Theo

I want to tell you about someone I'll call Theo.  Theo was born into poverty and lived in the west end of town.  I knew a couple of his brothers and they had dropped out of school and had been in and out of jail a number of times.  Theo told me that it happened often in his family and that his home, usually shared by 15 or twenty relatives at a time was always in an uproar, some had jobs, most did not.  Theo had a number of bad years at Seneca and had been in and out of school.  When I first met him in his ninth grade home room that I conducted, he was quiet, untrusting, often surly, and frequently sleep deprived and angry.  We had our bad moments but for the most part we had made a silent pact of agitated co-existence.  I really didn't hold out much hope for him but really wanted him to do well.  His home life was a really bad influence.  Many were on drugs, had babies without support, others were violent without warning.

I thought about theo a lot but was powerless, it seemed, to help him.  After his first year I would see him on occasion and would tell him that I hoped things were going well for him.  He would reply with a quiet "think you" without any embellishment.  He eventually showed up in a senior Psychology class of mine and I noticed that he had come out of his shell a bit and was more alert, less angry and, for the most part very nice to have in class.  He still didn't participate a lot but he did what I asked and turned in his worked and did well on tests and was no trouble.  He improved the entire year and and the end of the year I spoke with him one-on-one and I stated how pleased I was that he come along so well.  He had been accepted into a good college and it looked like things were going to work for him.  I just bluntly asked what had happened and he said that sometime late in his sophomore year he decided that he did not want to live his life in and out of jail, nor did he want it to end prematurely.  He went to live with a relative that had a much better home situation.  He thanked me for my interest through the years and said that Seneca had been good to him.

Theo has graduated and is doing well and living somewhere in the Northeast and is raising his own family, and I am sure is raising them well.  This the kind of story that makes me feel that it is worth the effort.  The strongest kid in the room was always Theo and I didn't know it.