Tic-tac-toe is a paper and pencil game, although we actually have a game board in the classroom, for two players who take turns marking spaces on a grid. It's a pretty simple game unless one of the competitors has an anger issue and the other competitor has an oppositional defiant disorder. One competitor placed an X on the game board. The second competitor decided to change the rules so he can win by playing two O's at the same time. The competitor playing X asked the competitor playing O to remove one piece as it is considered cheating. The competitor playing O refuses. The competitor playing X again asks the other competitor playing O to remove one piece. Again, the competitor playing O refuses. The competitor play X smacks the competitor playing O up the side of his head. The competitor playing O moves quickly behind the competitor playing X and puts him into an arm bar choke hold. Competitor Y, who was observing, quickly separates the competitors, picks up the tic-tac-toe game, announces the game is going into timeout for several weeks, and the day continues. One of the competitors was Grr! and the other was Oil. I'll let you try and figure out who was playing X and who was playing O.
"Schultz, I have two Patricia Polacco books that I want you to read," Gnu says to me. "I'd read them to the scholars but I'm afraid I'd start crying during the stories," she continued. I started with Junkyard Wonders and, as the story progressed, it was interesting to listen to what the scholars had to say about the setting and characters in the story. I'll give you the abridged version of the story. The setting is a special education classroom in, what I think is, a middle school. In this school, the classroom is called the junkyard by a lot of scholars who are not in the special education classroom. The teacher for the junkyard scholars has the task of convincing them that they are geniuses and can go on to accomplish many great things. As I introduced the junkyard scholars to our scholars it was interesting to watch their reaction when they heard why each individual scholar was in the junkyard. In the book, there is a very intelligent scholar who stutters. We have a scholar who stutters. There is a scholar who is very tall for his age. We have a second grade scholar who is in the 150th percentile for growth and is two inches short of being the tallest scholar in our classroom. There is a scholar in the junkyard, Patricia Polacco herself, who can't read due to dyslexia. We have three scholars with dyslexia. There is a scholar with Tourette's Syndrome. We have a scholar with the same disorder. In the book there is also a scholar with very thick eye glasses who loved to dance and a scholar who is non-verbal. After all the characters were introduced I asked the scholars what it was like for them to be in the junkyard of our school. There was no response. So I said to them, "you are in the junkyard, you are just like the scholars in this story." Still, there was no response and that was interesting because when you read to these scholars they usually can't wait to make a contribution to the story.
At the end of the story Patricia Polacco tells a little bit about the scholars when they reached adulthood. Polacco, who couldn't read until the age of fourteen, is an author. The scholar with the stutter was a math genious who went on to work for NASA. The non-verbal scholar ended up in New York City as a fashion designer. The scholar with the thick glasses works for a ballet company in New York City. The scholar who was exceptionally tall for his age, and the reason Gnu had me read this story, died of his disease during the school year. In the end I think our scholars enjoyed the book and may have recognized themselves in the story. Hopefully, one or two of them will overcome the obstacles they face and accomplish great things when they reach adulthood. Before they do that however, they'll have to figure out how to avoid starting a brawl over a game of tic-tac-toe.
My day of origination has come and gone. That's correct, I advanced another year. I chose not to say anything to Gnu or the scholars on my birthday and I had a good reason. Gnu's spouse has the same day of origination, with about forty years difference between us, and I knew she would be busy planning for his birthday. It was a couple minutes before I left school for the day when I finally said something to Gnu. "Can you do me a favor," I ask her. When she looked at me I said to her, "say happy birthday." "Why didn't you tell me. You know I'm terrible at remembering dates," she said to me. I explained the reason for my silence and she was good with that. The next morning I was first to arrive and I went through my standard day beginning routine. As I sat at my desk checking my email Gnu walked in carrying something that required hot pads. "Birthday cake," I asked. "No, belated birthday breakfast casserole." I laughed. She laughed. The scholars arrived, stuffed their faces and the day began. About an hour into the day, Tourette walked over to my desk to do a reading station. As he sat down across from me he asked me how old I was. I told him I was 67. He looked at me and said, "and you can still walk."
There is a running race coming up in my city. It is called the Monumental Marathon and there are around thirty scholars from my school in training to run the 5K leg of the race. If you could see them, it wouldn't take you long to figure out that none of the thirty or so scholars are avid runners. Training for the race takes place right after our buses leave the school area so the scholars have to run with whatever they were wearing during the school day. That doesn't seem to bother them at all because, for whatever reason, they just like to run. The starting point for the daily run is inside the school. They run from east to west in the school, exit onto a side walk, turn south for a short distance, to back east for another short distance, turn north for a short distance and then re-enter the school. They repeat this course three times right now and then call it a day. On one training day, Gnu was staying after school to tutor EM and S&T when there was an announcement that teachers were needed to help the running club. Gnu, being in the school, volunteered to stand and hold open one of the doors to the school so the runners would not be slowed down. EM stayed close to her and worked on his homework. S&T asked Gnu if he could run. Gnu said, "sure, go ahead." S&T was off in a sprint. He managed to make it through two laps when he ran out of gas and stopped by Gnu. Part of Gnu's responsibility, besides opening a door, was to place a mark on the back of each runners hand when they passed her. If, with the run completed, a scholar didn't have three makes on the back of his/her hand the coaches would be made aware. Gnu decided to pay closer attention to EM, who was sitting close by, to help him with his homework, so she gave the marker to S&T. One by one, as the runners ran by, S&T placed a mark on the back of the runners hand. With practice over, EM, S&T, and Gnu were headed back to the classroom when S&T said to Gnu, "this was one of my best days ever."
I have just a brief update on EM. He is still in the general education fifth grade classroom and for the most part he is holding his own as we approach the end of the first grading period. Unlike, Uh-Uh-Uh, Big House, and MiniJ, EM has a chance to succeed for one reason. He has access to an inclusion teacher that spends time with him in his general education classroom daily. EM also has a guardian angel to help him with his homework everyday that he has homework. Not too many people know about this guardian angel. I suspect EM's homeroom teacher is aware but that is about it. Well, technically, I'm aware of the guardian angel as she sits across the classroom from me everyday. Does this guardian angel get paid by the school corporation to tutor someone after school? Surely, I jest. Does this guardian angel get paid by EM's parental unit for tutoring. No! Even if EM's parental unit made the attempt, the guardian angel would turn down the money. So why does Gnu do this? Because she is a school teacher, like thousands of other school teachers, who cares about her scholars. And maybe, just maybe, there is something that Gnu sees in a young scholar that has battled dyslexia everyday of this life, that will bring out his inner genius so he can on and do great things some day.
Ta-da! The grill is fired up, hamburgers are about to feel the heat and I'm out of here. Thank you for continuing to follow the musings of an old man that has a view from the back of the room.
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