Wet behind the ears

3/17/10 Umbrella, given away

On Monday, one of my students wasn't in school.

On Tuesday, he told me why, more or less like this:

I couldn't come because my stepfather took the car, and my book bag was in it. And our house is a mile down the road from the bus stop and it was raining real hard. And my mom has fibromyalgia so she doesn't want to walk. And, when we moved, we lost my raincoat and stuff so we'd get wet. I wanted to walk by myself, but there's a sex offender that lives on the road, so my mom said I couldn't walk and she wouldn't walk with me. And, we forgot to change our clocks for daylight savings time.

If you've ever worked in a public school that serves kids from low-income families, you've heard that kind of story a million times before.

How much is true? How should a teachers respond? Honestly, I don't have answers.

Today, I gave the kid an umbrella.