Saturday, April 23rd at 5:10pm. I heard it before I saw it. The sudden loud outburst of a child just after mass had started. The mother turned quickly toward the child and put her arm around him. That seemed to help but for a very short period of time. Although I'm not sure what it was, the child picked up an object that he was not supposed to have and the mother turned to take it away from him. Immediately after the mother took possession of the object the eruption happen. The child got very loud, the mother again turned to put her arm around him but the child starting swinging his elbows back and forth very aggressively and said "give the back to me." The father is now up and is picking up the child and removing him from the church. As the father was moving from his seat toward the aisle the child was struggling to get free. Now in the aisle, the father is quickly walking toward the back of the church with the mother immediately following. I've seen scenes like this numerous times over the past four years so I had a pretty good idea of what just happened, a child with an emotional handicap just erupted. As the mass continued I had trouble refocusing on the religious service as I kept thinking about what I just witnessed. Then it hit me, I'm in a church in the suburbs where homes are well maintained, lawn care companies do the majority of the yard work and being concerned about where your next pay check will come from is mostly non-existent. Outbursts like this aren't supposed to happen in the suburbs and that is why I started my blog with this incident. For four years readers have followed the musing of an old man with a view from the back of the room in a low social economic neighborhood and may not have considered that scholars with emotional handicaps are in the suburban schools. Well, they are, because an emotional handicap doesn't distinguish between rich and poor, between bad parents and great parents, between educated parents and uneducated parents. So, I ask you, as I've asked before, to keep the scholars that have emotional handicaps, as well as their parents, in your prayers because they have a tough road to follow.
Alright, let's get down to some academics. Today, I'll talk about things that made me smile if not laugh out loud so here we go. With so many scholars in the classroom Gnu decided to break the scholars into three academic groups and establish three separate work stations. Work station number one is her desk. Work station number two is my desk. Work station number three is an independent work station where the scholars can sit anywhere they want doing either reading or math on one of our iPads. The scholars rotate work stations every twenty minutes and Gnu runs a stop watch on her cell phone so we can stay on schedule. I can't remember what day it was but Gnu pulled out her cell phone and started her stop watch as we were doing our stations. As the first twenty minute rotation was coming to an end suddenly there is this duck quacking sound in the room. Gnu and I are looking around wondering where that sound was coming from. As Gnu focused on the quacking, she reached into her back pocket and pulled our her cell phone. Some mischievous young scholar changed the ring tone on her cell phone so it quacked. The scholars were laughing, I was laughing, and Gnu was laughing. The guilty party, as he could not keep from laughing when confronted about the quacking sound, was MiniJ.
I'm working with Grr! during our reading block. Knapper is also at my table doing his work. Grr! was in one of his moods and didn't want to read any more. I'm doing my best to keep him on track but to no avail. All of a sudden Knapper looks up at Grr! and says to him, "you need to keep reading. I know what it's like to not be able to read. I'm ten years old and I can't read and it is embarrassing." I wanted to give Knapper a big hug but hugging can be problematic so we exchanged high fives and I thank him for saying what he said to Grr!. When I turned back to Grr! he had is book in his hands and was ready to read.
We've had a science project in progress for several days and it was the life cycle of a butterfly. Every morning the scholars needed to check on the butterflies as they went through the various stages of metamorphosis. Despite the constant disruptions from the scholars, the first of our five butterflies hatched on Thursday morning. When Gnu told the scholars what had happened the excitement in their eyes and voices, as the commercial says, was priceless. Throughout the day the other four butterflies hatched and the science project was declared a success.
For about a week and a half Gnu read one of the Magic Treehouse stories to our scholars. This particular book was about the two main characters, Jack and Annie, traveling to Edo, Japan around the year 1650. By the way, the present day Edo is known as Tokyo. The story line discussed the culture and traditions on Japan and, as with the other Jack and Annie books, the scholars were thoroughly engaged in the book. As the final chapter was read Gnu half jokingly said to the scholars, "maybe we should take a trip to Japan." The scholars thought that was a great idea until Gnu mentioned what it would cost for a plane ticket to Japan so the conversation ended quickly. Later that evening I received a text message from Gnu about her plans for Japan day in the classroom that will take place on Friday. I told her that it would be a fun day so continue with the plans. For some reason I'd forgotten about Japan day until about 1:15pm on Friday afternoon as I was sitting with the scholars in music class so I decided to text Gnu about the matter. Gnu's text came back quickly and all it stated was "I'm working on it right now. When you are returning to the classroom walk slowly as I'm not quite ready." About five minutes later Gnu is standing in the doorway of the music room so I walk over to her. She says to me, "you'll need these," and she hands me the scholars passports and departs. When the music class ended I had the scholars line up in the hallway but instead of taking our usual route back to the classroom I had them walk in the opposite direction where the hallway came to and end. When we got to the end of the hallway I sat on the floor and told the scholars to sit down. The consensus of the scholars was, "why do we have to sit on the floor in the hallway Mr. Schultz, we didn't do anything wrong." When they were all seated I told them that we are no longer in school, we are in the airport as we were on our way to Edo, Japan. I told them we have cleared all of the security checkpoints but have to sit here for a while as our plane was on a weather delay. As we were sitting there my cellphone beeped and it was Gnu telling me she was ready. So I announced to the scholars that the text message I just received was from the airlines and our plane had arrived so we need to get ready to go. Just before everyone stood up I asked the scholars what they needed to have with them before we left for Japan. They thought for a moment and then said, "passports." I said that was correct and then, one by one, handed them their passport. On each passport was a photocopy of the seal of the United States just as it would be on a real passport. On the inside was the generic information for each scholar plus their picture. Do I need to mention at this point that I am working with a really outstanding teacher. Probably not. With their passports in hand, I tell the scholars to stand up and follow me as we are heading to the airplane.
When we were about twenty feet from the classroom I see our speech therapist walking toward us. I get her attention by saying, "officer, can you assist us as we are heading to Japan and I need to be sure our passports are in order." The officer steps up to the scholars and says, "I need to see your passports so when I stand in front of you, you need to hand me your passport." The speech therapist quickly got into her character, asked the scholars some questions as she looked at the passports and finally said to me "everything appears to be in order, you may continue on you way."
To this point, I've totally adlib what was going on. Now that we are standing outside our classroom I can see a sign on the door that says "Japan, please knock." From here on, I have no idea what will happen when we walk into the classroom. Knapper is at the front of the line so I say to him "we have arrived in Japan, please knock of the door," and I step out of the way. Gnu opens the door and she is wearing a kimono, has her hands together in front of her, she bows slowly and in her best Japanese accents, says to the scholars, "welcome to Japan, my name is Master G. Please come into my teahouse and sit on a mat as we will have soup and rice for lunch and then begin our poetry lesson." She carefully looks at each passport, tells each scholar that she/he can enter but first you have to take off your shoes. When I step into the classroom Gnu looks at me and says, "may I see your passport?" I respond, "I don't have one." She immediately starts speaking loudly, "intruder, intruder, young scholars please sit on your mats quietly as we have an intruder and I must call the samurai and have him removed." Gnu then picks up the telephone, dials a few numbers and speaks into the phone. "This is Master G, please send the samurai to my teahouse as there is an intruder in my presence and he does not have a passport." As she is holding the phone she starts searching her pockets and pulls out a piece of paper, looks at it and says into the phone, "I have found the intruders passport so I will not be in need of the samurai," and hangs up the phone. As she hands me my passport she says, "please have a seat in my teahouse as my scholars are about to eat lunch."
When Gnu is back at her front desk she has the scholars line up in front of her and announces that miso soup will be served so pick up a bowl and spoon. She also announces that when you have finished eating your soup you can return to the front table for rice, wanton and chop sticks so you can continue your meal. The fact that they can use chop sticks has everyone real excited. When they unwrap the chop sticks they can't figure out how to use them. Grr! tells them that they need to separate the chop sticks as they are stuck together. With his chop sticks separated Grr! properly places them in his hand and starts eating his rice. The other scholars are struggling with the chop sticks so Gnu helps them and also announces that if you want to, you can eat your rice with your spoon. Everybody but Grr! opted to us the spoon.
With the meal finished, Gnu instructs the scholars to clean any spilled food off of their mat and prepare for the poetry lesson. "Master G," I say. "I have prepared a haiku for the scholars that is worthy of me being declared a shogun with my own samurai and my own large private castle. If you'd like, I can write my haiku on the white board for the scholars to see." Gnu directs me to the white board and I write my haiku and go over the procedure on how to count the syllables in each line. I also inform the scholars that the haiku needs to be three lines long with five syllables each in line one and line three and seven syllables in line two and take my seat. Gnu moves to the front of the room, hands out the worksheets and the scholars are writing their haiku's. BigHouse and Uh-Uh-Uh are the first to finish. EM, MiniJ and S&T don't even make an attempt. Knapper had a good outline but can't get his ending right so I sit on his mat next to him and offer a few suggestions. A couple minutes later Knapper was finished and the scholars now get a chance to read what they wrote in front of the class. With the lesson completed, Gnu instructs the scholars to roll up their mats and put them back in the storage cabinet and, when done, to take a seat as our trip to Japan is over.
With everyone seated, Gnu informs the scholars that a decision has to be made about our butterflies. She reads the final part of the instructions that came with the butterfly kit to them and they realize that the butterflies need to be set free as the weekend is about to start. With the butterflies in hand the scholars are led of the school building onto the lawn at the back of the school where there are trees and flowers. Gnu is about to open the butterfly house when Uh-Uh-Uh says she wrote a haiku that she would like to read before the butterflies are released. Uh-Uh-Uh's haiku read as follows.
Flutter flutter butterfly
Fly to flower that's blooming
Pretty butterfly
With the reading complete Gnu reaches into the butterfly house and gets the butterflies moving. One by one they exit their house and the only thing nearby for them to land on is the scholars. As the butterflies are landing on the scholars they are literally screaming with excitement and pointing at the butterfly that landed on them. After a couple minutes all of the butterflies survived the screaming and excitement and safely departed.
It's 4:00pm and the day is over. Gnu speaking to me, "I don't think I've ever seen our scholars as excited as they were with those butterflies. This has the potential to be one of the best days of their entire lives." I smile at her and said "it was a good day and at some point in the future the scholars may realize that the time spent in this classroom was with the best teacher they ever had."
Not one negative thing happened in our classroom all week. We had a great week and my string of consecutive blog posts that focused solely on the bad things that happen has ended. I'm tired, I'm out. See you next week.
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