Journal Excerpts - Week 2

Monday – Blake was having a bad day. He started out by throwing things on the floor. A lot of things. The other teacher was working with him during this time, so she did make him clean up after himself.

Alex and I went to the library. I picked out a book about Helen Keller for him to read to me. Is that lame? He said he wanted to read it. I worked with Alex all morning on his reading and writing. It’s really basically like I’m homeschooling him. Everything is one on one and he’s saying “You’re KILLING me!!!!” I’m very thankful that he’s not disrespectful, at least not too disrespectful. We seem to have developed some sort of respect for each other and it just takes a little bit of encouraging and “mean eyes” to get him to keep working. I had him write a paragraph on the kind of music he liked and why. He told me he and his friends liked “raping.” I insisted that they liked “rapping” and found an immediate lesson in doubling the consonant before adding the “ing” without going into too much detail as to why “raping” would be a bad idea.

I did not catch Blake in time today. When I turned around from basking in the gorgeous sunlight his pants and underwear were around his ankles. On top of the most toppish top of the playground he was peeing down onto the dirt and mulch where children are usually happily frolicking. Fortunately he and I were the only ones out there at the time. He giggled and laughed like he had just won the Georgia lottery. I tried to be very stern with him in explaining why that was very bad and we couldn’t play outside anymore today and we were losing playground time and how he made me very sad when he did that. I hope he didn’t see my shoulders shaking when I turned around.

Tuesday was a bad day. The morning started with Alex reading the Helen Keller book to me. It wasn’t a difficult book but it had a lot of words on each page and no pictures. He got very frustrated and put his head down refusing to look at me. Here’s the thing – If I’m not looking at Alex, he can talk to me and I will know what he’s saying. I, however, can not speak to him unless his eyes are on my hands. So him not looking at me is the same as if he just left the room entirely. After I put my hand on his arm asking him to look at me, he claimed that I had hit him. Nobody else was in the room. I told him I was sorry if I had hurt him, my intention was only to get his attention so I could help him. I started to get very frustrated that I was the one apologizing. When the other teacher came back she was able to smooth things over with him. No lawsuits yet. But that respectful connection we had… it’s gone. And my eyes have a watery glaze over them that I don’t let him or the teacher see.

Most of the rest of this week has been a blur.

Blake takes 2 seconds to throw things on the ground.

I point to the things and do not let him move until he has put them away. That takes about 5 minutes.

Blake throws more things.

I point.

Blake picks the things up.

Blake knocks over my pencil jar.

I point.

Blake picks it up.

Blake drops his breakfast in the cafeteria and the cafeteria ladies look at me like I’m in big trouble mister and I look at Blake like why did you do this to me and Blake looks at his breakfast like you still look yummy to me but I think I’d rather jump on you since you’re on the floor.

I take Blake to the playground and do not let him go on the toppest top part and hope that he understands the punishment I am giving him for doing the bad thing from the toppest top.

Blake hits the playground sign. He wants to go to the toppest top.

I hold his arm until he stops.

Blake tries to hit me. This is the first time he has tried that.

I hold his arm until he stops. I look very sad into his eyes. He has no feeling in his eyes for me.

All the romanticism I held for this position is suddenly gone and I am tired. Blake bangs on the desk because his computer game doesn’t work and he doesn’t know how to tell it how to work and he doesn’t know how to fix it and he doesn’t know how to tell me what’s wrong and I don’t know how to fix it because I don’t know about computers or computer games and I hold his hand down and put on a different game and Blake smells my elbow and I wonder if he notices that I didn’t take a shower that morning.

Friday afternoon the school librarian was gone and I got to sit in the library all afternoon and read my book (which is now “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer because I just finished “Liars Club” by Mary Karr who is a lovely and imaginative writer but writes very depressing books) and check out kids books and tell the girls that I love Junie B. Jones too and Nancy Drew books are under “K” for Keene because I love her too and tell the boys that I don’t really know much about extreme biking but it looks neat and can they show me sometime. They look at me. Go back to their class. I don’t care and this is a good way to end the week.