Tasha.

2003-11-12 at 8:10 p.m.

Have I explained before, where I tutor? It's this alternative high school, for teen mothers and drop outs and gang-affected and homeless and troubled youth. These are kids who've seen the bottom of the barrel, checked out what's underneath, and are trying by the skin of their fingernails to claw up to fresh air. Some are going to make it--you can kind of see a grim determination in their face. But some--it could still go either way.

So, "Tasha", who I was working with today. Girl's got a temper--and a supremely short fuse. I worked with her before, but in a group, and if someone so much as looked at her crosswise she was up in their face defending herself against any and all perceived attacks. Loudly. Gir's a tough tree-stump of a fighter.

But the shit of it is--she's pretty smart. And I was kind of awed by the math she intuitively understood without knowing she was understanding it. I'm working with kids who've been dropped by the school system since third grade, so they don't 'get' long division, multiplication, stuff we take for granted. And when she started at the school, she couldn't do her times tables. And she still thinks she can't, but when she's trying to figure out 8 x 6, she knows it's 4 x 6 plus 4 x 6. Which, when you think about it, is actually a pretty complicated concept, and shows a very fundamental grasp of multiplication and addition and how they work together. She was flying through the long division. At a deep level, she gets math, but she's so unsure of herself that she doesn't trust that she gets math, so all it takes is one or two wrong answers before she's all flustered and defensive.

Which, unfortunately, is kind of what started to happen.

As the class went on, she got fidgety and fidgetier, and spacey and spacier. "I haven't had my caffeine yet," she laughed breathily. She started dropping her pencil and her handwriting started getting more erratic. She couldn't read the numbers on the page--her eyes were having trouble focussing.

"I've got some problems with my eyes," she told me, looking anywhere but at me.

Oh, Tasha. Don't do this. Don't fuck this up. Whatever's got you flying--it's not worth it. Not here and now in this classroom. We're at the ass end of the Last Chance Saloon. I'm not saying there won't be other chances if you fuck this up, because there might be. But there might not.

I didn't get a chance to speak privately with her teacher today. I am going to pull him aside on Friday. (I'm switching my tutoring days to Tuesdays and Fridays) I'm not sure the right way to go about it, but I don't want to look back and say, "If only I'd..."

If only I'd what, I don't know.

If I see her that way again, I'll speak to him immediately. I already regret not saying something as soon as I saw the signs. I just wasn't prepared--I hadn't equipped myself. That was stupid.

So I've got these combating emotions warring in me--hope, because Tasha has got some math in her; fear, because she may never get far enough for it to make any difference. They're just sitting there, in a kind of staring contest from opposite corners of the boxing ring. Can anyone tell me what to do with these? Because I'm afraid of either one winning.

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