and then there are days you feel helpless...

Today was one of those days. My kids were great, my lessons went well, overall it was a bright Monday. However, something was missing.

The twins. These beautiful, identical, nine year old, girls have been moved around from school to school, and at nine years old have little to no language development in either english or spanish. They have been a part of my community of learners since around December. All throughout the day special ed teachers and ELL teachers are in and out working with these girls to give them back all of the education they have missed by being bounced around from place to place. Over the past month of February we were all starting to witness results. The girls were volunteering answers in class, socializing with other students, trying to work independently, and overall their individuality was shining through. Sometimes if I'm lucky, I will even get a hug or a poke to my stomach. It is those moments that I feel successful as a teacher.

Last Wednesday I pulled the girls aside to do some one on one work with them. We were reading about snow and I was loving watching their little brains search for answers. Towards the end of our one on one lesson, one of them asked me if we had school on Thursday. Call it intuition, but it was at that moment that I had this gut feeling that I wasn't ever going to see my twins again. Sure enough, Thursday rolled around and they didn't show. Friday came and went, and still no show. I thought about them all weekend, just hoping they had a stomach bug or were on an extended vacation. Today, still no sign. We sent an attendance officer out, and the house was empty. Their parents had snatched them and their older sister and fled yet again. These are the moments where I feel helpless.

I feel many emotions, sadness, anger, judgment. I am angry at their mother for doing this to them, and depriving them of their right to be educated. You see this cycle, this cycle where you know that they will probably be the same type of parent that is being modeled for them now. They won't have an adequate education so they won't be able to support their family, so they too will flee with their children from place to place in search for something. Being from a white, middle class, family it is so hard to grasp the selfishness of their parents, even though I have no idea how hard it must be.

I wonder if this will ever get any easier, will I ever feel hard when I know a child is being mistreated or being deprived of their right to at least learn one language? I feel so helpless. All I know to do is pray and hope that in some miraculous way God will intervene in a great way. That he will give them another teacher who will love them like I did and that they will open up in enough time to actually begin to learn.

The emotional pressure today wasn't over. Around lunch time I got an email from the secretary that one of my students dads was trying to contact me. This immediately raised a red flag because I knew this father was no longer in this child's life. This student of mine I am particularly fond of. We have had many deep conversations about her home life, and this man who is her biological father has been no father at all, the most fathering he ever did was donating his sperm. How is it possible that an 8 year old child has to endure so much pain, and I lived my life with very little? How can a man be so selfish to contact his daughter when he has hurt her enough? I am so afraid that he is going to do more than just call, I fear that he may try and actually see her. I feel this protective nature, that I have never really felt before.

There are times throughout my day where I feel as though this world is so cruel and I can't begin to understand it. Many of my kids have experienced more disappointment, more pain, more instability, more hatred in their 7-8 years of life than I ever have. It is these moments that I want to love them harder and deeper in this short time than is even possible. I merely pray for the faith for HIM to replace my feelings of weakness with overflowing love.