I am a fan of new things. And meeting new people isn't too bad, either; but at PLC, not having a student to call your own feels like failure. So, when I walked through the door and didn't see either Kassandra or Curry, I wasn't in the best mood. Kassandra had been simply missing in action for a few days. Curry's story, however, was something Mrs. Green hadn't predicted either. He had apparently put in an application to the Work Corps two months ago and hadn't gone through the trouble of telling anyone. The thing about Work Corp is, there's no G.E.D. necessary. Simply endure a few weeks of vocational training boot camp, then show up and work a job that pays a small piece above minimum wage.
Again, the teacher/savior complex was kicking in full force....I only got to work with him for a DAY. A day. What if all Curry needed was someone to tell him he wasn't too far away from catching up? Or maybe he knew that if he were to tell Mrs. Green about what he was thinking of doing, she would never let him hear the end of it, and he just didn't want to have the spotlight on him in that way. But if he had entirely given up school, why did he let me force him to jump through so many hoops?
This time, I was placed in the quiet sector of the classroom, where the three white students wearing black were typically whispering among themselves. Today, one was missing, and the other two sat with a seat between them. Mrs. Green introduced me to Justin, who sat closest to her desk. As Justin and I shook hands, I noticed that his right arm was coated with red, horizontal lines; he was a cutter. He also had a stooped posture and hair that hung in his eyes. I wouldn't guess he was the sort that would want the attention of a tutor; most students seem to feel that if identified as a good candidate for receiving a tutor, they've been singled out in some negative way. So, I tried to keep the mood light.
I found out he was working on some Gothic Romanticism, and couldn't hold back. “Oh, Poe does some great stuff to his readers. All those ironic ends. It's pretty sick stuff. What do you think?”
Justin lit up “I love dark stuff. Like, it ends and it just feels right. Especially when the crappy people get what's coming to them.”
And then, Justin began to explain to me what his favorite sort of books were. I actively listened, asked some questions, and soon we traced it back to his quizzes on ENGL 2020. When he first pulled up his account, I realized that Justin's course completion was far behind everyone else. His progress was in the early 20%. I asked him if he had been struggling, and he explained that it was not that he had issues answering most of the questions, it was just that he was not easily motivated and that, as Curry had mentioned, these short stories he had to read were not necessarily “short.” I soon found Justin's attention span to be very short. He would sidetrack and ask me questions concerning if I had heard of his favorite bands etc. But I also discovered that he had a fear of failure. He told me that he has panic disorder, and it makes him really work-avoidant at times. Though usually a personal subject, I felt that it was a good time to self-disclose. I, too, have panic disorder, and was able to sympathize with him. I told him that although it may put off anxiety to procrastinate, the moment you are hit with the weight of all the things you haven't done, it's all the worse. So, it's better to do it in small doses.
I would gently remind him “Alright, we've got work to do.” or “Let's talk after we ace this quiz.” And very soon, it seemed to work. He would say “Okay, okay,” give his head a shake, and go on. Something I appreciated about Justin was his honesty when he was faced with something he did not know. He would tell me he had never heard of something and ask me what it was, or would head straight to the internet to look up a tricky word. At one point, I challenged him, and asked him to take a guess at what an allegory was without looking. “Uh, well, I've heard of people making allegations. I don't know if that's linked, but that's like, when the facts are fuzzy on something. So, maybe an allegory is a story you can apply to lots of things. Is that Latin, or something?” And from there, he managed to guess the correct answer from a list of multiple choices. In this way, we created a system of relating things and looking for familiar root words. I encouraged Justin to verbalize his thought process; it seemed to keep him focused.
Justin saw the progress he was making and got excited. The next story we got to, he got restless and just wanted to bolt through it. It was one of my personal favorites, “The City of Omelas.” I promised him that because we were running out of time at this point, I would show him the paragraphs where he could find the answers for his quiz as long as if when we got to the end of the quiz, he would explain to me what the “take-away” was supposed to be. We both kept our ends of the bargain.
An interesting conversation was had when Justin had an issue figuring out what the difference between a theme and moral was. So, I asked him what his favorite movie is. “Fight Club. Definitely Fight Club.”
“Okay, so what is a thing that happens over and over in that movie that sort of sticks with you?”
“Um, well, they don't like establishments that much. So, it's like, man vs. society, right?”
“Yeah! Good one. You could say good vs. evil....Or, uh, evil vs. evil, considering.”
And for our discussion of moral lessons, we deferred to other movies.
The class period flew by, and at the end of it, Mrs. Green gasped when she saw Justin's progress. He had leapt from the 20's into 42%. She told him he should be immensely proud of himself, and she later told me what she had never seen him stay on task for that long at once since she had known him. We were able to relate even his small, side-tracked thoughts into the bigger picture to keep him moving. She also said it was impressive that I was able to link all the distinctly Englishy lessons back to things that already caught his interest. Through Justin and I's discussion, too, I found out that he really wanted to move on to college. He asked me if I would recommend UGA. I told him that I would love to see him there and that I was sure he could get to college if he could only stay focused. Justin thanked me profusely, and I told him that I would be around if ever he wanted to work together again.
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