Notes from public school - day 124

Today, I was teaching some students how to write a simple, three paragraph story.

“In the first paragraph,” I taught, “You show your reader who the characters are in your story, what they are doing, and where and when they are doing the thing they are doing.

In the second paragraph, you show your reader the main problem in your story. All good stories have a problem that needs to be solved. What is the problem going to be in your story?

In the third paragraph, you show your reader how the characters try to solve the problem. Sometimes they solve it, Sometimes they don’t. The story is in the trying.

One of the students is a mess.

Which is to say he is fully human.

We’re all a beautiful mess, aren’t we?

He is struggling in all areas of his life.

Emotionally.

Academically.

Relationally.

Behaviorally.

But I learned two things about him today that I didn’t know before.

One is that the kid can write.

Sometimes the hardest work I do is trying to get a paragraph out of the thoughts and feelings of nine and ten year olds.

In ten minutes of writing, he had a page full of words.

I was amazed.

Another is this.

“My younger brother, Mom, Dad and I went to breakfast at Wendy’s,” he wrote. “Then my brother and I went to school. Then we went back home and found that my parents couldn’t pay the bills.”

His words hit the deep parts of my heart, as good words do.

His voice rang in my ears, as authentic voices do.

Here was a 4th grader writing about a problem no 4th grader should have to solve.

Poverty.

One of my heroes, the Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutierrez, has written deeply and widely about economically poor people in our world.

He reminds us over and over again that poverty leads to all of the struggles my little student is going through.

He reminds us over and over again that we should fight like hell against it until there is a world  where the basic needs of every person are met.

Where a ten year old doesn’t have to write stories about unpaid bills.

I see.

I feel.

I learn.

I fight.

All in a day in public school.