Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Because of the type of students I work with, they are required to attend summer school. My school still runs on a 10 month school year, but teachers have the option to work an additional 6 weeks during summer school. Summer school for us, means 5 days a week, 8:30-2:30, with only a measly 30 minutes for lunch. Monday marks the 15 day mark, which means its almost halfway finished.
Fortunately, I am teaching the same class I taught during the school year and am working with the same assistant. Luckily for us this means we don’t have to get re-acquainted… we just snapped back into our typical routines minus all of the structure we have during the school year. The summer curriculum is focused on Language Arts and Math, both of which I enjoy teaching, but aren’t necessarily as fun as Science or Social Studies can be and definitely isn’t necessarily as fun as the stuff that my students’ siblings are at home doing.
As an only child I never even thought of how they might be jealous of their siblings that get to stay home during summer school… until Thursday. Two of my boys ride the same bus and are best friends. C came in informing me that B was absent. I asked him where he was and if he was sick (this is all in sign language by the way). C tells me that B was with mommy and was crying. B had told us his throat hurt the day before so I just figured he was sick and C has very minimal expressive language so I didn’t push it. At dismissal I asked their bus matron what had happened with B that morning at which point she tells me his mom was trying to push him onto the bus as he was crying, holding on to the doors refusing to move forward and saying “No!”
My initial reaction was to feel a little sad. B is admittedly my favorite student (more to come on that later) and I was upset to think that he didn’t want to come to school. He came in on Friday and I asked him why he was absent. He got a very guilty look on his face and didn’t answer. He kept avoiding my question, but later he was dying to tell me some stories (he has developed so much language and when he is absent he comes back dying to communicate in sign since no one at home signs). He was telling me about a Spongebob video game, and some other one with a guy with one eye (a pirate, a cyclops, I don’t know)…. turns out…. he just wanted to stay home to play with his brother.
B, I don’t blame you. If I were still 6, staying home to play would be my choice too…. guess I need to up my game a little to be able to compete with older brothers and video games. I’ve got three more weeks to make summer school the cool place to be!
