This episode of NPR's StoryCorps is guaranteed to bring tears to your eyes. The beginning of it is excerpted here, but it's well worth a listen to ground you on your Monday morning.
Aaron didn't intend to tell his classmates that he was homeless. But when he recorded his own story with StoryCorpsU — a project designed to help kids in high-needs schools build stronger relationships with their teachers — he says, it just came out.
"I felt ... like a big load was let off," Aaron explains. (NPR has withheld Aaron's last name, at the request of his foster care agency, to protect his privacy.) "I don't know what made me say it, but I'm like, 'Let me just be honest and just get it out.' "
In his recording, made last year in Chicago, Aaron revealed that he "had to sleep outside, sometimes with nothing to eat. I was ashamed. ... I still am ashamed."
It was only upon hearing Aaron's recording that his teacher, Celeste Davis-Carr, learned that he was living on the streets.
"I was scared, because I felt helpless," Davis-Carr tells Aaron in an interview the two recorded this year. "I didn't know what to do, but at the same time I felt I had an obligation to try my best to help you."
http://www.npr.org/2014/03/07/286921391/a-homeless-teen-finds-solace-in-a-teacher-and-a-recording
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