Goodbye, Leticia

My heart broke today.  A friend and former colleague told me that one of my former students committed suicide.  She was 17 years old.

 Leticia joined my multicultural lit. class for the 2nd semester.  I actually had a handful of kids who joined the class in the middle of the year, but she was the one who stood out the most to me.  I can't tell you why she stood out from the rest, but she did. 

My first impression of Leticia was not favorable.  She looked and behaved like an angry cholla.  Wearing droopy, tan carpenter pants and a plaid over shirt, she would sit in the back of my class and attempt to not fall asleep.  She wasn't disrespectful, nor was she disruptive.  She just didn't want to be in a class in which she not only had to read, but discuss what she read, as well.  When called upon to answer a question, she would either respond grudgingly or say, "I don't know."  She would also either not turn in her homework, or turn in homework that was only half completed.  But she had lovely handwriting. 

I can't remember exactly when she started to actively participate in class.  I wish I had paid more attention to what we were talking about that sparked for her.  It's so hard to see what sparks for individual students in a class of 30.  Especially when they all spark on something different.  But one day, she actually started to ask questions. 

I loved when my students ask questions.  I loved when they answered each other, too.  I'm not talking about who did what, when, and where, but why.  I loved when they talked about character motivation, whether they were right or wrong or just blowing smoke to try and score points.  When someone can speculate on motivation, they can connect with the character and story, and that's the first step in appreciating literature.

Let me explain something before I go on.  I taught at a college prep school for low income students, predominately Hispanic students.  School was not a priority for most of my students.  They were at our school because their parents wanted them to be there, they were unsuccessful at the public schools in the area, they were misfits who were looking for a better atmosphere, or because our school was closest to their home.  Most of the students were far below grade level.

Our school had a fabulous Early College Program (ECP), but almost all of the students who were in my class had decided that college wasn't for them.  I taught juniors and seniors, and by the time I got them, they had either flunked out of the ECP, or they never had the desire to be in it.  It didn't matter.  My goal was to try to prepare them in case they decided after they graduated that they did want to go to college.  I knew most of my kids would not only not go to college, but they wouldn't ever open a book to read for pleasure.  I had a small window of opportunity and only a minute chance of changing this.  

So, when I talk about my students starting to ask questions and have conversations about the literature, you can see how exciting it was for me.  When a student like Leticia started talking, it made me want to do a happy dance at the front of the class.  Now, I'm not saying she started talking post-modern lit. theory, but she did start to engage.  And at the same time, she started to smile. 

I like to think I won her over with my engaging personality and my intellectual prowess, but I think it was actually the fact that I would dance and sing and tell stupid jokes and crawl on the floor along the front wall to illustrate "The Yellow Wallpaper."  In other words, I think she liked the fact that I was crazy.  That's okay.  I wanted them to see that literature could be fun; it could be crazy.  I think she got that.  I think she saw someone with a passion, and seeing that, her spark started glowing.

By the time we reached our unit on Asian lit. near the end of the semester, Leticia was a completely different person.  She still had days in which it seemed she would rather be home sleeping, but she had many more days in which she talked, laughed, smiled, told jokes, answered questions, told me about herself, rapped, made fun of me as I acted the goofball.  She became one of the lights in my classroom.  She still looked exactly the same, carpenter pants and all, but she wasn't the same taciturn child who walked into my room in January. 

I remember when she told me that she wanted to be a DJ/Rapper.  We talked about how hard it is to break into the music business.  I told her that no matter how hard it was, if it was her dream, she should follow it.  After all, how would she know if she could do it if she didn't try?  She then asked me why I didn't become a singer (remember, I used to sing in class.) I told her that I had the opportunity once, but I chose not to take it.  I wanted to finish college.  The opportunity never came again, but I was okay with that, because I'd rather sit with a bunch of people and talk literature.  It was a lot more fun being at the front of my classroom than it ever was on stage.  She gave me one of her patented frowny-faced nods, and that was that.

I haven't seen Leticia since class ended last year, but I've thought about her several times.  She made fun of me once when I demonstrated my superior rapping abilities by singing the song "Buffalo Girls" from the eighties ("you got mad skills, miss.")  It makes me smile every time I think about it.  I'm smiling right now.  But I'm crying, too.

Leticia committed suicide because she was bullied.  She was bullied because she was gay.  This lovely, talented, sweet, tough young woman couldn't take any more. She gave up, and it makes my heart hurt.  I don't blame her for giving up.  It's hard to be different, and teenagers are not equipped to handle the kind of pain she went through on a daily basis.  They shouldn't have to.  I remember being a teenager.  It was hard.  It was ugly.  It was brutal.  And I wasn't an "other" like Leticia was.  If it was that hard for me, I can imagine how much more she struggled.

I have no idea what these bullies said to her.  I have no idea who these bullies were.  I have no idea how long she had been bullied.  I have no idea if I could have helped her had I been there.  What I do know is that this shouldn't have happened.  But it did happen.  It keeps happening.  It will keep happening for as long as people try to force belief systems on other people. 

In my classroom, we talked a lot about discrimination.  All kinds of discrimination: racial, sexual, gender-bias, religious, political, and on and on.  I encouraged this, even built lesson plans, many lesson plans, around discussing discrimination, marginalization, and the effects on society these negative things have.  I did this to try to stop what happened to Leticia.  I did this to try to create a generation of people who accept a person for their individualities.  I did this to try to help create a world in which love is the guiding factor, not hate. 

But how can one teacher in a small school change the world?  How can the students take such a teacher seriously when they see the courts upholding someone's "right" to discriminate against another person?  Why should they believe a teacher when members of their own government show them how to hate so much more effectively than I can show them how to love?  How can they feel safe to be different if someone can legitimately bring a bill to their state senate that says homosexuality should be a crime, and everyone convicted should be put to death by firing squad?  Why would they believe anything I say, when society is actively showing them that it's not okay to be a person of color, a woman, LGBT, non-Christian, etc.  I'll tell you how. 

I can't. 

Goodbye, Leticia.  We failed you.  I failed you.  And I'm sorry.

 With love,

The Crocheting Cat Lady