The other day I was thinking about the counselor who worked in the office next to my classroom during the first year that I was teaching in East Harlem. I would always get to school 45 minutes or so early to prepare for the day. I'd make sure everything I needed was laid out and write a lot on the board because I couldn't turn my back to the children for so long. This was my first teaching experience and I was learning by trial and error. My class was extra challenging, having been assembled with the specific intention of getting a tenured teacher to quit. He did quit, and the first person to fill in after the tenured teacher quit a week into the school year had been hitting the kids with the window pole. She was eventually harrassed out of the school, they couldn't fire her because she too had tenure, and then came me. I was as green and as naive as can be.
There was a very nice counselor in that office next to my class, and we would often chat for five minutes before the kids came streaming in. By chat, I really mean I would discuss my kids and ask for advice on how to help them. Almost every child in my class had a tragic back story. This kind counselor would often tell me that it only takes one person to make a positive difference in a child's life and I could be that person for these kids.
One of my students was named Moses and he was a quiet, keep to himself kind of kid until one day when he suddenly began interrupting me in class, calling out, and sharpening his pencil too often that it raised my suspicion and I began to watch Moses. It turned out Moses was breaking his pencil points by stabbing himself in the privates with his pencil. Then the girls began to complain that Moses was trying to look under their skirts during recess. Alaram bells were going off in my head like crazy.
I went next door forgetting that the kind counselor was not at our school that day and instead the counselor who hated white teachers was there. I had gone too far into the office before I realized and was forced to tell the hateful counselor what I had come in to report. I described the change in Moses' behavior and my concern that he was possibly being sexually abused.
Now Moses lived with an older relative, who was not his grandmother, but who he called "grandma". This woman was fostering Moses, I never knew what circumstances brought him to her, and as far as I could tell she was bringing him up to be a real gentleman. I knew he was always clean and looked cared for, I knew she sent him to the corner store in the morning to pick up coffee and a newpaper for her before school started, which I thought was wonderful, teaching him responsibility, and I had no beef with the grandmother.
The day after I reported my concerns to the hateful counselor, I was called into her office and there sat Moses "grandmother", about to explode with rage. The hateful counselor hate a smug grin on her face and asked me to explain to Moses "grandmother" how I thought she was molesting him. I said that I did not think she was abusing him and that I had reported suspicious behavior of a sexual nature because it raised a red flag in my mind. I did not know what Moses did with his free time or who he spent it with.
It turned out that Moses was supposed to be getting counseling and someone along the way had dropped the ball on him, so after this incident he started going to counseliing twice a week. Which I was grateful for because now Moses was angry at me too, and after the whole molesting debacle I was happy to have him out of the room for a breather.
After a while things got back to normal and Moses got quiet and back to polite int he class, he stopped bothering the girls at recess, and he was well behaved again and I kept teaching and we all just went on as usual, except for the addition of Moses new counseling schedule it was status quo.
On the last day of school I was relaxing with the kind counselor and talking about what a crazy year it had been for me and she said "But that was a great catch with Moses!" and I didn't know what she was talking about because no one had ever spoke about the incident with me again. It turns out that during counseling Moses did admit that he was being abused by a teenaged male relative who the "grandmother" immediately banned from her apartment, and luckily for Moses, it had only been going on for a few weeks and they were able to address it right away and protect him.
Last night we went to a play and I saw a boy in the audience who looked just like Moses would have looked at 20 (Moses would be in his mid 30's by now) and I wondered what ever happened to Moses. I hope he grew up happy. I hope I contributed.