I learned some interesting information from these papers. For example, the "lost essential" of social studies is the "use of geography." (Hint: change the o to an a.) Captain John Smith was captured by a "tork." (Try "Turk.") And, my personal favorite -- did you know that Columbus was friends with Lief Eriksson and other Vikings? He explored North America for the first time with them.
In all seriousness, though, I could decode the nonsense, or at least understand where the idea originated. As many times as I shook my head, I laughed out loud. These kids get points for trying, even if they sometimes forget that names get capitalized and sentences get verbs. These crazy, inaccurate, grammatically confusing papers are what I dub "the ugly." I like the ugly. They are indubitably the original work of 6th and 8th grade students trying to understand history, even if they get confused along the way.
However. The ugly sometimes are the bad in disguise. At other times, the bad don't hide. They shine in all their different-voiced glory, shouting to me, "I came off-line!" Their cries are quickly corroborated by a Google search. Most of them came from Wikipedia or free paper and easy fact websites, although one guy got his from a historical society. If you're going to copy, have his sense: use a reliable source. Also, don't use the textbook. That's just dumb. I got some that came word for word from the textbook, spelling and grammatical errors not included. I don't know if they were trying to cheat smart, or if they just were too lazy even to copy right.
The ugly is very depressing and frustrating, which is why I wanted to end on "the good." It has nothing to do with essays. It has to do with two of my most frustrating students. One of them was absent yesterday. He is frustrating because he does nothing most of the time; he just wanders, acting clueless. But every now and then he has motivated spurts, and he does the work well! I just don't know what causes them, so while I encourage him at these points, I don't know how the make them happen more frequently. They are infrequent, though, so he ends up in trouble with me a lot.
Well, today he walked into school and gave me the hugest smile and a wave! I told him that I'd missed him yesterday (which was true), and he kept grinning. All day, he worked hard on today's exams and make-up exams from yesterday, and he smiled and waved every time he saw me. Since he was in a productive mood on Tuesday, that makes two good school days in a row for him!
The other one is a girl who needs attention and will act wild (but not maliciously so) to get it. She says crazy things to get reactions, and she's high-maintenance as far as attention goes, but she is no serious trouble. She too doesn't work most of the time, sometimes because she can't, and other times because she doesn't want to. I'm starting to figure her out though -- she just needs to be away from people and distractions. Escaping distractions is no mean feat in this school, but every now and again it shall be done.
Today, she was one of the few left at the end of the day, so Ana and I took her into the building for study hall. However, since there was no work for our two middle schoolers to do, we let them go to play with the after school daycare. This girl, who had been running her mouth about how she didn't want to go upstairs with us, gave us the quickest sad look before we left.
Those two moments let me know that at least I am touching some kids, somehow. Those sorts of moments are little hugs from God.
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