day 5 - tgif

My feet hurt. I should know better - somehow wood based clogs that I used to live in don't feel that good anymore after clomping in a school the size of a shopping mall. Imagine having to walk from Macy's to JC Penney's for recess, plus two flights of cement stairwells. School policy is that all the children walk silently with their hands behind their backs. Some of my first graders are tiny: imagine having to walk with your hands behind your back when you are 4 feet tall? Who made up this policy? If one of the principals is in the hallway and the children are not silent or have their hands behind their backs, they will be barked at. It's already happened to my class twice.

Poor things.

I'm all for quiet and order, but holy moly. So there I am, barking dutifully in the basement level tunnel that goes under the highway connecting one shit part of town to another. They built this place in the 70's when community buildings were all the rage. No walls, let the community in, rah rah rah. The floors are like supermarkets I used to go to with my mother - they haven't changed since the 70's: White tile except for of every other single tile a different color; red, blue, yellow, green. I tell the leader to count ten red tiles (every fourth, or, including the white tiles, every eighth one). They stop, and then I might say seven blue tiles. Then maybe 8 green tiles. Yes, I'm telling you, the walk is that long.

And one side of the hallway by the steps that go up (yes, more steps) and out the doors to the "playground" (teacher's pick of a dirty grassy area; don't forget to check for needles) the floor has a permanent puddle, it seems. Stained brown filmy nasty puddle. We don't walk on that side. If you look overhead or in the corners, ceilings are crumbling and paint is buckled and chipping off. When it rains, there are buckets dispersed in about 8 different areas that I can think of , with the folded plastic yellow "caution: wet floor" signs in front of them.

By the way, there is no play structure, if that didn't get across. No swing, no slide, no nothing - but the new asst. principal says we should have balls and jump ropes and things for them to play with. I went to my new asst. principal: I would love to fork over 60. bucks for playground activities, but I'm not going to.

Oh, no, she says. You don't have to do that. Get balls from the gym teachers.

Right. Except that gym teachers are in the middle of class when we go outside.

Oh, well. Just a detail.

By the way, the volcano was awesome today - told my "Great Story" Montessori style - creation of the universe - kids agape, totally into it, watched their brains reeling while I ranted on enthusiastically about how light could travel around the WHOLE EARTH SEVEN TIMES IN ONE SECOND!!! Isn't that AMAZING? And can you believe the earth is just a TINY SPECK when you compare it to THE SUN???

... actually, it was pretty exciting... the kids loved it... more experiments to come...

I'm happy to report also that E and A made it through their day... the both were a bit wobbly, a few times, but somehow pulled it together and didn't fall down... A did a drawing of football players and wrote a caption "THE STEELERS ARE WINNING!" and a drawing of a basketball game that said - I can't remember - but SOMEBODY beat the CELTICS ... I guess he's not a Boston fan... He was starting to stew at the end of the day, the fists were clenched, the eyes were furrowed and I said "...And A did AMAZING drawings today of football and basketball, which I would LOVE to share with the class if he'll give me permission!" ...
I watched his face soften and his mouth almost break into a smile...

It was M, however, that I was worried about today. The last month of school last year, her teacher had so had enough of her was ready to have a mental breakdown. That teacher had a real tough class. We all do, really, but M was her last straw. I remember this teacher writing an incident report about one of her students (turned out it was M) and just crying and crying .. so defeated.. so DONE with this little girl...

The principal decided at that point that she should be in MY class.
One day she showed up with an asst. principal. "Ms. Lowe, I think M would be a good fit in your classroom. Can she be with you for awhile?"

Beautiful girl. Brown skin and green, green eyes. Really, the girl is gorgeous. "Sure!" I said. "Nice to meet you! C'mon and meet the children!" etc. I recieved no history on the girl, no information (this was deliberate), but I knew instinctively that she needed love, and she needed it bad. So Ms. N, my para, and I, poured it on. And for the last month of school, we had not one problem with her.

Turns out she's on all kinds of behavior surveillance, suspected "ODD" (oppositional defiance disorder), therapists and counselors and hullaballo...

Ug. Need I go on. I'm seeing it now. Cat fights with other girls. Refusing to budge. Beautiful girl who wants what she wants, when she wants it, how she wants it, period. ... Last year after I'd had her for only a couple weeks I'd met her father. "Hey! My name is Ms. Lowe, M's been hanging out in my class for the past while. She's doing great! It's so nice to meet you!"

He didn't even look at me.

"C'mon M, let's go," he said.

Wow. Okay, then. Right. See you.

A week later I chanced upon her mother.

"Nice to meet you, I'm Ms. Lowe, M's teacher!"

She barely glanced at me.

Right. Okay, then. See you.

Oppositional defiance disorder? Or maybe ... maybe... something else?

I don't dare criticize the parents. I mean, I'd love to, of course. I'd love to say what fucking SHITTY parents you are, my God, keep your fucking hands off these kids. Pay attention to your kids. What the FUCK do you think you're doing? ... but I don't. I can't. I won't. I do believe, though sometimes I waver, that parents really do the best they can do with their kids, to the best of their ability. T's mom is a crack head, so the best of her ability fucking SUCKS, which is why she lives with her Grandma. But T still talks about her mother as if she is an angel, and when I met her mother for a conference, it was clear that she loved the crap out of her daughter, but just had No Clue - how to be a mother, or how to be herself. How can I criticize? I would love to, but how can I? And how can I explain this conviction? As compassionate as I am for the kids, I'm as compassionate for the parents... I can't help it... and I wasn't always this way...

Who could you possibly love more than your own child? And how terrible would it feel to have no idea how to love your child, who you want to love more than anyone? How much pain would one have to be in? So much. Too much.

But this cycle. Too much. How does it stop?