The things that go unnoticed in most classroom settings:

This week I want to talk about the things I see in classrooms that are cries for help from students, or obvious signs of other issues going on in their lives that sometimes slide right past the eye of a teacher, administrator, or other school staff members.

I want to touch base back on a situation I had a year ago with a student. This particular child was going through an identity crisis with herself. She was a very pretty girl, had the opportunity to be very smart. She started by changing her name, she still wanted to be both a girl and a boy. Some days she chose to be a boy, some days she chose to be a girl. At this point, her peers and classmates started to pick up on it, but instead of denying the fact, they began to find her actions cool, and entertaining. It was at that moment this child got exactly what she was looking for…. Attention. She got the attention from her peers that she was needing. As teachers we allowed the situation to go on without discrimination because that is what we are trained to do. However, should that have been the red flag that we began to question? Shortly after that, she had came to school one day with a pixie haircut. Not shaved, but not long. Nothing wrong with that right? Lots of women have haircuts similar to that. The exact day she came back to school she, once again, gained a lot of attention from her peers. They began to look at her and ask her what she had done, they questioned her and constantly kept up with her everyday. A second sign of odd things happening. Do we contact the parents? Email them? How would you start that conversation? You can't say, "Hello, I am emailing you with suspicions about the new haircut your child received." NOPE. Of course, like every other teacher, we just let her do her own thing as long as we were not seeing any declines in education. She was an A/B student. Just like any other thing in a teenagers life, the new wears off and the new turns old. She began to slowly lose the attention she was getting from her classmates. We were ¾ the way through the school year, the students had grown used to seeing her this way.

At this point we began to slowly see declines in the child's grades. She knew the answers to the questions on her homework assignments and tests, however, she chose to answer them incorrectly. Why? After a few weeks of this we had a meeting with all of her teachers and came to the determination she was failing in all of her classes. We agreed to have a meeting with her to see what was going on because we knew she knew these answers. She was a smart child. When we called her in, she denied all questions. She said she did not understand what we were teaching her. She was unable to get the content down. Like any other teacher would do to a child in this situation we kept her from things such as recess, extra curricular activities, etc. to tutor her for the things she was not getting. We recommended that she speak with the counselor if something was happening at home or at school that was causing her to act this way but she assured us nothing was happening. After a few weeks of tutoring, she made a miraculous incline in her grades. She was back to A's and B's just like before. Was she getting the attention she needed from the teachers now? She had one on one time with each teacher more than any other child, and they were concerned about her. She WAS getting the attention she wanted from the teachers, it explained the incline in her grades. After we realized what was going on we referred her to the counselor of school. After meeting with the child several times, the counselor said that she could not determine the underlying problem of this child. She acted happy when she visited her office, and was always willing to come back the following week. She too believed she was getting the attention needed from now the counselor to make her emotions go away.

What do you do now?

She slowly began to get weaned from the counselor meetings because she never had problems to discuss with her and the meetings grew shorter and shorter each time. A few weeks went on that things seemed to be back to normal. She laughed, she smiled, she was having fun with friends at school, she was making good grades..

Then..

There was a period of three days she did not show up to school. Parents called and said she was sick. We weren't sure what to believe at this point but we thought it was reasonable considering it was cold and flu season. On the fourth day the child came back to school. She acted depressed, she was quiet, she didn't want to speak to anyone. As concerned as we were we called her parents to inform them of her newly developed behavior at school. Her parents said, it was probably her just trying to recover from the cold and that she was okay. A few days later we got a note from one of the girls friends saying she was worried about her, that she told her friend that she enjoys pain and that she had intentions on hurting herself. Once again we called the child in again with the counselor (the parents refused to meet with us). The child was sad but refused to talk. She said everything was fine and she doesn't know what her friend was talking about. We left it at that thinking it was just a phase. Pretty soon, we were contacted by our tech team, that our filter had caught searches of suicide, death, and how to kill herself that led back to her email linked to her school computer. At this point we called her parents, the principle, the counselor, the child, and an outside counselor in to discuss the problems we have had with this child. The rest of the team was very concerned about the problems, the parents never showed a sign of emotion about the situation but frequently checked their phone messages that were received, along with several phone calls during the meeting as well as emails. At the end of the meeting the parents said they would talk to their child tonight and thought it was best to keep her home the rest of the year (their were only 3 days left of school). It was determined by the rest of the team that if that was what the parents felt was best for their child, then that was what was going to be done. The parents said they were going to have it under control so that no one else needed to worry about it. That it was just a "phase" she was going through.

As a teacher, it is so heartbreaking to allow parents to make these decisions. After much thought we came to realize that the parents attention was the attention the child was seeking. Both parents were busy workers and always had to be kept up on their social statuses as well as social media. We were later contacted and told that the parents had called a juvenile officer after catching their child attempting to end her own life…

Why? Why does a phone screen have to shatter so many things. Why does it have to act as a shield in family events, it denies family memories. This was the cry for help the child was looking for. She wanted someone to care about her, to love her, to give her attention. Instead, her parents were stuck behind a phone screen, clueless to what was actually going on in her life. They were careless and unwilling to open their eyes and put down the phone. The life of a precious child just seeking attention was almost lost.

Teachers,

Catching red flags like this is something we should look for everyday. The attention we gave the child made a difference, however, when we began to stop because things got better, things got worse mentally with that child. Don't give up on them. Remind them, no matter what you will always be an ear to listen to them talk, a hand to hold when they feel unwanted or scared, and a heart to love when they feel like they are not loved. WE have to be that light for these children when their own parents cannot be. WE can make that difference in their life. It takes 20 seconds to change the life of your students. Make that change. Every single day. If you don't, who will?