Losing Patients

Teaching in public schools is a lot like working in a hospital. Having worked in hospital ICU's and ER's, I can say that the stress is very similar to teaching - you are working to save a human life. You pour your heart and soul and sweat into doing everything you can to keep someone alive, and sometimes everything isn't enough. Sometimes there is nothing you can do, and it doesn't matter how much you care or how much you know. Those are exhausting days, because you are not only tired physically and mentally - you are also tired emotionally. Your soul is tired.

But there are moments that make it all worth while. Seeing a baby come off of life support and start to breath on her own is thrilling. It's an emotional high that makes all the stress, discouragement, tedium, and tragedy disappear - at least until the next crisis.

Teaching is like that, but on a much longer time scale. Instead of the minutes that matter in an emergency room, sometimes you struggle over the course of four years. And sometimes you lose.

Today was one of those days. Today I found out that another one of my students was pregnant. That makes four in less than a semester. I found out at lunch, and I felt sick the rest of the day. I never know what to say to these girls when they tell me the news. All that runs through my mind as I stare at them standing in front of me is that they just ruined their life, and the life of their child. All of my work and effort to try and get them out of this school and out of this town so that they can get an education has been for nothing. If we're lucky, they might finish high school. If we're really lucky, she might even make it through college. But the overwhelming odds are that she'll never go on - and neither will her child.

There are people in this town that know their great great grand-daughter. They had a baby when they were 15, who then had a baby when they were 15, who repeated the pattern until you have a 60 year old woman holding her great great grand-daughter. And they all live in ignorance and poverty in the middle-of-nowhere, New Mexico.

Perhaps I sound depressed and over-dramatic. Yes to the first, but not the latter. Though I don't usually talk about such grim realities unless I am feeling defeated. Tomorrow will be better. I'll continue the battle, and I'll keep hoping that my book has managed to help at least one girl and prevent at least one tragedy, because the success of others is what teachers live for.