Candy Canes

So far, it’s been a difficult year with my class. They not only struggle with reading, writing, and math, but many are terribly lacking in social skills, personal hygiene, and self-esteem. They could easily be called lazy or defiant or disrespectful or rude or obnoxious or uncooperative or just about any other negative adjective that could possibly roll off the tongue. Most mornings it’s exceptionally tough for me to force myself out my door and often the entire drive there I’ll be wishing I could drive right past the exit for 196^th Street.

It’s not that all my students are bad, but out of my 28, 22 are completely and totally capable of doing something that is exceptionally rotten at any given moment. These terrible behaviors are bad enough to, at the very least, make me exceptionally angry, or at worst, flat out ruin my entire day.

I’m able to keep my classroom environment at a relative calm most of the time, and those who have observed me teach are all impressed with my calm composure. As a matter of fact, I had about 50 teachers observe me teach reading this year, and by far the most common question I got was, “I was amazed to see how calmly you interacted with your students. How are you able to do that?” I’m used to hearing this now, but at first it blew my mind because while my outward appearance may seem cool and collected, inside I feel like I’m hanging on to the side of a 737 at 35,000 feet. That I just barely have a grip and any small bump will be the end. From 8:30 when the kids show up until 3:10 when they go home, I’m doing everything I can to simply hold onto the side of that plane. It’s absolutely exhausting.

Yesterday was the last day before Winter Break and I was braced for the worst. Students all across America have difficulty on that day and it is always stressful for teachers. My school district frowns upon Christmas parties and I had decided we weren’t going to have one. It was clear after Thursday’s math lesson that no one had a clue how to use a protractor to measure angles and I had decided to devote the afternoon to teaching that skill. Earlier in the week, I had bought candy canes for each of the students, but we weren’t going to do more than that.

Yesterday started with a relative calmness. We have the same morning routine every day, which is very helpful for setting the tone. They completed the morning routine, then we had a school assembly, which was followed by library. We have a phenomenal librarian who the kids simply adore. She had asked several teachers to record themselves reading a page from “The Polar Express”. Then she put the recordings on her computer and the students listened to the story. She made a game out of it by having the students guess who was reading each page. I’m not quite sure how to interpret this, but my class did not recognize my voice.

If you’re not familiar with the book, “The Polar Express,” here is the plot in a nutshell. A boy goes to sleep Christmas Eve night and is awoken by a magic train outside his bedroom. He boards the train which takes him to the North Pole. There, he meets Santa Claus who gives him the first gift of Christmas, which is a small silver bell. He loses the bell, and is devastated, but on Christmas morning Santa Claus has visited and left the bell at his house. The thing is his parents can’t hear the bell because only those who believe in Santa Claus can.

At the end of library, each student was given a small silver bell. The students had so much genuine excitement about their bells. They attached them to their shoe laces, their belt loops, or on bracelets they were wearing. I decided to gladly embrace the jingling for the remainder of the day.

There are so many characters in my class, but Jesus stands out above the rest. He is a good-looking, well-dressed kid. Every week or so he gets a new pair of Air Jordans. He has a new iPhone 4S. He’s sharp as a tack and could exceed standard if he wanted, but he doesn’t care about school and usually doesn’t try. He gets picked up after school by a gang which provides him with all his things. His mother means well, but doesn’t know what to do with him, doesn’t have any money, and usually doesn’t know where he is in the evenings. Jesus also has tremendous power over his classmates. As the teacher, I like to be the one at the reigns, but when Jesus is in the room it’s pretty much an equal share. Jesus rarely acts out himself, but has the incredible ability to get his classmates to do anything he wants them to do. For example, if Jesus thought it would be funny for a pencil to fly across the room, he would tell Theodore to throw it and Theodore would. He owns his classmates and they are compelled to follow him due to a strange combination of intimidation and respect. Yesterday was a tough one for Jesus.

After library I decided not to give a reading assignment, but to simply allow my students to read their books. They were thrilled, but Jesus couldn’t embrace this change in routine. He was subtly doing anything he could to stop everyone else from reading. After about fifteen minutes of battling this, I called both Jesus and Theodore, who had been pulled off task, over to my table. “How’s it going, guys?” I asked them.

“Did you know the lottery is up to $136 million?” responded Theodore, who is the type of student that gets so excited about everything it’s a small miracle he doesn’t jump out of his own skin, “What would you do if you won it?”

I made the split-second decision to just go with it. I have no idea where this answer came from, but the first thing that popped into my head was, “I’d pay for the entire class to go to camp.” It was the right answer. It changed everything. Both boys cocked their heads and looked at me silently.

Jesus was the first to speak, “Then I hope you win,” he said. There wasn’t much to his statement, but it was one of the first sincere interactions I have had with him. It was truly from his heart. He really, honestly wanted me to win the lottery. After that, the conversation went all over the place. We talked about cars and mansions, video games and South Park, fishing and soccer. Jesus told me he likes Christmas songs, but didn’t sing during the concert because he hates the music teacher. It’s tough to hear things like that about your colleagues, but the way he was opening up I could tell, for the first time, that he trusted me. The two boys and I talked for 45 minutes while the rest of the class read silently.

That afternoon, I did have my students run through protractor exercises. They thought we were going to do them for the remainder of the day and had embraced it surprisingly well. The mathematical concept was outrageously difficult for them and Jesus spent about half the time trying and the other half spinning his protractor on his pencil.

When we had worked for about an hour, there were 40 minutes left in the school day. I told my students they could put their math away. During lunch, I had printed some coloring pages of winter scenes. I handed them out and they were all ecstatic. I handed out the candy canes and each student acted like I was giving them a diamond. After nine years of teaching I have never had a group of students who showed more sincere joy in getting a candy cane from their teacher. In previous years, most kids say nothing, some kids complain they don’t like peppermint, and maybe one or two thank me. This year I was overwhelmed with hugs, questions such as, “Are these really for us?” and “Can we eat them now?”, and one student, Danny, who is moving to Tacoma the day after Christmas, made a tag on which he wrote the word, “FROM:” and had me sign it. He affixed the tag to his bell and tied them both onto his candy cane and then told me he was never going to eat it, but would save it forever and hang it on his tree every Christmas. I truly believe he will.

Natalie and Ines gave me a homemade card the whole class had signed during lunch. Many students even wrote little messages about how they would miss me over the break and that two weeks seemed too long. Even Jesus had signed.

After a few minutes of coloring, A.J. asked if I would play some Christmas music. I’m sure it violated 16 school district policies, but I went ahead and put it on. They were old Christmas songs from Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby and Dean Martin and others who are similar. All the students sat quietly and listened to the music as they colored for most of the rest of the day. All of them except Jesus, he sang along to every song.

Two minutes before the dismissal bell as the students were all line up ready to go, Jesus threw his candy cane across the room and it shattered into millions of tiny red and white pieces. I calmly looked him in the eyes and said, “Don’t ruin this day.” This kid has been in trouble thousands of times and has never been within a light year of crying, but I noticed tears welling up in his eyes. Hiding his face from his classmates he picked up every speck of his former candy cane. When the bell rang tears streaked his face, he choked out a hushed “good-by” and dashed to the outside door like Usain Bolt. I let him run.

There is a chain of bookstores in the Seattle area called Third Place Books. It’s named such because every person needs three places. The first place is home. The second is their place of work. The third is a place where they are free to interact socially, such as a bookstore. So many of my students are missing that first place. Some of my students will surely have a good two weeks off with their loving families, but many will not. School is the only stable place they have and they rely upon it. They act lazy and defiant and disrespectful and rude and obnoxious and uncooperative, but in truth, they love school and their teachers because we love them back.

Yesterday was my ninth day-before-winter break and undoubtedly the most memorable. Families tend to be very generous to their students’ teachers that day. I have received many wonderful gifts from chocolates to Starbuck’s gift cards to a $150 gift certificate to one of Seattle’s finest restaurants. I have always admired this generosity as the gifts make me feel special and appreciated. Yesterday only three students gave me a gift that had been purchased. I got a calendar, an ornament, and a box of chocolates, all of which were extremely thoughtful. But I have never received a gift quite as special as the way this group of students reacted to getting candy canes. They showed me more than any other class how much they need my guidance and when we start again on January 3, 2012 we will have many more tough days, but I will always have yesterday to reflect upon, to put it all into perspective.