NOTHING IS TAUGHT TILL SOMETHING IS LEARNT
One day the counselor comes to me and says, “I’m giving you a ‘poor thing.”
Derek is so alone, so strange. Like a five year old, he craves attention and has repeatedly been pushed aside. He adores me.
He’s working against a low IQ and is trying so hard to succeed in school. It breaks my heart to watch him flounder day after day. Today, the beast to conquer is a grammar lesson. As we tackle the difference between “there” and “their”, I do my best.
“Derek,” I explain carefully, “THERE” means over in another place, and “THEIR” means that something is owned. I pile on examples, hand gestures, voice inflections to focus his attention. I’m so pleased with my masterful pedagogy until a moment later when he brightens and says, “Oh, I get it! Like when you say, ‘I own that there truck’”. He grins at me, so sure he’s got it right.
We will try again tomorrow. Right now, I mustn’t let him see me laughing.
I am working with Heather, a perky little sophomore, on a Biology worksheet on adaptations. The first example concerns the difficulty of being an albino squirrel in any season other than a snowy winter. Then comes an exercise on “hornless cattle”. For whatever reason, I read this as “homeless cattle”, and this strikes me as hysterical. It’s late in the day and my brain feels mushy. Homeless cattle. I’m pinging off the walls. After all, how would a homeless cow on the streets of Boston manage to survive? I make the mistake of verbalizing this to Heather. A good adaptation, I say, would be a sign hung around the cow’s neck reading “Milk for Hay”. Then I stare in disbelief as she writes it down. This is the same girl who defines evolution, I now remember, as “revolving with the apes”. However, her intelligence kicks in when she circumvents the attendance policy by periodically announcing the funeral of yet another imaginary relative.
Connie is a large, warmhearted girl who tells us that she has never passed English. Never. Sure enough, British Literature becomes her nemesis. One fall afternoon, the room is hushed, full of students working quietly. The only sound is my voice as I struggle to help her understand John Donne’s memorable essay, “No Man is an Island”. I can feel a teachable moment coming on. One of my favorite tasks as a teacher is taking a compelling passage and breaking it down into manageable chunks for one of my students. I can hardly wait for the light to go on in Connie’s eyes.
“Now, Connie,” I explain with all the intensity and passion I can muster, “ John Donne is trying to tell us that we are all connected in our humanity. We all share the same experiences. We are important to each other. So he says, ‘No man is an island’. Now what do you think of that?” I am really into this.
Connie gazes at me dreamily with those huge brown eyes. Surely I am reaching her at the deepest level. I wait breathlessly for her response.
“We’re all floating!”
Once more, I wonder. Should every single kid be given a classical education?