有五分钟? 一位前中学生, 现在是一名作家和记者, Says it Can Be Enough to Save a Life
2024年6月13日
2024年6月13日
珊德拉·哈贝特著
I was 12 when I thought everyone had given up on me. 感觉自己成了家人的负担, 我的老师们, 甚至是我见过的心理健康专家, 我放弃了自己, 太. Sixth grade marked the first time I’d wanted to die, and seventh grade marked the first time I tried to make it happen.
当你12岁时, 六年感觉像是永恒, so it’s hard to imagine making it to the finish line of a tumultuous adolescence. 许多有自杀倾向的孩子并不一定想死, but hopelessness is a powerful stranglehold when you have little or no control over your circumstances. 当时, 我逐渐适应了自己怪异的角色, angry kid to push people away before I could get attached. I’ve since learned in therapy that it’s a common coping mechanism among those who feel rejected at home.
But there was one adult in my life who never gave up on me. One person who wasn’t scared off by my biting sarcasm, 混乱的行为, and tendency to shut down when I struggled with my schoolwork: my seventh grade math teacher, Mr. W.
Between coaching swimming and going for his doctorate, Mr. W was the busiest person I knew, but he refused to let me fall off the face of the Earth. Mr. W spent lunch periods painstakingly explaining each problem in my dreaded skill sheet assignment. The weekly worksheet consisted of problems unrelated to that year’s coursework, and my neurodivergent brain just couldn’t unravel what felt like riddles from the sphinxes that populated the fantasy worlds I used to escape reality.
When he saw that this particular assignment led me to stop trying altogether, 他决定让我跳过, 只要我完成每天的家庭作业. Some teachers refuse to make allowances for kids who think differently. 但是,. W’s accommodations turned a dejected student into someone who made an effort. 因此，我能够提高我的成绩.
Mr. W的课就在午饭前, 我一打哈欠就会流泪, 数学课上常见的是什么. (对不起,先生. W.)在这些热泪盈眶的时刻. W would always make sure I was OK, despite the 20 other students in the classroom. 这个小小的关怀之举意义重大.
我在精神病院待了两周, 在我自杀未遂之后, felt more like a prison sentence than a saving grace. The monotony of hours with only my thoughts and the yellowing walls to keep me company was excruciating. 没有音乐, TV, or any of the distractions that helped keep me afloat outside of these dirty walls. It was just about the worst thing you could do to a kid with my potent combination of ADHD and a mood disorder. 先生来访. 那是我在那里最精彩的时光, providing a dose of normalcy and lighthearted banter that allowed me to forget where I was for a little while.
I had plenty of teachers who cared about me in middle school and the years that followed. 然而, most of my relationships with adults — both in and beyond school — felt like obligatory transactions. 但对奥巴马来说就不同了. W. He wasn’t trying to turn me into someone I wasn’t or even into an A-student in math. He just wanted to remind me that I mattered; importantly, he remembered to carve out the time and space to do that.
每一天, he offered me five minutes of undivided attention when I could vent, 谈论我的生活, or recap in detail whatever TV show I was obsessing over that week. This continued the following year when he let me eat lunch in his classroom during his free period, 尽管他已经不是我的老师了.
当我在高中的时候，我回去看望了Mr. W每周, and I remember telling him about the gym teacher who asked how I could live with myself for not taking initiative during whatever tedious drills he was having us do. “He has no idea,” my former math teacher told me, and I have never felt more unders太d.
年过去了, I would occasionally visit his classroom on breaks from college, 毫无疑问, 他给我留了五分钟. It’s been a while since I’ve made it back to my old middle school for a visit, 但我仍与李先生保持联系. W.
Life is messy, and it’s easy to get swept up in the grind. 太频繁, children and teens feel dismissed by the busy adults in their lives, 这可能会带来真实而毁灭性的后果. I know from experience that the inverse is true, 太. Five minutes of recognition and kindness can be lifesaving for a young person who is struggling.
如果不是奥巴马先生. 我今天可能不在这里了. 在某种程度上, 他知道他的时间对我有影响, but it wasn’t until I wrote him a letter inscribed on the author page of my first published short story that he realized he had helped save my life.
医学Harbet (XandraHarbet.Com)是一名记者, 散文家, and creative writer whose work has appeared in outlets including Salon, 内幕, The Daily Dot, 君威, 和StyleCaster. She has a BA in English with an emphasis on Creative Writing from Randolph College, and also student-taught and helped run an afterschool program in the Lynchburg area. You can find her on all social media platforms by using @XandraHarbet. This piece is reprinted with her permission and that of Chalkbeat (chalkbeat.Org)，它最早出现在那里.
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The average pay of Virginia public school teachers in 2023-24 was $65,830. 这是 4260美元以下 全国平均为70,090美元.
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