window

today the eleventh graders came into the room in twos and threes, sat down quietly at their desks and began spreading out their work. this is day two of an exam, written by me to mimic and prepare them for and english exam our state requires that they do not seem to be interested in passing. their desks disappear under photocopies of two or three of the short stories we've read in class, some annotated, some marked up with highlighters, most stark white and blank except for the actual words of the stories. they are expected to identify themes in the works and then write an essay comparing two works with similar themes using literary terms and techniques. as per the state exam. dulldulldull. the word theme is explained in substantial detail at the top of the exam. they will not be able to use any such notes or stories on the actual exam but i want them to just get a feel for what it takes to pass the thing.

but this is not where i should start with this story. so let's start with yesterday. day one of the exam. the first two children in the room began shrieking about how they did not know there would be a test. since the other teacher in the room and i have been talking up this test for over a month and have been talking about how we would begin it this particular day, it seems odd they would both be taken by surprise. they are unable to stop exclaiming about their shock. they suddenly have a lot in common with victorian women. three girls who show up together, but only once every two weeks or so, arrive and do not seem to understand that they need to be awake in order to participate in testing festivities. at some point about fifteen minutes into class seven children are sitting something like quietly and a dean arrives with two more little bits of sunlight. neither child (and by child i mean seventeen year old boy) is interested in taking this particular exam or any other exam. there is pouting. there is fit throwing. the first of the two gets up and leaves before the dean is down the stairs. but before he is out the door he works very hard to rile up the other child, the child who arrived with him. that child spends about ten minutes in the middle of the room whining, saying random things out loud, rustling papers.

he catches the eye of one of the two swooning shriekers from the beginning of class and there are catcalls across the room. this is odd because the shriekers are sitting next to each other (to cut down on suffering among other students) and the whiner is sitting not two feet away. their proximity does not at all necessitate the volume they feel compelled to use. the whining boy finally stands up and declares, "i can't think in here!" and stomps out with his test and all his work. i get a call from the dean's office. whining child has gone there, says i sent him. i explain that i did not, that he stomped out on his own. the dean's office says he can't take the test there and i explain, again, that i never intended him to take it there. he does not return.

i sit between the swooners, hoping to curb some of their ridiculousness. we are now nearly forty minutes into class. neither one has written down anything beyond his own name. neither name is legible. child one begins yelling an ugly word out into the room. at no one in particular. it is a word the children use when they mean "stupid" or "annyoying". it is not a word i allow in my class. technically, it is a term our district clearly defines as hate speech. i glare at child one. nobody else looks up. he says it again. just out there into the empty middle of the room. child two, on my other side, yells it out into the room as well. i look at him like he has lost his mind. truth be told, he has been carrying his mind in a bucket full of holes and i see bits of it falling out all over the place. and so the children continue until the other children are looking up with eyes like new parents at five am.

and i say, "get up." the two boys look at me and wait. "get up now." they take forever to get up because they are both children with organizational issues and they need to pack up their bookbags, ragged and miserable things holding small ugly tornadoes inside them. they wander down the hall behind me and usually i would use this time to snarl at them about how they shouldn't act like they are completely incapable of anything unless they are, about how it gets harder and harder for me to defend them when people say they are idiots because so much of their time is spent mimicking that sort of behavior. but i am too mad and too tired and my skull feels like it will crack open any second and allow my brain to float free. so when they lag behind i turn quickly and hiss, "hurry up!" and continue stomping down two flights of stairs and through two hallways.

when we get to the dean's office she looks up at me and i can tell she feels just as tired as i do. four of my students are now in her office and none of them has accomplished a single thing. she asks them what they are thinking and child two, a child i have worked with now three years, says brightly and cheerfully, "well, i couldn't let him get in the last word." i do not even try to explain that the first child was not talking to him. because i don't think i have the energy to care. i am beginning to worry that my parents and teachers have been wrong all these years. i worry that there may actually be stupid questions and stupid people and that i am staring at them.

so let us get back to today. today is day two. the two boys who left in hissyfits do not show up. the two i dragged to the dean's room do. along with seven or eight other children. the three girls. two girls work quietly, swirl themselves up in stories and ask questions- smart questions- that the other teacher and i try to answer in a helpful way. one girl texts. that's right. has her phone out on top of her bag, which rests comfortably on top of her test. and she spends the entire hour texting. which i would comment on during any other class but she is a nasty human being and to bring it up now would destroy the calm and quiet these other children are finally able to use. so now the only fragile part of this opportunity is the first swooning child from yesterday. a child who speaks, more often than not, in some sort of peter frampton/donald duck voice. when he's not chirping. or whistling poorly. or banging some object on another object. i put him at my desk. a big desk in an alcove at the back of the room. i sit beside him. he needs to read a section of the story but cannot. his brain is squirming, fighting him and he has no way to control its slipperiness. if i walk away for more than a few seconds to answer a question for another child he begins to short circuit, clicking and tapping and creaking. whatever child i might be working with glares at him. he fidgets under the glare but does not want to be alone with all those words on all those pages and his own brain.

and i recall reading years ago about a treatment for dyslexia using colored lenses. now i don't recall that i was in any way impressed with why folks doing this thought it worked but i do recall thinking kids with scattered brains might be calmed a bit by it. so i've had a big sheet of amber gel sitting on my desk for a month or two, waiting. i tried to use it a while ago on the other tornado in the room with less than impressive results. but today i try again when that scattered brain is skittering all over my desk, kicking up dust and paper. i tear the back off a black moleskine notebook, snip a window into it with my sewing scissors and slap a square of amber into it. the child watches, hands me glue when i ask for it, watches me fold down the edges. and then i hand him what looks a little like one of those magnifying windows for books. but with this honey colored film in it. and i explain to him that it might help him hold the words on the page. i hope. i tell him it doesn't work for everyone but that it could work for him, that i expected it would help some little bit, at least.

he holds the window over the words on the page and sits, silent. for the first time ever in our class. ever. he reads a while and then tells me what he read. it is nice to hear. no frampton voice. no chaos. just a child saying what he read. "did it work?" i ask him. he looks up and nods. he is not sure how he feels about something working. his finger moves over the black edge the reading window. "you can take it home if you want to," i say. he nods again. he knows what i was thinking in the dean's office yesterday about stupid people. we are both glad for a little verification that he is capable of something. he holds window for a minute, then puts it carefully in his folder. then the bell rings and he is gone.