Today marks the official end of my first year of urban education. Last year was a whirlwind of privileged, bratty students and egoism–not only on their parts, but on mine as well. I find it astounding that I, who has only ever attended private schools, found teaching private school students to be unbearably monotonous and devoid of purpose. There will always be someone else to come along and take your place in a private school–which isn’t to devalue any of my own teachers, who were incredibly influential in my life.
Nevertheless, my “at-risk,” urban minority students, marginalized politically, economically, and socially, make me feel like a pillar of stability and calm (a change when I find myself to be incredibly neurotic and anxious). In a year of teaching on the outskirts of a major city in the Western United States, I have felt ten times more appreciated, useful, and necessary than my year of teaching in North Africa.
I suppose this stream of reflection was unclenched by a shock–one of my students is pregnant. She’s been absent on and off for weeks now, and though I tried to talk to her about it, she didn’t want to share, she said. Today, maybe because it was the last day of classes, maybe because it was right after the last class, the class she has with me, maybe because we were alone in the hallway, she told me. I told her I was sorry, so sorry, that it had to be hard, and she said “It’s my own fault.” Being a teacher in America is often difficult, and all I wanted to do was to take her in my arms and hug her. She looked small and lost–but we don’t touch the students.
This is a constant source of tension for me. Students in urban settings (accuse me of stereotyping if you will) often have physically and/or emotionally absent adults in their lives. This particular student’s father left before she can remember, her mother works all the time, her older sister in high school already has a child of her own, and now she will join their ranks. I constantly wear different hats–teacher, mother, police officer, counselor, cheerleader…the list goes on. Our students’ needs are not only academic, but often emotional. How close is too close? When does my teacherly duty go “too far?”
The student-teacher relationship is a tight-rope that I tread with caution, and have come near to falling off of before. I told this student I would be there for her, and I gave her my cell phone number–an unprecedented move! In the end, she intiated the hug, and I was glad of it.
Somehow, I can’t get her out of my mind, so much so that I am writing in this blog for the first time in over a year and a half. I live the rollercoaster of American education and society every day, of which my students have taught me so much.
So, I ask, how close is too close? Where does emotionally supporting a student become grounds for litigation?
