About a Boy

My most worrisome students are boys: boys affected by poverty, boys with dyslexia, boys with poor social skills, boys in danger of failing -- angry boys, hungry boys, fatherless boys.

Here is another story about a boy. He moved here after the school year had started. His father had been without a job for more than a year, and they’d ended up in Texas. He was hungry and completely untrusting of everyone. He once cracked open a pecan in my classroom after recess -- pecans are a playground treasure for some of my students (the hungry ones?) -- and proclaimed, "Pecans are the only thing I like about Texas." I don't blame him for feeling that way. One Monday, he shared that someone had beaten up his dad the previous Friday, landing his dad in jail for a few hours. A few weeks later, he said someone had shot at his dog. I believe both stories. This boy has fear in his eyes.

When we wrote and illustrated poems to be displayed in the hall, he created a folding cover for his poem and wrote on it: DO NOT OPEN. I displayed it this way (he still wanted it displayed!), taped shut, until he took it down because kids were opening it. Nothing makes a fourth grader want to open something like a sign that says not to open it.

Last Friday, the last day of school before the holidays, the boy had a blow up. He spent the last half of the day in the principal’s and counselor’s offices and didn't get to finish his craft projects we were making in class. I promised to glue them and bring them by his house in a few days. So today, I visited, carrying his artwork, plus a few small gifts.

His street and neighborhood were not as bad as I had envisioned, from hearing his stories. The front porch was shielded by a sheet of plywood. A lanky puppy greeted me at the front door. I rang the doorbell, and the boy's mom invited me in. I followed the puppy. The house was warm enough, and a big Christmas tree took up one-sixth the living room. My boy was curled under a blanket on the couch. His mom said they'd just gotten their heat turned on (we've had some REALLY cold days recently, and I cannot imagine being without heat), and they'd all taken turns being sick. The puppy nosed him, and the boy sat up, his eyes glassy. He looked sad.

I admired their tree. It was covered in handmade ornaments from the boy and his siblings -- along with some more intricate ones I learned were made by the boy and his mom. My crummy photo above doesn't do them justice. They're made from Christmas cards the family has received, though the mom mentioned that they'd hardly received any this year, because of their moving around.

"Which one did you make for your teacher?" the mom asked her son, though I suspect that the boy didn’t want to part with one of his ornaments. His mom scanned the tree. "Was it the snowman?" she asked, then answered herself, "Yes, I think it was." She took the snowman ornament off the tree and gave it to me. I cradled it gently, oohed and ahed, and got instructions on making my own. (Each ornament takes 12 two-inch circles cut from the cards. The edges are folded so that each circle becomes a pentagon, and the folded edges are glued together to form a round-ish ornament.)

I am thankful that this boy has a puppy. And heat. I am thankful he makes things with his mom. And now, their snowman brightens my tree. I will think of my boy and his family this Christmas. I will hope for him, and all my boys, that 2010 will be a good year.

Kids Can Learn More, Earlier, Than We Knew

Promising research on brain development affects preschool education. "And schools in about a dozen states have begun to use a program intended to accelerate the development of young students’ frontal lobes, improving self-control in class," according to this NYT article.

Apparently, I haven't taught this student much.

I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.

Mean Boy Update

Even after his poetry memorization success, the mean boy is still mean. He takes regular verbal swipes at other students, often at after-lunch recess. (So much of the drama happens at after-lunch recess, because the kids are completely out of teacher ear-shot.) It has come out that many students are afraid of him. Yesterday, in the boys' bathroom, the mean boy allegedly threatened to beat up another student because the that student had told the truth (along with about 10 other kids) about the mean boy throwing a piece of food at a girl at lunch.

I am resisting the temptation to write about him as Mean Boy, with capital letters, like that's his name. Why? I still have hope for him, hope I can't explain. This boy has potential. He's bright and sensitive -- and miserable, I think, which is why he's so mean. I don't know all the reasons for his misery. I can guess that it has something to do with not having a father involved in his life, and with the mean older sister he mentions regularly.

So for now he's just the mean boy, a common noun. I hope he will become Kind Boy, Changed Boy, Caring Boy, Friend Boy. Anything is possible.

Window-Watching Weather

Tuesday, the big oak tree outside my classroom wore a brilliant rust hairdo. Smooth, heavy clouds blew far past in the distance, like a long blanket being dragged across the horizon. Wind brushed hard against the windows, and leaves shimmied, clinging to the oak. Now and then, we had to stop our lesson and watch. But just as we would go back to work, the wind would whip up again, and the stubborn leaves would tremble.

No kid can ignore exciting weather out a classroom window -- the shouts and oohs during a windstorm, or after thunder, or as fat rain drops slap the glass, or heaven forbid, when snow starts to fall, bring me back to my own elementary school years, when weather out the window brought a glorious distraction from a long, monotonous day. My teachers always said something like, “You’ve seen snow before. Let’s get back to work.”

But you should have seen the brilliant leaves shimmy on Tuesday! You should have heard the wind! It was impossible to ignore. So finally, I said, “Let’s just sit here and watch for a minute.” The classroom was the stillest it's ever been, as we took in our wild-haired tree.

We did that on Tuesday. We observed.

The Imagination Nazi Strikes

Many fourth graders are not so creative. I can think of several reasons for this: their developmental stage, concrete operational, which makes them more logical than abstract; laziness or learned helplessness (some want to be told what to do and how to do it); too much time spent filling in TAKS-practice multiple-choice bubbles; and fear of doing it "wrong," when the only real wrong is refusal to try.

Open-ended assignments, in which students have free choice of topic or format, are often met with worried looks or blank stares from several students, followed by a request to go to the bathroom, or questions that begin, "Is it O.K. if we ...?" -- to which I respond, sometimes crossly:

"Quit asking questions! Just use your brain to figure it out! That's why it's called a free write -- you are FREE to choose! ... What? NO, you may not go get a drink. And don't look so miserable! No one ever died from writing. ... Didn't you just go to the bathroom after lunch? No. Sit down."

My barking out corrections or commands probably whooshes any remaining creativity out of the room. It's like unleashing a fire extinguisher on a Christmas candle. I felt this happen in my classroom last Friday:

Determined that my students would stretch their creative muscles, I walked them through a guided imagery exercise in which they took a trip in their minds. A lot of students loved it and were sparked to create long stories or essays, or detailed pictures. Some students, however, could not handle the freedom of even the first step: "Find a place in the room where you will be comfortable sitting or lying with your eyes closed for about 10 minutes." Really. Some took five minutes finding the right spot. One boy, trying to be funny, even put his head in the trash can and, when questioned, told me that was where he was most comfortable. I became annoyed, then angry, with the few students who wouldn't take the assignment seriously. No doubt, my irritation affected the tone of the class -- and thus the effectiveness of this exercise -- for at least one group of students.

Still, I will continue to plan regular creativity stretches. I think it was good for my students. But next time, they will stay in their seats. And no matter how annoyed I become, I will not let myself sound like a Rottweiler.