Flashback

There's lots of teen girl drama going on at work these days. I guess a student is pregnant. I don't know for sure that she is, but there was an item on facebook that certainly made it sound like she was.

As far as I am concerned it is her and her family's business, not mine, not the school's and certainly not a bunch of snotty little girls who aren't this person's friends and who can't wait to gather around a desk and hash and rehash the information at their disposal.

I asked them to stop and refocus on the assignment at hand (working in groups to design a lesson based on a section of the text book that they will share with the class friday). The didn't want to stop, so I ended up snapping at them that they were behaving in a completely unacceptable manner and were risking being written up.

The truth is that the behavior bothered me because once upon a time I was a pregnant sixteen year old. I was a girl who's news had been broadcast before I was ready to tell the school. (In my case my then boyfriend told the whole school).

I was that girl who's classmates sat in front of me a gossiped about how they would "take care of the problem" if it was them. I was the student who had people talking about me and saying horrible, nasty things about me, my family, my future. It was me that wasn't welcome back at school because I was a "distraction" and a poor example.

And then I snap out of it a little and realize that there may just be a "teachable moment" in all this. After all, I was a teen mom. I survived it. I have a college degree (two to be exact but who's counting?). I have a respectable job and live an honest life. But I don't want to always be that person holding up a scarlet letter saying "see, it happens". Not to these judgmental, gossipy kids who wouldn't listen anyway.

The parents send them here to get them away from teen pregnancy. They will insist the child is not welcomed back to school next year. Because it is easier to blame the girl, and push her out of sight, out of mind and maybe complain about "all those welfare moms" than it is to examine what we did to help or hurt the situation.

The truth is that I did what I did knowing full well that sex equals pregnancy. I did anyway. I was a lonely teenager who felt the need to escape my sick mother, alcoholic father and violent, drug addled brothers. I don't know this student's reasons for doing what she did. But I can bet that her life isn't going to be any easier for having people judge and gossip about her.

I was able to accomplish what I accomplished because I have a very strong "fuck you" gene. As in, they say I can't graduate high school, I say "fuck that, I'll be in NHS". They said I couldn't graduate college, I said "Screw that, watch me". It went on like that for, well, the rest of my life.

I'm also smarter than the average cookie and good at compartmentalization.

I don't want to use my life to teach the nasty gossips in my first hour. But I wouldn't mind counseling other girls who have found themselves in a difficult situation. I suspect that in my current position I won't have that opportunity very often.