A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about some challenging students in my GEN Y GED class. I’d had a few rough classes and sometimes that just gets discouraging. One student in particular wouldn’t even participate. His first day, I was kind of perplexed. I wasn’t sure if he didn’t understand what we were going over or whether he was just having a bad day. I sat down to talk to him, but he wouldn’t even look at me when I talking. While I don’t have any, I felt like I was speaking to one of my children. There were a couple more incidents, but ultimately I decided just to let him come over on his own. I mean he always came to class; he just didn’t do anything. He had to be coming for some reason. It definitely wasn’t my jokes. Really, I get my sense of humor from dad. And he’s not that funny.
However, on Thursday, everything changed. He participated in class and when some of my students were giving me a rough time about a particular activity, he actually stood up for me. He worked through the entire lesson and even worked through my students’ one break. He worked on fractions the whole time and kept grinning every time I graded a couple of the problems he’d finished. I think this was the first time I saw an unsecreted smile, let alone 5 or 6 in succession. He even wrote his essay! Maybe he was simply having a good day. I just hope he keeps having more like it. Wish more classes could be like this. Man, I had to stop myself from hugging him…but that would’ve been just awkward.
Kolter
