Reminding Myself Why I Do This Job

Describe your favorite student:

Sam is not my smartest student. In fact, he struggles more than most. He tries to hide the fact that he really can't read. When I conference with him individually or require him to write while I'm standing at his desk, he nervously hovers his pencil over his paper before he scribbles even the simplest of words in such illegible handwriting that he thinks I won't be able to notice the misspelling. He doesn't have poor handwriting. He writes his name very well. He writes the words basketball and Kobe Bryant very well.

Sam was one of my pee-wee basketball players last year. A sixth grader at the time, he had such heart and wide-eyed eagerness to learn that I constantly found myself gravitating towards him, making sure he was doing everything perfectly... because I knew he wanted that. I wasn't his teacher, so I really had no idea how far behind he was academically. All I knew of Sam was that he always did as he was told, most of his teammates seemed to like him, he knew when to joke, and he knew when to "give me his eyes." 

This year I've gotten to know him a little better. About three weeks ago, I got tired of him losing everything he ever did in my class, so I pulled a binder off my shelf and emptied from it the miscellaneous paper work it was storing.

"Come here," I said with a stern tone and a wry smirk on my face.

He looked at me, chin lowered, his eyes unsure as to whether I was mad or joking.

"Come here, Sam," I repeated, showing a little more of my smile.

At this he completely dropped his head, and as he dragged his feet towards my desk, snickers rippled throughout the room. In most situations I would nip this immediately. In most situations I'm pretty sure my students would know better than to laugh at all. But Sam was doing this intentionally. He knew he wasn't in trouble and he knows how to be a ham.

As he sat by my desk, emptying the crumpled papers and busted pens out of his frayed and faded backpack, I patiently explained to him how I was dividing each section of his new binder. 

"This section is for your Do Nows. I'm putting plenty of blank paper in here so you don't have to walk around the room anymore asking people for paper. This one's for your notes... again... blank paper, why?"

"So I don't have to walk around your room mooching off my classmates," he smirked.

"Very good."

Surprisingly we managed to pull most of his missing assignments out of that tiny backpack. I made him put each one in its proper section. My next step was to make something to go on the front of his binder, inside the clear sheet protector. I pulled out a blank sheet of printer paper and opened my drawer to find a marker... only highlighters. Yellow wouldn't have shown up, so I placed my hand on the hot pink one and looked at him. His eyes got wide and his jaw dropped.

"Don't do that to me, Miss B!"

"Oh yes... this is happening," I said.

In big, hot pink capital letters I wrote Sam's VERY Organized Language Arts Binder and then slid the sheet into the front of his binder. Perfect.

My last step was to take a pen out of my drawer, tie a long piece of yarn around the top, and duct tape it into the center of his binder.

"What's this for, Sam?"

"So I don't have to walk around your room mooching off my classmates," he repeated.

Sam brings that binder to class every day now. He never forgets it. Every day he walks in, turns to his Do Now section, stretches his pen out as far as the yarn will let it reach, and playfully plucks at it like a guitar string. He may not get the Do Now questions correct most days and he may still misspell elementary words... but we're working on it. He wants to work on it.

When approaching this blog assignment I wrestled with how I was going to do it justice. There are so many kids who make my job worth it, who provide motivation to roll out of bed every day. It's easy to get excited about helping the "smart kids." It's easy to lean towards the kids who understand what I'm saying the first time around and only talk when they're supposed to. Sam probably talks too much, he's disorganized, and often times I have to repeat directions several times before he begins his work... but at the end of every day, when I reflect upon what I've accomplished, it's the things like making that binder for Sam that remind me why I do this job. I've met so many kids with poor backgrounds and rich personalities. Often times they don't realize how limited their opportunities really are... often times I'm glad for that. Kids like Sam, however, seem to be well aware of their own realities... devastatingly aware of their own realities. They know they're below reading level, that their parents can't afford binders, or that they're not the best athletes. They still show up everyday willing to make me laugh, willing to try in my class, and willing to humor me by letting me think they LOVE things like organized binders and subject-verb agreement. While Sam is indeed my favorite student, I am lucky to be able to say that I have several like him.