Love and Support for All Students
I recently received an email from a friend teaching English in China. The subject line was “Bad Day,” and my friend wrote about all the difficulties of teaching in a tightly structured, test-driven school – how the intensity and pressure drove one of her students to take his own life. “I miss the USA with all its imperfections and people crying out about one thing or another,” she wrote, “fighting with all their might for a cause just because they can.”
This poster is on display in New Orleans public schools, where nurses are in short supply.
I wanted to write back with encouraging words – something comforting and patriotic. But I found myself writing about all the hurt and oppression I’ve seen in New Orleans schools. Her email came during a particularly intense work week – the kind where I am so grateful to live with nine upbeat, loving women, ready to engage in deep conversation or dance around to music, whatever someone coming home from a hard day needs. That week, while trying to navigate the counseling program at a public school, I learned more about district-wide budget cuts put into effect for the 2009-10 school year. As a result of these budget cuts, many local public schools operate without a fulltime nurse, social worker or guidance counselor, leaving students in need of critical support with few resources.
Through my work with Rethink, I hear children share incredibly heavy stories. I assumed, perhaps naively, that each school had (at least!) one trained professional working fulltime to provide these children with support. In reality, counselors and social workers often are assigned to multiple schools and responsible for hundreds of students; they spend one or two days a week in each school, working hard to balance massive, impossible caseloads. Under such circumstances, even the most caring and talented support staff cannot fully connect with and provide support for every student referred to their offices.
This knowledge got me thinking about all the small things I took for granted in school – something as simple as a registered nurse with a calm, soothing voice leading me to a quiet room when I felt sick. My middle school had a counselor to help students work through even the most minor preteen drama, to field complaints about backstabbing ex-best friends and provide comfort after a first breakup. (Of course, the counselor also dealt with real trauma.) I never recognized how fortunate I was to have certain support networks in place. In-school care was a basic right; I passed the nurse and counselor offices without a second thought.
A school nurse, counselor and social worker are not the added bonuses one might expect from an expensive private school. Every child deserves to attend a school with trained, fulltime support staff. Children should not have to sit through school in pain because there is no nurse (or other authorized adult) to distribute medicine, pull out splinters. They should not have to go through trauma alone, without someone to comfort and counsel themThis huge hole in the New Orleans public education system is enraging and discouraging. Yet the students I’ve met through Rethink provide a real sense of hope. These students spend much of the school day feeling like prisoners. They pass through metal detectors, are body searched by security guards, receive severe punishments for small infractions. They spend class time preparing for high-stakes tests that do not measure their true brilliance and imaginativeness; they eat cold, hard, unidentifiable food, often squeezed out of plastic bags right in front of their eyes. They are consistently treated without respect or dignity. Yet in Rethink Club they often display tremendous compassion – the capacity to love, support and care for each other in moments of serious pain.
Rethink Clubs mostly meet near the end of the school day, during enrichment period; students come carrying and reacting to all the stresses of the day. One group in particular almost always bursts into the room with wild energy – amped up and unable to sit still, focused on something that happened outside of Club. Yet when an activity or exercise prompts someone to share a heavy story, to reveal a dark part of her life, the room goes quiet and the group comes together to provide support and comfort. Students squeeze each others’ shoulders, appreciate each others’ strengths. They share their own stories, so that whoever is hurting doesn’t have to feel achingly alone.
For me, some of the hardest and most beautiful moments this year have taken place sitting in a circle, creaking desk chairs pulled in close, as students create a safe, loving space for their classmates to share stories. I’m in awe of students’ capacity to love when so much about their school is unloving. (This is not to say that the adults working in schools don’t care deeply about their students; most people I’ve met are extremely committed to their work and to their students. Rather, a host of systemic problems contribute to the unloving, oppressive environment in many public schools.) But as loving and compassionate as students may be, small moments of support are not enough to sustain children - most of whom have undergone serious trauma, both during and since Katrina. Budgets are tight, the economy is tough, but every child needs – and deserves – ongoing support.
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