Overcoming the Challenge of Dysfunctional Families: The Real-World Example of Carla Martinez Padilla and Carlos Padilla

Note  >>>>> The names used in this article are data privacy pseudonyms.


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Close to 38th Avenue South and 4th Avenue South in Minneapolis, Carla Martinez Padilla (Grade 10, Roosevelt High School) and Carlos Padilla (Grade 9, Washburn--- but in transition to an alternative high school) came tumbling out of their duplex on a Thursday evening in November at 7:00 PM. This is the time of week that I typically pick these two up for transport to New Salem Missionary Baptist Church and our weekly two ours of intensive academic study.


Carla and Carlos were tired and disgruntled that evening.


I was a bit surprised, because I had recently worked very hard through my extensive community and familial contacts to locate these two after some very disturbing family incidents found the brother-sister duo scrambling for stable residential and academic situations--- and both Carla and Carlos had been grateful for my efforts and very cheery at the prospect of resuming their studies with me.


I overlooked the sluggish returns to my initial greetings and began with my litany of questions:


“What are you doing in math right now?”


“How about English?” “History?” “Physics?” “Health?”


Carla gave me good answers to those questions, confiding that all of her grades were at “C” or better, except that she was going to be staying after school for credit recovery in physics and health. Before I lost touch with Carla for a while, she had been making “A’s” and “B’s” at South High School. But multiple familial dislocations and a shift to Roosevelt had undermined her academic performance, so she and I are strategizing for a return to “A”-“B” territory.


Carla desperately wants to avoid the pattern within her own nuclear unit that would predict job prospects fluctuating between Taco Bell and nothing at all. She had been so upbeat in her return to my instruction but on this evening was having a hard time holding herself together.


Brother Carlos also answered my questions but couldn’t relate anything from the world of the classroom because the paperwork had already started on his transfer from Washburn to an alternative high school when the building of the latter was cited for deficiencies, leaving him in academic limbo until the structural issues in the edifice were resolved: Officials at Washburn wouldn’t let him attend class at that high school.          


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We got to New Salem and I directed Carla and Carlos into different classrooms for individual study, since the two are at very different levels in math and reading. Carla is more adept at the latter, Carlos more skillful at the former.


I sketched out a bevy of review problems on the old-fashioned chalk boards already installed upon our taking up church residence at the site at 2507 Bryant Avenue North a few years ago, having moved up the street from our former location at the corner of Lyndale Avenue North and 26th Avenue North (both locations are just across a field from Nellie Stone Johnson K-8 school of the Minneapolis Public Schools).


My students love the chalk board, pining for the end of our academic sessions when I let them write on it.


And for my purposes, the chalk board is ideal in its immediacy and efficiency: An adroit teacher possessed with abundant knowledge often works best and most efficiently with the simplest of tools.


For Carlos, I sketched out problems involving percentages, mixed numbers, and ratios. He complained that the ratio problems were too hard. This is typical for many impoverished kids from dysfunctional families who have experienced so much failure that they don’t want to try anything new.


I patiently explained how to do the ratio problem to Carlos and, given his mathematical aptitude, he quickly grasped the concept. Carlos now said that the problem was easy and declared, “I like ratio problems.” This, too, is typical for students for whom dread becomes delight upon achievement of success.


Over to Carla’s room, I sketched out some multiplication problems. Carla actually has good mathematical aptitude, but she buzzed through K-5 classes with many concepts not mastered, so we are still scrambling to catch her up. She can do rudimentary algebra and geometry problems, but failure to master multiplication and division often gets in her way--- so I am ever backing up and putting skill mastery in proper sequence for Carla--- even as we attend to homework covering concepts prevailing in her current math and other classes.


Carla was balky at first and not properly attentive.


After multiple attempts to seize her attention with my usual banter and chicanery, I stopped, looked Carla square in the eye, and said:


“Carla, this is Gary you're talking to. You know, the guy who cares about you, comes and picks you up every Thursday evening, and is doing everything he can to catch you up in school to the point that you need to be--- and have said that you want to be. I really need your attention and to hear a more respectful tone in your voice.”


Carla continued balky in her manner and sulky in her demeanor.


“Carla, we may need to have a long talk with Auntie Marianna when we get back.”


“I ain’t living with her no more,” came Carla’s reply.


“So did you shift back downstairs to your mom?” Carla’s mom Elena lives downstairs in the duplex. The much more responsible Auntie Marianna lives upstairs.


“Yes.”


So that was the problem.


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Elena, mother to Carla and Carlos, is forty years old but an emotional adolescent. She has had numerous male companions and is now shacked up with an abusive alcoholic, Marco. Marco is actually a hard worker in the construction trades, but he cannot control his drinking and has a ferocious need instead to control Elena. Elena has a hard time keeping jobs in any event and has shown an inclination to accede to Marco’s demands that she not work.


This gives Marco the classic male dominance over the economically vulnerable female. The situation has produced multiple fights, angry separations, codependent reunions, thrown objects, and cries from both the older Carla and Carlos and younger brother (Grade 4, Folwell) Cortez.


The specific reason that Carla and Carlos were disgruntled on this particular evening, I found out, was that Elena was eager for the two of them to return before 9:30 PM so that they could take over responsibility for Cortez while she and Marco went out nightclubbing.


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And so it goes.


I talked to Carla and Carlos about the situation, about needing to maintain focus on what’s important even in the midst of familial turmoil. There is a way out, I told them, as I tell all of my students, through the power of education and the development of an alternative, high set of ethical standards.


They listen. They know. They are grateful that someone takes the time to hear their story and offer loving advice.


And they each had success with their respective mathematical challenges. Frowns and deep furrows turned to smiles and to crinkly folds at now mirthful eyes.


When I let Carla and Carlos off at the duplex that evening, they each thanked me profusely and said how fun the evening had turned out for them.


They said that they didn’t really want to get out of the car.


I said, “Yeah, but you gotta. You gotta be good examples for Cortez. That’s the future, you know. And so are you.”


Carla smiled and Carlos reached from the back seat to give my shoulder an appreciative clap.


“Next Thursday at 7:00 PM, right?” Carla asked.


“You betcha,” I answered.


“Can’t wait,” Carlos said.


“Well we’ll all wait, but it’ll be so good to see you then, as always. Now go take good care of that little brother--- and your very valuable selves.”


Carlos and Carla smiled boldly.


I waited for them to enter their abode, turned off the ignition, and went upstairs to talk to Auntie Marianna about how we could help Elena to attain some stability and wrest herself from her violent and codependent relationship.