594. Parents, teachers and students in the same ship


One day teacher of English B said to teacher of English A, “Crack (sorry), cannabis and liquor are serious hinderances and remoras for our students’ growing, and mental work, are they?
I assisted in a remedial summer course for boys, in August 1993. They had to prepare their September exams of their schools, when back in their cities. The kids lived in the school. They had quite a nice number of hours in the study hall, and remedial classes. We tried teach them how to study. The work was intensive.
You’re soon understanding why I relate this story to drugs. Drugs and drinking aren’t so a simple problem to solve, I guess.
They also had scheduled time for sport, swimming pool, a few movies, recesses. They could join their parents in the weekends if they had passed week tests on their subjects. Otherwise they had to study those days to improve their studies. Many families took their sons to the course.
Summing up, it was a hard course for the students.
One important point was the individual tutorials. A teacher who attended these programs, a few years ago told me that the kids he talked with at the tutorials naturally opened their hearts and gave vents to their hardships in and out the course, in their lives as well.
Some boys told they’d never been so much understood and accompanied: they felt released from their distresses. They made a friend with that teacher.
Once one kid was dealing with some kind of drugs inside the school. Well, they, obviously, were absolutely free to tell whatever they wished: they were going to be listened to, at the tutorials and at any friendly conversations in the halls of the school. They would be silent about themselves’ stuff, of course, if they wished to.
So we decided to call this kid’s parents to pick him up from the course and talk with him. Also his tutor explained the problem to his parents and talked for long: he was doing a harm to himself and to his friends; many of them had never smoked crack, or maybe it was cannabis, I quite don’t remember. Both his parents and we were so concerned about him. Well, now I don’t know anything else about him since.” (Sorry for this setting of spare space between lines. Photo from:nauticexpo com. sailboat-racing-sailing-yacht-reichel-pugh-design-in-carbon-91204 )

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