10.03.2008
from last Thursday
| These have been trying times, lately. Hurricane Ike wrecked havoc on parts of my area, including my school. The building with my classroom was flooded when the roof collapsed. The building needs to be completely redone (even though the inside was renovated earlier this year). We lost dozens of computers, projectors, student files, and a million little belongings to the administrators and teachers in that building. It won’t be until next semester when the building is reusable. Our campus is without internet and intermittently without electricity—the building I’ve been relocated to is running on generator power which will cost us almost $25,000 a week. Yes, I said a week. Many of my students have lost their clothes, their belongings, and are still without power nearly two weeks since the storm. Others have lost their homes completely and are running out of food. Even though all of that is difficult, it’s not impossible. Our school will be okay eventually because of insurance money. We can replace students’ uniforms and help them find new resources for other clothing, beds, food, and even housing. Even though the generator costs an incredible amount of money, at least we aren’t losing any more instructional days for the kids. The AP tests will still come around in May, and the kids still need to be ready for the next year on their journey to college. I’m thankful that we returned to school so early. Instead of anything related to the hurricane, the most trying problem has been with two students, sisters, who attend my school. They have a terrible home life. Think of what you see in the movies or on television if you’ve never been so unlucky as to have been abused, neglected, and cast out on the sidelines of society for being not just a minority, but an illegal immigrant. Add the parents’ abuse of alcohol, their unwillingness to work, and some anger issues, and it almost feels like an episode of Law and Order: SUV. But it’s real life. Children being abused are an every day tale in our country. Overworked, overwhelmed, under-resourced social workers have their hands tied by obscure or irrelevant bureaucratic rules. Oh, we know. Everyone knows. We ‘care’, but isn’t it someone else’s job to deal with these families? I can’t count on one hand how many times we’ve called CPS about this family in the last two years. The beatings that leave bruises, the lacerations that leave bloodied skin. The way the parents systematically rip apart any iota of self-esteem these girls might possess. The law mandates that we must ‘outcry’ for abused kids. But who do we go to when the system continually fails? I’ve stated before that I would take the girls in if necessary, but the parents are bound and determined to keep us away from the kids outside of school. The mom has been selling tacos to day laborers in order to make a few extra bucks. My students have to take the tacos down to the men who purchased the tacos. Apparently, one of the men expressed an interest in the older girl (a high school freshman) to the mom. She gave him permission to take the older girl home with him for money. She is prostituting her daughter. The older girl has managed to stay away from this man by refusing to get anywhere near his car and running off, but her mom was furious at her for this. Furious at her for not allowing this man to rape her. Furious that this man might demand his money back. We have to get them out of there. The school social worker called the police, who said it wasn’t their business since no crime had been committed. Really? This isn’t a crime? Since there was no sexual contact, they didn’t want to be involved. Isn’t it great to know that this child must be raped before the police care? CPS is a slow moving behemoth, and it’s hard to believe that they’ll do anything this time. Before the social worker went to call the Sex Crimes division, she came to ask if I would take the girls. Yes, I promised. But, then I remembered that I needed to talk with my husband about this potentially enormous decision. A million questions were running through my head—would this be hard on our marriage? Are we ready to basically be parents, even though we recently agreed to wait a year before trying to conceive? Can we afford two more people in the household when we have to stretch every penny to meet our savings and retirement goals? Of all these fear-based questions, I kept coming back to one: How could we not? How could we not take these girls when their situation is horrifying? How could we not give them opportunities that they would never otherwise have? How could we not take them when the woman who gave them birth is willing to sell one for some beer money? |
posted by a teacher at 9:06 PM