My son sat on the chair in front of us, his feet dangling a couple inches above the ground. In his hands, he fiddled with a piece of paper, twirling it round and round his finger. On the tables surrounding the room were felt snowmen in various stages of completion. The walls held pictures that had been drawn throughout the year, most of them depicting the holidays. His teacher and I sat on the couch facing him, ready to start the conference we had been holding every Tuesday for months now. And while my son sat uncomfortably, aware that he was center of attention once again for reasons other than his clowning around, I was grateful for these meetings.

Year after year my son has had trouble in school. It’s not that he isn’t smart, he is. He understands the work and can read without the starts and stops of most beginning readers. He can recite math problems off the top of his head. His favorite game in the car is when I ask him if I have so much money and take away several cents, and he has to tell me how much I would have left. He’s incredibly bright when he wants to be. But he loves playing much more than school, and tends to drift off into his own imaginary land when the rest of the class is learning. Or he rushes his work so that his paper is illegible. Or he goofs off with his neighbor while his teacher is trying to get everyone’s attention. I can’t tell you how many times I had to face a teacher in a conference and see the hopelessness in their eyes as they tried to find something positive to say about my son. They didn’t see my son every day of his life. They didn’t know that he could carry on an adult conversation with me, or that he enjoyed looking over his older sister’s shoulder now and then to figure out the math problem she was struggling with, or that his favorite past time (even more than video games) was to snuggle up on the couch and watch a movie. They only knew what he showed them. His last year’s teacher wouldn’t even let him get near the animals when they went to Safari West, sure that he would do them some harm. She wasn’t aware that my son is an animal tamer, able to make the meanest cat roll and purr at his feet when not one of us had been able to get near it.

This year, his teacher recognized that there was more to my son than he was showing. Or maybe the teacher knew that every student has the capability to be something great. Whatever it was, he took special interest in my son and proposed that we have weekly check-ins to go over how my son is doing, what’s working, and what still needs some work. These meetings involve very little talking from me, mostly being an exchange between the teacher and my son. What’s amazing, even if it seems obvious, is that the things that he is struggling with at home are the same things that he is struggling with at school. The week that he had trouble getting ready on time in the morning because he was too busy playing, he was having trouble staying present and on task in school. The week that he was being defiant and arguing with me over the chores I needed him to do was the same week he had a little trouble with the bathroom door and required a referral. At home he rushes his homework so that it is mere scribbles on the page, and then complains loudly when I make him do it over again because it is taking away from his playtime. At school, he is the first person to turn in his spelling tests. All of the words are spelled correctly – if you can read them.

This week’s topic was on preparedness.

“What happened today?” the teacher asked my son. My son went into the tale of how he had not known about a piece of work that was supposed to be turned in. “How did you feel when you were the only one who didn’t have their work turned in and you had to ask what we were talking about?”

My son shrugged his shoulders. “Um, maybe disrespected?”

I was alarmed at his answer, and he saw the look on my face.

“Do you mean that you were being disrespectful to me? Or do you think someone was disrespecting you?” the teacher asked.

“I mean, not disrespected. But……I don’t know.”

“Were you embarrassed?” the teacher prompted.

“No, not embarrassed. Well, maybe.”

“Let me give you a little trick for being able to be prepared. Let’s say you were trying to teach me how to fold a paper over my finger over and over,” the teacher said, pointing to my son’s fidgeting hands. My son grinned and held the paper up like he was teaching us how to fidget as well. “If I’m right here in front of you, I can see exactly what you are doing and learn how to do it myself. But what if I stand back here,” and the teacher moved to the back of the classroom. “And I wasn’t able to see in front of all the kids in front of me. And then my friend, who also couldn’t see, had my attention and we were goofing off in the back of the class. How much would I be learning from the teacher?”

“Not a lot,” my son admitted.

“I have a challenge for you. How about if you make it your goal to be in the front of the class when I am talking so that you learn even more,” the teacher proposed.

“But then everyone will be looking at me,” my son said. The irony was, everyone was looking at him when he was unprepared. My son hates to be the center of attention when it isn’t on his terms. When he is fooling around and being the clown, he wants everyone’s eyes on him. When he is playing sports and throwing a perfect spiral or executing an interception, he wants everyone to notice. When he has cleaned his room exceptionally well, or even just mediocre, he wants me to praise him up and down. But when he is supposed to be serious and on task, he wants to shrink in a corner and be invisible. Earlier that year, my son had asked the teacher to say something like, “Eyes up here,” when he noticed that my son was drifting off into his dreamland. He didn’t want the teacher to say his name because he didn’t want anyone to notice that it was him that didn’t have his eyes on the teacher.

“If you are looking at me, you won’t even be aware that anyone is looking at you,” the teacher said. “Plus, they’ll all be looking at me. They won’t have time to look at you.”

“But I don’t want to get pushed,” my son said.

“No one’s going to push you,” the teacher said.

“They will if everyone’s trying to get to the front of the class.”

The teacher laughed and turned to me. “He’s quite the manipulator, isn’t he?”

I laughed too, partly because it was true, and partly because I was so shocked that an educator would spell it out so plainly right in front of him. But he had nailed it on the nose.

“What’s a manipulator?” my son asked.

“It’s when you blame everything around you and don’t take ownership of your own actions or circumstances,” I said in a loose definition.

“Well, yes, but it’s more like this,” and the teacher lifted his hands. “Let’s say I have a pair of puppets on my hands. If I move my fingers I can make them move as well. I’m manipulating them to move. You want things to happen your way, others to bend to you, and blame things around you when things don’t work out. But you aren’t willing to make the change in yourself so that things are better.”

What I like about these meetings is that because there is no distraction, my son is completely present and hears everything that is said. Some weeks we have nothing but good things to talk about. Other weeks, like this week, we have things that need to be worked on. His teacher has proved how much he cares by taking the time to meet with us every week so that my son can thrive in his classroom and future classrooms. And since we started meeting, both the teacher and myself have noticed a vast improvement in my son. My son actually looks forward to these meetings, even when he is sitting in the hot seat and feels a little uncomfortable. I can’t express my appreciation enough to this teacher for all he has done. He didn’t just dismiss my son as another troublemaker who would make his job of teaching that much harder. He saw the promise that my son had, and has gone the extra steps to try and get that to rise to the surface. He has given my son special computer duties, telling him it was because he was smart enough to do it. He even had my son train two other kids on these duties. He talks to my son like an adult, bringing my son up to his level rather than stooping down to my son. And he cares. It’s apparent. He isn’t saying anything different than any of my son’s past teachers. But his approach to face it head on and work with us to make things better for my son is helping my son, and me, more than ever.

Thank you to my son’s teacher, and to all the educators out there who are making a difference in every child, every day.

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