Believe!

"One of the scholarship recipients from our younger grades was new to St. Matthew’s.  We knew very little about her when she was selected, other than there was extreme financial need and a strong desire from her mother to send her to a Catholic school. 

When I first read her records I was scared of the challenge that lay ahead of our school.  At her previous school she often had to leave the class for behavioral problems and her mother was very honest to me in saying, that she was at the school at least once a week for problems they were having, and that her home life was often unstable due to problems with the child’s Father. 

We took on the challenge, because we were hopeful our small Catholic school environment could make a difference.  We had her meet regularly with our school social worker and her teacher worked hard to create positive interactions with the student and her classmates. 

The child was slow to believe that she could be a positive, happy person.  She was always intelligent, but this year she grew into a confident, positive, leader.  At one point her mother stopped in - she was amazed at how well the school year was going and almost seemed hesitant to believe it was true. 

This past week the school social worker and I were discussing the year and the success we had.  When I brought up this child, the social worker had the biggest smile on her face and said “she is in such a good place right now, think of how much she has grown.  If that is all we had done all year, I would consider it a great year."

Encourage!

"In my 3rd year of teaching I was meeting with a child and her grandmother at conferences in the spring of her 8th grade year.  The child was raised primarily by her grandmother and occasionally by her mother as she entered her life from time to time before leaving again.  Her father was never part of her life. 

During conferences, I mentioned college as part of her future plans.  The grandmother was surprised and said, “ you don’t think she could go to college?”  We continued for several more minutes discussing the high quality student her granddaughter was and how there was no doubt in my mind that she was “college material.”

A little over 4 years later that child stopped by school.  She had just finished her last day of high school and she made a point to come back to her grade school – to say hi to some of her former teachers and to share her future plans to attend a 4 year college the following year. 

As we were talking I couldn’t help but flash back to 4 years earlier and the conversation we had at conferences.  Before she left I had to ask – “do you remember your last conference here when you were an 8th grader?”  She replied very casually and confidently – “Yeah, we talked about going to college.  Grandma remembers it too."