Laura Evans-Relationship With Students

I have become extremely attached to the students in my mentor teachers classroom. They are so young and have so much to learn, I am excited to get to help with that and see their education grow. I have become so attached to all of them, their home lives are very different from what I am used to. This was a big wake up call to me because I just cannot imagine how some of these children live or what their home life is like. We have one student who has been taken in and out of his home because his parents are on drugs. Sometimes, he will come to school so totally out of it and I just wondered what types of drugs he has been recently exposed to because I see those side affects. Another student has been in a foster home, but his foster mom did not want him because he was "too hard too handle." Just recently, the student was placed in a new foster home and switched to a different school. On the day that they came to take him, I was not prepared for how emotional I would be to see this little boy go. There is another student in our room who we are pretty sure is environmentally deprived. She is like a zombie, in a another world, clueless of how to communicate with people. She is a smart student, but she has no clue how to talk to anyone. At first, I thought she would need to be in a special education setting, but as we got to know her we realized that she has never been exposed to anything. I have met both parents and now I can see why this little girl is the way she is. Her parents don't talk to her, they don't show her things and teach her...she is just ignored. My mentor teacher and I have been helping her to learn to wipe her mouth after she eats and to blow her nose if she needs to because she will just leave food or whatever all over her face. I could go on and on about this particular student and how sad I am for her, I just wish I could take her out of the home that she is in because I know that is the reason that she is so out of it.