I read in The Daily Dispatch yesterday that Demario Thomas was sentenced on Monday for the killing of Danielle Terry.
I taught Demario when he was in the seventh grade. I taught Danielle when she was in the fifth grade. It’s a small town, sure, but that’s still something of a coincidence.
When you teach kids, you hope for the best for all of them, even the ones who don’t necessarily make your life easy. You hope, even knowing the statistics that tell you that an unlucky few won’t get a happy ending. You hope hopelessly that they’ll all beat the odds.
It’s always gratifying when a kid who gave you one hundred eighty days of unadulterated hell shows up years later to show you that he or she didn’t turn out as badly as you were afraid he would. That happens less and less as time goes on, though.
Danielle isn’t the first student I’ve lost, and, sadly, she most likely won’t be the last. Demario isn’t the first student I’ve had who has completely screwed up his life and the lives of others with appallingly bad choices. He won’t be the last, either. Statistics don’t compromise.
It doesn’t mean that I have to accept it as inevitable. Neither do you. Statistics can change, too.