(Goodman, pg. 5, 2018) 

Many students have faced changes in their lives that are hard to overcome to be successful in school. Luis, as Goodman narrated his story, is another one of many who also had circumstances out of their social and emotional control. In this case, immigration laws affected greatly the family dynamics of Luis’s home by not having a father to provide emotional and economic support. A family is broken, and those barriers prevent Luis to just take care of school and persevere. I also know of a student whose parent passed away or another who has repeated a year in school, leaving heavy emotional distress and a feeling of not belonging with your friends anymore. This prevents them to be successful in school and continue to fail. It’s not just teachers, but also society teaches us to instill a grit mentality to push students and people in general to be successful, graduate, go to college, and have a job that you are passionate about. It’s look down upon when a person fails given that we have a free public education, and supposedly all of these great jobs, etc. However, emotional trauma, access to resources, and information to get those resources—economic or social—aren’t distributed equally to all of the neighborhoods in New York City. You can also think of any other city in the United States, they have similar problems. A lot of times, we as teachers feel powerless because we can’t probably bring every parent who has been deported or feel helpless because we cannot help every student that is struggling. How do we navigate these circumstances when creating safe spaces of learning in the classroom  or having programs that helps students use storytelling to retell their traumas to overcome them isn’t enough? How do we bring outside resources like professional therapy when school counseling isn’t enough?