I had a student my first year teaching named Adeja. I have taught many students over the years, a couple hundred perhaps but this young lady was the brightest. I feel like I’ve crossed paths with some pretty gifted students. This young lady, I mean all around; reading, writing, and arithmetic she was stellar. Not only that she was just the sweetest young lady around. She had the respect of all her peers; even students who were habitual line steppers respected her scowl. With all of this going for her one would expect that she came from a nice, middle class, two parent home, except she didn’t. Her father died when she was just two. Her mother, unable to provide adequately for Adeja and her two siblings, sent her to live with her grandmother. Her grandmother lost her home during the housing crisis at the beginning of this decade. They ended up living at the Durham Rescue Mission and that’s when I met her in 2012 as a fifth grader.

In Adeja’s circumstance it would have been easy to just give up on life and resign oneself to disappointment. This young lady didn’t, she found something to cling to and she wouldn’t let it go. That something was school and her education. She once told me she loathed leaving school (I recall she used the word “loathed” because I remember thinking at the time, “how does a ten year old know how to use that word properly?” Then I realized this young lady was reading Pride and Prejudice at the time) because there wasn’t much to do at the rescue mission. That school building was her sanctuary. From 7:30am-2:30pm she might as well have been halfway across the world.

This wasn’t the greatest school in the world according to its testing data. Actually it was one of the worst elementary schools in the state. Both reading and math proficiency were below 15%. Perhaps not coincidentally, 94% of the students receive free or reduced lunch at the school. So the question remains how can students living in adverse circumstances rise up out of those conditions? Perhaps more importantly what is my role as the educator in that process?

I still often wonder, how can this young lady who had so little in the way of what most people think matters, have so much of what is missing in education: desire, motivation and just pure gumption. All of this started somewhere. Somewhere in her educational journey a teacher, another adult, perhaps one of her peers instilled the joy of learning in her.

Personally, Adeja’s story underscores the importance of schools for students living in poverty. An education is a way out the madness, the insanity, and the sheer uncertainty that these students endure when they leave the school building. Oftentimes students living in poverty bring with them into the school building the disorder that is associated with their lives. In turn school personnel are often tasked with providing remedies and it is a daunting task. Regularly I feel like too many expectations are placed on teachers. Eventually teachers feel burdened with all of these expectations. You’re expected to keep students engaged, be their surrogate parent, dramatically raise their achievement levels, and be the beacon of hope for students. Eventually with all of these expectations placed on teachers, they become burned out. They don’t feel like they are making a difference, they’re just treading water. I’ll address this in my next blog post. I’ll be reading this study (http://tinyurl.com/hqvme69) to gather some ideas.