Got It. You're That One.

“All students can learn.” –Christopher Morley

You know that student.  You’ve had them in class beside you, you’ve been one, you’ve taught them.  They come in a many different forms—the student who sleeps through class, even though his eyes are open. The student who just can’t manage to not get suspended.  The one who refuses to try.  The one who just doesn’t care. 

This year mine is a girl, but some years that student is a boy.  Some years I’ve had more than one, but I’ve always had at least one.  That student who I want to succeed so badly, who I want to teach something meaningful to, and, who, for some reason, just won’t learn.  That student that you bring home with you in your heart, who makes you wonder, “What am I going to do?”

This year, she’s the student who so desperately needs attention of any kind, whose main goal is to distract, who is adamant I do not understand her.  

She is not totally wrong.  I don’t understand what it’s like to grow up in a single parent home.  I don’t know what it’s like to live with barely enough money to survive or to feel like you’re not smart enough to have anybody think you could possibly have the right answer. 

But she is not totally right either, because I know her well enough after two weeks to see beyond the behavior.  But the reason that I can’t leave her at school some days, why I can’t always just turn it off and worry about her tomorrow is because I don’t know how to treat the root cause of her behavior.  What’s even worse is that I doubt I’d be able to even if I tried.

I sit in my house, thinking about the situation with her, thinking about her ridiculousness, about her outbursts, her defiance, and her excuses, and I just don’t know.  I don’t know how to help her, I don’t know how to fix her, I don’t know how to make her learn. 

That’s what it comes down to in the end.  She is that student that I want to learn in my class almost more than all the other students, because I believe that learning, that education, that knowledge, could actually change her life.  And she is the one for whom I just can’t seem to figure out how to do that.

This isn’t a story of how by loving her and accepting her I’ve come to change her life.  I’ve known her for two weeks and mostly in the moment she drives me crazy.  I was sort of excited for the rest of my students today when I thought she was absent.  Instead she was just ten minutes tardy to my fifty-minute class.    This is the story of me and of so many teachers who have just looked at a kid and thought, “I just don’t know.”

What really makes me just shake my head is that I’m sure she has no idea how much I think about and wonder what I should do about this whole thing.  If you asked her, I’m sure she’d say either, “Ms. Short hates me,” or “I hate Ms. Short,” depending on her mood and how much of my frustration seeped into my voice during class.  Obviously I don’t hate her, and I doubt she actually hates me.  Honestly, it’s tough to come in and love someone who wants you to grow and change and stretch and expand your mind.  Especially when you’re 13.  In fact, as I remember it, most people sort of hate themselves and lots of other people at 13.  It’s kind of a terrible age. 

I want this to have an answer, a resolution, a neat hopeful ending about the power of a teacher to change a life.  And one thing I’ve learned is that resolutions are never as neat as they are in books.  Even good books.  Right now the answer is I don’t know.  The only resolution is that I’m going to teach her again tomorrow, and the hope is that she’ll remember something from what I taught her today.