Boston Public is good this evening (I'm watching the local feed as I slept through it last night). It's amazing how the death of a student (or students in the shows case) can affect a school.

There is a former student of the school I teach at. He graduated to high school last year I think. He has an incurable cancer. When it was mentioned, teachers who knew him as well as teachers who didn't grew silent. The heaviness in the air was amazing. Losing a young member of what is, against all odds, a close community, is a horrid feeling. Losing anyone is a horrid thing but losing such a young person.... well... it's horrid.

It's like... last year. During my internship we discussed tragedy. The example my teacher and I gave was that of death from cancer. He discussed his aunt, or great-aunt. She was in her late 90's and asked to be taken into pallative care. She was dying from cancer and was ready to die. She had lived and accepted the end of (this?) life. It was agreed that while her death was sad, it wasn't a tragedy. I then mentioned a student who was in my school when I was in grade 7. He was in grade 6. He had beaten cancer that summer and had gone into the hospital to get a checkup. This was a few days before christmas break. Instead of giving him the .01 dose he needed of a drug, they gave him 1.0. With this drug, .1 is strong for an adult. He was a kid. He died and was buried on christmas eve. It was agreed that this was a horridly sad story - and a tragedy.

Friends of mine did their internships in a school in the community I now live in. Last winter, during the internships, 4 students from that school went pan hopping. Three drowned. They had to deal with an unexpected loss in their community - not just their physical community but their school community. It was, as one put it, an internship experience that can never be repeated, never be erased. It will stay with them - and with the students - for the rest of their lives.

So Boston Public is getting it right. It's sad, so sad. A tragedy.

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