Whatever Happened to Shepard Scott?

When I was in junior high (I believe it was grade 6), a new student arrived in the middle of the year.  He had been placed in a local foster home, and was now attending our school.  He was, I suppose, a “typical” foster kid in many ways.  He struggled to fit in.  He cracked jokes in class.  (He didn’t do well in class either.)  He tried to make people laugh, and by doing so, like him.  But he had few friends.  I don’t even know offhand whom he could have truly called a friend.

Somehow, something about him struck me.  I never disliked him.  I didn’t make fun of him.  I didn’t really befriend him either.  I was simply polite.  But I could see that deep down, he was a good kid who just wanted to fit in.  

Having come from the “big city” (if I recall correctly, it was Brandon), he used the “new” catch phrases before others in our small town had heard them.  Things like “Shut up!” and “As if.”  They caught on as they did elsewhere, I suppose.  Even though we learned them from him, however, it still didn’t earn him any acceptance.

Then suddenly one day, he was gone.  Moved to another foster home.  I believe I heard that it was in Brandon again.  I don’t think any of us heard from or of him again.  He crosses my mind often, as he did today.  As I read about kids that had gone through foster care, being bounced from one (often dysfunctional) home to the next, I thought of Shepard.  The stories of these children, now adults, struck a chord with me.  I can’t imagine lacking the stability of a home - not knowing how long you would be there, or where you were going next.  Interestingly, children who were raised in an orphanage were reported to have fared better than those raised in foster homes.  Perhaps it was because they found their belonging there.

I’ve tried to locate Shepard a couple of times, but to no avail.  What happened to him?  Did he ever find “his place”?  Was there ever a time when he knew that for once, he belonged?  Was he resilient enough to make it through?  

I will likely never know.  But I do know this - as a teacher I will come across other Shepard Scotts.  They may drift in and out of my life as he did, but for the brief time that I encounter them, I have to do what I can to help them belong.  It may not be life-changing for any of them, but hopefully, somewhere down the line, they will look back and know that someone cared.  And maybe, just maybe, that will make the difference.