I grew up in San Francisco in the foster care system, I was placed there when I was nine. That felt really really old to be in foster care. Why I placed in to foster care? Well I would rather not share the details...but basically my home wasn’t very safe and was generally unreliable for even being an option to come home to at night...I’d rather not say more. I spent a lot of time on the streets and well...at that time we would go down to Polk street. I remember San Francisco, in generally, was CRAZY. oh man, i used to just hangout on polk street from 7 to 4 in the morning. San Franciscowas crazy . i mean drag queens, prostitution was on every street in the tenderloin, am exageratting of course, but when you went on the street, you had to be careful. The tendleroin was a hectic place for people who wanted, or even needed to escape. I don’t think I left for almost two years. i really don’t. i don’t think that i walked All of this time was when I was in the foster care system, I would say starting from the age of 14 or 15 i would go hang outside of the balls at night. I panhandled, we had a community. Everyone from 13 to 19. I went to middle school at tenderloin elementary school, it was 1998 so i was the first class in fact. and, you know, the tenderloin is an overlooked neighborhood in san francisco. When your young, when you’re latino, when you don’t have anyone home three to ten at night, your very vulnerable. i might i had a LOT of issues with neighbors, etc. and at school, at school i really struggled. i was born into the foster care, meaning i had never until my eighteenth birthday not been in state care. i was lucky enough to grow up with only two families in my whole experience. the first family was in daly city and, to be honest, my memory of them is not that great. I lived with them from the ages of three to six. i remember it was one mother and there was just one other kid, a girl who was five years old (born by the mother). they were nice, it was a fine situation but i just really don’t remember much. but she was only qualified to be a short-term foster parent, god in a way i wish i stayed with her, but anyway at the age of four I was placed with Margo, a (foster) mother of five kids. We lived in 650 jones street, and to be honest it was a not a terrible part of the tenderloin. where i worked, hungout was, but i had an easy walk home.
School for me was an impossibility. I mean after i started hanging out with all the kids at night, seeing the drag queens, the prostitutes. The money that was offered to you just walking down the street was impressive for someone like me. I would stand outside nob hill theater every single night and pulled dates with much older men. They would pay me to spend time with them, etc. After I started working at night out on the street and making considerable money, school was over. I mean I was making hundreds of dollars when i first started! But you know, all my childhood i had this drive to be normal so i did stay in school at first. I remember I would wander around polk street starting at like eleven oclock in the evening and i would walk until the sun rose, than I would walk straight to school! My foster mother enjoyed the benefits more than me. She was gone frequently, would dissapear inexpricably. I wasn’t abused, and I’m very lucky for that. but starting around 11 I would just go out on the streets because...well because I was lonely. And I was desperate. You had to be desperate to go out there and hangout.
The reason I left school was because of the way my situation was dealt with. The streets didn’t ‘suck me in’ like so many people say. No. My school just pushed me out. The thing that you need to understand about a foster kid is that….my whole life i felt like a problem. I mean literally. The way I viewed my entire place in the world was as a burden. You begin to feel that there is something deeply wrong with YOU, not the system.
My behavior in school was obviously problematic.I mean I was provocative, everyone made fun of me and I would just respond to them by being more vulgar than they were. Oh man, I mean it was bizarre really. I was the biggest headache of the ENTIRE school
-what was your biggest challenge in the classroom
I felt really horrible and insecure, my bigges tproblem was not with any autorhity figures with the other kids. the biggest issue is I didn’t respect myself, so i was extremely hyperactive and self depricating. I mean i had such a minimal understanding of what a ‘normal’ childhood was that I didn’t even know where to start when trying to fit in! the only thing i knew for sure was that i was NOT normal. having the life i had, being exploited, i felt this deep shame about myself. in school, that was only reinforced. when i would act out, try to make a spectacle of myself, i wanted to escape everything that was associated with my REAL situation. so I couldn’t calm down in class. It wasn’t long until I dropped out, after my teacher said i was “hopeless” i left.
What Went Wrong
No body throughout my whole school tried to connect with me or approached me with any holistic lens. i was so obviously acting out from a deep seated pain and hate for….for myself really. every single day i would get into a fight, or i would cry, or i would do both. I was diagnosed with A.D.D., well sort of, by my teacher really, and I was dealt with according to that disorder.
I was never medicated because I really never had a guardian who took me to be evaluated. Later on in life it never manifested...or that point didn’t really matter, but the way I was thought was as though I had an internal problem with paying attention and sitting still. That’s it. Boy were they wrong!
They knew I was a foster kid, and I think they had some idea that my foster mom was either overloaded with other kids or just not really present. They invited her to meetings, even wanted to have her sit in class one day to see how I behave. Even at a younger age, i was almost amused by how WRONG they had her. My teacher would as “where is your mom? She hasn’t answered our calls for a week!” I of course couldn’t say the truth, which was; “I have no idea!” or “In bed...indefinetely.” So i would make up some type of story...typically that one of my other siblings had some type of emergency...or something ridiculous. Looking back, it was pretty obvious that nobody at home was concerned with me and I think that my teachers basically chose to ignore it.
Punishment:
When I was punished in school the teachers would typically be really really angry. I was a pretty out there little kid, and the way they reacted, as I think of it now, was as though they took it really really personally. The teachers at this school, well it sounds kind of ridiculous, but the teachers judged me more than anything. There was always a condescending tone, a judgement involved. Like “you need to sit here till you are able handle yourself, till you able to be okay, than you can come back.” Always said with a sour, judgemental look on their face. This drove me CRAZY.
When they left me on time outs, this happened almost daily, I felt absolutely horrible. I felt like I was being mocked. As a foster kid, I was extremely paranoid, I can’t describe it but you really feel like everybody around you is basically looking for a reason to abandon you, make fun of you. Like i said, I had this deep seated feeling that I wasn’t right. I’ve carried that with me for so long, and obviously now, as an adult it’s not the same, but sometimes you still feel like a freak.
When I went on time outs, I would FLIP OUT. I had no idea what to do with myself. I felt like I was being punished with the thing that traumatized me the worst.In a weird way I always knew that if I had a normal mother, father, or both, I would’ve been happier. It’s this deep seated anxiety that I’ve always had and no matter what I do I can’t get rid of it...well not that I can’t get rid of it. I can’t heal it. What punishments did work? None…(laughs). I just think that something would have changed if somebody had accommodated me. I would show up exhausted, dishevelled. Very rarely, but at times I would show up dirty if I had been out all night working. I would sleep with ten to fifteen different men a night. I was just becoming a teenager, I was in a complete survival state. I needed to be evaluated, talked to, counseled, and the only thing my teachers did was isolate me or speak with disgust.
-What would you say to teachers about how to treat someone in your situation differently?
I think that the teachers thought they could ‘treat’ me through the way a teacher would deal with a situation of this nature. I don’t think they felt compelled enough to refer me counseling or anything like that. I had SO much anger and, although it can seem impossible, I needed to connect with somebody and not just be thrown out the classroom. I guess my biggest advice is to approach my problems like you really care, and you’re not just looking for a solution. Punish with increased investment and interest, not putting a kid in solitude. And in some ways spending time with somebody can be MORE of punishment when you're in this survival situation, but it’s productive too, not like the time outs. The thing about this is that teachers need patience. A lot of times it’s hard because you’re just a teacher with X amount of resources, but you still need to try. And you still need to recommend other people for them to talk to. None of this happened.
Takeways:
-Relating
The largest takeaway from this story is strategies and approaches for how to both discipline and relate to children in unstable or traumatic situations. While it may seem obvious, teachers may not always be aware of the judgement they display and it is crucial to keep an accepting and neutral tone and attitude. Another thing that is crucial is persistence, it is simply took a long time for me to connect with any sort of adult. Kids with severe instability in their lives, often associated with toxic environments, respond instability in the classroom as they do in their lives, shutting down or acting out. A teacher needs to have faith in themselves and be persistent. When a classroom is overloaded and this might not be possible, they need to advocate for the child in whatever way they can. With a school counselor, afterschool program, anything. No judgement, patience, persistence, and acceptance.
jjjj-Discipline
When disciplining, it is far better to send the child to a place where they will receive more attention, such as a principal, counselor, or idle teacher. If a child has attachment issues, this in fact more of a punishment than solitude, yet has positive outcomes. If a teacher is available, even if a child is having a complete meltdown, do not leave the child alone.
Never blatantly insinuate the roots of behavioral issues, but it alright to guide the child. Yet it is not appropriate for a teacher to make any blatant statements of links to behavior issues, as they are simply unqualified and it could derail the constructive nature of a teacher-student relationship.
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