*that* kind of teacher, part II
I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I assigned a personal narrative essay. I just thought it would be easier for my students to write about their own lives than to make something up, so I gave them two prompts to get them started. One was to write about a time when they took a chance to do something they'd been afraid to do, and one was to write about a time when they realized an adult in their lives had an influence on them. If they didn't like my ideas, they were free to come up with another topic. Of course, there are the usual essays about roller coasters and best friends, but many of my students have gotten so raw in their papers that I have found myself almost crying during our revision conferences. I have been so proud because across the board it’s the best writing they’ve done all year, but it’s also been hard for me to read about how hard some of their lives have been, ranging from Melinda writing “my mom was always saying she wasn’t a good mother, but she was the best,” to Katie writing about singing “You Are My Sunshine” at her father’s funeral, to Rory sharing the feeling that his grandparents don’t really want him.
What has blown my emotions away this week most of all is one student: Marcus. He’s another one of my students who is in a foster home; for some reason God is putting the system in my life this year in a big way. Marcus had been at our school for about three days when the other teachers started saying he was in a gang, and when I started to pay attention I realized that they were probably right; he even refused to take a red Post-It note from me in class. I resented having him put into my Special Ed Inclusion class, which already had 20 kids, most with learning disabilities or ADD/ADHD and many with various discipline issues. He's a scary kid, bigger than me and the other kids in the class, and my co-teacher and I spent the first weeks with him establishing our authority as he tried to show the other students that he was the alpha male in the class by picking fights with the guys and flirting with the girls. Regretfully, I did not spend a lot of time trying to develop a teacher-student relationship with him because I was spending so much time sending him to the office, holding him after class to talk about what he'd done wrong, etc. We hadn't been able to get more than a paragraph of writing out of him since he came to our school in December.
When I first assigned the personal narrative, Marcus refused, saying that he doesn’t want to think about his life and that his therapist had told him to let it go. I told him that writing *is* a form of therapy and that the hardest writing to do usually ends up being our best work, and my co-teacher sat him down and asked general questions about where he had lived, siblings, etc. He finally completed the assignment during a day in in-school suspension. This is Marcus’s essay:
I want to tell you about my life and growing up in the church and also on the street. The first time my grandmother took me to church, I was about four or five me and my brothers were so scared it wasn’t even funny.
My grandmother was the best person alive and not to mention the nicest. She had the face of a god and the voice of an angel. When she died my brother’s and my world was upside down as if it had ended for us. But we weren’t the only people suffering about the loss of an angel ever since then it felt like we were going through everything but I was different then my brothers. I was the type that held it in and more protective than they were not to mention way more violent than them.
What I would do was as soon as I got out of school I would hit the block hard. I started when I was nine selling drugs and made $10,000 before I was ten. I’m from Roanoke I know it’s not real real ghetto but I know it was hard growing up without a father or a mother the only type of mother I had was dead and the only father I had was abusive. Not my biological parents they gave me up to their mom and dad. But I’m not complaining because I can grow up to be something great because what don’t kill you makes you stronger and I been through a lot more that that but I’m not gone get into that. I just want to thank all the people who helped me throughout the years I would not be here if it wasn’t for you all.
In the same week that he wrote this essay, Marcus breezed through The Lightning Thief, told me it was the first book he’d ever finished, and asked to borrow the sequel. When I handed him the second book in the series, he exclaimed, "This looks bad-" and remembered to cut himself off before saying the rest. The next day, he told my co-teacher that he wants to join the track team (she coaches), and came into my classroom early one morning to show us the new sneakers his foster mom bought him for track. He’s remembering what it is to be a kid, and he’s liking it, and I am so grateful that he is getting this second chance to have a normal thirteen-year-old life. He has a B in English-- the first grade above a D he's ever had-- and I'm feeling victorious.
What has blown my emotions away this week most of all is one student: Marcus. He’s another one of my students who is in a foster home; for some reason God is putting the system in my life this year in a big way. Marcus had been at our school for about three days when the other teachers started saying he was in a gang, and when I started to pay attention I realized that they were probably right; he even refused to take a red Post-It note from me in class. I resented having him put into my Special Ed Inclusion class, which already had 20 kids, most with learning disabilities or ADD/ADHD and many with various discipline issues. He's a scary kid, bigger than me and the other kids in the class, and my co-teacher and I spent the first weeks with him establishing our authority as he tried to show the other students that he was the alpha male in the class by picking fights with the guys and flirting with the girls. Regretfully, I did not spend a lot of time trying to develop a teacher-student relationship with him because I was spending so much time sending him to the office, holding him after class to talk about what he'd done wrong, etc. We hadn't been able to get more than a paragraph of writing out of him since he came to our school in December.
When I first assigned the personal narrative, Marcus refused, saying that he doesn’t want to think about his life and that his therapist had told him to let it go. I told him that writing *is* a form of therapy and that the hardest writing to do usually ends up being our best work, and my co-teacher sat him down and asked general questions about where he had lived, siblings, etc. He finally completed the assignment during a day in in-school suspension. This is Marcus’s essay:
I want to tell you about my life and growing up in the church and also on the street. The first time my grandmother took me to church, I was about four or five me and my brothers were so scared it wasn’t even funny.
My grandmother was the best person alive and not to mention the nicest. She had the face of a god and the voice of an angel. When she died my brother’s and my world was upside down as if it had ended for us. But we weren’t the only people suffering about the loss of an angel ever since then it felt like we were going through everything but I was different then my brothers. I was the type that held it in and more protective than they were not to mention way more violent than them.
What I would do was as soon as I got out of school I would hit the block hard. I started when I was nine selling drugs and made $10,000 before I was ten. I’m from Roanoke I know it’s not real real ghetto but I know it was hard growing up without a father or a mother the only type of mother I had was dead and the only father I had was abusive. Not my biological parents they gave me up to their mom and dad. But I’m not complaining because I can grow up to be something great because what don’t kill you makes you stronger and I been through a lot more that that but I’m not gone get into that. I just want to thank all the people who helped me throughout the years I would not be here if it wasn’t for you all.
In the same week that he wrote this essay, Marcus breezed through The Lightning Thief, told me it was the first book he’d ever finished, and asked to borrow the sequel. When I handed him the second book in the series, he exclaimed, "This looks bad-" and remembered to cut himself off before saying the rest. The next day, he told my co-teacher that he wants to join the track team (she coaches), and came into my classroom early one morning to show us the new sneakers his foster mom bought him for track. He’s remembering what it is to be a kid, and he’s liking it, and I am so grateful that he is getting this second chance to have a normal thirteen-year-old life. He has a B in English-- the first grade above a D he's ever had-- and I'm feeling victorious.