As a volunteer at the shelter's preschool, I don't often interact with the parents. I can match them with their children and observe them during the morning hand-off, but unless a kid is sick or seriously misbehaving, I don't have much insight into the home lives of these kids.
That's the way I like it, because I can just deal with the kids for who they are. While it's great to see the caring, involved parents, it's disturbing to see the children in dysfunctional families.
Yesterday, our shelter was in the news because a parent allegedly assaulted her two-year-old over the weekend. That's an unusual situation in a safe, caring place, but not entirely surprising. The families referred here are under stress; some of them are broken; and not all the parents have learned good parenting skills.
Today, for example, as I came to work, a woman was standing blocking the entrance gate. She had two girls, one listless and crusty-eyed in a stroller. I had to weave around her to get through the metal detector.
Later, I learned she was the mother of a third girl I met in for the first time today in our classroom, a happy blonde with Pipi Longstocking braids. She asked me to draw a tulip for her, then she proceeded to color over the stem with a dark crayon, putting the entire stem under the dirt.
Midway into the morning, after I finished supervising handwashing, I found her crying unconsolably in the arms of a teacher. Usually, we work through these I-miss-my-mommy meltdowns, and the kids return to normal, but her distress was exceptional and continued through the entire snack time. She insisted that she had to go find her mother, and the teachers were concerned if we didn't keep a close watch on her, she might try to slip out of the room.
One teacher decided to calm her by calling the girl's mother, so the mom could reassure her she would return to pick her up at the end of the day. This backfired, however, when the mother came down to the classroom and retrieved the girl.
"She cries like this when she wants something," said the mother. "That's how she gets her way."
Then she took her daughter out of class.
Great. For today's lesson, let's learn how you get out of school.
Later, through the gym window, I saw the crusty-eyed girl outside being held by her father, who was talking on a cell phone and smoking a cigarette right in the girl's face. The mom was also having a smoke.
The girl from my class and her other sister were not to be seen. Possibly they were alone in their room.
We hear again and again how the trouble with schools is the quality of the teachers. If we want to improve student achievement, goes the argument, we need to fire poor teachers and attract better ones to the profession.
I suspect the people pushing that line the hardest have no more classroom experience than reading "The Pet Goat" during a photo op.
The teachers I know here do have insight into the family situations and do care what happens to the kids, but they have limited ability to affect the environment the children live in.
This sounds like a platitude or an excuse, until you see some of it for yourself.
