A powerful lesson

I taught Leonardo in 1998.  I can still see him now.  He was a cocky young Hispanic boy who defiantly sat in my 7th grade classroom.  This was the first year that his father got a job at the canning factory near Rochester, MN, making it the first year that he was in the same school for the entire year.  The normal track was to attend school in MN from September - October and return in April when the fields were ready to work again.  To say his attendance was sporadic would be an understatement.


He came from a migrant family.  The oldest child of six, Leo opened my eyes to many things.  His mother deserted the family when he was in elementary school.  His father worked hard, but there were so many things lacking.  At the tender age of 12, Leo was a pseudo-parent.


In school he wore his tough façade proudly.  So many people let him down.  He was labeled as a troublemaker, a year older than everyone else in his class because he was held back.  The system didn't hold a lot of hope for him.  Other kids were a little scared of him.  He had a sharp mouth, and quick fists.


It's easy to judge that, isn't it?  It's easy to make assumptions about him and his future.


He sat in the back of the room and just watched me.  I was young, energetic, and working hard to engage my students.  I encouraged inquiry, discussion, and non-traditional projects.  I sat on the floor, read aloud, and pushed my students to embrace learning.  The first couple of weeks we circled each other - testing the waters, sometimes engaging in a quick jab, pulling back. 


I'd never taught someone like Leo.  He wasn't easy to engage.  I let it get to me - being inflexible was my mistake.  I remember arguing with him about joining us on the grass outside do participate in a class activity.  He refused to sit.  He told me I was stupid.  He wanted to be sent to the office.  I can still seem him standing proudly in the sunlight in his white pants, blue tucked in shirt. His eyes dared me to release him from the torture of being with my class.


But I still didn't really SEE him.  I didn't SEE the white pants.  I was too involved in what I wanted to listen to what HE was really saying.


Later that week I saw him driving across town.  Yes, he was 13. 


I met him at the door the next day.  "What were you doing?  You can't drive.  Something could happen to you."


"Laundry," was his simple reply.  "Someone had to do it. We don't have a machine."  Something clicked.  I remember asking him, "Is that why you didn't want to join us on the grass?"


He couldn't look at me.  He just whispered, "yeah.  Those were new pants."  New didn't happen very often in his family.


Fortunately I listened to the words behind his simple "yeah". You see, his life experience was so vastly different from mine.  So many pieces of the puzzle flew into place.  At that point I apologized.  I apologized for my insensitivity.  To this day, I still feel like a heel.  It wasn't that he didn't want to be a part of us, he just didn't want to ruin his hard work over the potential of a grass stain. 


I'm not sure that anyone had ever apologized to him.  His smile lit my heart.  It was the shift in our relationship. 


Leo was responsible for a new vision for me.  This 13-year-old boy challenged me to put my money where my mouth is and truly see every child sitting in my room.  It opened my eyes to the fact that life happens outside of my classroom that impact what happens in my classroom every single day.  Leo gave me a large dose of flexibility that I've never forgotten.


I'm grateful every day for him. 


Leo grew in leaps and bounds that year.  He passed all of his classes, had one office referral (yes, it was the pants day), and closed the gap in reading comprehension and writing.  He scoured poetry, found books that intrigued him enough to give them a shot, and learned to ask questions.  He started to find his voice. He started to find his confidence. His classmates started to look at him differently.  He emerged as a leader and kept others on task.


At the end of the year he wrote me a note:
"Miss W taught me a lot this year.  Sometimes she made me so mad that I wanted to poke a pin in her to make her pop, but mostly I just wished she was my mom."


Humbling, isn't it? 


After that year I moved to the Twin Cities, then to Texas, Kansas, and now Tennessee.  I spent a decade raising my own children, taught ELA to over 1,600 kids, and I lost track of Leo.  For the first year or so I'd hear that he was doing well in high school, then I lost touch with my contacts in the district.


It's been 17 years since I met him.  He's around the age of 30 now. 


Through him I learned about the power of relationships, looking behind the façade, listening to the true words and insecurities that kids cannot voice.  I learned about grace, found a new level of compassion, and focused less on my goals and more on what my students need. 


He taught me to make sure that every child who sits in my classroom sees his worth, to make sure that child knows that someone cares, and to keep an extra snack in her cabinet for days when there wasn't enough lunch, or breakfast, or dinner.


He was a smart young man. 


Thank you, Leo.