Foil Boy

One of my favorite parts of teaching first grade is the fact that it is never ever boring. Each new year as I embark on a new educational journey I learn to embrace another set of children and undertake all the peculiar and humorous character traits of each of them. This year I have come across a curiously amusing child named Malachi. Malachi is a relatively tall, lanky African American boy whose big brown eyes seem to glimmer with mischief. In the classroom he is a well-behaved, rather quiet child. When I first met Malachi I considered him to be a typical six year old child, until I sat next to him at lunch.

On the first day of school teachers have to sit in the lunch room and eat with their students. This of course, is torture for the teachers, but it has to be done. Once I settled all my squirmy, restless pupils at the table with their square, classic yellow lunch trays I myself sat down to eat. I took my seat at the end, across from two boys and next to Malachi. What possessed me to eat so close to little boys is beyond me. Little boys are not the most well mannered eaters. It’s not their parents fault, they are just boys. As they wiggled, jiggled and convulsed with excitement of the over stimulating cafeteria, their lunches trickled on to the table, floor and their clothes. After reminding the boys to quiet their sharp, penetrating voices and to close their sandwich packed mouths, I settled in to work on my own lunch. But just as I would take a minuscule bite, an eager hand would fly into the air to tell me they needed a fork, or napkin or something painstakingly important that they had to have at that exact, precise moment. As grape jelly was oozing on to the table, and chocolate milk dribbled down shirts, Malachi sat poised on the bench alongside me. As I was choking down my last bite of sandwich, I felt a slight, subtle tug on my shirt. Malachi asked me if I would help him with his yogurt lid. As I carefully tore the foil off, he informed me that he could make anything out of foil. “Really? You can?” I questioned. “Oh yes!” he replied, beaming with pride. Within minutes Malachi had transformed his yogurt lid into a turtle. Each day since, Malachi finds some sort of foil from the lunch table and makes it into an animal. I now have a rather extensive collection of dinosaurs, snakes, elephants, giraffes, alligators and turtles all made of foil that I will, of course, treasure always.

Update on Mom 6

Ελπίδα, надежда, надявам се, hoop, espérer, espérance, espoir, Hoffe, hoffen, Hoffnung, Zuflucht, sperare, esperanza, hope

Webster defines hope as “to cherish a desire with anticipation; expect with confidence.”
Are we mistaken to have the hope, the expectation, the anticipation to live with confidence? Who deserves to live with assurance? Don’t we all? Is life so impossible that we cannot hope for tomorrow? For next month? For next year? When faced with uncertainty or adversity do we still have the privilege to hope? They say that sometimes, the dying, cling to life and defy odds simply by the power of thinking. Can this be true? Think about it. Hope implies a particular amount of believing that a positive result is possible even when there is indication to the contrary. Can hope prolong life?

I receive my church prayer chain via e-mail, and it seems like lately, those that I have been praying for, for months were defying those odds, have now lost their fight for life. Did hope sustain them when they were alive? I really thought my mom would be dead by now. The doctors were not so sure she would make it through the summer. Yet, here it is, 5 months later. Today is her 16th anniversary. Can she hope for 16 more? She told my step dad that she would settle for 4 more. Is that a realistic hope? My mother received a small ray of hope from the doctor this week. Her hemoglobin (red cell) counts were higher than projected and she was offered chemo as a choice of cancer management once again. Should she attempt the unscrupulous suffering of treatments again? Or should she try a non fda approved, all natural, herbal remedy? She is not ready to stop fighting. Right now, she sleeps more than she is awake and has little to no energy. She has to do something. But what? Hope. So many questions go unanswered. But I can tell you that I believe that hope is what is keeping my mother alive.

Open House

The school year began like any other year, with the highly over-rated, dreaded open house. This year was no different and as I looked around I could see the same plastered smiles on each and every teacher, the square tiled floors with a fresh coat of wax, the walls still bare, waiting for another round of carefully written seat work to be taped to their cold, lonely crevasses. The classrooms full of a fresh supply of crayons, glue sticks, scissors and pencils. The desks scrubbed down with a clean, sterile coat of Lysol, awaiting their bright, untarnished name tags. The alphabet neatly glue-gunned above the dry erase boards, vibrantly colored posters of numbers, phonics and classroom rules methodically, strategically placed throughout the rooms to ensure that every child could reference to them. As students and parents began to arrive, I anxiously waited at my door, imagining the year ahead of me, the 10 months I would be liable for a new set of children. I had 17 on the roll, 7 girls and 10 boys. I was pondering what I would say to them, as I recognized how important first impressions are. It was my first chance to gain parental support, create a personal connection with them, to establish ways for continued communication during the school year. Throughout the night it was more of the same superfluous conversation welcoming each parent and child into the, warm, inviting, engaging world of first grade. I chuckled to myself as the majority of the children feigned shyness. I knew that would not last very long. As the evening was winding down the debatable words of the parents were echoing through my mind, “My child loves school”… “My child is well behaved”… “My child likes to draw”… “I would love to volunteer in the classroom.” In all, 12 parents showed up.