I had a very moving experience today and have felt the need to tell
everyone so I'm afraid you lot get it too. Just over six years ago I
noticed that one of my students, in a Year 11 Environmental Studies
class, seemed troubled and although she was bright, her work was
getting late and poor. Fortunately she chose to talk to me and I
discovered that she had real troubles. In the previous five years,
her father had died, her uncle suicided and now the boy next door had
suicided as well. Every important male in her life had left and she
was grief-stricken, feeling somehow responsible. She spent a fair
amount of time staring at walls and crying. At that point we could
have lost her, seen her drop out of school. I managed to restructure
her whole course so that she went part-time and took three years
instead of two to complete senior high school - plus add in a lot of
encouragement and counselling.
She dropped in today with her mum, to say thanks. They seem to blame
me for her success. She's just completed her honours degree in
Ecology and the University has given her a generous scholarship and
part-time work to complete doctorate in Science, researching Powerful
Owls. I had to go out the back and have a little weep after they
left. Shit I feel good today. And just a little emotional.
AndrewF
(and she's promised to help me photograph the beasts too).
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