My Students...A Little Depressing

Unfortunately, most of my students really could care less about their education as middle school kids but as I was their teacher, I was given the opportunity to walk alongside some of them during the darkest times of their lives.  At times, God allowed me to speak truth and love into their lives and even pray with them.  Writing those dark times down has helped me to see how numb I had become...how REALLY screwed up our education system is...and will help me to not forget.  Here are the circumstances I can remember witnessing my students go through over the years:

• not having clean clothes or enough food to eat
• students left alone at night while parents gone at night "working"
• sleeping on floors or couches because there was no bedroom for them
• one student's uncle got into a car accident and put on life support...after a while had to be pulled off of life support because they couldn't afford him to stay in the hospital...so sad that she even was aware of this...but that was what she was told.
• foster homes
• sister dying of heart problems
• being the "parent" to younger brothers and sisters
• witnessing their friends get hit by the train and killed  (this happened more than once)
• one of my most favorite students ever had her mother murdered and was at school the next day - gang related- it is almost unbelievable all that she would tell me...she was around drugs and violence all the time and knew who had done this to her mom and exactly how it happened...she also happened to be a beautiful, super smart girl...straight As in school!  What a true gift from God for her to be smart and motivated!
• selling/smoking weed
• watching parents die of cancer
• mother murdered by her ex-boyfriend who had a restraining order- my student and her sister were home.  the sister hid in the closet and my student escaped through a window and called the police on her cell phone after she heard the shots.
• lost EVERYTHING in a fire. . .the house they rented was blown up by mother's ex-boyfriend who also had a restraining order...nothing was left...same student in the same school year who lost her uncle from a car accident.
• many runaways-this past year one of the girls was in and out of the Sanctuary. When I asked her if she was okay, she said anything was better than living with her mom and that her mom wasn't even a mom, she was never around and that she never gave her anything she needed. 
• one of my boys this year saw his mom in the front of his house having sex in the backseat of a car as he was being escorted home by the principal for inappropriate behavior...needless to say this boy has some major issues!
• caught one of my boys with alcohol and a knife in his backpack.
• one girl's mom was bi-polar, had strangers stay in her house, clearly strung out on drugs, and was a "white witch"...this intelligent, beautiful, and gifted student, was doing drugs, having sex in the 8th grade with boyfriends who were in the 20s, wondering the streets in Tower, had no curfew, back and forth to mom and dads, doing her own thing...she had also been sexually abused.
• lots of kids claiming colors...part of major gangs and constantly fighting in and out of school...these kids were for real and their families were even scarier.
• moms or dads in prison
• students try to commit suicide.  5150'd 
• students in and out of juvy...happened in my first few years of teaching more so
• students with ankle bracelets...for a variety of things...theft, rape, violence
• calling the police in a times of danger
• many kids who could not read...we are talking teenagers here!
• students every year living in motels or homeless
• students who were major "cutters"...when that was in
• students every year involved in multiple fights...even those who you wouldn't expect
• all kinds of abuse
• witness brother shot and killed inside front door of home

I wonder why these kids could give a rip about math or science or history!  As a teacher, you motivate, encourage, teach, entertain, but that can only go so far!  These are stories of only the students that were mine and teaching three different grade levels I often had some of the same students over the years.  There are so many things that happened to students there I don't even know about.  But one thing is for sure...their world is full of drugs, sex, abandonment, neglect, hate, murder, theft, prison, gangs and violence.  It is so sad, but this is their reality.  It is a whole other world! These little kids are just trying to survive...they need an education but what they really need is to experience love and security and to know that God can save them!  I am sad I am no longer one of the people that gets to speak into their lives and teach them life lessons, skills, morals, and values, but that is one of the reasons I didn't like teaching...I wished I could have done that kind of stuff more!