There are days in teaching, where I come home feeling high with the euphoria of success. I have found just the right way to communicate what I want students to be able to do... and... they... have... done... it. I collect a bundle of poems from proud creator-hands and... the poem... are... transparent... and... whole.
And then there are days like today when I come home holding my heart in shattered pieces, so tinny and broken I'm sure the shards will cut my hands. If I shared this story with my colleagues, and maybe I will, they would all have similar stories to tell, similar episodes of setting aside the huge stack of papers that need grading to listen to a child who doesn't possess a fraction of the words he needs to communicate just how much he's suffering. There are too many stories like mine today, too many tales of the adults giving up or going away, too many stony faces of children swearing that nothing is wrong when really their world seems to be held together with cheap masking tape.
Ike (not his real name) is a beautiful brown-skinned boy who sits in the first seat in my last period class. He's a clown and a showman, constantly smiling and embracing distraction and laughter over attentiveness to learning. He speaks with an African accent and makes friends easily. He is my only dark-skinned boy in all of my five honors classes. His skills are low enough that if he weren't so darned likable, I might suggest he move to regular English.
For the entire year, Ike's grades each quarter have started off abysmally low, but by the end, he takes advantage of my no-points-off-for-late-work policy and he brings his grade up to a B. He earns the B, just within his own time-frame, and that's alright with me. He needs more minutes of instruction and so he chooses to stay after school quite often.
We've talked before about the pressure his dad puts on him to make good grades and I always sided with his Dad, so happy that his father was pushing him to do his best. But today, Ike's face was frozen solid when he came by to turn in his missing work. He told me, eyes stony, that everything was fine. I called him a liar. He grinned, but not his usual contagious one... and walked away.
Over the weekend, I'd bought him a book at a thrift store, so by the time he got to my class for the last period of the day I had it wrapped with a note. I gave it to him. Nothing. Eyes of granite.
He stayed after school, moving from his usual spot on the other side of the room to the sofa right in front of my desk. Seeing that he wasn't working much, I asked him about Ghana and I looked up his home city online so I could see where he came from. I asked him about the pictures I found. I asked him about how schools are different. He answered with more and more words, each question opening the door a little more. By the time I came home today I knew this.
He lived with his mother until he was seven, when he moved in with his father, a man he'd never met. Between that day and when he moved to the US in sixth grade, he saw his mother four or five times only. Since he moved here, he hasn't spoken to her once. His father wants him to make good grades, wants him to rise above the life of menial work. And all of that sounds good, but when the details get refined, I learn that his father tells him that he, Ike, just doesn't try hard enough, that his grades are low because he's lazy. I hear that his father makes him sit for four hours staring at math that Ike just doesn't understand. I hear that Ike has stopped telling his father that he doesn't understand the math because he's tired of the mean words he gets in response and now lies and accepts that punishment over hearing that he's lazy. His older brothers tutor him and then shout and report Ike's continued failure to their father. Yesterday his father banished him from studying at the dining room table. Ike moved to his brother's room, but was then kicked out of there too. I asked him where he studied and he said, "I tried to study in the bathroom, but then my dad said no."
"Mrs. Leary," he said, "You know what I wish the most? I wish I could have a whole day where my Dad wouldn't talk and would just listen to me. If he listened to me, he'd learn that it's not that I'm smart and not trying. The truth is that I'm not as smart as he thinks I am."
So, I know I have a tendency to side with my students, believing every word they share as truth. So, let me just say this, even if the fact reporting is skewed, the reason my heart broke was these words that Ike dropped as he was putting on his back pack to leave, as if they were irrelevant, as if they weren't little spiky bombs : "My father is threatening to send me back to Ghana. I don't know who I'll live with if I go there. I think I'd live with my mom. But, what I'm afraid of is what if he sends me there and I don't get better? What will happen to me then?"
I said, "Ike, your father wants to help you but he doesn't know how. Because he's trying everything he knows and it's not working, he feels powerless and so he is making you feel like there is something wrong with you. But, Ike, there is nothing wrong with you. Nothing. I see you compared to a lot of other teenagers and THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU."
His eyes filled with tears and he looked at me begging for more absolution from the sin of complicating his father's life. He wanted to drink it up. He left by brainstorming what he might be able to do to help his father have more faith in him. I guess that's positive. But, I hold these shards of my own heart in my hand, because Ike isn't the broken one here. He wants to believe he can fix himself so his father will use loving words and patience, so his father will just hear him.
And then there are days like today when I come home holding my heart in shattered pieces, so tinny and broken I'm sure the shards will cut my hands. If I shared this story with my colleagues, and maybe I will, they would all have similar stories to tell, similar episodes of setting aside the huge stack of papers that need grading to listen to a child who doesn't possess a fraction of the words he needs to communicate just how much he's suffering. There are too many stories like mine today, too many tales of the adults giving up or going away, too many stony faces of children swearing that nothing is wrong when really their world seems to be held together with cheap masking tape.
Ike (not his real name) is a beautiful brown-skinned boy who sits in the first seat in my last period class. He's a clown and a showman, constantly smiling and embracing distraction and laughter over attentiveness to learning. He speaks with an African accent and makes friends easily. He is my only dark-skinned boy in all of my five honors classes. His skills are low enough that if he weren't so darned likable, I might suggest he move to regular English.
For the entire year, Ike's grades each quarter have started off abysmally low, but by the end, he takes advantage of my no-points-off-for-late-work policy and he brings his grade up to a B. He earns the B, just within his own time-frame, and that's alright with me. He needs more minutes of instruction and so he chooses to stay after school quite often.
We've talked before about the pressure his dad puts on him to make good grades and I always sided with his Dad, so happy that his father was pushing him to do his best. But today, Ike's face was frozen solid when he came by to turn in his missing work. He told me, eyes stony, that everything was fine. I called him a liar. He grinned, but not his usual contagious one... and walked away.
Over the weekend, I'd bought him a book at a thrift store, so by the time he got to my class for the last period of the day I had it wrapped with a note. I gave it to him. Nothing. Eyes of granite.
He stayed after school, moving from his usual spot on the other side of the room to the sofa right in front of my desk. Seeing that he wasn't working much, I asked him about Ghana and I looked up his home city online so I could see where he came from. I asked him about the pictures I found. I asked him about how schools are different. He answered with more and more words, each question opening the door a little more. By the time I came home today I knew this.
He lived with his mother until he was seven, when he moved in with his father, a man he'd never met. Between that day and when he moved to the US in sixth grade, he saw his mother four or five times only. Since he moved here, he hasn't spoken to her once. His father wants him to make good grades, wants him to rise above the life of menial work. And all of that sounds good, but when the details get refined, I learn that his father tells him that he, Ike, just doesn't try hard enough, that his grades are low because he's lazy. I hear that his father makes him sit for four hours staring at math that Ike just doesn't understand. I hear that Ike has stopped telling his father that he doesn't understand the math because he's tired of the mean words he gets in response and now lies and accepts that punishment over hearing that he's lazy. His older brothers tutor him and then shout and report Ike's continued failure to their father. Yesterday his father banished him from studying at the dining room table. Ike moved to his brother's room, but was then kicked out of there too. I asked him where he studied and he said, "I tried to study in the bathroom, but then my dad said no."
"Mrs. Leary," he said, "You know what I wish the most? I wish I could have a whole day where my Dad wouldn't talk and would just listen to me. If he listened to me, he'd learn that it's not that I'm smart and not trying. The truth is that I'm not as smart as he thinks I am."
So, I know I have a tendency to side with my students, believing every word they share as truth. So, let me just say this, even if the fact reporting is skewed, the reason my heart broke was these words that Ike dropped as he was putting on his back pack to leave, as if they were irrelevant, as if they weren't little spiky bombs : "My father is threatening to send me back to Ghana. I don't know who I'll live with if I go there. I think I'd live with my mom. But, what I'm afraid of is what if he sends me there and I don't get better? What will happen to me then?"
I said, "Ike, your father wants to help you but he doesn't know how. Because he's trying everything he knows and it's not working, he feels powerless and so he is making you feel like there is something wrong with you. But, Ike, there is nothing wrong with you. Nothing. I see you compared to a lot of other teenagers and THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU."
His eyes filled with tears and he looked at me begging for more absolution from the sin of complicating his father's life. He wanted to drink it up. He left by brainstorming what he might be able to do to help his father have more faith in him. I guess that's positive. But, I hold these shards of my own heart in my hand, because Ike isn't the broken one here. He wants to believe he can fix himself so his father will use loving words and patience, so his father will just hear him.
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