My Kids
"Miss, my stomach hurts."
I am bent over helping one of my sixth graders, but these words make me stand straight up. I grab the nurse passes from my desk and begin scribbling. "Did you eat breakfast?"
I already know the answer.
"No."
"Go get breakfast. You can bring it back to class."
My co-teacher used to get annoyed when I'd let students go get breakfast after the bell rang. She said it was their responsibility to eat before school, but I say sometimes life happens. Parents run late. No food in the fridge. Hungry students can't learn.
I teach at a Title 1 school, and the government spends a lot of money to increase our test scores.
The new buzzword is academic discourse. "Get the kids talking. That's how they'll learn."
I've had people in suits from the district visit my classroom. They stand in the back of the room, peering over my students.
They come to see if I am doing my job.
My principal worries. Test scores have flat-lined. The new textbooks and teacher trainings have not helped. "You have to teach the curriculum with integrity." He says it like it's something that we haven't thought of before.
I forgive him though. I know he's under pressure too. If our test scores don't improve, we could become a Turn-Around School, a sugarcoated way of saying that all the teachers could be transferred out. My kids would have to come to a school staffed by strangers.
My students are "my kids." For me, the voices of panic from the state are muffled. All I can hear are my kids' voices. All I can see are their faces.
My husband teaches at a wealthy high school. Their students score high on tests, even when they are routinely pulled out of school for ski trips, beach vacations, trips to science museums... while some of my kids have never left the five square miles of their neighborhood.
My niece will someday attend that high school, but right now she's in second grade. Her school is year around, so I volunteer there over the summer. The top reader in her class read one grade level above my average student. I am lucky if my sixth graders can read at a fifth grade level.
Being at my niece's school feels like some sort of dream. I watch her classmates sit with their eyes glued to the teacher. The only time their hands leave their firmly clasped position in their laps is to reach for an ice-cold water bottle, sometimes even a colorful Hydro flask that rests supremely on their desks.
My classroom does not look like this. Last year, one of my kids was sitting with his foot propped on the seat of his chair, knee to his chest. He was examining his black converse, picking at the dirty white toe of his shoe.
"Bryan, what's up, bud?"
"My shoe... look at the bottom." Bryan pulled up the toe of his shoe. The sole separated and lay flat on his chair. "It's broken." His brown eyes looked up at me. "Can you fix it?"
"Let's see what we can do about it."
I grabbed some clear duct tape. Bryan's small hands held his shoe in place as I stretched the tape around.
"There. That should work."
Bryan squeezed the top of his shoe to make sure it stuck. Then, he got up.
"Look, Miss! I can slide on the carpet!" Bryan hopped forward and slid across the floor. My heart ached as I watched his worn shoe transform into a new toy, slick with duct tape.
The next time the people in suits from the state come into my classroom and ask me questions about my teaching, I should hand them a list of questions for my kids. Ask them if they've eaten breakfast or if they need glasses. Ask them if they've ever been to the beach or ever sat down to a meal with their whole family when no one was hurt or sick or in jail. Ask them to forget about test scores for a moment. I should ask the people in suits what they could do to help fix those problems for my students before they tell me how to teach my kids.
My kids are worth so much more than a score on a standardized test.
My kids are capable of doing so much more, if only they had a little more.
