Public Education

The first set of people I sent this commented about how heroic my friend is. My definition of heroic is ordinary people doing extraordinary things in difficult circumstances.

And you have no idea how heroic my friend Chuck is:

I have a true story of public education that has moments of humor and sadness and also ends in a cliffhanger.

My friend Chuck is an EBD teacher at a large high school that lies on the edge between rural and suburban. In a country and in a profession marked by gentle, politically correct euphemisms, EBD is the rare acronym that retains a bit of bite: Emotional and Behavioral Disorder. These aren’t clowns, knuckleheads or pains in the ass. They’ve been medically diagnosed with something serious.

Among these, I believe that Chuck gets the toughest cases. In part, it’s because of he looks like a person that a rough kid would either be attracted to or intimidated by. Tattooed, sinewy, with rock star hair and a biker beard. He plays hockey and sings in a band. He reads Spin Magazine religiously.

He also gets the tough cases because he’s terrible at playing office politics and, I suspect, because he’s volunteered for some of the kids no one else wants to take.

But mostly, it’s because he’s good at it. He’s patient and he’s principled and he’s tough and he knows that it’s important for everyone to laugh every day. I think his love of hockey taught him that there are times for offense, times for defense, and times to play for the tie.

When I say tough cases, I mean this is the end of the line. For many of them, the next step is jail. In fact, for some of them, the previous step was also jail. The powers that be are playing long odds, but they only get longer elsewhere.

There’s a kid in his class who’s a great example. He suffers from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, one of the more horrific disabilities you can imagine. Because the brain is damaged by alcohol in the womb, it is unable to establish effect from cause, unable to control impulses, unable to make new social learning stick. They can be unpredictable and they can be mean and it isn’t because they’re recalcitrant, it’s because they’re physically unable to be any other way.

In addition to his other issues, the kid is refusing to work with Chuck. He won’t talk to him or even look at him, which isn’t a great strategy for success. So, Chuck sets up a meeting with the mother to see if he’s missing information that isn’t in the file. It’s a routinely painful meeting that both Chuck and the mother have played out before, but it takes her 10 minutes to work up the courage to blurt out the issue.

“He has a problem with the fact that you’re gay.”

…

She spent another 10 minutes explaining that she herself didn’t have any problem with his homosexuality, which I would have paid money to see.

I’ll let you in on the dramatic irony.

He isn’t gay.

Something of a stud, if you want my opinion.

I know the end of the story and, in a future installment, I’ll share it with you.

Meanwhile, I’d love to hear what you think. Should he tell the parent that he isn’t gay? Should he tell the kid?