A Teacher’s Regret

Daily writing prompt

Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?

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I have a lot of guilt about a student I had almost twenty years ago. I was teaching Spanish at an international school, and one of my students was a Swiss boy whom we’ll call Friedrich (not his actual name) henceforth.

Upon meeting him, I immediately clocked him as trouble. I noticed that he had a challenging, kind of aggressive way of talking and was frequently arguing with his classmates. Their typical reaction to him was to dismissively roll their eyes, like they couldn’t be bothered to pursue any conversation with him.

He had an unruly head of blond curls that needed more frequent ministrations from a barber. His haircuts were always overdue, so he was usually sporting a wild mop of ringlets that didn’t really help his generally untidy appearance. I got him after lunch, and he usually had a stain on his clothes as well as a small but visible scratch somewhere on him.

When it came to academics, he also struggled. His native tongue was German and he learned English and Filipino really quite well, but I suspect that was from exposure and not actual intentional learning. When it came to Spanish, he had a hard time grasping grammatical rules, and his penmanship was really quite abominable, not at all fitting the expected skill of an eighth or ninth grader. I spoke with some of his other teachers, and his performance in their classes needed a lot of improvement as well.

It was quite obvious that he was a social misfit. The other kids tended to avoid him, and they could be rude to him (he was rude right back), but I never witnessed any form of deliberate bullying. There were a few boys who tolerated him, and he gladly took advantage of their chronic niceness, hanging around them when he could. It was still easy to see that he wanted for real friends.

I’d like to think that my default was kindness, and it was part of my job to care for him or, at the very least, pretend. Since I got him after lunch, he liked to come early and regal me with his thoughts and little anecdotes from his life. He developed a craving for the candy I kept in a jar on my desk at the little office space I had in the back. They were kiamoy in caramelized sugar, and I was happy to share them with him since he liked them so much.

One time, he gave me a big bar of marzipan, saying that his dad had brought it back from Morocco. I learned that his dad was frequently away. It was just the two of them even if he had older siblings from both his parents; however, his dad had started a relationship with their housekeeper, who ended up bringing her three young sons to the household and turning the tables on Friedrich, making him do the chores and using money intended for him for her own children.

I’m not sure if his dad was aware of this behavior, but he was away too often to sufficiently interfere. The few times I got to talk to him in a parent-teacher conference, he didn’t seem very interested in Friedrich’s progress. It was obvious he was just dragged to the school to accompany his partner to the PTC sessions for her own children (yes, they were enrolled at that very expensive school too).

So there I was, having an inkling about Friedrich’s home situation and suspecting that he had special needs that were not being addressed. I’m afraid that I didn’t take a more active role in ensuring that his situation improved. I feel like I should have done more than being a sympathetic ear and a welcoming face in my classroom.

And then, the twist nobody was expecting happened. Toward the end of his ninth grade year, his father passed away.

I had so many questions. I was in and out of school at that point, being pregnant with my first child and suffering from a terrible bout of hyperemesis gravidarum. I couldn’t actively pursue the answers to my questions, but they marinated in my mind. Later when I had regained some of my wits, I learned that he had an older sister who had come for him and would serve as his guardian. By that time, he was gone.

This was all before Facebook, and keeping in touch was not the foregone conclusion it is nowadays. At any rate, my life was hitting milestones upon milestones, so I was otherwise preoccupied. Friedrich would cross my mind from time to time, but I was so caught up in my own concerns that I didn’t bother to satisfy my curiosity.

About a decade later, I finally reached out to this angel of a boy whom Friedrich considered his friend. I was hoping that he had an update on Friedrich, but this other former student was like me, wondering if he was okay and feeling guilty for not having done more.

I also reached out to a former colleague and friend who had a similar fondness for Friedrich, but neither of us had any news. We just both lamented the fact that we had let him slip from our world.

This is a very common occurrence in life. Sometimes we only get to have certain people for very short specific seasons of our lives. That doesn’t mean their memory doesn’t linger. That doesn’t mean we stop caring in our own way. Friedrich will always be that boy I could have done more for. With children of my own and all of them having special needs, you can imagine the guilt I have over it.

Now, I wish I had gotten his email or his address. I would’ve contacted him and kept in touch through the years. I would’ve made sure that he knew he had somebody pulling for him even if that person was in a whole other continent.

I’ve googled him through the years and done multiple social media searches, but I couldn’t find him. The school might still have a record of his sister’s address, but it has been too many years. If I did get something, I wouldn’t know what to say.

I just hope he’s okay. I hope somebody would tell me that he’s thriving as an adult. This has been the case for many people who had a difficult childhood, and I certainly hope it’s also true for him.