#13

13 is the third of 4 blond, bright girls. One day she will be lobbying congress for some environmental cause. That is if she can ever not be incessantly reading. It sounds completely backwards, but she got in trouble a couple of times for reading! She always had her nose in a book. She had some good friends in class but many times during snack or indoor recess she was trying to get through one series or another. At the end of the year, I was tallying up pages from our "read-a-thon" to see who got a prize or a medal at Prize Day and 13 was not even up to the first prize level. So a few girls sat with her during any free time for at least a day and tried to tally up all the pages from the piles and piles of books that 13 pulled out of the book shelf that she had read during the entire school year. Usually, I won't let kids enter them much later than when they finished a book, but it was crazy that 13 wouldn't be recognized for reading on Prize Day, and the rest of the kids knew it too. It turned out that out of all the books from my shelves that she had read the total was over 7,000 pages. Which did not include books she had read at home.

13 brought such a calm, patient, and logical presence into room 22. She had amazing abilities in all subjects and made A's look effortless. I will miss her sweet ways and surprisingly dry, witty humor at unexpected times.

Far Away

Someone shouts in Annie's ear,
But what they're saying she can't hear.
Buzzers buzz and school bells ring,
Annie doesn't hear a thing.
Friends can jostle, tug, and pinch,
Annie doesn't move an inch.
"Oooo, here comes a big black bug!"
Annie does not even shrug.
"Fire!" "Earthquake!" "Runaway bus!"
She remains oblivious
Until, at last, with a faraway look,
Annie smiles and shuts her book.

-Carol Diggory Shields

#12

In the fifth grade, each month a different student is selected in each class to be the "Student of the Month." There is a big ceremony and the chosen ones get to stand up in front of everyone, shake the principal's hand and get a bunch of prizes. They also get their picture and certificate up on the main bulletin board across from the gym on the first floor and their name mentioned in the monthly newsletter. This is obviously a big deal and, even if you might not think so, most 10 year olds that I have come across covet this honor and get their hopes up each month. Also hopefully obvious in this blog is that I think that ten year olds have a lot to offer. Every kid I have ever had in my classroom wants to do well. Even if what they want more than that is to have someone is to have someone who wants them to do well. Even elusive #5 (who is missing from the list but will be filled in at some point later when I have more energy to remember the time when I thought I was going to quit). Even he had a desire to do well even if all the other forces in his life were telling him that he should just give up.

So Student of the Month is bittersweet for me and I tell my kids this at the beginning of each year. Something like, "I hate having to choose someone for Student of the Month because I know that all of you have positive qualities that I want to recognize, but only half of you will get that honor." Then I go on to tell them that I try to make up for this by doing a Student of the Week each week. It is much less official. Usually done halfway down the hallway on the way to bus dismissal on Friday afternoon:

Some helpful student: Miss Corday you forgot to do Student of the Week!
Me: Oh yeah! Go grab the pencil off the windowsill behind my desk.

Then I make a quick announcement at the bottom of the stairs, usually based on events from the previous 3 hours since that's all I can remember at the time. Students clap. That's the whole "ceremony." I need to be better about that.

#12 was my first Student of the Week this year for "being herself". It was hard to decide if receiving this gift would spawn a "class clown" of infinite proportions or would allow the other students to come out of their own shells and be themselves more. 12 was always outgoing and silly from day one. She walked into class every day with a smile on her face and seemed determine to spread that to anyone who was nearby. And being the first Student of the Week did not go to her head. I would find out that this was probably because she spent the year before with a teacher who did not tolerate any speaking out and any excessive or funny comments. Or just that, like most other kids, she just wanted to do the right thing and be good. 12 was very bright and did not apply herself at first. Most of my comments on her report card were along the lines of "not working to potential." I saw her really come into her own this past year. I love the 10-11 year old. I feel like most of them are just starting to really see what they are all about and they adjust themselves so simply and importantly throughout the school year.

By the end of the year, 12 was participating at an acceptable level and contributing all those great comments and questions that I knew she had inside her. Many of her comments were made in a silly way, but were always relevant and appropriate and or/easily changed into something serious. Yes, she still named everything Fred or Larry. In the yearbook she filled in the sentence "One thing I will never forget..." with "that piece of grass out in the field that I named Henry." Yes, she still scribbled over the "teacher comments" section of her assignment book each day so that when I stamped (my way of checking that they had everything written down while providing a certain color based on their behavior for the day) I had to stamp in the "parent comment" section, which to her meant that each day I had "adopted" her. But she managed to keep that in check and grow academically as well as socially. I will miss all the silliness and I hope I always have someone in my class who can be fun without crossing the line and who provides a great example of just being yourself. Hopefully she can carry this with her next year and avoid the drama that she was beginning to slip into toward the end of the year.