Open Your Eyes

Open House, for me, follows a predictable routine. First come the jitters where I question my decorating, organizing, and teaching abilities. Then the elbow grease starts flowing as I scrub my room with a focus that parallels a marine’s. Finally the short but exhausting 2 hours of talking to parent after parent takes place.

Usually, it’s a much ado about nothing. That is, until a former student comes back to visit.

There’s just something about witnessing the former ghosts of a gawky, impossibly immature 7^th graders develop into near adults that overwhelms. From the way they carry themselves to the thoughts they express, I can’t believe the bloom that has occurred over the years

Tonight, I found out that one of the biggest troublemakers in my 6^th period is the younger brother of a student I had 4 years ago. She came to me and I remembered her instantly because of her eyes. She has a pair of deep, luminous, compassionate eyes. She was telling me how she worried about him, while he mimicked and cursed her, telling her to shut up. When their mom stepped him, he spat out words of anger till I intervened and told him to leave, because no one should treat their family like that.

She described how her mom can’t control him and how their family has a lot of things going on right now. He’s on his way to being expelled, and she just wants to find a part time job right now to help her mom out. It hit me that while I have to “deal” with this student for only three more months, he will be a part of that family forever.

Hearing that formerly forlorn, scrawny girl saying more than I ever heard her say in a year amazed me. Her eyes had told the story all along, but I never understood it. While my heart was filled to see her as a responsible, caring 11^th grader, it was broken at the same time.