Some are Broken Far More Than Others.

I walked down the hall to the drinking fountain. A boy with straggly hair approached. He said he was hungry. He asked if I could grab him a chicken sandwich from Macdonald's. Drove there, returned, found him, and handed him the bag with fries. 

You should have seen the look in his eyes. 

I walk back to my classroom with tears streaming down both cheeks. 

Last week I spent the day teaching high school students in a threatened community. Española, New Mexico is about a 30-minute drive north of Santa Fe.

With a population of about 10,000, this city often bests others as most drug-infested in the United States. 

The day wasn't about a $106 stipend, about minimum wage. The purpose was to be with the children. These children. Face to face. Listening. Watching. Conversing. Witnessing what I had read about, including this LA Times piece, Can this town save itself from fentanyl addiction? The race to turn around a threatened community, published only a few weeks ago.

You never understand reality – physical realities – by reading about them.

Earlier this year, I deiced to split my time between my native coastal Orange County, California, and here. I wake daily to Abiquiu's silence and pristine landscape, a few miles from where artist Georgia O'Keeffe settled and often tried to describe:

As soon as I saw it, that was my country. I'd never seen anything like it before, but it fitted to me exactly. It's something that's in the air; it's just different. The sky is different, the stars are different, the wind is different.

Española is different

I woke. I drove south from Abiquiu. And I looked across the horizon, and to my left with the rising sun were jagged cliffs and crags and formations of red clay and to my left, a river that would soon become the Rio Grande flowing strong and eager from the melting snow of Pedernal. And past Bode’s, then Hernandez, then to the school. 

I decided to teach the teens about what confounded me as a high schooler. "In a country where everyone thinks we have freedom, going to school is a law. You must be here. You can't opt out."

"To make it worse, all these boring classes."

All eyes are locked in. 

"I always wanted to understand. Why math? Why science? Why art? Why history? And, especially, why fiction? — novels and short stories and all that.”

"They make you come here and learn this stuff which is not practical, not going to help you earn money, and sometimes as boring as hell." 

Every kid in every class nodded. A few smirked. 

I had ‘em. Then a explanation why.

The world breaks everyone eventually. But some are broken far more than others. These teens are bright. They have a collective perspective that draws me in. Some have seen real pain. I’m lucky to be with them.

At Child Rights Foundation, we are committed to understanding children. And from there, helping them.

More on that later.