New Haven Independent

April 26, 2006

Yesterday during lunch, one of my advisees, Ruby, came into my classroom to say hello. She talked with me about her grades, about her baby brother who is about to turn a year old, and about her EMT class and college plans.
I know Ruby doesn’t live with her mother, but I remembered seeing her and her mother a week or so ago. Ruby came in and showed her mother off to everyone in the hallways: “Ms. Coggio, you remember my mom, don’t you?” She was proud and excited, a grin spread across her round face. Of course I remembered her mom. I had met her last spring at a presentation Ruby had done to a panel of teachers and friends. Her mother had just had a baby and she held him the whole time while Ruby was presenting.
In the two years I’ve known Ruby, I’ve made numerous phone calls home about her grades, about school information, whatever. I’ve always talked with her aunt. Her aunt is very attentive to Ruby’s needs and grades, and my experience with that family has always been a positive one. So yesterday when Ruby came into my room, I asked her why she lived with her aunt instead of with her mom.
“That’s a long story, Miss,” she said, her eyes darting to the side. She picked up and hugged the stuffed animal monkey I keep on my desk. “I love this little guy,” she said. She rolled the fur between her fingers making it stand up in little points.
I just stayed quiet, looking at her and understanding how difficult of a question this must have been for her. I was about to tell her that she didn’t have to answer, that I was just curious, when she came out with her reply.
“They took me away from her because…back then with my dad…back in the day, they both did a lot of drugs and my mom was a prostitute so I live with my aunt and now my mom has been clean for a long time and she just had that baby and now she’s going to college and she has a job at that place where people go when they have problems with drugs. I think she’s getting her masters? Yeah. I don’t know. But that baby, he’s crazy. He wouldn’t let me put him down this morning, crying all the time.”
So clearly Ruby didn’t want to talk about the past, and it was my fault for making her feel uncomfortable right then. I felt guilty. So because she’d brought the conversation back around to her baby brother, we continued talking about him for a little while.
When she left my room, I thought about how, again, I wasn’t prepared to hear what a student had told me. So many times this year, I’ve been stunned by my kids’ lives. I can’t relate to the kinds of things they grow up in and around; it makes me wonder if, to be a good teacher in a city, you need to be able to relate to the difficulties your students face. Relating to Brinn was no problem, since we’d both experienced the death of a parent. But relating to Martin, who is struggling with depression and an abusive family, or relating to Ramon, who is involved with gang activities, or relating to my student whose mother beats him to punish him for not performing academically… those things I just can’t grasp. And now Ruby—taken away from a family because of drug use and prostitution. I wonder if I would be a better teacher to all my kids if I understood exactly what their struggles felt like? And I wonder why a teacher coming from similar backgrounds matters in a classroom?
As I look ahead to the near future, to new schools in different countries, I wonder if the differences between me and my students will be even greater than they are now here in New Haven. Do geographic differences also matter in being able to reach students? I suppose I’ll never be fully prepared to hear my students’ deepest secrets when they choose to reveal them, and I’ll have to decide how to react the moment they are revealed.