You would think it’s parenting, given my occasional gripes and whines about loss of freedoms.
But actually, it’s not. The hardest thing I have ever done is seeing a student through his two years of upper secondary school education.
Here’s a photo of him and my younger self:
First, some context. He lives in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in my country. His mother was imprisoned then; he has never met his father before; and he was raised by his grandmother who had her hands full raising several grandchildren.
This explains why I had a soft spot against him. The odds were overwhelmingly stacked against him.
He wasn’t a juvenile delinquent, but because his home lacked structure, he could come and go as he pleased. Nothing serious in the grand scheme of things. Fishing with his mates. Hanging out. In Singlish, we call this lepak.1
This meant that his attendance wasn’t regular. At most 1-2 days per week? The thing was, he had to achieve semi-regular attendance to fulfill all his course requirements and have a chance to enrol into post-secondary education.
Not to mention that teenagers his age would start to experiment with drugs. I was adamant that he wouldn’t go down this route of self-destruction.
NOT UNDER MY WATCH!
Ya, in hindsight, I don’t know what exactly possessed me to have this maniac-like obsession. But I started to give him morning calls.
Usually, he would pick up my calls. That didn’t exactly translate into him coming to school, though. He went back to sleep. Or he stepped out of the house but decided to play arcade games with his friends. Or he wanted to come to school but lost his money. It’s like he was cursed. Many barriers prevented him from stepping onto the school campus.
Which evolved into me going to his house occasionally to pick him up. Having gained some hands-on experience, I understood why his grandmother had given up on him. He slept soundly, dead as a log, and I had to expend all my energies - be it mental or physical - just to get him to sit up.
If you ask me why I did that, I thought about his problem objectively. There was no one at home who could wake him up for school. If it meant that I had to be the one to bear the burden, then I could step up to the plate and help out his grandmother. At personal expense to myself, no doubt, but hey, I just didn’t want him to take drugs.
There was once where he was so angry with me that he flung his pillow or blanket so violently across the room that it knocked down the baby safety gate in front of the kitchen. I was fuming mad too but decided not to say a word. He did come to school that day, so I will count that as a victory.
I embedded him as part of my morning routine for the greater part of two years. Every morning from Monday to Friday.
He did graduate from my school, albeit not with a full certificate. I did my best for him though and have no regrets.
And nope, I don’t think I would go this far for any student anymore. I have two kids of my own haha.
What’s the hardest thing you have ever done?