Silence Is Golden
I had a student who would not acknowledge my presence at all. He was absolutely silent, so I guess what depressed me was his lack of engagement—until I found out the devastating reason why. Basically, the boy was in my sophomore-level English 10 Honors class several years ago. He was quiet and chose to sit with his back to me every single day.
I tried to get him to talk to me a few times, but he was so shy and withdrawn that I stopped because I didn’t want to make him feel more awkward and uncomfortable than he obviously already did. He was a middle-of-the-road student: When he turned in homework it was often half done. His classwork was sloppy and I usually sensed that he wasn’t paying attention at all.
That year, I had a rough group of classes. There were student fights breaking out, a girl was beaten up by her boyfriend and almost killed, a very tall male student threatened me—and my admin wasn’t very supportive. So, a lot of the time, I was hanging on by the skin of my teeth. I allowed the young man to sit quietly in the back of the class because he wasn’t causing any problems. When we got to the essay unit, I was completely gobsmacked by his paper.
It was the most well-written and analytical essay I had seen in a long time. I wrote him some sort of encouraging comment and started to pay closer attention to him in a very low-key kind of way. Well, fast forward to his junior year. I asked if he would join the school newspaper, for which I was the advisor. He did and, over the course of the next two years, I watched him change and develop into a leader in the class.
He came out of his shell and got really involved in the paper—even learning how to program and do layouts, etc. When he graduated, he wrote a note in my yearbook that I will never forget for the rest of my life. The note was all about how, back when he was a sophomore, he was being jumped into a gang and it was my encouragement that gave him the courage to get out of that lifestyle. He joined the Navy and is currently in the Ph.D. program at Duke University.
I still talk to him once in a while and he’s doing amazing. He is both married now and happy with his life.