The Litany and a Harbinger of Hope

I survived the week and slowly but surely the relatives of the man who passed away are trickling back into school. How can you recover from this?

Unfortunately the suicide is not the only thing to recover from. My first few days back, my students gave me the list of everything that happened over Easter break. Some of the things happened in other communities but up here, even though the communities are far apart geographically, they are close emotionally because of all the family ties. In Trout, there was the suicide and a roll over (with the driver's drinking). In Red Earth, there was a kid (maybe two) hit by a vehicle. In Wabasca there was another death by a drunk driving accident. One of my students has a brother whose friends were hit by a train. And the list goes on and on. My students has a rotten week of tragedy. They weren't coming back to school refreshed but were returning emotionally stressed. So it was an odd week. I felt like I was walking on eggshells. There was some mild misbehaviour but I let a lot of it slide until they could feel comfortable again. For some of my students, school is truly their refuge.

So then my students have the gall to say, "Miss, you are no fun. You don't party." I had to remind them of all the damage that partying has done to their lives and their families. Again I didn't want to dig too deep. Instead I reminded them that I can have fun and remember it the next day and not regret anything.

The events of the week definitely had an effect on my students. I was struggling with one group of students when they start yelling and talking about being "F-ing no good Trout Indians," so why should they do work. It is hard when a roll model dies so tragically. I lost it at that point and said, "That's is completely not true and I never want to hear that from your mouths again. You all have worth. All of you." I am going to have to keep on reminding them of that.

But there is hope in all this despair. We had laughter and an ice cream party and have smiled. And today I went for a walk and saw my first pussy willows of spring.