D--- Triumphant

Edu-technical background :

Every week all the 4th and 5th grade students at my school take a multiplication test. We have used all our teacherly powers to affix status upon this event. It is labeled “The Principal’s Challenge” and The Man himself comes to each class to initiate it. On Friday, the class that had the most students with a perfect score receives a banner to display in their room all the next week. Every student who aces the test receives a t-shirt saying “Multiplication Master” that they are allowed to wear on Friday. At this point, we have moved from having 3 students in 4th and 5th grade ace the test each week to having 60. Overall, better than 90% of our 5th graders and 80% of our 4th graders have attained mastery (80+/100) of multiplication. Needless to say, as each class tries to achieve the banner and as more and more students show up in the t-shirts, it becomes increasingly apparent who the laggards are. This brings us to D---.

The story:

D---, in all likelihood, suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome. He does not look like the other children, he does not act like them and he certainly does not learn like them. He cries constantly, he picks his nose, he licks his shoes and, until the recent acquisition of a hearing aid, he talked at the top of his lungs. Due to years of parental obstructionism and professional ineptitude, he was only qualified for special education this December. He is paranoid, from years of bullying and abuse. He incessantly believes people are stealing his stuff and making fun of him and he is often right. Yet, he is constantly in search of companionship and tries, each morning anew, to befriend kids who have despised him for years.

A long time ago, I realized that my morning work, a sheet of 120 multiplication problems to be completed while homework was checked, was not a possibility for D---. Sitting next to other students meant endless distraction, an interminable cycle of D---‘s misbehavior, other students’ bullying, and D---‘s sobbing tantrums. Even sitting in the very front, facing only me, the world was filled with too much excitement, too many stories to tell the teacher and too many carefully arranged stacks of my papers to dig into and disorganize.

I eventually gave up on D--- completing the morning work and making any progress in learning his multiplication facts. He was too low even to join my after-school “facts club.” One afternoon, however, D—‘s other teachers and I looked up fetal alcohol syndrome online, in search of strategies to help us help D---. As though written directly for me, the website essentially said, “Students with F.A.S. can’t complete worksheets. They are much better off learning basic skills on the computer or with flashcards, where there is a high degree of interactivity.”

The next day, I put D--- on the computer during morning work. Wholly engaged by Multiflyer, hands down the best facts-teaching game ever, D--- would happily work at hundreds of multiplication problems. At first I only let him work during the multiplication period, but then, as he never does his homework, I let him stay on the machine during the homework correction too. Eventually, as our class progressed farther and farther past D---‘s capabilities, I just let him work at the facts. He explored different games at multiplication.com and only occasionally misused the time.

After a few weeks of this intense practice, D--- told me that he was going to pass the Principal’s Challenge. When he only got thirty or forty problems out of the hundred, he tried to fill in the rest as we corrected the test. The other kids caught him, called him out, and D--- sobbed. He cried to me about how he thought he could do it and how desperately he wanted to pass. I told him to keep practicing. A few weeks later, D--- got fifty-two correct. He came rushing up to me as the class counted out our perfects. The class laughed at him but, undeterred, he said that next week, he would pass the test.

Last week, just as the five minutes finished up, I walked by D---‘s desk and saw something I never believed possible. As my eyes quickly scanned the paper, I did not immediately find it awash with ridiculous guesses. In fact I found myself tracking back and forth across the rows of problems as I looked for an error. I picked it up, telling D--- that I would correct it myself. Unable to tell if he had done well or wrong, D--- assumed the worst and put his head down.

D--- did not ace the test, but he got over seventy problems right. It was a spectacular improvement, from twelve at the beginning of the year, and I announced it to the class. We were all amazed and the reconsideration of deep-seeded contempt was tangible. Most of the students in the class did not get seventy correct at the start of the year and for D--- to be within a few months progress of them was inconceivable. Ecstatic, D--- ran to the phone to call his mother, ran to the other classes to show his other parents, and came back to my class to call his mother again.