Worth the Effort

A student's accident prompted my little rant today.  She's not a bad kid (and really, no one has said she is), but the first comment I heard from someone today was "I wonder if she'd been drinking?"  It kind of rankled me and it got me thinking about the double standard we apply to kids.

We get a little jaded in education.  We sometimes think we have it all figured out.  We think we know just how to reach kids. We think we know which ones are the "good" kids and worth the effort and we think we know which ones are the "bad" kids and we should just write them off.

Kids don't change, you see. Kids don't grow up and mature. Kids don't realize they need to step up.

The "good" kids,

• the ones worth the effort, 
• the ones that would never cheat 
• the ones that would never party on a Saturday night
• the ones that make us think school is their number one priority

if something happens to one of them, everyone is is a tizzy.  The whole school would be on alert.

• "Oh, the poor parents."
• "What can we do to help?"
• "I wonder what happened?"

But, the "bad" kids,

• the ones not worth the effort
• the ones that do whatever it takes to get through school because no one cares
• the ones that let loose on Saturday night
• the ones that let us know school is not the top thing on their list 

when something happens to them, the first words spoken are, "I wonder if he was drinking?  She must have been partying somewhere. Great. Now they'll be behind again." No one considers that they might have just been driving down the road.

But

let's not forget, that those "bad" kids, the ones not worth the effort, the ones that people write off, they are someone's kid. Someone loves them. Someone was scared senseless with a late night phone call. Someone thinks they are worth the effort.

And they are.