We're fully in the throes of testing now, on Day 2, and it's starting to wear on everyone. The kids are grouchy and on edge, the teachers' tempers are frayed. I was thinking back to happier moments earlier, before they ever saw that darn test and felt real fear.
It was Movement, which is a time of the week that the kids really love. Pedro, who teaches it, has a great way with the kids, girls and boys alike, getting them to be in the moment in an authentic way that they can understand. He had them pair off and do an activity that goes like this: Student A says "one," Student B says "two," Student A says "three," and they start over, two people counting to three. They really have to pay close attention to each other.
One of my students, Jean-Pierre, did something really sweet. He was working with Carlos, who is an English Language Learner. So, completely unbidden, instead of saying, "One, two, three," he did his counting in Spanish. Really sweet. Carlos' English and Spanish abilities are about equal (he has a language delay), but it showed a lot of social intelligence on Jean-Pierre's part to come up with this on the fly.
All the adults in the room (six of them) wanted to high-five Jean-Pierre, and all of us gave him a ton of praise. He looked at us suspiciously, accepting the praise grudgingly. I asked him point-blank whether he knew what he had done to deserve all that. "No," he said, with a frown. I told him what a smart thing it was that he did. He gave me a rare, beautiful smile.
Seeing how these kids are struggling with the testing, I feel like I may never see that smile again.
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