What happens when we slow down

Another day. Another Monday. Squirming, squealing, grunting all the same, but in that fluid and almost lithe way that the adolescent body moves through a first day back from a break, spring break. As if limbs still believe they are slung over couches and on floors, gaming controls in hand.

It was a wicked day to give a pop quiz do now. Which is exactly why I chose to give it. How many students did the homework over the eleven days off? (Assignment: "Check your annotations for the first nine chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird. Make sure you underlined vocabulary words. Circled words you don't know. Wrote question marks next to burning questions. Place one inference per chapter in the margin or on a Post It.")

And would you know, most of those students did it. I mean, there were plenty of papers turned in emblazoned during the ninety-second peer editing melee in orange gel pen (have currently given up that battle) with 40%'s, 30%'s, and sigh 10%'s. But more than half received modest 70%'s, cheeky 80%'s, and you little scholars 100%'s. "Okay. You read. What now?"

After-school intervention was quiet today, sweet. Five out of ten students present. Divide them up into pairs: "Honestly, where are you in the book? Chapter three? You two read together then. Chapter eight? You two will be partners." Scooting my chair closer, I crossed my leg over my knee and listened as the lone girl read aloud about the first snowfall in Maycomb after a short fifteen minutes of getting her materials out. Threatening, cajoling, laughing don't work with this girl. Only time.

Five minutes left in our hour liturgy. The student who balks from reading like only a too-cool-for-school, nearly fourteen-year-old can; who has been braying his reading aloud, a not-so-silent protest against being here, being told what to do, being forced to change and grow and work for things that don't seem valuable-- suddenly interrupts himself to make a connection with the film version we had previewed that morning. 

Like, a really insightful connection: text-to-text, text-to-world, text-to-self. Multilayered. That kid. 

These kids.

We use those last five minutes to slow down. Questions emerge. Random questions. Google traffic patterns in LA. Google the number of escape attempts from Alcatraz. Share some very candid, very brave metacognition about the struggles of being a teenager: "I think I try sometimes because I'm curious; I think I don't try sometimes because I don't like to be controlled."

I halfheartedly suggest we should read a little more in these last moments. They protest, not sneakily but disappointedly, as if they are actually hungry for this moment of connection. Oh. Oh. Okay. But can't we talk a little more?

I think Scout actually misses her mother.

The movie communicates emotion better.

But the book has more details.

I wonder whether I'm a different person depending on where I am.

And then time is up and the students pack up. "Thanks, Miss. Bye, Miss. Wait for me! Let's walk together."

The sneaking suspicion... those were the best-spent five minutes of the day.

And all we had to do was slow down.