A n 11th grader who wouldn’t look me in the eye?

“She’s lacking some social skills” the special-ed coordinator says when she first calls me about Sara. “But she’s not stupid. She needs help completing her English Language studies so she can get a diploma. Would you work with her one-one-one?”

Sara had been in the very first class I’d taught when I was just out of seminary. She was younger then and her issues weren’t as pronounced. But I’d soon learned what a troublemaker she was and what an angel she could be if left to her own devices — to doodle her way through the lessons with markers and crayons. So I’d let her be. In my classes she’d created pictures and drawings and I blessed her artistic inclination without making much effort to engage her.

Five years have passed since then and to be told that Sara is struggling brings my niggling guilt to the fore. I take on the job.

Eye contact is the least of her problems. She walks into my home her whole body tilted away from me in such obvious wariness that I want to cry to close the door behind her and her issues. “Hello” I say with chirpiness I don’t feel.

Sara grunts and chooses the chair furthest from me. She looks up for a millisecond and in that moment I see the pain dark and raw glistening almost glaring in her green eyes.

I have to make this work I resolve but I don’t know how. I sit beside her and she squirms and fidgets in her seat her whole body screaming “go away.”

What now?

She thrusts her work at me. Poems. She’s got to explore the language in two poems. Despite myself I am excited. I love poetry and I’m all set to share my enthusiasm.

Nothing doing. There are eight poems and Sara’s got to choose two to focus on. Apparently she doesn’t have a preference.

“C’mon is there anything you like here? Any topics you find interesting? Any rhythms you enjoy?” A baleful stare.

Finally she croaks “Okay the shortest ones.” Phew something.

But obviously she doesn’t want to read them aloud. Okay I like reading poems. I start my voice too loud in the room. It’s a poem about a beggar sleeping each night on someone else’s doorstep always under the stars.