2 Steps Forward, 1.5 Steps Backward

Last week José smiled. On a fairly regular basis. When he wasn't frowning, that is.

And, he sat downstage right or left most of the time we were at the rug, rather than practically out the door and with his back to me.

I considered all this enormous progress and worked hard to acknowledge it. I made him office monitor. I gave him reading logs to hand back (which, for some reason, is understood by children to be a great privilege). I rubbed his furry hair and told him how much he'd improved.

Then along came Friday.

No homework. No reading log. Yakyakyaking all day long. Airplane eraser battles. Sharpening pencils on both sides (dangerous when they fly missile-like through Griselda and Kyle B.'s airspace). It was as if everything he'd learned about classroom and academic behavior had gone for a long weekend in Vegas.

And it wasn't just him. I had to call two parents on Friday. Esteban's for his hurling of an eraser at another child after two warnings to stop, and Randy's for his punching out his own brother before school. It was a Friday frenzy.

I came home this weekend discouraged. Whereas on Wednesday I had imagined for the first time staying with this class for more than one year (something I generally do), Friday I was checking out my blog countdown post-it. Two hundred and how many days?

It felt so hopeless.

I went for TWO runs.

I put it out of my mind all weekend.

And then just now it came to me. In a play, a movie, a story, you can't have the problem solved in the first ten pages! That's when you're just setting up your inciting incident. I've got to think of this class like a script. We're only on page 10. 90+ to go.

Characters have obstacles. No one grows in a straight line (in good scripts, that is). I'd never write a character like that, so why would I expect a person--and a child at that--to behave linearly?

Setbacks are a good thing. Drama. Tension. Excitement!!! Yes! Bring it on.

As I told the class on Friday: "Boys and girls, use up a lot of energy on the weekend, and then on Monday, we'll try it again!"

No Way José

It's the weekend. The Wild Things are roaring their terrible roars at home and not in my ears. In the silence I find myself thinking about José.

José who's always playing with his erasers. Who sits as far away from me as possible. Who likes to be last in line and alone at recess and with his back to the class.

I consulted with his kindergarten teacher, who, in a school bursting at the seams with Josés, instantly knew which one I was talking about: "The little stubborn guy. He does what he wants when he wants."

Yup. That one. A 3'8'' ft. furball of complete and total obstinacy.

I let students choose their seats until their choices prove to be unworkable. Then I move them. José chose to sit next to Griselda, another 3'8'' ft. furball of complete and total obstinacy. (We measured them. They're exactly the same size.) Well-matched in all ways. So far though, they tend towards cooperation rather than combat. Now if only the cooperation were a little more academic. Griselda, who, of course, knows everything, took it upon herself to inform me about José on the very first day of school: "Teacher. José just does what he wants to." I thanked her for the information and decided to keep a close eye on them. I also suggested to Griselda that José might want to speak for himself. "No, teacher," she said. "He doesn't speak English."

On Friday, International Talk Like a Pirate Day was a roaring success. Isabel and Kelly even came to school dressed for the part. We read a delightful book by Kathy Tucker, Do Pirates Take Baths? We stormed decks and flashed cutlasses, all the while shivering our timbers and cursing the cowardly scum. José was into it. He berated the scurvy dogs with the best of them. Defiance comes easily to him.

Every now and then I get a flash of a different José. When, for homework, I requested five sentences, preferably silly, he wrote me eight starring a baby who ate dinosaurs, castles, and entire mountains. His sentences came complete with capitals and periods. And, they were in English, contrary to Miss Griselda. Lurking under the shell of the class recluse is a bright, thoughtful boy who wants to engage with learning and cooperate with his classmates. Someone who might make a good leader. Someone who's perhaps trapped in a role he took on in kindergarten or even earlier. We all do it. Get stuck in selves we've outgrown and have to crack ourselves out of.

I just have to help him out of his isolation, which, by now, is his image in everyone's eyes. I need to create an academic path for his defiance. In short, find a way for a different José. And I think Griselda will be my perfect partner in crime.

(Her father did have a talk with her, by the way. "Teacher, I won't look at José's test again." So far, so good.)

Failure

We all deal with it. Some more than others. All day I tried to find ways to teach physically. We were pirates (tomorrow being International Talk Like a Pirate Day). We were long vowels standing tall and short ones crouching down. We used unifix cubes all through math.

8 kids mostly worked and learned. 9 kids worked a little and mostly were on showtime. They threw cubes at each other or played cube swords or cube legos. Roberto continued to obsess with his fingers. Evan spent much of the day with his back to me. At least Griselda didn't turn her eyelids inside out once. She did copy off of José's test several times, though, necessitating a call to her father on his cell.

Me: "Señor M?"
Señor M: "Sí. Buscamos un apartamente. Yo y mi hija--" (We're looking for an apartment. My daughter and I--"
Me: "Um. Soy la maestra de su hija..." (Um. I'm your daughter's teacher....)

Instead of offering an apartment, I had to let him know his daughter was copying repeatedly on a state test. She's only 7. I explained that there was no maliciousness in it. No clear sense of wrongdoing--at first.

Why does she cheat? Is she worried about failing? Already, at the ripe age of 7?

I don't think so.

Griselda and several others seem to think that tests are a social activity. If you don't know something, check with someone else. In fact, if you do know something, check with someone else anyway. Good advice sometimes. Many people I know, including myself, ought to take it. Listen to others. Connect. But Griselda does not do it to connect. To create social networks like apes grooming each other or friends twittering. Griselda does it to be right. Griselda likes to be right. Always. Even if she's wrong.

Me: "What's 7+4? Build it with your cubes."
Griselda: "Ms. B, I knoooooow that already."
Me: "Excellent. Can you build it with your cubes to show me?"
Griselda: "But Ms. B. I knoooooooooooow it! It's 10!"

I have no problem with social testing. Group projects are terrific and wonderful and I use them all the time. But Griselda needs to take that up with the State of California. The test she was taking is not considered by the governator and his minions to be a social activity.

And after I've told her not once, but twice (in English and in Spanish), to keep her eyes on her own paper and stop with the neighborly consultations and to stop peering around the divider that blocks her view of José's test and to leave José alone (since for godssakes he's not playing Airplane Eraser Battlefront for once in twelve days and he's actually concentrating on what he's SUPPOSED to be doing!!) because this test isn't one of those group projects but just a test between her and herself and the governator and she needs to show what she can do all by her lonesome ownsome and and and after all that--

she still consults with him--

I think her dad needs to talk with her about right and wrong a little.

I hope he did.

I'll ask her tomorrow.

(You don't know me, but I do hope you know I didn't say all those things. Really. I'm a playwright too. Artistic license and all that.)