Mixed Emotions

Today I spent the afternoon at a visitation for a student at our middle school.  He would have been an eighth grader this year.  Mary went with me and we stayed for a couple of hours in case any of our students came.  There were a few students that were able to be there plus all of his cousins.  Some I know from school and others I know from when Meg was a student at Syracuse.  We talked with them and hopefully made a difference.

This boy died of carbon monoxide poisoning.  His parents had been running gas generators in their home as their electricity had been cut off from lack of payment.  There was a lot of debate online about the cause of his death and why they would have generators in the home when they are not supposed to be inside.  I stopped reading the arguments as it finally dawned on me.  It didn't matter what he died of, the fact is he was a product of his environment.  No amount of arguing or blame could change that.

A lot of our students are a product of their environment.  They cannot change their circumstance in life and at twelve many fall victim to their upbringing.  The older Heinisch boys have had friends in the same situation.  It made me realize that birth is just luck of the draw.  No one gets to chose where they start their life from.  We talk to students about rising above the challenges that they face everyday, but in all honesty so many of them cannot.

I spent the second to the last day of school with this quiet young man trying to help him catch up on all of the missing work from his math class.  He couldn't find his book, didn't know where his agenda was to figure out which assignments were missing and was overwhelmed just trying to come up with a solution to this problem.  School was challenging for him.  I understood that then, but not to the extent that ended his life.  For our school to make a difference in the lives of the students we have to figure out how to help them while they are in school.  If a child goes home to a house without electricity and to a family that is struggling just to get by, homework will never be their priority.  Instead of laying blame we need to come up with a solution that works.  I don't have the answer right now, but hope that his memory will keep this problem foremost in my mind when the next school year begins.