Trying to Be There, but Unsure if He Will
Rafael Ocampo looked at the long list of names and sighed. He had been planning to meet with them all that week, the dozens of kids with Fs and spotty attendance who raise red flags. But it was already Friday and the guidance counselor was swamped, barely able to carve out time to wolf down Mexican takeout for lunch.
It was early afternoon, and the day had been a blur of therapy-on-the-go at Roosevelt Middle School. First Ocampo met with the vice principal to deal with the boy who yanked chairs from under his classmates, then squelched a spat between two girls. He talked to a parent whose child had been bullied, tried to cheer up a girl who was downcast and stopped to talk to a boy caught harassing girls. And lunchtime was like a "telenovela" -- a soap opera -- a swirl of preteen drama to sort through.
Still boyish himself, a twentysomething with spiked hair and a soul patch, Ocampo is the kind of guy who raps easily with preteens, who hurried up to confide in him as he crisscrossed the