, far older than most high schoolers' dads. Because he was older, he retired from his job right around the time Colleen was born, so he was Mr. Mom to her and her sister for their entire childhoods. As a native of Ireland, he also had a penchant for smoking, which had finally caught up to him.
At first, Colleen and her family were hopeful that her father could beat it. He told them that if nothing else, he wanted to see Colleen graduate high school. As the cancer spread, though, it became apparent to everyone that he wasn't going to make it that long. He quit the chemo and eventually moved into hospice. He died in late March.
I'd never been to a visitation to console a 16-year-old before. I didn't expect to cry, but I did. I hurt so badly for her. I was also incredibly touched by all of her classmates. She spent a large part of the visitation surrounded by ten or twelve of her closest friends who all took turns hugging her and making sure she felt loved. Throughout that time, though, she would constantly gravitate back to her boyfriend. They had been together for about a year and had been close even before they started their adorable teenage relationship. And so it went that night for Colleen: be consoled by friends, drift off to be consoled by her beau, repeat.
I've never discussed this with Colleen, but there was another family situation that most likely compounded her despair. About a month before her father passed, Colleen's mother fell victim to the recession and got laid off from the job she had held for nearly twenty years.
That poor kid is the phrase that could sum up how just about everyone felt about Colleen last year; even now, I can't help but feel a tinge of pity sneak into my mind every time I see her or think about her. But she wouldn't want people's pity. No one would've been surprised if Colleen had become bitter and cynical and let her grades suffer. Hell, I probably wouldn't have even blamed her. But she finished her junior year at the top of the class, won the Harvard Book Award, and got accepted to some seriously awesome universities.
I have never met a stronger person.
How did Colleen do it? Personal determination and pluck was certainly part of it. But it was clear from the beginning that her friends provided invaluable support to her. She did a great job of keeping her game face on at school through her father's illness, but her friends said that she would often break down with them. They were her refuge. They would take her out and try to make her forget about her family's problems, if only for a little while. The news focuses a lot on things that high schoolers do WRONG, but these random acts of kindness that keep kids like Colleen afloat often go unnoticed.
*~*
When I heard that Jared's father had died, my head started swimming. Should I call Jared? How do I find out how he's doing? I texted his mother; she chaperones most of our quiz bowl trips so I became pretty tight with the family over the years.
She told me that Jared had talked to quite a few of his friends, and that a few had made it over to the house. Again, I was moved by how much these kids cared and wanted to make sure Jared was okay.
Jared's mother agreed. "Our friends have been fantastic. Jared's in shock, but all the guys from school have been in and out all day. It's helping him out a lot. Really, though, there's only one person Jared will open up to."
That one person Jared truly wanted to see was his ex-girlfriend. They'd just broken up in the last month, but she was the only person that could truly understand what he was going through.
A year after Jared was her shoulder to cry on at the visitation for her late father, Colleen returned the favor.
*~*
I can't think of anything worse for two high school seniors to have in common. Colleen and Jared are probably done for good as a couple, but this has caused them to bond with each other on a whole new level.
On Wednesday I finally got the chance to talk to Colleen about everything that's happened in the last week. She said that the passing of Jared's father was especially hard for her. "After Dad died," she said, "he practically adopted me as another daughter."
I fumbled for words. "Well, I know Jared appreciates the support." As it came out of my mouth I was thinking about how trite it sounded, but seriously, what do you say to someone who's been through this? That poor kid.
"Yeah," she said, shrugging her shoulders. "But it was therapeutic for me too. No one else I knew understood what it was like to lose a parent so young. Now I can talk about it, and I know he's not just being sympathetic. He gets it."
Time will tell whether Jared will overcome this tragedy as well as Colleen did, but I'm guessing that he will. He came back to school on Tuesday and got through the day as well as could be expected. He's admitted to several colleges for next year. Perhaps most importantly, he has a network of peers who will refuse to let him slide.
Teachers don't always know what kids have going on beyond the school walls. For every case like Jared's that we know about, there are many more cases of death, divorce, homelessness, you name it, that we as teachers never hear of. It's troubling, and it's heartbreaking.
More than anything, though, this very sad sequence of events has made me realize just how important friends are in getting students through some of the most unspeakable circumstances. Too many students suffer personal misery alone with no one to prop them up and keep them going. In many cases, they let it affect their schoolwork and behavior and materially alter their whole lives. Jared and Colleen are blessed to have such wonderful friends, and to have each other.