Among the various and invaluable services Sea Mar offers are yearly physicals for high school students of migrant families. As part of the outreach team, I went and gave presentations during the Proyecto Saber class while students were pulled for exams. This class in and of itself is a pretty upstream model of education. It provides support for minority students especially in a predominantly white high school, and is also a way for these students get credit retrieval for classes they may have failed and receive enough credits to successfully graduate. Additionally, it offers an opportunity for students to learn more about their native culture. It places value on where these students have come from in a way that is lacking in today’s public school curriculum.
Our outreach team gave each class an option of what topic they wanted to learn about – chronic diseases, nutrition, mental health, tobacco, or sexually transmitted diseases. Each class period felt more like a conversation with peers than a presentation and reminded me that I am not as far removed from my own high school experience as I may have thought. It also made me recognize a little of my own ageist tendencies. These kids are smart! And many of them have experienced more in their 16 years than I have in my 23.
I had one conversation in particular with a student who made me realize how difficult being a teen can be, especially in a migrant family. The icebreaker for the mental heath presentation requires that everyone to share something that causes them stress. This droopy eyed student shared that family problems on top of balancing work and school were stressful. After the presentation he came up to me, asking about the consequences of drinking a lot of energy drinks. As we talked about sugar content, and the trouble with using energy drinks as a supplement or actual sleep, he revealed to me that his dad was recently injured and he was taking over his father’s night shift to support his family. He would go to work around 11pm, work all night long, come home at 7 or 7:30 and sleep for an hour or so, wake up and come to school. He was failing classes, having anger management issues, and only had one friend who helped keep him awake during class, but no one knew the whole story. “I’m a private person, I don’t want people to finding out about this and start talking about me” he told me, reminding me of how vicious rumors can spread in high school.
I talked with him about some of his options – make sure his teachers were on the same page and working with him to accommodate a schedule that allowed him to sleep and do school work, and to make sure to be in touch with the school counselor about his anxiety and anger issues. But I couldn’t help but feel slightly helpless. His family relied on him for survival. He was carrying way more responsibility at 17 than I ever have. And there wasn’t really any way around it. Who else could work? Who could take care of his siblings if his parents were to take a different job? How else could they make money? Who was going to pay the medical bills? These burdens were falling on his shoulders impacting his mental and physical health as well as his social health – the quality of his education and future prospects for job development and breaking the cycle of poverty his family is in.
I am grateful for Proyecto Saber that offers support, the free physicals that Sea Mar provides during school hours, and the school psychologist, but this student’s story exemplifies heartbreaking effects of social determinants of health that inhibit people from being truly and wholly healthy.
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