Damage Assessment

In the quiet and relative calm that is Friday night, I can see the textbook psychology of the kids I work with unfold with ease. As I was cleaning my room this afternoon after a long week of fighting the good fight that is fourth grade, I happened on a piece of note paper face down on the floor. On it was scrawled the legend "What I Wanted," above a crooked house and a pair of stick figures labeled "Mom and Dad," and a smaller stick figure named "Me." There were a number of hearts floating in the air around this little family. Below this was another title: "What I Got." Here there was a fiercely drawn set of bars with "Dad" inside, this was "Prison." Outside, "Mom" and "Me" were crying. There were more tears below than hearts above.
I know who made the drawing, and I know that we make efforts to reach out to this girl at school, and have for as long as she has been with us. The challenge is trying to do anything that doesn't seem like a band-aid while I continue to try and teach pronouns and antecedents, fractions and decimals, California history and where to line up for lunch. I know how fragile this girl is, and there are moments when I forget to imagine how terrible the fear and sadness of a ten year old girl who misses her father. I want to take fifteen minutes and talk with her, to try and make her feel better, if only for a little while.
And the other twenty-three kids? What about them? What about their stories and their heartaches and woes? Fifteen minutes for every kid? That would be the six hours I get to see them every day. So I hold on to that scrap of paper to remind myself that they all have stories, and so do I. We'll get to them all, as we have time.