I often wonder just how much peace my students experience at home. It seems to be an inverse relationship: the more troubled the behavior, the less peaceful the home. A colleague tells of a home visit that sounds absolutely horrifying: two loud televisions in one room, one with sports and the other with some movie, a loud boom box in a nearby room, someone sticking his head in to yell “When’s dinner?!”, and all the while, the conversation continues about the student’s performance and not once does an adult offer to turn down any of the noise.

“They’re surrounded by noise, by motion, by stimulation,” another colleague mentions during lunch. “It’s no wonder they can’t sit still, can’t focus.”

Not to mention what they consume in the name of food.

I have a rough class before lunch, and when we return from lunch, twenty minutes remain until the next class change. I work on social skills with them; I let them relax a while if they’ve worked well during class time; but most often, I try to give them peace. I turn the lights off, instruct them to put their heads down — why is it they won’t put their heads down when told but at least one every day wants to put her head down during class time? — and simply stop. Stop moving, stop talking, stop shaking a leg or beating a finger on the desk. Just stop. Take a moment to collect themselves.

Most of them can’t do it.

I try to play soft music for them, but I wonder if, obsessed as they are with rap “music,” the classical music I play for them might be exhausting. They might not even know what a melody is, and if that’s the case, they can’t find much pleasure in classical music. Add to it their painfully short attention spans and it becomes rather obvious that they can’t trace out the development of a musical theme, let alone notice when it repeats and begins morphing as it does in Romantic and Classical (as in the period, not the genre) music. I find Haydn works best, better than just about anything else.

Fast forward a couple of hours. K, E, and I have dinner together. What a blessing just to have dinner together. What a blessing that the Boy loves veggies. What a blessing that we had an entire zucchini to feed him.

After dinner, we go to the newly-paved street across from our house. K rides the scooter; the Boy coasts around on his whatever-it’s-called. They bump each other, chase each other, goof around. I take the pictures.

After riding, Nana and Papa bring the Girl back and everyone sits a while and talks, rides bikes, fusses, cries, laughs.

After bath, after snacks, the kids lie on the bed with K who reads a new book from the library, translating the English to Polish to provide the kids with more exposure to the language.

“Co to jest ‘snooty’?”

“Go with snobby,” I say.

What do all these vignettes have in common? A peace that comes with a family spending time as a family. A peace that I’m not sure some of my students can even imagine.