During senior year I didn’t have much to look forward to. I mean let’s face it, to be bluntly honest, senior year sucked. By the end of senior year I was ostracized by a lot of my friends and I felt like my existence in those walls didn’t really matter. But the one thing I looked forward to was student teaching. My whole senior year I spent inside a fifth grade classroom teaching. I taught many things and it was there that I felt I mattered. And I mattered because some of those kids were broken. Bailey was no exception.
How to describe my friend Bailey… Bailey is a blessing. Bailey is also trouble. And working at that school, I knew Bailey had a reputation---a very bad reputation. None of the teachers liked him. They referred to him as “that little monster.” The kids weren’t very fond of him. No one liked him… but… I liked him. I think these individuals spent so much time dwelling on all the bad choices Bailey made that they couldn’t see what I saw. And when I heard someone, a teacher, a student, saying bad things about Bailey, I was quick to put them in their place. Bailey, at fifth grade, would come to school stoned. He would smell like pot. He would get into massive amounts of trouble out of class. His mother would tell everyone who was willing to listen how she hated him… how he was a bad kid… how he would give us all trouble… she would even say it in front of him, like it was nothing. And every single time I heard these things I wanted to shout, “Don’t you see what you’re doing?! Don’t you understand?!” Bailey wasn’t doing all these things because he was trying to be a terrible kid; Bailey was doing these things so she would care. See, Bailey would always get into trouble outside of class, but never inside of class because he knew. He knew how disappointed Mrs. Lueders and I would be if he got into trouble on our watch. He knew we cared. He knew we were sad when he got into trouble.
Every Friday, right before I left I would lean down to him and ask him to be safe. And to be careful. And to stay out of trouble. And he would give me his little lopsided, one-of-a-kind Bailey smile and would say “Okay Miss Mandy” and I knew that he would try very hard to stay out of trouble.
The problem with teaching is… you can have a kid like Bailey. And you can see the wonderful, funny, sweet Bailey that is in his heart, and you also know of the Bad Bailey who makes dumb choices. And you can look at Sweet Bailey and see that he was hurt and that he was broken but you can never, ever fix that Bailey. You can stick a Band-aid on him and you can cheer him on with his successes and you can let him know when he let you down… and you can protect him for 6 and ½ hours, five days a week. But the truth is, by 3:45 p.m. you have to let him go. You have to send him back to a father who will hit him and to a mother who detests his very existence. You have to send him out into the harsh cruel world. You can’t keep him safe for the rest of the time.
And even though I haven’t seen Bailey in two years… I hear of him. And today I heard of him. And while finally, Bailey’s Dad is divorced from his mom… Bailey’s mom is still the “encourager” she has always been… and Bailey is still slipping. He’s suspended from school, as a 7th grader, for smoking pot in the school parking lot. He has to be a Mother to his baby sibling. He has to be a man when he can’t even be a boy. And he is kicked to the curb because everyone focuses on the bad decisions Bailey makes. And it still breaks my heart. It still makes me cry.
I wish I could take him home. I love Bailey. I love those rare smiles that I can get out of him. I love the thought he puts into things. I love the way he can make me laugh. And I love the kid that I met on my first day student teaching when they all went around the classroom stating their name and a fact about them (“I’m Bailey… and um… I like shoes?” I wish I could take him home. I wish he could be mine to keep. I wish I could wrap him in pillows and bubble wrap and stick a helmet on him to shelter him from all of life’s blunders. I wish I could be there for him. I wish I could say “Bailey, don’t do this. Don’t screw this up. I care. You need someone to care? I care.” I also wish I wasn’t so upset. I wish that I could be callused. I wish I could hurt less. I wish I could stop my heart from breaking every time Bailey chooses the wrong direction. I wish that every time I go out somewhere I could stop searching for Bailey on the streets. But I can’t.
And even though it’s been two years… I look for him in every little boy with glasses. I search their faces hoping to find him. I scour the newspaper everyday praying I wouldn’t find his name. I spend hours on end wondering about him.
And every time I wonder why I stick myself through horrible classes, spending a countless amount of money on classes I probably wouldn’t ever want to spend time on (like Lingusistics… I think of two children. I think of Devin, my speedy friend, in his wheelchair. And I think of Bailey. I think of Devin because his class was the first class I ever taught. I taught math. I hated it. I had no clue what I was doing and I was searching for how to teach it… and Devin would be sitting there… just smiling. And every time I feel I need a little encouragement, I pull out my M&M notebook I received on the last day of my teaching in Devin’s class… It’s a notebook I stuck in my shoebox labeled “Memory Box 2006.” What’s special about a notebook? All my students wrote in it. And when I feel I need a little encouragement, I look at what Devin wrote. Something along the lines of… “Thanks for the help! Your Speedy Friend, Devin.” But when I wonder why I want to teach. When I wonder why I stick myself through all of this… I think of Bailey.
I’m not supposed to have favorites. But Bailey is my favorite. I made a difference. I know because Bailey wouldn’t get into as much trouble over the weekends. I know because when I was in class and there was a sub, Bailey would be an angel for that whole two hours. And you can bet that if I pull out my notebook to think of Devin and his encouragement, I have something to make me think of Bailey. It’s not in a box.
The last day of school for that class, I went. I stayed the whole day. And I left crying. I cried for hours. I don’t know why God let a heart love so much, just so it could break, but He did. When I went home that day, I was carrying my students’ gifts. Every single one of them constructed a rose out of paper. There was green construction paper that formed an oval that split in half, and with a brad, the oval was attached to a printed rose. And everyone had written “My love is blooming for you, Miss Mandy.” And each had their name on it. And each rose was colored by the creator. And each was unique. I put them all in a new shoebox labeled “Memory Box 2007”--- the last of the memory boxes. I didn’t put Bailey’s rose away. I stuck it on my wall. I know it sounds stupid. But I kept it out for a few reasons. The first reason was that I spent the last semester teaching art. And I observed every kid doing art. Bailey’s art was amazing. It was amazing because he understood art. He knew that art was something you stuck your heart into. He would spend hours on my art projects---making everything perfect. And that rose must have taken him years to color. He made it a solid red with colored pencils. And I knew he thought of me when he used them because I really liked his colored pencils. They were erasable, and he let me use them because I was excited that they actually erased. And I knew he thought of me, because he used his favorite color. And his words were just meaningless words because I knew he meant them.
See, the difference between Devin and Bailey is that I don’t have to worry about Devin. Devin isn’t the kid I loose sleep over. I don’t have to wonder if Devin is out on the streets by himself. I don’t have to concern myself with whether or not Devin has a place to sleep or food to eat. I don’t have to worry about Devin, because Devin is set. Devin is on a good path. Devin knows what he wants, and he’ll get it. Devin will graduate from Middle School and High School, and Devin will go to college and study something like teaching, and then he’ll go and be successful doing what he’s always done. Bailey on the other hand… He’s the kid I worry about. He’s the kid who might drop out. He’s the kid that will get in trouble that I can’t fix. And he’s the one that I can no longer protect. I can’t tell the police officers that he has a sucky childhood with horrible uncaring parents. I can’t tell them that he only wants his mom to care. I can’t tell them that he’ll work harder. I can’t make Bailey make the right decisions. That kills me. I can only hear about his trouble and his pain and that just really ticks me off.
And it might be silly to you. And you might be wondering why I care so much. And I’ll tell you. I wasn’t just Bailey’s teacher. I was Bailey’s friend. I was his cheerleader. I was his counselor. At times, I was his bad guy. I was his mother… and he was my son. Because when you are a good teacher, teaching isn’t the only thing you do. And in Bailey’s case, I was a person that cared.
A couple of weeks ago, I thought about putting away Bailey’s rose. It’s starting to fade. But tonight, as I’m sitting here with a soggy tissue on my lap… I’m glad I didn’t. There was more than one reason that rose is on my wall, remember? I also stuck it up there as a reminder. A reminder that one person can make a difference---That I made a difference. And that Bailey made a difference. Bailey made me different. Bailey taught me that even if a kid seems like a terrible, good-for-nothing, never-going-amount-to-anything kid… doesn’t mean that that idea is reflected in that kid’s heart. I know that all the bad things Bailey does… And all the blunders I hear about… I know that the Bailey I know, the Sweet Bailey, is there. I’d like to think that things will look up for him. I’d like to think that there’s a happy ending for him. But it’s times like these that I want to give up… because there’s only so much I can do. But I know I can’t give up. Because there’s a lot of Baileys out there. And there will be another Bailey who will need me more than this Bailey. And so that’s why I teach. And that’s why I don’t quit. And Bailey is the reason I sit through Linguistics. Because teachers make a difference and because there’s a Bailey counting on me… and I’m counting on Bailey. And, so… That rose will stay up. And when I get into a classroom, that rose will hang. Because one day, just like that rose, Bailey’s going to bloom… and when he does, the man he’ll turn into is going to be the Sweet Bailey I saw every time I got that rare smile. And I want to remember that Bailey, so that when a New Bailey comes along, I can point up at that rose and I can repeat this.
I can’t un-break my broken students. I can’t sew up their tears, I can’t paint over their mistakes, and I can’t paste them into a pretty picture. But I can pray for them, and I can hope for their successes. And I can cry over their mishaps with them. And maybe at the end of the day, my heart will be breaking, but I’ll know that it breaks because this is what God hard-wired my heart to love. And it’s meant to break, because that’s what makes me good at what I do. And tonight, before I go to sleep, I’ll say another pray for Bailey and I’ll stare at the ceiling and wonder if my baby is okay. And I’ll wonder where he’ll be tonight. And I’ll wonder if he’ll show up sober to his sanctuary away from a messed up home. And tomorrow, when I go to school, I’ll search and search to see if I see him. And when I read the paper, I will still scour over every article looking for a mentioning of him name. But I won’t hurt as much, because I know, that God has big plans for Bailey. And that thought gives me peace. The truth is, I can’t do anything for Bailey anymore, but God’s got his back. And maybe it doesn’t seem like it at this moment. And maybe I’m furious at all the bad teachers who don’t realize that Bailey doesn’t deserve the title they all gave him. And maybe I want to smack his mother for all the damage she creates. And maybe I’d like to knock some sense into Bailey (out of love, of course). But tomorrow, there will be a little light. And my eyes might be raw, and my cheeks might be sore, and my nose might be runny… but tomorrow these tissues will be dry and it’s nothing a few eye drops and a hot shower won’t fix. And tomorrow I will keep one of my favorite verses in mind: “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” Psalm 42:5-6 My God can move mountains and therefore, my God can fix Bailey… and my God can fix me.