Thursday, October 11, 2018
I'm four days into fall break, it's 52 degrees outside, cloudy with rain threatening. Because of the lousy weather I'm sitting at my kitchen table instead of my favorite blogging place, my screened in porch, and with nothing better to do I started typing. The depressing activities that I saw in the hallway, as mentioned in my last blog post, got me thinking about how negative some of my recent posts have been so I decided to get out of the hallway and go back into the classroom Well, I'm not quite done with the hallway and you are about to find out why.
T6 scholars rotate during the day and one of their rotations takes them to the classroom that is right next to T4's. On a several occasions, after the T6's walked into the classroom, I noticed that one scholar chose not to enter the classroom. Instead, this T6-M just sat down on the floor outside the classroom door so I decided to offer him a seat at the half round table I sit at when I'm in the hallway. T6-M declined the offer but I kept after him until he finally got up and sat at the table. One day when T6-M was sitting at my table T-4 stepped outside her classroom, saw him sitting there, and said hello to him. Later in the day I asked T-4 about T6-M and this is what I was told. T6-M is real shy, doesn't like loud noises, and has autism. T-4's comment about loud noises gave me the clue as to why this scholar would not enter that classroom. The classroom is noisy, the teacher gets real loud when trying to get the scholars to stay quiet, and often times, because this classroom is so loud, I will get up and close the classroom door when I'm doing math in the hallway.
Normally T6-M just sits quietly at my table with nothing to do. This changed when he sat down next to me one day with a worksheet. Although he had a worksheet in front of him he was still doing nothing so I asked him what he was working on. He told me he had to write a scary story and then he said that he didn't know what to write. It's now decision time for me. Should I help T6-M or just let him sit there doing, as he has been for several days, nothing. I stood up, walked into T4's classroom, tore a page out of my black spiral notebook, walked back to my half round table in the hallway, sat down, and said to T6-M, "would you like me to help you get started with your writing assignment?" He agreed to let me help him so I wrote the following on my piece of spiral notebook paper: title, setting, characters, and plot. As we worked through the parts of a story T6-M did the talking and I did the writing. When he was finished I said lets start your story with a good opening sentence. He struggled with the opening sentence at first but finally wrote something.
When I read his opening sentence I mentioned to him how much I liked it and told him to continue writing and to look at the outline we made so he could remember to work the setting and characters into his story. As I sat there watching T6-M write I had a smile on my face. I wasn't sure what he was writing but he was writing nonstop. When he was about three-fourths of the way through the 8" x 11 1/2" piece of lined paper I heard him laugh to himself. When he told me what he wrote I started laughing and said to him, "T6-M, I'm certain that you will be the only scholar in your class that will work a paranormal experience into their scary story."
When T-6M finished his scary story it was right at a page long. As I sat next to him, he kept staring at his story and I wasn't sure what he was doing. Then he picked up his pencil and I knew what he was doing. He was rereading and editing his story as he had seen a couple mistakes he made and he wanted to correct them. I'm in my seventh year at this school. I've watched numerous scholars write a story. Only a few of them would write a story that covered an entire 8" x 11 1/2" piece of paper and no one, until I came across T6-M, ever edited their paper to look for errors.
A few days later I ran into an M-Overhead teacher that had worked with T6-M in the past. When this teacher asked me how T6-M was doing I mentioned that he just wrote at scary story that was an entire page long. The M-Overhead teacher's reaction totally surprised me as he gave me a hug and then said to me, "do you know how huge that is?" "No," I said. "T6-M doesn't like to do very much work. He usually will just sit and be quiet but you managed to get him to write a story that was a page long. That's amazing, thank you for taking the time to work with him."
I'm going to finish my T6-M story with two comments. First, a while back I was having a texting conversation with a college roommate and I was telling him that I missed my calling a long time ago and said to him, "maybe I should have been a teacher." The response from my college roommate, Lutriot, was this. "I think your calling found you." Here is the second comment. The hallway outside T-4's classroom certainly has a lot of drama but, as you can see, good things also can a happen. You were just introduced to T6-M, a scholar I saw sitting quietly and alone in the hallway while other adults just walked right on past him and now you can see why I choose to continue doing what I do.
Sunday, October 14, 2018
The granddaughter arrived on Friday afternoon and she is still here. For a while I didn't think I'd have time to finish this blog but I caught a break, she fell asleep on the floor, started snoring, so I just covered her up with a blanket and started typing.
I was so close to returning to the classroom as I wanted to tell you about T4's dream house project but this little story popped into my head. Every day T4's scholars rotate to specials class. Last year specials consisted of art, music, and gym. This year, for budgeting reasons, gym class stills exists but a hybrid class of art and music was formed. At the end of the specials class T-4 walks to either the gym or the art/music classroom to pick up the scholars and then returns to the classroom. On the way back to the classroom there is a restroom break. When the scholars are at the restroom break I'm normally sitting at my half round table in the hallway waiting for T4's return.
I'm not sure of the exact date that this started but one day a couple T4-F's decided to leave the restroom area and walk down the hallway and sat by me. "What are you doing, Mr. Schultz?" "I'm sitting here enjoying my quiet time. Shouldn't you girls be standing in line with your teacher?" "No, we'd rather sit by you," one of them said to me. "So you walked down here just to bug me," I said. Before there was a response the rest of the class arrived at the classroom and it was time to get back to academics.
The T4-F's have been visiting me at my half round table during restroom break just about daily. This past Friday, while the scholars were at specials I was grading a multiplication quiz at my table when four T4-F's arrived. "What are you doing, Mr. Schultz?" "I'm grading the multiplication quiz you just took." "Can I help you," one of the T4-F's said to me. "You T4-F's are bugging me again and no, you can't help me," I said. With a moment of silence from the four T4-F's, I continued grading the quiz. "Mr. Schultz," one of them said to me. "I just graded your next quiz. You can write down that this scholar got thirteen of the fifteen correct." I looked up at the scholar and said, "you are looking at this quiz upside down and you're telling me that this scholar got thirteen right, are you sure?" "Yes, Mr. Schultz, can I grade another one?" "No!" I picked up the next quiz, checked all fifteen problems and found that thirteen were answered correctly. There are only six out of a little less than sixty scholars that are on grade level for math. You just met one of the six and let me tell you something else about this T4-F scholar, she is also in the less than a minute club but I'll save that for next week.
The granddaughter, who has been sleeping on the carpet in our living room, is starting to stir. Time to go. See you next week when I'll continue telling you about my view from the inside of the classroom. Thanks for following along.
No comments:
Post a Comment