Two steps forward, one step back

I got some news last week that made my heart sink, and that stayed with me long after I left school.

A was not in class the Friday before last. I later found out that he might not be coming back to school with us at all. His mother is moving to another city and he may be going with her.

Now, I thought my reaction to this situation would be a little more mixed. That Friday, I experienced my class without him...and he's a significant variable in my classroom management equation. I thought I might be relieved...but as it turned out, I just couldn't stop thinking about him.

We've been working so hard to get him to a place of consistency in the classroom...we had worked out a plan just that week, where if he reached all his behavior goals for 5 days in a row (Monday through Friday), he would get to pick something from my "prize drawer". I let him take a sneak peak into the drawer and he immediately found his choice: a pair of rainbow "shutter shades"...you know the kind that don't really have lenses but just those plastic strips across? Those ones. So every time he started veering off track this week, I'd just lean over and whisper "sunglasses!" and he'd remember ("oh yeah!") and get right back on track.

At one point during a completely disastrous math lesson on Thursday, he raised his hand and when I leaned in, he asked me, "Ms. Bagdonas, how much longer until lunch?" Now, this might not seem like a big deal, but you need to understand that when you're seven, it takes a whole lot of self-awareness to a) realize that you are bored and b) think of a polite, non-disruptive way of gauging how much longer you will need to endure this boredom. Most kids' usual reaction to boredom is to decide it's playtime instead. When I told him 5 minutes, he quietly got up, took one of my classroom timers, put 5 minutes on the clock and sat back down at his desk to tough out the home stretch. Talk about self-monitoring! This was probably one of the most endearing things I've seen him do this year. Anyways, the point is we've been on a roll. He met his goals Monday through Thursday, and just needed Friday to get those shades...

In the days that followed, I came to what seemed like an unlikely realization: I didn't want him to leave. I was hoping and praying that one of my most challenging kids showed up at the front of my line on Monday. For a few reasons...first, I couldn't stand the thought of him having to start all over again somewhere else. More than almost anything else, I've come to see instability and unpredictability as some of the most difficult roadblocks to students' academic success. Kids have a really hard time focusing on place value and verbs when things at home don't feel right. Next, it kills me to think of losing all the progress we've made so far--and I think we have so much further to go. Finally, and even I was a little surprised by the force of my feelings, I just love this child so much. I want him around. I want to see him through this year and beyond. I want to be a positive presence in his life, and I want the opportunity to watch him grow.

As it's turned out, he has come back to school... A woman at my school told me that regardless of what happens, it's my job as a teacher to make sure that school is a safe and stable place. That when he is here, it's business as usual. This was a really valuable piece of advice that I'm trying hard to keep in perspective.

In any case, it was eye-opening to have that "don't know what you've got till it's gone" feeling about this student. And as my post title suggests, the best we can do is keep taking those two steps forward, despite the inevitable steps back.