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AUGUST 2005

Dead Souls

By Pola Rosen, Ed.D.

Though we are living through the dog days of August, we are on the brink of a new school year. I go back in time to school days past, before my life as a college professor and newspaper publisher: my experiences as a home instruction teacher, special education teacher, hospital teacher and regular education teacher spanning grades two through twelve. My goal was to provide outstanding, creative instruction as well as to be sensitive to the emotional needs of my students, inspiring them to fulfill their potential.

I remember Gladys, an 8th grader who was pregnant and became a home instruction student because she was not allowed to attend her public intermediate school in Brooklyn. Gladys lived with her mother, an alcoholic and abusive parent in the projects in Coney Island—a building that I visited several times. The entrance was covered with graffiti, the floor pattern was obscured by old dirt, the bells didn’t work and when I finally got in, the elevator provided a rickety ride to 12. The hall was unlike any I had seen—a long corridor with bars facing the street on one side and apartments on the other. The apartment was dark and small; clothes and dirty dishes were everywhere. There was no place to do schoolwork. Gladys’ mother, missing several teeth and reeking of alcohol, said hello and disappeared.

I arranged for Gladys, a bright and enthusiastic teen to meet me three times a week at the local library. She loved the lessons we did together. I interwove child development and nutrition as part of her studies. When she got close to delivery time, I accompanied her to a local city hospital, giving her lessons as she waited for her clinic appointment.

Gladys’ boyfriend and the father of her child was also a teenager and worked at MacDonald’s. They were trying to save enough money to get married. She explained softly that he was going to help raise the baby, unlike the father that had deserted her as an infant.

I continued to see Gladys after she gave birth. She confessed her deep concern about her mother holding the baby upside-down. She wanted desperately to move out and start her own family unit. Our lessons continued.

One day, Gladys dropped out of school and became an invisible student, counted only on the medicaid rolls so her mother could collect money. She became one of Gogol’s “Dead Souls,” a 19th century Russian novel that underscored the corruption of the landowners who collected money for serfs who were deceased.

Gladys is still on my mind though almost 20 years have passed. We must try to have a better tracking system of our students who drop out and perhaps a closer coordination between schools and Medicaid so that our children do not become “dead souls.”

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