Sending Sarah

Three strikes and you’re out, right? That’s a pretty good rule to live by.

Shortly after Christmas break, I realized that it was time to send Sarah back to civilization. We received her fall ACT scores and her math and science were lower than we would have liked, although her Reading was a solid 29. (We were to find out later that that was the highest Reading score of any village in our area – which, remember, is the size of Ohio!) The low math and science scores were strike one. That is not to say that her teachers weren’t super and doing the best they could, but in a class with students all achieving at a level way below average, she just wasn’t being taught the necessary skills.

Strike two came when we realized that her spring semester science course would be Earth Science, which she took in the 8th grade (she’s a junior in high school). The teacher understood her plight and offered for Sarah to make the class an independent study and do a series of in-depth projects of her choosing. It was the best option given the situation, but that certainly wasn’t going to raise her science ACT score. Strike two.

The third strike was more insidious, having been there all along, hiding in the bushes. It reared its ugly head and showed itself fully in January. Sarah had taken Art as her elective. She loves art. She loves to draw and paint and create. There were only a handful of students in the class at any given time, maybe seven or so. On Thursdays, the teacher began to invite the middle schoolers to join them in art class. All of the high schoolers would sit at different tables and the middle school students would file in and fill up the various tables, so that each table had at least one high school student at it. The first Thursday, no middle schoolers sat at Sarah’s table. As a matter of fact, they filled the other tables, and when the tables ran out of room, they took the chairs from Sarah’s table and moved them to other tables. It was awkward and Sarah was left to work alone. The teacher said nothing.

The next Thursday, the same thing happened again. Of course, Sarah’s reaction was, “I don’t care; they’re all stupid anyway.” However, I know what it’s like to be 16 and this had to be affecting her on some level. I thought about confronting the teacher, but ours was a small school, only five high school teachers, so to say something to a veteran bush teacher (she had been in Kwethluk six years) would have been detrimental, to say the least. I kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t the right thing to do. The third Thursday, Katie, Sarah’s friend from Homer, was visiting us and had gone to school with Sarah. She watched the same thing happen for the third week in a row. Katie was awestruck that such a thing could actually happen in 2011 and that the teacher would stand idly by. Good, so it wasn’t just me.

Those three things – low ACT scores, lack of adequate Science curriculum, and the outward shunning – led me to send Sarah back to Homer with Katie on the afternoon flight out of Kwethluk on Tuesday, February 8th.

She had learned many lessons in the bush.
She learned how to be alone.
She learned what it felt like to make straight A’s and she learned how attainable that is.
She learned the importance of a few good friends over many mediocre friends.
She learned that her mother wasn’t Hitler.
She learned that she wanted to go to college.
She learned the importance of accepting outsiders.
She discovered who she was and how to be comfortable with that.

My only hope was that she would hold these lessons dear as she took them with her back to Homer.

I cried every day as I thought of her leaving. Then, I cried every day after she left. She went back to Homer and lived with Katie’s family – a really great nuclear family with strict parents and two high school daughters in the home. They had an Indian foreign exchange student living with them first semester, so they were already prepared for a third daughter second semester as the Indian girl had moved on to another family.

It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, sending her 450 miles away. Not only did I miss my daughter terribly, but she had become my only friend and now I was utterly, totally, completely alone. The days were long and the evenings were quiet. Very little was said to me about her at school. It was like she had evaporated and no one even missed her. My funny, outgoing, redheaded daughter had left no friends behind after having lived in that village for over six months. She had never even been invited over to someone’s house.

I’m sure some were glad to see her go. She raised the bar too high academically, uncomfortably high for some students, and even a teacher or two. She didn’t party, use tobacco, or eskimo dance – that cut out many social opportunities.

During the fall Volleyball season, she had observed a teammate (and teen-parent of a small child) using tobacco (“chew”) in the classroom where they were staying at a neighboring village… with their coach in the room. If you don’t know, all players and their parents have to sign TAD (Tobacco, Alcohol, Drug) contracts at the beginning of the season, stating that they will abstain from these substances and if they don’t, it states what the consequences are – suspension from the team, etc. The coach knew the student (a very valuable player often voted MVP at tournaments) had tobacco and did not say anything about it until midnight or so, when she told the player to spit it out and go to bed (the coach let the girls stay up late using the school laptops for personal use, chewing tobacco, and drinking pop and eating junk food). All of this was so far out of whack for us that it felt like we were in the twilight zone. Homer sports coaches endeavor to keep their players healthy – village coaches… well, I’m not sure.

Sarah told me about the incident when she got home and we went to the Dean and the Principal, both of whom agreed that to bring this situation into the “light” would mean labeling Sarah as a snitch, because even if they said it was an anonymous tip, everyone would know who it was. This could be dangerous for Sarah. So, nothing was ever said or done. That’s how most things are dealt with in the village. Fear is the rule of the day.

This is only one of hundreds of things that happened in the village that I never blogged about while living there. You understand why, I’m sure.

I knew that being apart from Sarah was only a temporary thing. I’d be back in Homer by the end of May and we would find normal again. As if I didn’t feel bad enough sending her back without me, her father had to have his say. He said to her (and texted to me) that she’d probably never live with me again, that he hoped the people she was staying with liked her because she’d probably have to live there until she graduated from high school. He told her that I’d probably never come back for her. Yep, that’s right! Can you imagine someone, especially her own father, being that insensitive? Thankfully, she has a strong heart and we are thick as thieves.

My heart ached as she went to the Valentine’s Dance and I saw the pictures on Facebook.

One day, about three weeks after she had gone back to Homer, one of the office workers asked me if Sarah was playing basketball (meaning, for Kwethluk). I said, “No, she’s not much of a basketball player. She played volleyball, but soccer’s really her favorite sport.” The woman looked at me funny (since there is no soccer team in Kwethluk) and I explained, “I sent her back to Homer a few weeks ago to finish out the school year.” She hadn’t even realized that the only white kid in the village hadn’t been around for the past three weeks! When I told her that Sarah was gone, she simply raised her eyebrows and chin with disdain as she humphed, “Oh,” and turned away. It was like she thought I was a traitor, that Sarah was a traitor for leaving. There was no “I hope she’s doing well.” or “That’s good; I’m sure she’s happier there.” or “Tell her I said ‘Hello’.” Just silence and a turned shoulder.

It was the best thing for Sarah. It was the hardest thing for me.