Saturday
Keeping Me In Line
Cleaning the floor is a delicate matter. Use this on this surface; use that on that surface. I was using the wrong this on the wrong that, and when K returned from shopping with the Boy tonight, she informed me in no uncertain terms that I was not to be using this with that. The Boy was standing and watching. When K walked away, he was kind enough to make sure I understood it perfectly:
"No, Tata, no!" he said, finger wagging. "Don't use this here. No Tata!"
Boot Heel
Dear Terrence,
Today was it. I do honestly like you all; I do honestly believe in your abilities and your intelligence; I do honestly see in you potential. But you all don’t see it in yourself, and because of that, you disrupt. Constantly. We’ve been in school three weeks now, and you’ve shown me that when given the chance to act like adults, you act like infants: you fuss about infantile things, you laugh uproariously and chaotically about infantile things; you fight over infantile things; you talk constantly about infantile things. You’ve shown me you’re just not ready to be treated like adults. What this means is that I must treat you like children. I must seem harsh in order to protect you, from yourselves and from your self-destructive habits. And so tomorrow, though I don’t really want to, I will be putting my foot down. That’s a cliche that doesn’t really adequately explain just how hard I’m going to hit you all tomorrow, so to speak. I expect to send at least ten students – that’s fully one third of you – to the assistant principal for being disruptive, because I’m going to define “disruptive” in such a harsh way that sneezing might get you sent from the room. I do this because you can’t handle the slightest amount of freedom: one off-hand comment to a peer turns into complete chaos in the class in a matter of seconds. One giggle sets ten others giggling. You are lemmings, robots – your behavior is so predictable. And so I am going to make my behavior equally predictable.
I expect to get calls from parents. I expect to see frustrated students. But I’m doing it for one reason: I will not let you screw up your own education because you find everything else in your tragic world more important.
So take a deep breath, and hope for a change in everyone else soon, because you can only change yourself, no one else. And until you do, all privileges in my classroom are indefinitely suspended. I know it sounds like I’m angry when I say this, and I am, but I’m not doing this to make my life easier or to torture you: I’m doing it to protect you.
Tying my boot laces already,
Your Teacher
Echoes
The Boy is in bed, trying to fall asleep. The cat jumps onto the bed and begins pestering the Boy, who stands up and says, “No, Bida!” When the cat doesn’t listen, the Boy says sternly, “When I say ‘No,’ I mean ‘No.'”
Guest
He was hanging in a web spun between the handrails on our deck, an enormous guest whose body was probably two inches long, the span of his legs much longer still. He was impressive size, impressive color — and probably impressive eater as well. I didn’t know what kind of spider it was; I doubted it was dangerous, for only black widows and brown recluses are spiders of venomous note around here, and this fellow clearly wasn’t either. Still, a bite would probably be painful, especially for a child. So I did the logical: I gently knocked the web down, then pushed it off the deck.
Will he return tomorrow?
The Girl’s New Room
It's been over a month in the making, this project. The Boy got his own room, using left-overs from L's room, but the Girl got new everything. New paint, new furniture, new decor. New everything. And now, it's finally -- finally -- finished.
Hunting Island
Snacks and Puzzles
Lost Cause
Dear Terrence,
I thought today was a lost cause. I thought you guys would never get it all back together. I was convinced that getting you refocused would be all but impossible. After two interruptions like you guys experienced, it would have been difficult for anyone to get back to the task at hand.
First, the fight. If you could call it a fight. I still don’t know why James attacked Bryce, and I don’t know why Bryce just sat there in the desk and took it. Disturbing on so many levels, not the least of which was the entertainment factor it seemed to have for most of you. A young man was getting pummeled, and you guys laughed. Such brutality is so foreign to me that I can only recoil, but you guys find it funny. Or was that laugh something else?
Then there was the verbal altercation with the girls while I walked the two boys down to the grade-level administrator. I know even less about that incident than I do about the fight, but I know they were angry, ready to fight themselves. I saw it in their eyes.
So when I tried to rein you guys in, I was doubtful about the ultimate success. I’ll admit that part of me was convinced class was a wash. But somehow, you guys pulled it together. And I have to say I was impressed. No side conversations about the fights. No comments when the girls came back (well, almost none). Well done. More promise.
With hope,
Your Teacher
Your Daughter
Dear Frank,
The other day I did something I doubt you have ever done: I met your daughter. She's really something: smart, amusing, sincere, beautiful. Though she's only thirteen, she's got a maturity about her that is striking. Sure, she's an at-risk kid, but the difference is, she knows it. She's aware of it. And she wants to change it.
You could do a lot to help her, but she doesn't know where you are. Indeed, she doesn't know who you are -- she told me herself. I didn't ask. She volunteered the information. (Don't worry: your daughter is not the only one to share family secrets like that. In fact, she's not the only one to share that family secret. But that's a post for politicians and pundits.) You could help her, but instead, you left.
I think of my own children, and I try to imagine leaving them before they even knew me. What kind of a father would I be if I did that? The answer is simple. You know the answer. And statistically speaking, you know the answer on a firsthand basis: I'd venture your dad skipped out on you and gave you the example of how to be a "man" that led you to skipping out on your daughter.
Perhaps it's for the best. After all, what could someone who doesn't have the courage to accept the consequences of his actions teach a girl who's trying to learn how to do just that? You'd probably drag her down, and maybe you knew that, and that's why you left. But you see, here's the catch -- it's a real paradox. If you had stuck around and had tried, you'd have been everything she needs. Perfect? No way, but no one is. Still, being a father is just like anything else: the more you do it, the better you get. And it's not too late to start. Or is it? Would she want you waltzing back into her life? Certainly not: waltzing is not humble. How about contritely contacting her? That might work. Maybe a letter.
Let me start if for you:
Dear Daughter,
I don't even know your name, and for that I'm ashamed. I have done so wrong by you that it's hard for me to look myself in the face every morning when I shave. I hate what I've done to you, but I want to make it up to you. I don't know if you want this, though, so I'll leave it for you to decide. I'll let you decide all the boundaries, and I'll keep to those boundaries like they came from the mouth of God. And if you don't want to meet me, I understand. In your shoes, I might not want to meet me either. Still, I want to apologize for what I did to you, and I want to try, somehow, to make it up to you.
There. Simple. To the point.
Of course, if you don't even know her name, how could you send it?
Sadly,
Your Daughter's Teacher