You’ve Got a Friend

Here are a few thing that I said I’d never do:

“I will NEVER have a DVD player in our car.”

“My kids will NEVER watch The Disney Channel.”

“Once I become a mother, I will NEVER go back to teaching.”

“If I ever go back to teaching, I will NEVER teach my own kids.”

Here’s the truth:

-When travelling to the midwest, we try to make it to Breezewood, PA before we turn the DVD player on for Hadley and Harper.  An hour and a half of no TV for an 11 hour car ride is good, yes?

-Handy Manny speaks Spanish and Mickey Mouse and his gang are problem solvers so what’s the big deal?  Just no Hannah Montana or any of the other girls who wear more eye make up and glitter than  Wet n Wild can keep up with (is that still a brand?).

-I lead a Book Club once a week to a group of very cute kids.  Hadley’s in my class.

It’s the perfect job, really.  I get to read stories and ham it up to a group of people who try to sit still but as the plot unfolds they’re sitting on their feet, hands waving in the air because, “OOOOOO!  Hadley’s mom!  Hadley’s mom!  Ummmm…..Mrs.  ummm….HADLEY’S MOM!!!!  That same thing happened to me!”  Dear me, they get so riled up.

We do a little project after we talk about a book we’ve read.  Sometimes we’ll draw while I play “Dolphin Dance” by Herbie Hancock or “Volare” by the Gipsy Kings.  We’ll talk about why one picture is more “loud” then another, or why we used different colors for one song.  Once, we pretended to dive for seashells after we read the book Wave by Susie Lee. Another time we looked around the room for the mouse from A Visitor for Bear by Bonny Becker. Once we found him, we invited him for tea because, as we learned in the book, it’s good to invite folks over for tea (I’d serve coffee, but that’s another story).

For our first Book Club, I read Dotty by Erica Perl.  I’ve written about the book before, but if you’re not familar with the story it’s about a girl named Ida who has a friend named Dotty.  Dotty is a huge rhinoceros sort of thing with gorgeous glittery pink polka dots on her body.  At first, it seems that Ida’s classmates can see Dotty just as Ida knows about the friends her classmates bring.  But with all great books, there is a trial, a bit of heartbreak, and a lovely ending that makes one see that real or imaginery, good friends are worth holding on to.

We talked about imaginery friends the day I first met my Book Club kids and read them Dotty.  I gave the kids each a little card with a glittery border and a string attached to it (a leash because Ida walks Dotty on a leash) and they made a little creation on it.  When it was time to go, the kids lined up with their bags on their shoulders, and their new friends at their sides walking them out the door together.

When I first started teaching in 1998 I was nothing short of terrified of the 8th graders that stared at me as I tried to speak to them above a whisper (maybe if they couldn’t hear me I could go home).  One morning, when I was asked to pick the kids up from the playground (“If you can get those kids to walk in a straight line quietly up three flights of stairs you can do anything,” my cooperating teacher told me.), I walked down the stairs terrified.  Gripping the banister as I walked, I considered other jobs I would apply for the minute I got home.

That’s when I thought of my college buddies.

After graduation, all of us had scattered and began our careers. I missed seeing them everyday. I missed our jokes and late night or early morning discussions. But I didn’t mind the vacancy that came when we all left Calvin because they brought me so much happiness as I took my first wobbly steps into adulthood.  Just like Dotty was with Ida as she made her way through school.  Real or imagined, our friends help us see that we are good, and that gives us the confidence to walk by ourselves when we need to.

So even though I was 22, I imagined my friends were picking up my students with me, and imagining that gave me some confidence to do what I really wanted to do: teach.

I brought my students up three flights of stairs that day.  They weren’t quiet,  but they did stay in a line.  As we walked, some of them talked to me about Sammie Sosa.  They told me they hoped he’d hit 62 before Mark McGwire.  Others stopped by the windows at each platform between flights.  I’d lean in and look too, then ask, “Can you see the Sears Tower from here? I love looking for it.” We’d lean closer until our noses pressed on the glass and we might see a faint black line pointing towards the sky. One student asked what we would be doing that day.

“We’re going to start the book To Kill a Mockingbird,” I told him. “Have you read it?”

“Nope.”

“I hope you like it,” I said as I opened the door to the classroom so the kids could walk in and we could begin the day. I wasn’t thinking about my friends anymore. I was thinking about Boo Radley, Mayella Ewell, Atticus, and Scout.  I was looking forward to introducing these folks to my new students.

 

I have a hard time talking to kids about confidence, or the importance of an imagination, or how to keep trying to do something you love even if it’s really, really hard. So I read them stories instead. Because I think that if they read book like Dotty, or To Kill A Mockingbird and they can get to know Boo Radley, or  Ida and Ms Raymond, then they’ll know to say, “hey” when they see them in real life.