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The Student I Couldn’t Save
Confessions of a high school guidance counselor
My journey to becoming a counselor started with a suicide.
A student I’ll call George was in my math class the year before he took his own life at the age of 16.
He always came to class even though he didn’t like math — actually, it would be fair to say that he hated it, but he came all the same with big earphones over his head, a ball under his arm, walking with a bit of a swagger. We connected over our love of hip-hop and basketball. I tried so hard to get him to like math, never quite succeeding. My relaxed nature, goofy sense of humor, and the fact that I never got angry when he walked in late undoubtedly helped us connect as well.
He always had a bit of a smile on his face. You know the kind, the smile that never seems totally committed to the emotion. A smile that loosely covers up a whole bunch of stuff invariably lurking behind it. A smile that’s both a smile and not a smile, all at the same time.
We chatted and got to know each other. The class was one of those small, remedial-type classes with only 13 or 14 students, each of them a little rough around the edges and assigned to be together due to their underdeveloped multiplication and division skills. I recall always wondering what else was going on for him…
