Day -31: Overheard

On the playground today one second grader said to another, "Which would you rather kiss, your right eye or your left eye?"

"But I can't reach," the other kid answered indignantly.

"Yeah, it's a trick question," the first replied.

-----

The last day of April I pulled a kid aside for a little talk. Eddie really struggles academically. I'm almost sure he has undiagnosed learning disabilities (and yes, I have tried to get him tested; it's supposed to happen next fall). There's almost no way you can be a fourth grader born in the US yet have an English Proficiency Level of 2 (Early Intermediate) on the yearly English test without having learning disabilities. He is very socially adept and in addition to being popular in my class, he is friends with more kids outside my class than any other student. We have some sort of bond. He knows I push him and he respects me for it, I think. Anyway, I told him how I'd noticed that he had been paying less and less attention in class, goofing off more and more, turning in less of his work. I told him that I knew some of the other students at his table distracted him sometimes. Since students change tables every month, I told him that he would get to make a fresh start the very next day. "It's a new month, and I know I will see a new Eddie," I said.

He sat there with a blank look most of the time. This is not the first time he has heard one of these talks. Eventually he started crying and told me about some problems going on for him at home and how he doesn't like to see his mom cry. I listened and talked about how I knew his mom wanted him to learn as much as he could in school, that that would probably make her happier than most other things he could do for her. And then I sent him off to science class with a note explaining why he was late.

The next day, May 1st, when we were walking into our classroom, students were talking about the fact that it was a new month so we would be changing tables.

Eddie was near the front of our line with a smile on his face. "Yep, a new Eddie," he said cheerfully, not really to anyone, just to himself - but I was close enough to hear. Who knew he would remember my little line?

And he was a new Eddie. For that whole day. It didn't quite hold for today. But it's better than nothing.

-----

For those of you a little starved for Juan stories, here's one. It wasn't exactly just overheard, but still ...

He was wearing a long-sleeved gray t-shirt today and the cuffs of both sleeves each had two small holes in them. Near the end of the day, he put a pencil through the two holes on one cuff and hid his hand inside. "Look, I've been harpooned!" he cried out to me and anyone else whose attention he could grab.