Fall 2016
November 23, 2016

Enlightened in Byhalia

Personal Essay
​by Wesley Craft
whcraft@go.olemiss.edu
A student tutoring middle schoolers in northern Mississippi arrives one day to tragic circumstances and leaves with renewed purpose
Thursday morning. 7 a.m. I did not want to get up. Laying in bed, I began to question my reasoning. I began to question if I really made that big of a difference anyway. I told myself that the world didn’t need me eagerly enough for me to wake up and turn my alarm clock off. I should just stay in bed where I’m needed the most, I thought.

Alas, I did get up. I got up, put my “teacher” clothes on, and started my familiar one hour drive north toward Byhalia, MS. Every Tuesday and Thursday I wake up at 7 a.m and drive to Byhalia Middle school where I teach three middle school kids how to read. I originally started tutoring these kids because I needed to fulfill my community service hours for the Honors College. Still, I knew that deep down, I always felt something else pushing me, too. On this particular Thursday, after staying out until 2 a.m the night before, I wasn’t feeling that push anymore.

While I was waiting for one of my students to come see me, readying material to help him learn the most basic rules of reading, the principal of BMS came to speak to me. He had bad news about this student.

Two days earlier when my student got home from school, he learned that his eighteen-year old first-cousin was shot four times in the chest at random. Murdered. The next day at a memorial service for the cousin, my student was standing outside, mourning with his other family members. Seemingly out of nowhere, an unknown car pulled up to the memorial. A man got out, pointed a gun a my student, and threatened to kill him too. The man shot three times straight up into the air and drove off.

The principal told me that the student was at school and that he wanted me to handle our 35 minutes together however I thought best. I was dumbfounded. I was never trained to handle a situation like this. I have never even known someone to die.

When my student walked in the room, he looked like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. I have never seen so much pain in someone’s eyes. I told him I was sorry and that I was there for him. I told him that we could talk about it if he wanted to. I even thought about continuing our regular reading to get his mind off things. Still, I knew nothing would work. Nothing I could say would take away the pain and fear he was feeling. So instead, I pushed the material aside. I told him that the books will always be there, but this moment and these feelings were happening now. I told him we didn’t have to talk; we could just sit for a moment, away from everyone else. He looked up at me and asked, “Why do things like this happen?” I didn’t know what to say because honestly, I was wondering the same thing. We sat in that old room in the library and both cried until it was time for him to leave.

On my drive back to Oxford I remembered why I originally decided to tutor three middle school kids in Byhalia. Even though there was nothing I could say to make things better for my student, I could at least be there for him. Even though I didn’t have an answer to his question, I did know that if I can teach him how to read, then maybe one day he can find his answer in the books or poems of someone much smarter than I. These kids deserve so much better, and if I can make their day a little easier then waking up at 7 a.m is worth it. If I can teach them how to read, if I can give them the key to the world’s problems, then everything will have been worth it. 
Wesley Craft is freshman from Raleigh, MS studying Public Policy Leadership and Business. A member of the UM Collegiate DECA, Freshman Forum, and the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, Wesley hopes to run a non-profit in Mississippi with the mission of advancing education for disadvantaged students.