“You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down.”
– C.S. Lewis
I walked towards the kids, seated neatly like two corn rows in the school square. I duly took their attendance and teased them as I went along, breaking the monotony of their mandated morning routine of waiting silently for the roll call to begin.
One of the boys waved excitedly to grab my attention. He was small for his age, olive-skinned and had a perpetual glint of wonder and curiosity in his eyes. His face would light up whenever he tried to answer a question in class, he took correction humbly without a shadow of despair, and he had a slightest trace of mischief whenever he smiled in glee at his classmates’ antics.
When I looked up at him from the class register, he grinned, stretched out a hand and showed me one finger. One packet in the morning. Twelve sticks, within the short span of time between waking up and being in school. Twelve sticks or more a day, since he was ten.
~*~
Having been posted in school for a year and a half now, my initial reactions of shock and horror at finding out that a student struggles with one form of addiction or another has subsided into a dull, slow, and throbbing but constant ache. Within the year, I have had students got caught for sneaking in ketamine, cigarettes, vapes and shisha sticks to school. Some of them had acted as pushers for syndicates which had targeted the school kids.
My school sits just outside the town radius, and there are rows of terrace houses in front of it, but many of my students live “right behind” school, and when I ventured there once, I discovered that separated only by the school, was an entirely different world. I drove through gravel roads, passed by a cemetery, wooden huts, longhouses, farms, hills, and young children playing on a school day, and saw that this was home to many of my students.
The disparity in lifestyle and socioeconomic background, I realised, could have played a part in the many forms of social problems these kids face; they were thrown into the turbulent seas of the modern world which catered little to their needs to begin with, with no map and compass for their navigation.
The most crushing thing for me as a teacher, next to the realisation that the health and well-being of my students are being compromised, is the gruelling punishment and shaming that comes along with the exposure of their addictive habits.
Our students are reprimanded and suspended, and are sometimes publicly shamed and caned if they were caught with cigarettes in their pockets, as if to beat the evil out of them. This creates a culture of fear and shame, which prevents others who may be seeking help to clam up, and pretend the problem of their addiction does not exist.
I have spoken to at least ten students about their smoking habit, and not one, not a single one of the ten, has ever been asked the question, “Do you wish to quit?” “Have you been taught ways which might help you quit?” It makes me wonder if we have been doing things wrongly this whole time.
~*~
I closed the class register and looked at the boy. It had taken me a little more than a year to win his trust over, a year before he was able to admit that he is trying to quit smoking, but is failing miserably, a year before he decided that admitting his problem to an adult every morning before school begun might help him track his addiction pattern.
I had fallen into the temptation most first year teachers commonly would; that perhaps I would somehow serve as a superhero to my students, as an antidote to their many social issues. Often, I realise that is not so.
But, I am a teacher, and there is always a lesson. As an educator, I understood that my role was to be my students’ biggest fan, and to support or journey with those who are willing to stand up tall and strong. As I returned his grin, I realised that some kids, like this boy, has already stood up after falling, and continued to walk against the wind, and boy, does it blow strongly.
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