Write About That Student You Won’t Forget by Lauren Cope Write about Markquese, that student you’d been warned about since he was in 1st grade. His mother waging war against the school as a whole. “Get ready,” they told me, “He’s coming your way.” Third grade, a challenge on its own, now with an added hurdle. Write about Markquese, who told you how he hated school every morning in September. How school was dumb and pointless, just a place he had to be. “Just leave me alone,” he’d frequently say. I’d tell him how it was my job to help him learn – I realized I needed to teach beyond the curriculum to reach him, convince him that he belonged. Write about Markquese, who would threaten to – and execute – destroying our classroom. Throwing books, flipping his desk, slamming our classroom door as he charged into the hallway.
Write about Markquese, who needed time to trust – trust me, trust his classmates
and administrators. Trust himself to be vulnerable, to be accepted by his peers.
Write about Markquese, that student you grew to love most. The one that the office staff began calling “your son” by January. How he’d blossomed and opened up at school – a newly found safe space. Write about how even his mother grew to trust you, she learned not to fear the sight of the school’s phone number on her caller ID. How she knew you’d call to highlight something good rather than calling to complain, to demand consequences at home for something that happened at school.
Markquese, Third Grade, 2019
HVWP COMMONPLACE 38
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