Reading Between The Lines
School counselor here. My second year on the job, I had a courageous student who suffered from a rare, debilitating disease. She didn’t have many friends because she was never in school and always in hospitals. She loved reading, though. She brought books with her to the hospital. Unfortunately, due to the disease, her eyesight was now deteriorating, and she knew that she would eventually go blind.
She cried in my office that she would miss her books, and didn’t want to be alone in the dark. I couldn’t help crying with her. She transitioned to using audiobooks on her iPod. This was roughly fourteen years ago, a time when middle schoolers didn’t have smartphones. A year later, she passed. My hope is that she’s at peace, reading all the books she wants with other friends she’s met.
If I can pass on anything to all you educators out there, it’s this little piece of advice that I received from a principal many years ago: “Be kind to your students at all times. The seven hours that they have in school may be the best seven hours of their day. We are never certain what goes on in their homes.” He was absolutely right.