The day eventually comes when a teacher is forced to use force.
I remember the rare and awkward conflict between nine-year old Reilly and me when I was forced to require him to write a personal narrative.
In 2010ish, the robot arm of mandatory standardized testing placed its steel fingers around my neck and squeezed. Reilly peeks over his owl-like spectacles and lowers his head as if to say, “You’re killing me here.”
An interview I heard on the way to school that morning comes back like a pin in a voodoo doll: “The problem is that teachers are coddling kids and dumbing down America!”
Before we were such convenient scapegoats, teachers planned out creative, multi-approach Units of Study, building cool activities around a theme: Carnivorous Plants, Egyptian Architecture, Time Travel. Or around a National Award winning authors: Jean Craighead George, Gary Paulsen, Lois Lowry.
Kids’ imaginations were fired up and they spent days engaged in researching, imagining, writing, measuring, experimenting, calculating, and presenting.
Then data analysis became king of the hill, forcing us to give frequent practice tests on test-taking skills, and on to lockstep monthly, quarterly, midterm, and semester tests on every subject know to mankind, broken down into it’s smallest disparate part.
Reilly peeks over his owl-like spectacles and lowers his head as if to say, “You’re killing me here.”
Some children organically distinguish a fable from a fairy tale before the Country Mouse says a word. Most people live a happy life without actually knowing the difference between a metaphor and a simile. Knowledge facts are fun, but they don’t predict compassion or character.
As for ‘critical thinking’, my favorite teenager once asked, while answering follow-up questions for a high school literature assignment:
“How should I know? Why don’t they ask the guy who wrote it what his purpose was? I need to change the oil and the spark plugs before tomorrow.”
Knowledge facts are fun, but they don’t predict compassion or character.
Reilly is a delightful fourth grader. He tested into the GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) program, but is also ‘on the spectrum’. He has sensory issues, stays under the hoodie, behind the thick glasses. Has a few tics. Likes to swing. Worries about his Grannie, who takes care of him and his teenage sister till his Mom can come back.
It’s two months till the high stakes tests. Everyone in America wants “Reilly” to do well, start building hopes now for a college scholarship and an eventual spot on the Banking Board.
He and I have been experimenting with taking a few risks, working on some social fears. He’s a whiz at math, but terrified to write or find his voice. Thinks he might make a mistake and disintegrate.
Reilly/ Day 1/ Personal Narrative
After several days of brainstorming with the class, making lists, and talking about settings and events for our personal narratives, Reilly’s only response is still,
“no, I can’t do it….can’t you just give me the F?”
Of course not.
I sit down and dictate an implausible start for him, pausing after each sentence, hoping he’ll add something of his own at some point. Like a kid’s first ride on his bike, when he takes off pedaling after you run along behind him, pushing.
So I insist that he write what I say, one sentence at a time:
“I can never think of anything to write. My mind goes blank. I can’t remember anything that has ever happened to me. I guess nothing has happened. I have never left home. I have lived in my room for nine long years.”
When he finishes writing this, he finally starts talking to me:
“Well, I have a cat but he has never done anything because he’s an inside cat. If he gets outside he will be in danger in two seconds.”
I give him a thumbs up, and make him write what he just voiced. Then it’s time to head for lunch. We have words on paper.
Reilly/Day 2/Personal Narrative
Today Reilly refuses to read when the class is reading, then refuses to write when we are writing, so I finally give him his first ever “Behavior Ticket” and phone Grannie from my desk.
He’s a whiz at math, but terrified to write or find his voice. Thinks he might make a mistake and disintegrate.
She suggests the nuclear option, the worst case scenario…put him out of his misery: send him to the Office for a ‘Do Better’ warning from the Principal. Siberia. The Firing Squad. He leaves the room like Dead Man Walking.
He returns in about fifteen minutes, sits down, and writes:
“One day my mom told me to get some exercise. She thought it would be an exercise if I went up to the National Park. I said no. Then my mom was mad. She said I had to go and I couldn’t watch TV until I got a photo of a jackrabbit, a rattlesnake, and a tortoise with his head and legs out.
She gave me a camera and pointed her finger at the door and yelled “OUT!” When I headed toward the desert I felt like I was in a sauna without steam. I sat on a rock and drank the water I brought, then I heard a hissing sound. I jumped off the rock and ran fast as I could.
A light bulb went off in my mind. I had to take a picture of a rattlesnake. I got close enough to take a picture but not get bitten.”
When the timer beeps to end the writing session, Reilly stops, but grumbles, “I’m not finished.”
After three other students read us what they have of their first draft, Reilly stands up. He reads the whole thing, softly, rapidly. There is spontaneous applause from his peers.
I’m not sorry for what I did.
Tough love ❤️
Love this story and how gentle consequence of going to the Principals office moved the needle, allowing this boys vulnerable heart to be shared in his narrative.