This is especially apparent in the after-school program here. I'm a designated homework helper from 2:30 until 3:30; during that time, the powers that be demand ultimate concentration on one's homework from the instant one is done with one's snack. Granted, this is only for an hour, and I know it's practically impossible to get a child back into School Mode after he's been in Play Mode. Still, I can see the insolence in their eyes the instant they walk into the door. "You're not my mom. Or my teacher. What the hell?" If one said that to me, I'm not sure what I'd respond with.
One of the boys in the after-school program is restless both after school and in it. In class, O. draws ceaselessly on his folder as his Second Language teacher talks. He is ten, blond, with an intense expression. He is Polish, and can read and speak in Russian. He loves guns -- I often catch him pointing a piece of plastic that is shaped only vaguely like a rifle at other boys, going "Pppppppp!" at their faces. When I take that away, he continues undaunted, using his finger. It's a little scary, or would be if he didn't have such an enthusiastic, crazy brain.
Today, I watched him work at modifying the line drawings on his verb - forms worksheet. They were insipid scrawlings of children doing things like "move -- moved" and "walk -- walked". While Mrs. Lyons, the teacher, helped other boys, I watched O draw giant springs on the feet of a boy who was jumping, doodle large black spectacles on the face of the girl with the box. I told myself he probably had verb forms down anyways.
Still, Mrs. Lyons, when she noticed, was obligated to take his marker away, as she'd taken away his folder that had a halfway-finished drawing of a dragon on it. (Along with some characters in mock Chinese -- we'd been discussing Chinese New Year in class, and O.'s 'words' had been gleefully shot down by his classmate Timmy, who legitimately was from China).
I realized rather belatedly that getting him back on track had probably been my job, since I was a) watching him do it and b) after all there as a sort of apprentice teacher.
I think I always tend to let kids go too far. After school today, I sat with two boys while they snacked, preparing to make them shut up and look at their homework after one last graham cracker. But I looked away for a second, and then looked back to find one hitting the other on the head with his water bottle.
"Hey, there," I said. "If you keep going with that I'll have to eat it." (Why not, "stop it"?)
The one boy looked at me, set the water bottle down and then -- I have no idea why -- pushed it with his fingers like an air-hockey puck across the table.
I have no idea why I did this, either, but I scuttled my hands like claws towards it, seized it, looked greedily around, then took it beneath the table for "dinner". I heard them above me going, "She's gonna do it!"; I emerged to find them staring gleefully at me.
The puck boy went beneath the table, retrieved it, and started gnawing on it like a dinosaur wordlessly. I watched his teeth squish and rip at the plastic, but I still didn't say anything until another adult came by, shook her head, took it out of his hands, put it in his backpack, and said, "I think we'll have to separate these two".
For a second, I'd thought she'd meant me.
(I also love Roald Dahl, The Simpsons, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Avatar, all of which the people of Ireland love. I should really be a student rather than a teacher.)
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