Nurturing the Mind Begins at Home : A teacher’s job is to spark young students. But when parents send so many ‘broken’ children to school, it’s a miracle any of them are successful.

On May 26, The Times reported the statewide high school dropout rates. I have the dubious honor to have taught at Sylmar High School (highest dropout rate in the state) and am currently teaching at Monroe High School (second highest dropout rate in the district).

During that week, in addition to my normal teaching duties, I had the following student contact:

Monday: Four students over the weekend had attended the funeral of a dear friend who had been shot the weekend before. We spent part of the period talking about grief, loss and separation.

Tuesday: An enraged woman came to school threatening to file assault and battery charges against her stepson, my student, for getting into a fight with her son. The dean and I talked with the 16-year-old to warn him what to expect when he got home. He said his alcoholic father and stepmother abuse him. He had bruises on his back from a kicking by his stepmother. (I don’t know what follow-up the school pursued with authorities.)

Wednesday: A student, illiterate in both Spanish and English, for whom I was providing small-group instruction, was involved in a fight and sent back to Juvenile Hall. He had violated his probation for grand theft auto by hanging around with gangs. He has been abandoned by his mother and was living with an alcoholic father who does not care where he is.

Friday was a full day.

During the morning snack period, I met with a student who had been a joy until Monday and who had been cutting class since then. Her father had gone to the grocery store on Sunday and had not returned home. She said he had been shot, under circumstances that I never fully understood, and was in critical condition. She hadn’t told anybody but was acting out in class.

During fourth period, another student asked to speak with me privately. She showed me her positive pregnancy test results. She hadn’t yet told her parents, who gamble locally and go to Las Vegas every other weekend, but wanted to talk to me. She is 16 years old. She already has a 10-month-old daughter who lives with an aunt and an alcoholic uncle, known for beating his five children.

What’s my point? When a community sends “broken children” to school in such great numbers, it is a miracle any are successful.

In sixth period, I talked about the dropout rate and its relationship to parents’ involvement. I did an impromptu survey, asking my 10th-grade students to write down their average grades over the past year and to evaluate their parents. They handed in their papers anonymously. This is a sample (reported as written):

“My grades are usualy C, D or F. My parent whom I live with is unsuportive.”

“My grades are usually low Cs. I’m now getting a fail and a D. My dad is an alcoholic--I don’t live up to my family’s expectations, especially my step mom. And I’m always getting yelled at for what I think is nothing.”

“My grades are usualy C average and it could be better but my life is a disaster and I have no place to be alone.”

“My grades usualy are D-C-F. My parents are drugies and are very abusive. I hate my family.”

On the other side:

“My grades are usually BEE, CEE. My mother is no nice. She is a greate mothe and I don’t have father he died when a was 5 years old.”

“My grade are usually (A-B). I have a solid family.”

“My grades are A B. I consider my parents as a very good example to me, they are very good. Don’t smoke or drink. We are a happy family!”

“My grades are usually B’s, C’s and sometimes A’s. I have a very supportive family thank god. My dad was an alcoholic. He didn’t live with us for like a year cause he was arrested. But thank god he doesn’t drink anymore and also doesn’t smoke.”

“My grades: A/B. Family--mom: supportive. ‘dad’: not around ‘cuz he’s not allowed to (restraining order) for child molestation.”

“I have an A+-B+. I don’t have a mother, my dad just is not supportive. I learn to live by myself, or managing myself.”

In a poem called “I’m a Teacher,” J. W. Schlatter writes: “Throughout the course of the day I have been called upon to be an actor, friend, nurse and doctor, coach, finder of lost articles, money lender, taxi driver, psychologist, substitute parent, salesman, politician, and a keeper of faith.”

I can’t fix broken children. By age 7 the child is using adults as models. Then the peers take over.

Parents, it does matter whom your child hangs around with, what your child wears to school and, most importantly, what kind of an example you set.

When will parents be held accountable for the dropout rate? Why not print the names of parents whose children drop out of school instead of just the schools they drop out of?