I will never be a morning person, and if teaching night classes for tweens was an option, I'd certainly take it. As I came barging through the doors of my beloved institute of punctuation and capitalization this morning, I was met by a little girl whose face was soaked with tears. She was standing beside the door waiting on me because she knew I'd come through eventually. Thank goodness I had nothing in my hands; she just broke on me. The most promising eyes you've ever seen, and that broken heart that only a daughter can have. A tired, terrified child who hadn't slept, hadn't eaten, and hadn't stopped worrying.
We made our way to my happy place within the building, the furnace room. That dark, musty, enormous room was her place of peace for the moment - a welcome salvation from her own nightmare. I didn't have to ask. She barely had to explain. Another broken soul. Another statistic to add to the ever growing epidemic here and elsewhere in these hills. Her hero and her provider had fallen prey to the numb feeling so many promising futures have crashed into.
She needed to collapse for just a second. She needed to tell the story to anyone. Not once did she question why; she has come to accept it as her normal. She is one of hundreds children who have stopped asking.
They know more than adults. They are typically silent, but they seek out peers who know their fear. They rely on each other. They will find an adult to tell. We will listen. Today was my turn. My colleagues share my concern and compassion. There are no state standards that tell us how to deal with this. Nothing in college prepared me for this engulfing hell that is slowly creeping through too many front doors.
And after a few minutes, she could exhale. I reminded her that her only job was to be a smart and fabulous girl. She desperately wants to fix what is broken.
Carefully, she resumed her daily routine. Algebra. Literature. Social Studies. Science. Language Arts. Library. Homework. She won't miss a step. The things she can make perfect will be.
Surely you know; I do pray in school...and especially in the furnace room.
