Acrostics

Yesterday, in response to Monday's train coming off the rails, we shifted gears a little bit.  We gave our sixth graders a concrete--and seemingly fun--activity: to write acrostic  poems using their own names.

For many of the students it was entertaining and fun, and for much of the time the room was a noisy, vibrant place.  Kids turned around to share their imaginative and silly lines with each other and seemed enthusiastic show their poems off to Laura and me.  It was chaotic and noisy, and I promise you that not every child was "on task" for most of the time, but they seemed to enjoy it.  Quite a few of them got stuck on words they couldn't think of; some of those kids went to the book shelves in the back of the room and grabbed a dictionary; some of those kids sat there silently fuming that they couldn't figure out a word that started with the letter Q and described them in some way.  But just about all of them worked through it.  I heard a lot of poems about lions and monkeys and football and princesses.

And then there was Andrew.  Andrew is not built for school, and he knows it.  And he has known it for a long time.  And I suspect that school has reminded him, again and again and again, that he doesn't belong at school. And I suspect that that feeling of not belonging ways heavily on his 11 year old soul.

Andrew did not know where to begin.  So he did nothing.  I stopped by his desk, crouching down to meet him at eye level.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

He looked up at the lesson projected on the screen.  I tried to imagine what it looked like for him, a series of random words in some random order.

I asked him to write his name on the page.  I used the word "vertical".  He shook his head.  I said: "One letter on a line.  Skip lines between letters."

"Good job.  Now come up with one word that starts with each letter in your name."

He said nothing, avoided eye contact.

"I'm gonna give you a few minutes to do that on your own," I said; Malikah and Molly were chirping a few rows back about wanting to share their poems with me.  I circulated for a while.

When I return, Andrew had written nothing new on the page.

"What's going on, Andrew?" I asked.

"I can't think of anything that makes sense."  I had heard this before.

"Ok.  So I'm giving you a new rule: what you write isn't allowed to make sense.  Your goal is just to come up with a word--any word--that begins with each letter."  I gave him a dictionary and asked him to flip through and pick a random word for each letter.

He stared down at his desk.  "Andrew, are you with me?"  He was silent, avoided eye contact.  "Please flip the dictionary to the "A" section."  Continued silence.  "Andrew, are you in there?"  More silence.  "Hey man, this poem thing isn't that big a deal."  Echoes in the silent well.  "Andrew, I'm standing two feet from you, but it seems like you're a thousand miles away."  Nothing.  "Andrew, can you just let me know that you still exist?"  Nothing.  "Andrew, please say the word 'yes'".

"Yes," he said.

By the end of the period, he had plugged in a word for each letter in his name.  (For "n" he used the word "nacelles".)  I hope I can find some sort of sanctuary space for him as the year progresses.