Sitting in the back of the classroom, right cheek pressed to a desk and tears drying on her chin, Mya squeezes a stress ball and smells a stick of lavender while I talk about units of measurement.
"Mr. Cipriani," Jose whispers as I pass his desk. "Read this." He hands me a written note, something I encourage students to do to communicate personal information with me. "I don't know when my mother is coming back to America," it reads. I think about the other note in my back pocket that Mya has given me a few minutes earlier: "The landlord is mad at us again."
"Can I use the bathroom?" Jose snaps my attention back.
"Not now. Let's work through this math first," I respond.
I teach second grade at Orchard Gardens K-8 in the Boston Public Schools, a district with many students who come from poverty and who have experienced trauma. I hold degrees in education from New York University and the University of Massachusetts Boston. Neither had prepared me well enough to teach in the city, and I would wager that America's most recently graduating education majors are not ready for this September either.
[For more of this story, written by Jeffrey Cipriani, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...learn_b_8109674.html]
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