Case study.

2004-10-04 at 6:43 p.m.

I think I had noticed her the first day of school. Tiny, about five foot two, with her hair scraped back into an I Dream of Jeannie ponytail on top of her head, with the slightest make-up line along her chin. She was mostly silent, looking slightly cowed in her seat, nearly hidden by the stack of books and binders and notebooks in front of her.

Hers was one of the first names I learned in that class. I wanted to see her smile, even if it was just the "Good morning" smile high school students offer their teachers. I made it a point to say hi to her when I saw her in the halls, skin stretched taut over her cheeks as she concentrated on navigating the crowded byways.

She works so hard. She is always on task at a level of concentration very few sixteen year olds have. She always has every homework assignment, finished, if not always right. She takes notes with a fierce single-mindedness.

I started looking at her homeworks a week or so ago. Actually, not hers specifically--I was just glancing through the homeworks to get an idea of who worked at what and who did what. I happened to notice hers--not because she's my favorite, or anything, certainly not that--and my heart sank.

I could see that she'd put work, lots of work into the homework. Where some people had been lackadaisical, she was thorough. But she was also thoroughly wrong.

Algebra is a tough course. Studies show that all through elementary and middle school, the amount of new stuff you learn in math decreases every year, until by 8th grade/pre algebra, its something like 30% new stuff. By Algebra, though, it's more like 90% new stuff. And conceptually different new stuff, harder stuff.

This is the first month, and she's having problems with exponents, with adding and subtracting negative numbers, with basic fundamentals that the rest of the year is going to rely on.

I'd sidle over to her desk while everyone else was working, to talk her through a problem I'd noticed she'd gotten spectacularly, horribly wrong. (I wouldn't quite put it that way, of course, I'd ask her to step me through what she'd been thinking and try to gently correct her where she'd made her mistakes). But it just wasn't sinking in.

I'd noticed she was on an IEP, so I decided to check with her resource teacher. What I learned today, this afternoon, has filled me with awe and grit and determination that if she can work this hard, so can I to help her succeed.

Due to a deprivation of oxygen at birth, she was clinically dead for a minute or two--and after that, she was on machines for eight or nine months. Her mother has been re-incarcerated for narcotic offenses, her father--well, the less said about him, the better. She lives with her grandmother. But as a result of the various traumas in her young life, she doesn't have long term memory.

Note this isn't Memento: she can remember five minutes later that she spoke with you. But think how much of your high school career depending on memorization of names, places, vocabulary, processes. Think how it would have been different if you'd had to stop relying on the ability to just memorize something, even something so stupid as what "exponent" means.

So she's compensated. She has a big chalkboard at home where she keeps track of important times. When she has to leave to get to school on time. What time her favorite show is on TV. Her grandma says that if the president showed up at their doorstep, if she hasn't finished her homework she wouldn't come to the door to meet him. Her grandma says that if she accidentally gets up early for school, she'll sit, dressed and ready, in her bedroom watching the clock until it's time to leave so that she's sure she leaves on time. Her grandma says she follows through with an almost religious fanatacism on every homework assignment, small or large.

Think about what has come easy to you. Think about what hasn't. How hard have you worked to get what you have? And what have you taken for granted? Think about what small victories you've taken pleasure in. Like passing Algebra.

Her resource teacher says they're fighting to have her graduate with a standard diploma (as opposed to a modified one). This algebra class is really the make-or-break point for that aspiration. I can't allow her to get by and say she's done "well enough," I can't have her pass out of algebra just because she's worked hard. But I can make sure that there is every support to keep her caught up, to make sure she's got what she needs, to make sure she really does know what she can do.

If she can work with this much determination and pluck towards that piece of paper, can I do any less?

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