Grey Areas

Olivia almost killed herself last week.

Lines are fuzzy; areas are grey; values aren't always black and white.  I don't think I've ever been one hundred percent certain of what I should do with a student in any given situation.  There is always two sides, there is always twenty five factors to write into the equation, and when the equation finally balances out.... the answer isn't always right.

My students and their parents are involved in extremely codependent love hate relationships. My students see their parents as both friends and enemies, but they don't really see them as their parents. They will humiliate their parents, physically beat them, throw them under the bus, and then turn around and put a bullet in your head if you say anything remotely negative about them. It's completely messed up, but I still make sure I get in tight. I am connected with  every single student's closest adult family member by text or social media on a regular basis. 

Whoever said that an alternate student's parent doesn't want to be involved in their kids school experience is dead wrong. As a teacher I just have to open the dialogue in a non threatening way that doesn't throw gas on their social anxiety fire. They might hate the system but they are thirsty for positive influence and friendship...and they do want help. I go to their homes and eat dinner with them, I get invited to birthdays and baby showers. I am absolutely involved in their lives on so many levels.  However, this is risky business and requires an extreme level of balance.

First and foremost, I work for my students.  They are my priority and my focus. I am entwined throughout their entire world, and therefore, I get respect both as a family member and as a teacher. The super crazy part is that I have to balance this dedication to them with my relationship with their parents. It's almost an art.  Both my students and their parents have to have one hundred percent faith in my guidance without seeing me as taking the other one's side. I do succeed in sustaining this balance ...and the kind of influential power that I have because of it is extreme. I use it to literally change their lives.

Then shit gets grey.

I've been working with Olivia's (not real name) family for three years now. She has the scariest family I've ever known.  Guns, knives and wrench fights. Weekly police visits. Heads through walls, nightly fist fights. Eleven people in one house, three older brothers addicted to methamphetamine, two violent alcoholic parents.  An entire home running on violence and self-destruction, but the loyalty to each other is extreme. The love is abusive, but there is definitely a lot of love, and it is very strong.

My Olivia was sleeping with her phone and her money in her hand, under her pillow .  She was ready to grasp her valuables the moment a family member tried to steal them. The whole family  has always been very open about their situation, Olivia is a tough little girl and her defense is extreme bad language, constant threats, and an attitude problem that would instantly kill most people's grandmas. I've worked hard with Olivia and her mom, but as a society our backs were turned. Everybody just accepted that this was the family's reality and shook their heads at the horrendous situation. The police didn't intervene, except to stop the fights and throw one or two of them in jail for the night. This family needs so much help.  Perhaps the situation was too scary for anyone to take it on?  Too overwhelming to face?

Olivia messaged me last Friday night. She said that she needed to be removed from her home. She said she was worried that her mom might hurt herself if she leaves, she called herself her mom's rock, but she said she was having suicidal thoughts again and she just couldn't go on living in the violent prison that was her reality.  I told her I would get her out.

She was her moms rock. What an incredible weight.

It was at this moment that I realized how incredibly trapped Olivia was. She was the only one in the house not addicted, and it was up to her to keep everyone else alive.  Sleeping with a death grip on her money.  

Olivia survived the weekend in her room and took what little possessions she owns to school with her on Monday. I watched in tears as our community came to together for this child. Policemen, social workers, counselors, teachers, principals, and youth workers rallied around Olivia and created an effective plan for her immediate safety and well-being. The first policeman in the room gave Olivia a hug and said "You are an incredibly brave girl."  That cop knows her.  That cop had her back turned. Olivia is now protected and completely isolated from her family. I was proud of our community last Monday. 

Throughout this week I have seen a drastic positive change in Olivia. I pick her up for school everyday now. I realized, with shock, that I have never before heard her tell normal teenage fun stories until this week. She said to me yesterday, "My suicidal thoughts are gone.  I didn't realize that all it would take to get rid of them was leaving my house. " Profound.

I guess my question to myself is, what if Olivia had not messaged me last Friday night, might she have killed herself instead? Am I so intertwined in the lives of my students, in balancing the family equations that the situations have actually become math problems instead of human issues?

I don't really have answers...but what I do know is that these math problem are hard...really fucking hard.

I've been scared of writing a new blog entry for almost a year now. Honestly, sometimes life gets too tough and it's really not easy to write about it.  I had to take a step back, re-assess, re-create, and implement change. It's what good teachers do, but it definitely takes it's toll.

At the beginning of last school year I was super excited to begin a new adventure.  I was venturing out into new territory,  joining the movement in hip hop education that seemed to have swept the nation. I had my classroom re-modeled as a hip hop room.

I learned about rhythm and rhyme and the evolution of the rap world.  I read about Tupac and researched deejay equipment.  I recruited local hip hop artists and started encouraging my students to come out of their shells and get on the mic.  At first it was really incredible to watch their excitement.  The music drove them, the lyrics inspired them, I could see the passion in their eyes. I could feel the excitement vibrating through the air.

In no time at all I was lost in the lust, the inspiration, the lyrics....as well as the utter devastation and destruction that went along with it.


I watched in horror as the positive and empowering 'bubble' that I had spent years creating slowly started to deflate.  Over the next two months I struggled to keep my head above the water.  My intent had been to draw on the positive side of the hip hop industry.  The wordplays, successes and empowering lyrics.  However, I quickly realized that this was not the side of the hip hop industry that my students were interested in.  They couldn't get passed the negative side.  The drugs, the violence... the degration. I was being sucked dry.  All of my energy and all of my passion left my body.... and I crashed and burned.

I literally burnt out.  My flame went out.  I went home one Friday and I didn't go back. After fifteen years strong...I didn't show up on Monday....indefinitely.

It's funny because I can't even count on two hands how many people had told me over the course of ten years that I needed to start putting myself first."You need to slow down". "You have to put yourself before your students."  "You have to take steps to make sure your mental health is taken care of". Blah Blah Blah....that's all I heard.  I actually had no idea what healthy coping even was, and I spiraled out of control for a good 15 years. From addict husband to addict students.  I was so lost in crippling codependency that it wasn't even funny, and I thought I had it all under control.


I turned first to my doctor and a random therapist. After a while,  when I had finally kicked the pills that my doctor felt were necessary, I turned to mindful meditation. I was on a  journey to find the mental stability that I didn't know I didn't have.  Unfortunately, I had to push my students to the side.  I couldn't answer their calls or messages, or help them, or talk to them....I couldn't even think about them. When I finally succeeded in only focusing on me... I found myself.

I found myself.

My classroom this year is a far cry from the hip hop home of last September.  I have a lot of the same students, and I have a back room full of deejay equipment that still inspires them.  However, we begin our school days in a completely alternate existence.  It's a lamp lit room filled with sweet aromas and calming music.  We speak of our anxieties, our needs, our hopes, our dreams... and we meditate.  It's three weeks in and I'm already noticing massive changes in the focus and the disposition of my students.

This year my classroom is going to change the lives of so many people. I was changing lives before I even stopped to think about it. Obviously the more I understand about my own mental health...the more I can share, change, mold, and inspire.   I am completely committed to practicing mindfulness and sharing the power of focus with my students.

I don't think that I've ever had it exactly right (the practice of positively influencing young minds I mean), but I think that for now, I'm the closest I've ever been.....and that's pretty damn close.