Bronson came into class today as a little bundle of energy. He couldn't sit still in his chair. He couldn't read along with the story we were reading; he just couldn't stop interacting with a friend of his who sat a nearby table. He was just so interested in everything that was going on around him that he couldn't buckle down (a funny metaphor) and do what he was supposed to do.
After warning him twice, Laura sent him out into the hall. I had already had a few one-on-one conversations with him, so I grabbed a copy of the story we were reading in class and the questions they were going to respond to, and I went out into the hall to see if I could help him think about the story.
He was resistant. He told me that was "just one of those kids who gets in trouble all the time", that "every class has one of those kids" and that he "didn't have any choice." He told me he had ADHD and that that basically decided his fate.
I told him that he had choices, that his brain was unique and different and that school wasn't really built with his brain in mind. (I didn't tell him that our school system didn't really have any children's brains in mind when they were designed, but I thought it.) I promised him that I had some strategies he could use and that if he trusted me and tried some things out that might be strange and different to him that things would get better.
Then he asked me if he could go to the bathroom. But he had lost his hall-pass. But he had another one in his locker. I was making headway with him, but then biology (or his desire or need for a break) intervened, and off he went to get his hall-pass, so I could then authorize him to take a piss. (I'm sorry; but I think that is a level of control all teachers should be willing to surrender.) When he came back I asked him to work for three minutes, then take a one minute break, then work for three minutes, then take a one minute break, and so on.
And then I let him be for about 10 minutes.
When I came back, he had re-read the story and was constructing a sentence in response to one of the questions. He had already answered two other questions on his own.
"You just made my day, Bronson," I said to him. He looked up and sort of smiled, an awkward smile, but a smile nonetheless. I told him he could come back into class, that we had moved on to other things. He said: "Ok. But just let me finish this one thing first."
And when he came back in, he was mostly distracted by his friends and the noise inherent in a room full of 35 children. But he got one more thing done in class, and when he left I could say to him--without the slightest hint of condescension: "Good work today, Bronson." And he knew I meant it and was proud.
nice work Gil!!
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