Posts Tagged “teaching story”

Tonight is the first of the local school holiday performances!  It is such hard work practicing and perfecting the show but always such a great joy to see the end result.  The kids always seem to out do themselves.  Just a year ago we had the greatest holiday performance surprise ever!  Our class was having a horrendous time coming up with what we wanted to do to represent the 3rd grade class.  We thought and thought and finally we had a few ideas to vote on.  It was decided that our class would sing and dance to the song Jingle Bell Rock.  Great idea if you were anyone but Juan or Tracy…..

Juan was a very special boy who had led a pretty hard life.  The child had witnessed things that no child should ever have to experience.  Due to his early childhood traumas he had also not learned to speak English and until becoming part of our class family; he had not attempted to.  This lead up is going somewhere, I promise.  Juan was a very shy boy but very emotive and loving.  He was much more physically mature than the other boys as well.   Tracy had been raised in a disadvantaged household. She was a pretty girl with a great deal of potential but had severe anger management issues as did Juan.  Neither child was interested in being part of the performance; or so we thought.

Through the 1st three weeks of December we rushed through our days to get to practice. Neither Juan or Tracy never really showed much interest in the whole thing.  To keep them involved we requested that they be the review team and ensure that we were performance ready.  In exchange they would not have to perform with the class on stage.  They both agreed to this plan.  We worked during lunch break, before and after school, and any chance we had to fit in a few minute review of our song and dance.  With each review our class became a closer knit group.  The students were having a ball.  During these times our non-performers would monitor our mistakes and let us know how we were doing.  Two days before performance time the students were getting the holiday bug and were quite giggly.  We couldn’t get it to flow and this was bothering Juan.  Here comes our holiday miracle.  Juan stood up and yelled across the group in his broken English to get it together, we only have 2 more days to practice.  This shocked all of us, not that Juan had been so vocal because he was known for outbursts but for the fact that he cared.  The class settled down and surprisingly got right to work.  In the dance the kids had a swing style step that was a tad complicated for 9 and 10 year olds.  Most of them were doing pretty well but the step was not tight. 

Upon completion of that review, we stopped, and asked Juan how they had done.  Crossed armed and obviously unhappy, he said NO, NO good!  With this he turned the music back on grabbed Tracy and said this is how you do it.  With that he stepped in to position with Tracy by his side and showed the class how to do the dance the correctly.  It was if Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers had walked into the room.  The grace, the attention to detail in every step, and the snap to their moves was unbelievable.   Mind you neither of them had ever practiced the dance.  Upon completion Juan stated, “That is how you do it.”  He went back to the corner of the room to continue his monitoring job while the class broke into an uproar of applause and shock.  They were amazing.  The entire class begged the pair to be in the performance.  Reluctantly the pair agreed to perform.  After class I asked Juan and Tracy how they knew how to dance like that?  Not surprisingly they both answered, “I don’t know….I just do it.”  I explained to them both that they had done something that no one else in our class had been able to do.   It was at this point that they realized that there was some thing that they could do better than the other children.  They had not thought of it as anything of any great importance.  Out of frustration had come a gift to themselves and to the school as a whole.

Two days later the performance came.  All decked out in their scarves, mittens, and hats we waited for our turn on stage.  The cafeteria was packed with students and parents and the emotions were running high.   Of course, five minutes before performance time Tracy and Juan got into an argument swearing they weren’t going to dance together but by some miracle they agreed to continue the dispute after our performance.  The kids got up on stage, Tracy and Juan in the center of the group and the other couples staggered and surrounding them.  We were all nervous.  The music started, their little voices timidly started to sing.  Out of Tracy’s little soul came this beautiful deep  voice.  Jingle Bell Rock had never sounded so sweet.  With our star performers’ confidence, our room came together as a solid team.  They completed their performance to a rouse of applause.

Where they the best performance that day?  Maybe not in the eyes of a critic, but was the holiday spirit felt in a way none of us had felt before?  Most defiantely! The class hugged, laughed, and congratulated each other all the way back to our portable.  They were so proud of themselves and each other.   A new respect for the “tough kids” was formed that day.  Tracy and Juan had learned they were an important part of our class family and that our show would not have been nearly as good with out them.  The “scholastically more gifted kids” learned that there was a lot more to life than just good grades.  I learned that what I thought of as stress was actually character building school.  Without my challenging kids what kind of teacher would I be?  Thank you Juan and Tracy for our holiday miracle.