Teaching Hope: Challenges

The first entry that really spoke me, was entry twenty two, “Contemplating Suicide” and it spoke to me for a lot of reasons. While, I have never actually thought about it, I’ve had depression and other mental health issues, like anxiety, so that feeling that the teacher and the student are both talking about, is definitely a feeling that I am familiar with. Another reason this really spoke to me, is that because of these mental health “issues” that I have, it sometimes worries me how I might be affected if I have a student who is going through something like that and needs someone like me to lean on. The way that this teacher handled it, and the connection that exists between Sierra and this teacher, is something that really really touched me and it really made me look at my own thoughts and feelings and how I might handle something like this if it were to ever happen to me. I don’t quite know yet, what I would do, but the strength and courage of this teacher, really really spoke to me.

The other entry that spoke to me was entry thirty three, “A Mother’s Addiction” and again this one spoke to me for very very personal reasons. My father has struggled with drug addiction for most of my life, he’s been in and out of rehab and struggled with alcoholism as well. This goes along with the first entry that spoke to me, in that, I’ve always considered myself a very empathetic person and it’s easy to get me emotional, so I might struggle with hearing about these struggles of my students, when I’ve gone through something so similar. I can only hope that I’ll be strong enough, like the teacher in this entry, to be vulnerable with my students and open up to them.