Narratives

Conversations • Working Through Difficulty

Conversations

10.24.03

Demarcus' best friend Damion has joined our class. I knew a couple of days ahead of time that he was coming and mentioned it to the class.

"Did you know Damion is one of my best friends?" asked Demarcus later on.

"No," I said.

"Well, he is."

"I think maybe he's had kind of a hard time in school; I think we'll need to help him see how smart he is and I think you can help him with that."

"Well, he thinks he knows everything, but he don't."

"Hmmm. I'm not sure if he really thinks he knows everything, even if he acts like he does. You know what I mean?"

"Yeah. Like I used to think I was stupid."

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10.26.03

I showed the previous writing to Demarcus. (I read it aloud while holding my journal so that he could see the print.) I asked him if I had captured the conversation we had had a few days before accurately. He corrected two words as I read the piece aloud, shifting the word "don't" into the Standard English "doesn't," and the word "yeah" to "yep."

I talked with him for a few minutes about the phrase "I used to think I was stupid," even underlining the "used to" in my journal to emphasize the past tense.

He wanted to add one more thing before we opened the door to go back into the classroom.

"Ms. Franz," he said, pointing to the line, 'I used to think I was stupid,' "add 'and now I don't.'"

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11.21.03

Ooh, an angry, grumpy day for all of us. Demarcus even called Kiarra "a tub of lard." Ooh. It's impacting me, the negativity. I'm hoping this quiet writing time, with Yo-Yo Ma's Cello Suites playing in the background, will help.

Later: Another example of the way Demarcus is attending to what I do:

While the writing time did help, it's continued to be a very grumpy day. At one point, late in the afternoon, I'd walked over and sat down on my "I'm waiting" stool. I sat there signing the word for "waiting," until finally everyone quieted down. I made some remark I just can't remember now, but it contained the word "iota," a word I hadn't used before.

Demarcus said, grumpily, sotto voice, "Now just watch, she's going to start using the word 'iota' all the time now."

I smiled to myself, despite my own grumpiness. "You've got it, Demarcus! You've got my patterns all figured out."

"Iota, iota, iota, I-o-ta. You're gonna say it every other word now, aren't you?"

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6-4-04

Demarcus stayed after school with me today to finish the work he'd not yet done. While he kept asking if he really needed to do the work, and kept trying to negotiate how much he would do, within about forty-five minutes he had completed all of it.

While I am driving him home I decide to approach the topic of the morning's behavior issues from an angle I've tried a couple of times before.

"Demarcus, one of the things you have got to start thinking about is how your behavior influences others. Look at Damion. All that screaming he's doing. All that refusing to work. He's picking that up from you. You know he is."

"Well, he shouldn't copy me."

"Demarcus, you're a natural-born leader; Damion pays attention to what you do. So does everyone else."

There is quiet in the car as we drive under the freeway and wait to make the left-hand turn on to his street. Just as we're pulling up to park, Demarcus asks, his voice full of question, "Ms. Franz, do you really think I'm a natural-born leader?"

"Yes," I respond. He says nothing, just nods his head, and we get out of the car to walk towards his apartment.

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6-8-04

Demarcus comes in during lunch recess, angry about something. After awhile he begins to talk about what happened and how he'd handled it. Eventually I say, when it seems appropriate to fit it in, "You know, Demarcus, I heard you yesterday, saying to Dijon, 'You and I are natural-born leaders.' I heard you saying to Damion, 'You're a follower; every time I say something you repeat it and everything I do you do. You should stop that.' I heard you say those things, Demarcus, and I know you're thinking about them."

"It's your fault I'm thinking about those things," he responds, as he gets up to head down the hill with me to pick up the class from recess.

Working Through Difficulty

Working Through Difficulty

 

2.3.04

"I hate you," Demarcus yells, "I hate you."

I am giving directions for a writing task; we are readying for the Reading Retelling test given to all third grade students in Marin County in late March.

"I hate you!" he says again loudly. "I'm not doing it!"

To keep myself calm, to keep myself from over-reacting and becoming engaged in an argument with him, I pick up my journal, sit down and begin writing (as everyone in the class has been instructed to do). I write down what Demarcus is saying. Most of the rest of the class settles to the task. Demarcus keeps talking, but he is no longer yelling, not even speaking particularly loudly.

"I don't care...I'm not listening to you...I want to chop off your head with a chain saw..."

I look up from my writing and comment that I'm sorry he's feeling this way, but that he'll need to complete this writing before he goes home today.

"I'll leave when I want to!" he says loudly, then over turns his desk. It hits the floor hard. Most of the class looks up, but then goes back to writing. I write "Boom!" for the sound of the desk hitting the floor, in my journal.

Demarcus picks up the desk and rights it. The next time I look up, the desk is upside down on the floor again, although I have not heard it go over. He's sitting with his feet on the desk's bottom, holding two of its legs, as though driving away as fast as he can.

He begins to talk again. "I should just write 'blah, blah, blah on every page in this stupid book.... Sometimes, I really wish this was a person so I could rip its head off.... I would break everything, including the teacher's..." He trails off, sits quietly for a moment, drives the desk.

Damion, who sits at the same table, is now becoming engaged in what Demarcus is doing; he's beginning to say that he's not going to do the work either. I stand up, walk over to Demarcus and, without saying anything, carefully pull the desk out from under his feet (he holds on to the desk legs for a moment but then lets go). I slide it away from him a few feet, then leave it sitting upside down. He gets up, walks toward the door, throws himself at it (Boom!), and is gone.

A student gasps, "Ms. Franz, he just threw the blue chair!" I look out the window. Sure enough, the chair we keep just outside the door is sitting upside down on the muddy hillside adjacent to our classroom.

 

Demarcus spends about an hour in the office after this. He talks with the principal; he works on some mathematics papers I bring for him. At lunch time Damion and I walk down to check on him. Damion has worked with me to do the retelling task, and he is now very cheery. He smiles broadly when I suggest that he and I go check in on Demarcus, and he practically skips down the ramp toward the office. Once we get there, Damion plops down in the chair next to Demarcus, while I stand just in front of him. Damion speaks first, asking how he's doing, asking if he's ready to come back yet. I notice Demarcus' face soften noticeably as Damion speaks to him. I'm glad that I didn't speak first, that I stood quietly while this interchange takes place. While he's done very little of the work I gave him to do, I note that Demarcus is calm and collected. He says that he's ready to come back now. I remind him that he'll need to complete both the writing and the mathematics before he goes home today, and he nods his head. The three of us walk back up to class together, Demarcus pausing outside the door just long enough to go and pick up the blue chair still lying on the hillside.

 

The end of the day is approaching. "Do I really have to do that writing?" he asks me, maybe ten minutes before the bell is going to ring.

"Yes, Demarcus, you know that you do." He grumbles some, but I see him about five minutes later sitting at his desk, journal out, writing. I tell the class it's time to get their backpacks and jackets and we line up to walk down to the bus. I tell Demarcus that he'll get the bus on its second run.

"No!" he cries, "I'm finished! I'm finished!" He slams his pencil down, lifts up his journal so that I can see it.

"It's okay, Demarcus. You know I have to look over the writing, and I can't do that now. Come on, walk down with us, and then we'll look at it together."

"No!" he yells, throwing the journal, knocking over a book box on another students' desk, the contents of which spill over the floor.

I head out the door to walk the class down to the bus. Demarcus trails after us. I see him standing behind a tree on the embankment above the bus loading area.

 

I get on the bus, help get everyone seated and settled, get off the bus and talk with a teacher who wants to tell me something. When I call Demarcus after I've finished talking, there is no answer, no tell-tale movement from behind the trees. He's gone.

Since Demarcus has never left school before, I walk around the grounds looking for him. He's nowhere to be found. I get in my car and drive over to the apartments where he lives. At first, no one is home, but when I return about twenty minutes later, Demarcus, shoes off, opens the door. His mouth drops open when he sees me.

"Get your shoes on," I say. "You need to come back to school, clean up the mess that you made, and go over the writing with me." His mom looks out the door. I'd thought she was still in Washington, where she's been the last several days. I learn that she has just walked in the door from the airport not five minutes ago.

"What did you do?" she asks him. He doesn't respond.

I say, quietly, "Demarcus left school without permission. He walked home on his own, and he left quite a mess behind him. I'd like to take him back to school to clean up."

His mother's mouth drops open. "You told me you missed the bus! You get your shoes on right now!"

Demarcus says nothing but turns to get his shoes. We all walk out to the parking lot together. I tell his mom that I'm sorry this is happening the moment she's gotten back, but that it seems important for Demarcus to know that if he leaves, I'll simply come and get him. She smiles, nods her head. We agree that I'll bring him back in about an hour, which gives her time to run an errand she was just leaving to do.

Demarcus and I are quiet in the car. As we arrive back at school, I tell him he'll need to first clean up the things on the floor in the classroom and that after that we'll talk about the writing and about what happened today. He nods, and begins to pick up the books and papers lying on the floor as soon as we enter the room.

We talk for about fifteen minutes. I do much more talking than he does. It dawns on me while talking with him that perhaps part of the reason for his anger this morning was simply that he didn't expect there to be two writing assignments. I realize that I hadn't written both tasks-the quotation mark work and the retelling-on the schedule. The retelling work was a surprise to him, an unwelcome surprise given how much he dislikes writing. I ask him about this. He agrees that it was, along with the fact that he was tired and hungry.

After we finish talking, he goes out to clean off the muddy blue chair, and then we start work on a new engineering project-constructing a marble track run-until it's time to take him home.

As we're getting ready to go, Demarcus says, "Ms. Franz, can I stay after school on Tuesday..." he pauses for a moment, "and Thursday?"

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2.04.04

It is Wednesday, the day after Demarcus' and my conversation after school. I have added the word "retelling" to the schedule, and I see Demarcus look at it when he first comes into the room. When it is time for the retelling work, he has his journal out and his pencil in hand; he participates fully in the exercise, even reading aloud his effort to the class when he doesn't particularly want to.

At the end of the day I call his mom to let her know how hard Demarcus worked and what a good day he had.

Demarcus' writing: