It all started with the new student– we’ll call him John. He was not only new to our school, but new to the country. He would sit each day in class, silent and expressionless until dismissal, then saunter off toward his uncle without even a good-bye or smile. The kids tried to be friendly at first, but when their attempts were met with a wall of silence and blank stares, they soon lost interest. The students were generally kind to him, but one quiet morning, I saw his look of annoyance as a messy classmate’s papers began to crowd over and onto his desk.
John wasn’t able to communicate his annoyance, and also chose not to push the papers back over. Instead, he simply shifted his seat over to work on a smaller section of his desk. He avoided the problem. That’s one way to deal with it, I thought. I observed as the classmate continued to take over John’s personal space, and before long, John sat, frustrated with just a tiny corner of his desk space left. Finally, he turned and glowered at “Luke,” the offending space invader, with a, “Get your stuff off my desk” look. Luke just looked at him challengingly, then said, “What?” and then continued working.
Meet JoEllen
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