A Look at One Child in Particular

I took almost immediate notice of Joshua on our first day at La Casa. It was morning circle time, and the class was singing the ‘name song’. A student is asked his/her name, and in response the class sings the refrain, “His name is Joshua. Joshua. Joshua. His name is Joshua.” Then the class moves on to the next student and sings the question, “What’s YOUR name?” As we went around the circle singing the names of all those present, it turned out that one of the teen volunteers was also named Joshua. That’s when I took particular notice of  (little) Josh. As the class noted the similarity, a grin break out across his face and you could see him visibly puff a little bit with pride at having an older, cooler namesake in the classroom.

When the class split into the older and younger students, I found out that Josh was one of the older kids in my and Camille’s group. It wasn’t long until I could see how bright he was. The students were given a ‘d’ word spelling worksheets. Josh quickly finished his worksheet, and so we told him that he could write one word and draw a picture of it on the back, but Josh said he wanted to draw a picture of a dinosaur (one of the ‘d’ words). The picture led to a discussion among some of the students as to what color dinosaurs were. Sensing an opportunity, I jumped right in and began to ask how we know the things that we think we know about dinosaurs in the first place. Josh kept right up with me… and rightly concluded that we don’t really know what colors dinosaurs were since we’ve only found their bones. As we concluded that dinosaurs are usually drawn as green or brown because those colors would help them blend in with their environment, he was so excited. You could tell that he was a kid who loved to learn.

            A day or so later, all of the girls in the classroom went to a session with the Girl Scouts, and so I found myself in a classroom full of boys left loose for free play. Somehow I found myself at a table with Joshua and a game of Connect 4. So we began to play. Red chip. Yellow chip. Red chip. Yellow chip. I went to put in the winning piece to connect a horizontal row of four of my pieces when suddenly Joshua grabbed and kept pushing my hand. I was taken aback by his roughness and about to chastise him when I realized, he wasn’t grabbing my hand to keep me from winning. He had already won, and I hadn’t noticed. We needed a rematch.

As we played I started to ask Josh about his life. At first, he was a bit suspicious, like, “Why do you want to know?” but then we started to talk. He shared that had two much older brothers whom he didn’t live with. His parents were not together. He lived with his mom and step-dad. His dad lived farther away. He didn’t know the exact name of the town, but it sounded like in the suburbs as he played outside in the woods, etc. He loves playing video games and his DS, movies, Bay Blades. He is going into 2^nd grade at First Avenue. Then one of the youngest kids in the class, Isaiah wanted to play with us. So we started a game of candy land. It was during this game that I started to see a Joshua rambunctious, mischievous side that often gets him into trouble. So, he jokingly tried to cheat by moving his pieces up and skipping other people’s turn. He had hands on everything and everyone and was very loud and overbearing. This may have been fine with some of the other kids, but Isaiah is still quite immature and very emotional. After he got bumped back to the start, Isaiah started to sulk and Joshua kept antagonizing him. Finally, Isaiah had enough hit the pieces and put his head on his arms and cried. I pulled them both outside into the hallway to resolve their conflict. I had Isaiah express how he felt and asked Joshua what he thought about that. Joshua was contrite and immediately recognized his culpability. He apologized and then resolved to make up for it, and the boys went back to playing.

Over the coming weeks, I could see these two sides of Joshua:  the mischievous imp who liked to buck authority and push boundaries and the sweet caring boy who needed affection. If Joshua isn’t classified with ADD/ADHD, I’m sure a teacher will try to get him classified. He was a boy in motion. Even more so, his mouth was in constant motion as he constantly calling out and interrupting students and teachers alike. A few times, during lessons, when I had to ask Joshua that we needed to move on or no more comments, he’d sulk and get upset. Once he even had tears in his eyes, as I pulled him aside and spoke to him afterwards. I let him make the comment that he kept interrupting all of us to say, and then he felt better. He just wants to be heard.

One day, I witnessed Joshua being given a time-out for this behavior during circle time and went over to talk to him. I found out that he often gets in trouble in school for talking too much. As we discussed what he should do in the future, he said, “Don’t talk during circle time.” I shared with Joshua that I thought that was a very ambitious goal. That maybe he should start with smaller ones, like I’m not going to interrupt during the next 5 minutes of this lesson to build up his strength and stamina. Of course then he, contrarian that he is, started to tell how strong he was. I agreed that he was strong; what he needed was focus—which is not easy to come by.

I worry about Joshua. Ms. Norma told me that he had gotten in trouble one afternoon for hitting a girl on the behind.  This the same boy who drew – unprovoked – drew a picture of a heart with the word family in it under the needs – an act that showed both warmth and insight. I wanted to do more to encourage that side of him, but I didn’t know how and our time was so short. I hope his teacher in the fall sees beyond the smart Alec retorts and interruptions. Joshua definitely has a lot to offer the world.