Not So Immaculate Conceptions

Well, here we are at the end of the week.

This week has ended well, for the most part. I think that I am coming out of the disillusionment phase of things, where it becomes very, very clear that things are not going to always go according to plan, regardless of how well you have prepared.

Today's frustration comes in the form of two young ladies who have made possibly the worst decision they could in high school, and have delivered children. Leaving aside the ethics of the various options for handling an unplanned pregnancy, I received notice today that both of them have been placed on homebound instruction until nearly the last day before Christmas break. While neither were Rhodes scholars, both of them were good students, conscientious and hard-working in my class. Now, thanks to a single poor choice, they and their children are going to be placed at more disadvantage than their SES had already placed them. ARGH!

Now, without getting too far into pedagogy, and waxing philosophical, I really am finding this as a motivator as well. I became a teacher because I wanted to make a difference, a change in the world. I want to give my students the tools they need to consciously and deliberately navigate the myriad of choices before them, to wisely choose their path and gain access to the Discourses of Power which keep them at a constant disadvantage.

Many of my students, through the chance of their birth, find themselves permanently barred from positions of power, through only the way their speech, dress, or bearing. Too often, this is a generational issue, with generations of children born from poor choices, into socioeconomically disadvantaged families, only to repeat the cycle. While I haven't given up on these two young mothers, and will do everything in my power to prevent this choice from harming them, in truth, the damage may already be done. Children take time, resources, patience and energy that no teen mother has; full grown women find it challenging. As such, the best I can manage is triage.

However, they are only two. I have easily twenty times as many young ladies in my classes without children; maybe, these two, and the difficulties they face, can serve as motivation for the rest.