Different Country, Same Problems
A kid who didn’t have food at home once said to me: “I am hungry. How much time until the break?” Another kid once said: “I will quit school and become a criminal when I grow up, because swiping stuff is the only thing I’m good at.” This guy was a teenager who had a very bad situation at home. I was a teacher at a public school in a poor region in São Paulo, Brazil. Many of the children had serious problems at home.
Many of them didn’t have a father, lived in small houses in the slums, etc. More than one of them didn’t have any food at home. All the teachers knew about it. One kid’s mother had a lot of problems and all his siblings were in the same situation, so every day the main thing on his mind was eating. He talked about it all the time.
The second teenager I mentioned apparently had food, but there was a history of violence in his family and he had already committed serious offenses and he probably felt empowered by them, because he apparently felt bad and stupid in regular legitimate activities such as his studies. I wasn’t the regular teacher, I was part of an NGO that offered specific attention to students in need.
So every day, I would go to their regular class and pick about six or ten of them to have special classes with me. At the beginning, they felt really bad and other students were calling them stupid for having these side classes with me. But by the end of the program, many students wanted to join us and our students felt much more confident in general. So it was great. But, sadly, we didn’t solve the hunger problem and this teenager was never convinced that he had a future out of crime…