Category: Writers Block
Teacher’s Pet For The Month
Christine June was one of the more ambitious and responsible fif graders in Mr. Richard Carson’s class. She was one of the few who did all her assignments most thoroughly, and completely, Furthermore, her responses seemed much deeper and much more complex then those others who turn in completed work. She had an actual interest in the subjects and endeavored to study her books to be as intelligent about the topics as possible.
This afternoon, as usual, she was wheeling herself back in to class in her fancy black wheelchair. The loud deep bell had rung out very audibly throughout the medium sized well to do elementary school signifying the end of lunch. All the other students were filing in to their class. Christine was now nearing the ramp of the bungalow, so, she wheeled herself closer and was about to make a sharp left turn, then continue to wheel herself up the ramp to her classroom as per usual. Except, this time, she felt a push, a sharp jult to her wheelchair and the front of her wheelchair hitting the railing then bouncing off of it with some force. The impact was hard enough to nearly tip her and her wheelchair over and she only prevented herself from losing control of the chair by grasping on to the railing quick enough with her small hands. Meanwhile, a lanky somewhat chubby boy with red hair had reached out a hand to give her wheelchair a shove.
“Hey, that’s Not nice. I’ll tell the teacher!” Christine shouted mournfully her slightly high pitched voice wavering, at the sniggering boy who was now fleeing across the school yard, to a bungalow on the other side. She steered the wheelchair around the railing, and as she ascended the ramp her hazel green eyes rapidly fills up with hot salty tears, which slowly leaked out from her eyes on to her beautiful small tender heart shaped face. She manage to reach the top of the ramp and wheel herself in to the small classroom, wheel herself back in front of her desk, and waited impatiently for classs to commence, attempting to stop herself from crying and feeling down by relaxing.
“Hey Carla, mom said it is okay for you to come over, can you still come over?” the red headed Ingrid Peterson asked excitedly and a little loudly so from even two rows behind Ingrid Christine was able to hear Ingrid well enough, over the other chatter.
“Yes, then we can play with your new Hamster!” Carla squealed excitedly now sitting down after walking in from the warm outdoors.
“I thought I would start out our class period, here, with the student of the month award,” Mr. Carson announced over the noise of the childrens conversations as the 20 young fifth graders all finished settling down in their chairs behind their desk and sat there talking to each other. The fifth graders all suddenly went quiet, and looked at mr. carson attentively, expectantly even, hoping that it was them this time around who was getting the student of the month award.
“”oh, I hope it’s me,” One of the more popular boys in the class and the school named Shelden theolls was heard audibly and excitedly saying to his friend. There was now more and more whispering within the 30 second pause Mr. Carson had stop speaking to try to build excitement.
“The winner is……, drumroll please,” Mr. Carson said loudly and in his best announcer voice, that he could manage. All the kids did just that, they pounded against their table noisily for drum roll.. He cleared his throat noisily.
“”Christine June,” Mr. Carson said this the loudest with a wide smile on his face. The other students however was not as happy with this news. There was tense silence for a few moments. No one cheered or clapped or showed that they were happy for Christine for winning the student of the month award. A lot of faces looked more vicious, upset, or disappointed at this news.
“That’s not fair,” Julia Robinson cried out in outrage. She was one of the more popular girls who was liked by all the boys in the class. She was hoping that one of her friends would win the award.
“That’s so unfair!” One of the boys in the class named shaun said loudly, clearly very upset that he didn’t win student of the month. He was also very popular and was hoping to win student of the month to brag to all his friends just how awesome he was.
“How come she got the student of the month? I think I am better!” an African-American girl with bbraided long hair named ella stood up aggressively shouting and pointed a finger at Christine.
“She’s just a dumb cry baby, she’s not a good girl!” Another boy, this one named James, shouted angrily atMr. Carson , sticking his tongue out at the teacher, “You just like her.”By now after this comment from James Christine looked a bit upset, and her face twisted itself in to a sad expression, and a frown appeared on her face.
“lets come together please and calm down, please,” mr. Carson said sharply now raising his eyebrows in both surprise and anger, “and, I want to see both Shaun and James after class, at recess. I must say I pick student of the month for very good reasons, and I have good reasons for picking the 6 including Christine for each month’s student of the month. There are traits and abilitie Christine, Alexander, Lillian, tamilla, Nathaniel, and Terrence have that the rest doesn’t have and each very uniquely individually, and each lack some sort of abilitie and traits that some of you have. You must trust me that I don’t pick student of the month based on just anything, and I think each of you have some really good traits. And, as the theme changes, different people might have the chance to win something.” Mr. Carson was usually very mild mannered, and didn’t favor any students. He liked his students equally. He didn’t like any of them treating any other student badly. He was unpleased with the attitude of his fifth grade class on his decision to make Christine the student of the month, and. He was constantly amazed at the effort that Christine put forth in her work and was quite friendly with her since he spent a lot of time helping her out because she needed the extra accommodation. He had picked her as he had picked all the other students because he thought they deserved the award and praise according to the theme of each month. This month was greatest academic achievement. Christine had come very far in this way and have done a lot of great work despite her disability.
Mr. Carson then gave them a few worksheets they didn’t quite finish in the mathematics part of class yesterday and told them that was what they were going to do for the rest of the class. They were allowed to work with others or alone. Student by student paired up with their friends or other students. Christine waited for students to get settled down to see if anyone wanted to work with her this time. No one ever in her whole school career wanted to work with her, but she was hoping maybe just maybe this once there would be one kind person who would be willing to work with her. She always imagined it would be nice and longed for it, but thus far no one had. This time, again, No one came forward to be her partner, so she quietly got to work. Writing the equations as usual, slowly, and with some difficulty. Everyone stayed distant from her and worked with each other other then christine. Soon enough the bell rang and everyone but James and Shaun got to go outside. Christine liked to go outside for recess even though she couldn’t run or play outside like everyone else. The reason she liked going outside was because of the fresh air and it was a break from the classroom setting. So after class Christine wheeled herself out of the hot stuffy classroom, down the ramp, and right in to the school yard, today filled with bright strong rays of brilliant sunshine. It was a really rather nice day, and a non-typical March afternoon.
She sat quietly observing the lovely day, by the bungalow that was her classroom, not bothering anyone..
Splat
A Large quantity of something wet hit the back of her shirt. Christine screamed loudly in surprise. Of course, she was not expecting this to happen, no one would, so, Christine wanted to find out who would want to do this to someone. She thought this was rather rude, senseless, and hurtful. She turned around so to look at who did it.splash, a quantity of spit hit her squarely on her face near her large eyes. A young boy with jet black hair and brown eyes named gilbert from her class was standing ten feet away from her, by the dirt and grass with a big handful of muddy dirt in his hand, which was pulled a bit back ready to pitch the handful of wet durt, which was ooriginally dry dirt, which he spat on, at Christine.
“no! that’s so mean!don’t do that!” Christine cried out desperately at the boy. The boy thrust his arm forward and let go of the wet dirt anyway, which flew at Christine quickly and splattered messily all over her shirt. Amy Giliganson, a girl also in crhistine’s class approached and watched for a full minute, but then walked away doing nothing, nor did she attempt to speak up. Christine’s eyes filled up with tears, which leaked out and she started to cry helplessly, softly but unable to stop the hot salty tear drops from ffilling up in her eye socket to the brim and then flowing out of it. She sat there, unable to move, and in a real mess. The dirt, spit, and tears all over her body, stuck to her skin and her shirt. Another boy this one named william, also in Christine’s fifth grade class, approached her and pulled hard on her auburn hair which was tied up in pigtails.
“You don’t look so smart now do you?” William taunted yanking even harder at her hair and sniggering at her, “You are not smart enough now to get out of this, you crybaby, are you? You need your mummy to help you now don’t you? What smarts do you have? You stupid little baby? You think you’re so good aren’t you, you little know-it-all.” Another boy, one of William’s friends, who was not in Christine’s fifh grade class, named Theodore came over and was about to taunt her when everyone who was bullying Christine stopped what they were doing. They all stood frozen, as if something bound them to their spot, All of the boys’ expressions turned from mockery and triumphant, to fright and pure terror. A very red and furious Mr. Carson had stepped out of his classroom door and was now standing in the doorway in front of the ramp that went down to his left, And ended with a railing on the right. Not only was bullying someone wrong. He was quite close to her as they had had many conversations about the material, because she really took interest in all of it. So, he didn’t want to see Christine bullied, not that he would want to see anyone else be bullied. He looked from boy to boy, his eyebrows raised, his face taught and red with anger.
“May I ask what you guys think you are all doing? And why? Do you think this is seriously good behavior, and if it’s appropriate?” The boys stayed frozen, No one moved. No one attempted to answer Mr. carson, no one even nodded or shook their heads. They all stood their for a minute longer as Mr. Carson frowned down at them.
“Why don’t you all come in, all three of you, gilbert, william, and, you,” he said, and at the end when he said “you”, he pointed at Theodore while taking a few steps back but never taking his watchful eyes off the scene. He was extra angry and watched more carefully partly because this wasn’t the first time that Christine was bullied. Furthermore, Some of the people who were bullying her presently had also bullied her before, along with some others.
The boys moved ever so slowly forward, as if every step took a great amount of energy, towards the Ramp, the bungalow, the classroom, and most dreadfully of all Mr. Carson. They all finally after a minute or two finally reached the door of the classroom and all of them went in.
“Christine, why don’t you waight their for a few minutes I am going to call the school nurse to come collect you to help you clean up,” Mr. Carson said to Christine after he watched all the boys file in to the class, and getting ready to go inside, “It’s going to be all alright.” Christine Sat there crying, trying to collect herself so she wouldn’t look quite so bad to the school nurse. She took a few deep breaths. Her mind wondered to the constant torment from herpeers and the fact that few wanted to work with her. This made her tears renew it’s course of flowing out of her eyes. But she didn’t cry very hard. She was very upset and angry about all this bullying that happened to her but wasn’t sure what to do. Wasn’t the world suppose to be good? Weren’t people suppose to be nice and friendly? Why would anyone want to be a bully? And why did they single her out? She was no different from anyone else, was she? She was another human being, another girl, another fifth grader in Mr. Carson’s class. So, what if she was in a wheelchair? It didn’t really matter she was just the same! Her tears came down harder now nearly as hard as she had wept before. Why couldn’t someone be kind? And be their true self and not to this to her? She didn’t know what game they were playing. People was suppose to be nice, the world was suppose to be a good place to live. All the adults told her that, but, the kids sure didn’t seem like that. Why couldn’t all the children her age be as kind as all the adults?
“Oh Dear!” Amanda Winfield, the school nurse exclaimed after seeing the mess Christine was in, and ran over to her wheelchair, disturbing Christine’s thoughts, “hun, come, lets get you fixed up, honey. Lets go to my office, sweetheart.” She produced a packet of tissues she had in her pocket, and handed it to Christine who opened the pack of tissues slowly with her stiff fingers and hands, and blew her nose. Amanda wheeled Christine away from the bungalow and started off to her office.
“It’ll be all okay Christine, Amanda will fix you up! I am sorry that they did this to you. You’ll be okay in the end you’re better then they are! Just hang in there,” she said both sympathetically and cheerily attempting to cheer up Christine. Christine finished blowing her nose and turned to Amanda hoping to elicit a true answer from someone this time.
“Why…. Why….. Do they want to do it to me,” She said unsteadily trying to calm down after all the upsetting events. Amanda looked at her sadly and with pitying eyes.
“Well, there are just some kids like that. It’s just ignorant cruelty. You can’t help it. Ah, what can you do,” She said resignedly and they walked on for a minute or two in silence.
“Ah, it’s a very nice day, out here nice and warm. Hmmmmmm…. So, are you doing anything fun over the weekend, Sweetheart?” Amanda asked Christine trying to distract her from the topic, of the upsetting events. Christine took another tissue from the pack of tissues, and blew her nose again.
“I have OT two hours after school. I think my mom and dad wants to go to aunt Angela and Uncle Charles house this weekend. It’s very nice, it’s out in the country,” Christine elaborated kind of to express herself. She didn’t have many to talk to about life, and since the school nurse did ask.
“wow! That sounds really fun, dear!” Amanda said as they pproached her office dor. She reached out her slender arm to open the dorr and then pushed Christine’s wheelchair in to her office. She pushed Christine in by her desk.
“Mr. Carson has already called your mother to be able to come pick you up. I’ll be back going to grab you some towels to help you clean up a bit, first,” Amanda said in a more serious matter of fact voice getting ready to bussle off.
While Amanda was gone to the bathroom Christine’s mind drifted back to the bullying issue. she wasn’t so sure anymore, if she believed the adults. That’s what they told her, and that was what she believed but this incident was now, a more serious proof against the validity of that view. Hurt was part of her life but not so badly before. Sure they had teased her, pulled on her hair, tried to take her sstuff and run with it, chased her around the school yard, called her names put their hands on her and be really rough, and many other things. However, no one had ever really spit on her before and she had never been in this big of a mess. Perhaps the world is not all good, after all as she would want to believe, and some people do have a desire to hurt. The level of violence that caused her to be in this mess was certainly not done by good, was it? Some tears flowed out of her eyes at this realization. And she started to cry again. Sometimes she just brushed the hurt off after crying about it wanting to believe that people were better then this but really? Being splattered by mud and spit, certainly isn’t anything you can deem as good or easily get over. She didn’t think she could see them as naïve and good but somehow bad in the moment. Maybe some adults were wrong. She thought of the weekend and thought that her Uncle Charles seem to know a lot of answers that most adults didn’t or was otherwise willing to share them with her, so maybe he might be able to talk her through this. But for the meantime, to take her mind off of this hurt, maybe it was better not to think of it just right now.
Teachers pet for the Month has been a pet project of mine for nearly two years. I had written a version in 2010 or 2011 but it is drastically different from this version.
I had planned for it to be a fun story to read but serve the civil rights purpose of teaching people about the disabilities aspect of civil rights, which I think is a bit neglected at times. It provides a realistic view of what a lot of disable students go through in grade school especially in primary or elementary school. In many ways it shows what people don’t talk about, and what children who often don’t understand their peers who are disabled, do to disabled individuals. There’s a lot of emphasis placed on anti-bullying, but very few efforts to mind disability bullying in elementary school most of the bullying efforts seems to be concentrated on people bullying each other not the bullying of their disabled peers..
As a person who has definitely gone through that, it’s an emotional nightmare, and I still have very bad memories of being chased around the school yard, getting my belongings stolen, or students putting their hands on me and trying to hurt me. I still remember the lack of teacher and adult support. When I was bullied in public outside of school by children my age, people would excuse their behavior and say it was just them being kids or they were trying to have some fun. Either that or, I remember being very isolated. Having gone through such a nightmare and hearing similar sometimes even crueler stories, and yet not having it addressed or having too many adults still care about these children I thought it might be interesting to write about it.
Partly to show and partly to entertain. So, I thought I’d create a character like myself, but if she was also blind that might have me being too attach or too harsh on her abilities and to attached to her as a blind individual to actually write her well and let her get torn apart. So I accomplished what I did by making her crippled. Her actual disability was not stated not because I didn’t do the research but a lot of physical crippling disability seemed to be kind of complex so I wasn’t sure how accurate I would be. I suppose the closest disability she would have is cerebral palsy or ataxia. I also wanted her to be physically disabled because a lot more people seem to be more aware of the crippling effects of mental issues and that is talked about more, where as physical disabilities are not discussed as much.
Christine is also modeled after a girl who was autistic I had worked with in middle and high school. Christine is a play on the name Christina which was the name of the girl I worked with. She’s still close to my heart though I lost contact with her and she will always be. So, I thought I would also base this character off of her.
My original strategies was to create a very cruel group of children, who would do things to her to emphasize the cruelty some of us disabled people go through in grade school. They were meant to be normal children if not a bit egoistical and popular and rowdy. Also, there were adults in her life in the second draft that was hinted at. They were supposed to be like most adults in my experience who had told me that they were just kids, that they were nice, and that they were just being mean right now but was really actually nice. These people were absent the first draft partly because I didn’t think of it, but partly because I was limited in page count.
I had first wanted the teacher to be the really heroic man who saves the kid and tells them all off and helps her out and changes her view of the world. But I suppose I wanted a more realistic story. Teachers in grade school can only do so much so no matter how you play the hero, you can seem like the good character but there’s not too many heros in the school system. I suppose he was a much more heroic character in the first draft and just a good teacher in the second draft. I thought it would be kind of cool to put a random rude character who would do cruel things because some people are impulsive like that so I put the boy who pushed Christine in to the railing in the original opening.
I would say that my vision of it changed and that the story changed from a tale of good and evil to a more complex model of what happens in the world. As mentioned above Richard Carson was no longer the hero, he was just the good teacher that was willing to do something but that wouldn’t be able to fix the whole worlds problems.
I also, had male characters as her bullies. I had skewed the evil side of the story to only include males before, and it was not on purpose, because I have no idea why it was only males. As two of my worse bullies, Heather and Femmy was female. There was also this girl called april who liked to bully me to.
My first step was to unskew the evil side and add some girls. I also added some bystanders that didn’t do anything to her but was in the classs. They did not like her but did not hate her, more then anything a lot of them simply didn’t know enough and was not motivated to know enough as is the case with most children. Most disabled children go through school with very few friends. I had lacked girls, so I made most of them girls.
Also, during the critique session a few people pointed out that the teasing scene seemed like everyone was against her and that was the case and it is true some people don’t play a role, and there is other children in the playground. So, I included a girl who watched for a second and then went about minding her own business again.
I also needed more of a ending I knew it was not neat but couldn’t do much because of the original short short story page count. I added a few reflective passages at the end of the story to reflect her changed thinking. I suppose at first it was just to paint a picture, but I decided I would talk about her realizing finally realizing as most disabled students do that the world does treat them like that and not everyone is a nice person. Christine is too young to fully realize that she was being targeted for her disability or that she should fight back or maybe decideing she would take part in some civil rights work. Most kids don’t realize stuff like that until later, more towards their teenage years or in their teenage year.
At ten, kids are still young, and still think “well, I am just a kid, what’s different about me. I suppose they are too innocent and young to make real realizations about self advocacy. Sadly, there’s a large enough population of disabled individuals who never realize such need and stay passive all their lives. I’ve seen quite a few in the blind community. So, I made a decision for her to only make a small realization in that her idealism of the world and what the adults tried to tell her about kids being good and ignorant and all kids were good kids was not true.
I decided since I had more room and time, that I would add an extra seen to kind of complete the story a bit, but the story is a part of life so it could technically never end, but I thought I would add the scene where the nurse comes and gets her and brings her to her office getting ready to help her clean up a little and then send her home by having her parents come and pick her up. This character also lets me show a bit of the realities of some adults insensitivity and their want to care but does it the wrong way, because she is not really listening to the kids or acknowledges them, especially with disabled children.
I also ended up adding more to the details of Christine’s background and some details about her and what her relationship with Mr. Richard Carson was like. I also added a little bit of depth to Mr. Carson’s personality too.
Due to some time issue this is still a work in progress and I suppose could be a part of a very long story
which one day I hope to have the pleasure to complete. It feels like after writing the second draft that I should write this in to a novel, but for this title it’s more of a scene or a chapter of her life one of the many lessons she learns. I suppose one of the weakness is my attachment to Christine, because of the whole disabilities issue and how strongly I feel about these issues. So in many ways it’s skewed and in many ways it’s also very one sided.
In conclusion, I really love the fact I got to write Christine’s story, and while I got to express myself and while it was really therapeutic, I also think I did a lot of thinking and a lot of lerning about civil rights in many ways by being the narrator and mediating all the sides.I also learnt a lot about the writing of it. It was a good story overall, and whatever revisions and weaknesses it still has and will be fixed in the next revision, I will still be immensely proud of this story, and I will always love this story.