Marching to His Own Beat
I found out one of our marching band students was habitually late to after-school practice of home games for a disturbing reason: His younger sister was constantly running away. He never told any of us and played it off like he was a big jerk. He took a lot of yelling from the marching instructor and various teachers for skipping class or being tardy.
It wasn’t until the principal called the parents about his “behavior” that we found out he was helping to look for his sister or prevent her from attempting to harm herself again. He wanted to be treated like every other student and not receive special treatment from us, so we kept up the charade of yelling at him for lateness, etc.
I was a student teacher during this time and would sit with him and just chat, which is where I found this out the first time. He cared about his sister dearly and would start to tear up talking about her. He wanted her “well.” The family had been working with the local police and working with family counseling to try and get the daughter well and safe.
This was taking a toll on the brother, who cared deeply about his sister, and he kind of got “forgotten” as all the attention was on ensuring she was safe and alive. The teachers in the school were very worried about him and did what they could to let him know he was welcome and safe and cared for at school, but they were still limited.
Most of these kids drove better cars than the teachers. I had a six-year-old Dodge Neon, and BMW and Audis lined the student parking lots. Most of the kids came from neighborhoods where the houses started at $600k. It was very middle-middle to upper-middle class kids and families. Basically, it was considered “scandalous” in this type of neighborhood for this thing to be happening, and this was mostly why it was kept “hush hush.”