#schoolonwheels

Owing to the shortage of space, Deputy Commissioner of the Lohit District, Prince Dhawan got the idea of turning a school bus into a school itself, and thus the School on a Bus project was initiated. The project aimed to convert defunct buses into ‘classrooms which were a temporary measure to tackle the classroom shortage crisis.

My heart hit rock bottom. 

"Joey knows he will be moving to another shelter tomorrow, so this will be the last time you see him. If you could discuss it with him, it would give him some closure."

Closure?! You want me to give this eight-year-old kid closure? Who's going to give me closure? The shelter attendant had just notified me that this would be my last session with Joey because he would be moving into a more permanent living situation. This wasn't a relationship break-up, but it sure might as well have been. The idea of not seeing Joey on Mondays anymore tore violently at my chest. 

I was throughly depressed as I climbed the stairs to the second floor of the shelter, but as soon as Joey raced out of his room, I hitched up the most genuine smile I could muster because I didn't want Joey to know how sad I was. 

Joey didn't bring his backpack with him this time, and of course, he didn't have pencils with him again. He shoved his homework papers at me and whined that he didn't want to do homework. I didn't feel much like helping him with his homework either at that point, but we worked through it together.

During this session, I learned how adept Joey is at lying. I had brought him chocolate covered sunflower seeds from Trader Joe's, but I told him to keep it a secret. When we were eating them, Joey's brother pranced over to our table, and when he asked what the colorful seeds were, I lied and told him they were rocks. I hadn't had more than a second to register my little white lie before Joey started constructing an elaborate story of how I had found these "rocks" at the beach in Santa Monica and cleaned them one-by-one to make them "extra shiny." When his brother left, I burst out into laughter and high-fived Joey, but proceeded to tell him that lying is actually a bad thing to do. Yes, I felt like a hypocrite in that moment.

Despite the entertaining pauses throughout the session, Joey was extremely perceptive of my underlying emotions. He asked me why I was so sad multiple times. When I told him that I would miss him because I won't be seeing him after this session, his brows would crease and he would tell me he would miss me too. 

J: Don't worry! Maybe your next tutee will be smarter and cooler than me.

M: No one can be cooler than you, Joey. You are the coolest third grader I know.

At the end of the session, Joey gathered all his papers together and waved them around in celebration for finishing his homework. When he turned around to look at me, his face fell, and he asked if he would see me again. When I said no, he shuffled over and gave me a light hug around my waist. I hugged him back, and it was silent for what seemed like a minute. 

He looked up, and asked me where I lived. 

M: I live a two miles from here in West LA. 

J: I'm going to be living in the middle of LA. Maybe my mom can pay for you to tutor me on Mondays still.

M: Joey, it doesn't work like that. I can't contact you after this. I'm not supposed to know where you go. 

J: Oh, okay. Bye then.

M: I'm going to miss you.

Joey went inside his room to put away his homework, and I went downstairs to clock out. When I was leaving, I peered into the kitchen because I heard Joey's mom cooking. Joey was next to his mom's leg, and when he saw me, he looked quickly away. She said "Joey está... sad. Quiere comprar un tutor."

My heart broke into a million pieces. 

I rummaged through my backpack and pulled out the chocolate covered sunflower seeds we were eating during the tutoring session. "Puedo dar esto a él?" She nodded.

Joey took the box from me, and a wide toothy smile broke out over his face. His brother screamed and asked why I was giving him rocks. I laughed. "Bye Joey! Have fun at your new home!" I said, still laughing.

I walked back to my car in a bittersweet mood. I knew I couldn't handle having a student leave every six week. It was too much. Needless to say, I called the tutor coordinator the next day and almost demanded to be put in a longer-term shelter. She assured me that she would move me to a new location.

I didn't see Joey last week because I was in Costa Rica (which I swear I'll write about soon). After a week of waking up at 5:30am every morning and working with 40+ kids at a daycare in Carpio, I was about ready to collapse when I saw Joey yesterday at 6:30pm. I didn't want to hear about any of his camel stories/jokes or see the Legos his mom bought him last week.

Joey ran out of the tiny room that he, his mom, and his brother shared. His backpack was open, and I saw his green homework folder flopping around in there. He saw me, paused, and ran back into the room, only to come back with two fantastically built Lego constructions. One was looked like a robot and the other one resembled a tank.

In all honesty, I love tutoring Joey, and I wouldn't miss it for the world. He is very honest with me about school and his life at the shelter. To top it off, he also understands the heavy sarcasm that drips from almost everything I say.

I playfully rolled my eyes at his masterpieces. He laughed and scurried to the table to show me how his Legos worked. After about five minutes of not working, I asked him if he had a pencil to start his homework. Joey never, ever brings his pencil to our tutoring sessions, and yesterday was no different. After I retrieved a pencil from the downstairs office, I came upstairs to see Joey's brother washing strawberries for him. It was super random, but I just rolled with it. When I asked for a strawberry, Joey gave me one, and I made a little box out of paper to hold all the leaves from the top of the strawberries. Joey thought the box was so cool that he ran to show it to his mom, who said "Que bonita!"

Joey's homework was fairly easy for him this Monday. I asked him to write his weekly vocabulary words slower for two reasons: one, so that his writing was more legible and two, to not rip his paper. We have this running joke that the paper that his teacher provides him to write his vocabulary words each week was the "thinnest paper in the world". We raced to see who can finish writing his vocabulary words first. Every time he finished writing 5 words three times, I gave him a strawberry, which was a horrible idea. He wiped red strawberry juice all over the "thinnest paper in the world". I told him his teacher would think he had killed someone doing his homework or was eating Hot Cheetos very messily while practicing his vocabulary. He was entertained by this notion.

Joey raced through his math and phonics homework, while eating his strawberries. He talked to me about how everyone at this shelter was weird and that he wanted to leave it. I told him very seriously that if he left, I would be really sad because I wouldn't be able to see him every week. I pondered about how strange it must be to move from shelter to shelter without ever having a permanent home. I had always taken having a permanent address for granted, but here was this eight-year-old that was so accustom to switching addresses that he didn't even think twice about it. It was so normal to him.

Joey finished his homework with five minutes to spare, and I took the extra time to teach him how to fold the box I had made for his strawberry peelings earlier. I left, while he was showing his mom the wonderful little box he made out of scratch paper.

I squeezed my Avalon into a tiny space on a busy road. If I ran, I would make it on exactly on time. I pressed the speaker button to the shelter and told the admin on the other end that I was with School on Wheels. The gate buzzed, and I walked in.

I had debated on whether or not I wanted to come in this week. My head had been pounding from a crazy day at work. But I remembered how last week's session went. Joey had been so excited to see me that he kept asking the shelter's admins when I was arriving that Monday. Last week was his first week in third grade. He had complained that his teacher explained everything too fast and that third grade was going to be really hard. But luckily, his homework had been fairly simple for him, so everything went very smoothly last week. He had also mentioned that I was a really funny tutor, which made me happy.

As I was thinking about last week's session, Joey trudged out of his room in his calf-high socks with his backpack dragging behind him. He plopped into his chair and told me he was sleepy. I told him after we finished, we can play with his Legos, even though I was really in no mood to build anything with multi-colored blocks. His face lit up, and he told me that he had new Legos. Without even waiting for my response, he raced back into his room and came out with a bag full of Legos. I swear he gets new Legos every week.

We sat down, and he rummaged through his backpack to get the green folder that had all his homework papers inside. I looked at the two sheets he had to fill out. One was a reading comprehension worksheet and the other had a mess of math problems on it. The math one looked easier, but it was a very long process teaching Joey how to turn raw numbers into written letters and vice versa.

When we finally finished the math worksheet, Joey looked at the reading comprehension page. It was double-sided. His face fell. Trust me, at this point, my head might as well have exploded. There were five short passages and a couple of multiple choice questions that would test Joey's understanding of the passages. I wanted to grab the worksheet and fill in all the bubbles for him, but I resisted and told him to read the passages aloud to me.

There were a couple of things that entertained me. After we read a passage about camels and how long they can survive without drinking water, he asked me:

J: Where does all the water go? M: In the humps on the camel's back. J: If the camel doesn't drink water for 5 months, do the humps flatten?

He drew a camel that had no humps, as I thought "Where the hell does all this thinking come from?!" I had just read the same passage as him, and that question would have never crossed my mind. He then proceed to dream up a scenario where there there was too little water for all the camels in the desert.

We also read a passage about the White House, and there was a question that asked him to chose the answer that was an "opinion". One of the options was "The White House is the nicest home." He nodded his head and told me that that option was a fact. I had to explain to him that not everyone would want to live in the White House.

J: The White House IS the nicest home! M: Do you want to live in the White House? J: Yes. M: But what if you had a house made out of Legos? Wouldn't that be a nicer home for you? J: YES!

He marveled at how cool it would be to live in a house made out of Legos, but at least that was the last question on the sheet. I sighed in relief, as my head thudded.

I don't remember how we came to the topic, but as he was packing up, we started talking about bullying. He had told me in kindergarten, he had hit a kid really hard because he had been making fun of him. He imitated a fist swing and spun around three times. I made him sit down next to me, and I told him that hitting people is wrong.

M: If you hit me, I would be sad and cry. J: Really? I don't want you to cry. M: How would you feel if someone hit you? J: I wouldn't cry. I would be really mad. M: Well, it's not good to make anyone mad either. Pinkie promise me that you won't hit anyone again.

He then spent another couple of minutes telling me that I was a grown up and that people from China weren't suppose to know what "pinkie promises" were. He called me a "chinita", which I knew was Spanish for "asian girl." I laughed so hard. All this time, I had my pinkie held out, as I assured him that I went to school in America. But even still, he spent about two more minutes avoiding my pinkie. I realized that someone as young as Joey must believe that pinkie promises were actual promises that he had to keep - like the unbreakable vow. He danced around my hand and asked me if I was going to sit there forever. When I told him yes, he slumped his shoulders and hooked my pinkie with his.

While he was putting his backpack away, I headed downstairs. His mom was outside playing kickball with Joey's brother. She asked, "¿Donde está Joey?"

"Está..." I made a motion up as I wondered how to say second floor (segundo piso) in Spanish.

Joey bolted out of the door, saw that his brother was playing kickball, and ran to me. With his hands behind his back, he looked up to me and asked, "Can I hit the ball?"

I had a hard time resisting the urge to hug him and steal him away from the shelter. Instead, I smiled at him and assured him that he could hit the ball because the ball's feelings wouldn't get hurt if he hit it.