Accepting The School Of Hard Knocks

Since I started teaching in August of 2007, I’ve had no fewer than six girls become pregnant and bear the babies. I also know of a few who’ve had abortions. When I was asked by the students during election season what the differences are between Republicans and Democrats, I used a real example of teenage pregnancy to get my point across:

Last winter, when one of my young students became pregnant, a fellow teacher (and a die hard liberal) asked me one day if I’d be willing to help pay for her neonatal vitamins with him. This teacher had found out that she was eating very poorly and didn’t even have a clue about what kinds of vitamins she should be taking for her baby. The baby’s father was locked up for some reason or another. The girl’s father was nowhere to be found and her mother appeared to have less of a clue than her daughter of how to healthfully care for the baby.

It was a disappointing and sad story, but I said I wouldn’t purchase her neonatal vitamins. That is the responsibility of any number of people in her life, but not me. The vast majority of students agreed that it wasn’t my job to pay for the neonatal vitamins. I didn’t mind when the teacher called me a heartless Republican one bit because I had the kids on my side.

As a teacher, I told my students, it’s my job and no one else’s to teach this young girl to read and write so she can someday teach her children to do the same. Similarly, once that young girl and the father made the decision to make a child, it became their responsibility and no one else’s.

Often, teachers are played by students in inner city schools because they think they can win the respect of kids by giving them stuff – food, prizes, good grades, rides home, and neonatal vitamins. What a teacher really needs to do to win respect – true respect – is teach the kids as though their lives depend on it. I believe their lives do.