five
Yes. my posts will all be about work. i guess it is kind of a record because my short term memory is not so hot. so this way, i can keep track. of what…i don’t know. why…i don’t know.
my day today was wacky. really wacky. firsts, one of my students tells me this intense, insane story. she was brought over to this country from cameroon by one of her father’s friends. supposidly she was supposed to live here and go to school in exchange for some babysitting and light housework. however, for the next seven years, she was locked inside the house, made to sleep on the floor, periodically beaten, and ordered to babysit/houseclean, etc. this is what is known as "trafficking". so, when she was 17, she ran away, found her way to some catholic church, where they sent her to the catholic charities parish support coodinator who referred her to legal affairs, who helped her bring the whole thing to court. so, in the end, the woman who had kept her captive ended up getting 17 years of jail time. don’t believe me, do a google search on evelyn chumbow. apparently this thing was all over the news. in the meantime, this is my student, sitting here and telling me this story and in the next sentence, wondering where she should go shopping.
next, one of my older students comes in and gives me a little talk about the vietnam war and black people. he is a vet with serious ptsd. give him one small opening, and he runs with it….all the way back to 1968.
next, one of my students tells me that i really need to be locking my hair, and he would be happy to show me. he is my crazy student. the one who was masterbating in my office before i got up the nerve to ask him to stop. now he stands up instead of sitting in the chair…an intentional move so that he will not be tempted. yup. totally nuts. he got his ged over the summer. i worked with him for a solid six weeks. he lives in one of our homeless shelters. he is simultaneously one of the smartest people i have ever met and one of the most paranoid/schitzophrenic people i have ever met. needless to say, i politely turned down his offer. incidently, he has been growing his hair for 10 years. but not in the manicured style that is so popular with todays youth. nope. this is more the unkempt straight-up natural look…
what else about today. hmm. one of my students was at school for ten hours except for the 45 minutes where he stepped out to make a court appearence for a shooting incident from two years back (where he was actually the victim…i saw the scars myself).
another student showed up at MY office at 8:30 in the morning. i was not there of course. why was she there, i wondered? turns out, she thought (for whatever reason) that i was the one who would be giving her the GED test. yes. this is what i am dealing with. i called and left two messages about where and when her test was, and somehow only the "when" stuck. gotta love it.
gotta love it all.
