Letting a student speak

Hello all-
Sorry it has taken me so long to get back to you!! Busy times here. Please see the bulletin that is coming home with December Interim Reports for all sorts of great info.
The other day I was asking one of our senior students who had returned to school after leaving for awhile, how we might have helped him when he was younger and I thought what he wrote me was worth sharing.
You ask me about what you as a school could have done. It’s a dream that I wish I could say yeh I went to prom and say grade 12 yeh, I got that. And some kids we ain’t right because of family stuff that’s gone on again and again. Wish that I had a life like some people. Just ain’t that easy, a rough road and it’s a life that will kill you or bully you into who you are everyday. I don’t know why they say to you they know how that feels, that is something I never forget. That is when I wanna say people are getting bullied.

I don’t feel that I was someone feeling like that just 12 years ago. It’s just now I am a man and I wish I could say I had family when I was 8-9 years old. No, I was selling drugs living on the streets trying to make it; running from foster care because my parent was in jail. It’s not fun just having no one that really knows you but they all think they do. But they are just reading a file that says you are a bad kid. No one talked to me about what I liked to do or what was on my mind. Maybe I could have had this all.

Now we know who I really am and this feels right. It’s not what I was raised for. I am better in the eyes of lots of people who knew me as a fighter kid that broke the law, sold drugs and partied. That cool kid you wanna be someday. And all those people remembering you just not nice.