Measuring Up

He's short, even for a third grader, and he has a round face with dark eyes and long eyelashes. When he smiles (which is often), his whole face lights up and his eyes crinkle above his cheeks. He has a laugh that ripples with glee and merriment.

On Halloween, he dresses up as a gorilla in a full-body plush suit and lumbers around the classroom; when he hugs me, he is a squishy ball of fur under my arm.

"Why do people read, Jay?" I ask him.
"Um...to learn?" comes his reply, his reply lifting up unusually at the end with his accent.
"Why do you read?"
"To learn...to become a good reader so I will do good work, and then I will get a good job, so I can make money." All this with perfect guilelessness and bright-eyed enthusiasm.
"That's great," I tell him. "You do good work."

And he does--he participates, pays attention, answers questions--and I can see his whole face crease into concentration, the line down between his eyebrows, his mouth in a puzzled line.

He's a good student--obedient, cheerful, diligent.

We're working on subtraction, using a method where we count up to find the answer (23-14, so we count from fourteen to twenty-three to find the difference).

"Jay needs help," his table tells me, so I kneel beside his desk.
"Alright, Jay, where are you counting from?"

We walk through the steps one more time; I can see that he understands. He knows the procedure.

"Well, what's wrong? You can count."
"No...I can't."
This surprises me--he hasn't seemed to have a problem with counting.
"Why not?"
"Well...well, sometimes I try and I try but I mess it up--"
And suddenly he's crying, face scrunched into a sob, hands coming up to cover his face from his peers.

I'm at a loss for what to do--his frustration is clear, his diligence is obvious--how do I comfort a student that feels incapable of performing a basic mathematic function?

"Whoa, whoa, Jay, it's okay," I try, raising a hand to pat his shoulder. "You're alright."

I can see part of his face between his hands, and the tears streaming down his cheeks.

"It's okay," I repeat. "I need you to calm down. You can get this. Deep breaths, okay? Take a deep breath..."

I model, inhaling slowly and exhaling so he can hear me. I put a hand on my chest; he mimics me. I almost want to laugh at this little boy clutching his chest like a wheezing grandpa; but I can't, because the problem is so serious to him that he is weeping in class.

"We're here to help you, Jay," I say once he's calmed down a bit. "And you'll figure it out. You just need to keep working, even though I know it's hard and frustrating. Everyone has something they struggle with."

He is wiping tears from his eyes. His table-mates are respectfully quiet.

"Want to know a secret?" I lean in a bit toward him. "I had a hard time with math too. But I figured it out, and so will you."

"Yeah," pipes in Brady. "I'm bad at math too. I mean I'm basically failing...but it's okay."

I'm mildly disturbed by this comment--I certainly don't want Brady thinking he's failing at math as well, or parading this as an okay thing to Jay.

I focus my attention back on Jay. "Don't worry," I repeat once more. "Remember, even if you're having a hard time with this right now, you're still good at a lot of other things. Like soccer--I know you're great at that."

He nods, looking somewhat comforted.

It's time for the class to move on; I tell him not to worry about the work, that we'll work on it later.

In a couple minutes, he's joking with a friend, those eyes beaming again above his peach-round cheeks.

I'm troubled. What happens when if he realizes that his confidence levels are higher outside school than inside? What happens when he decides its cool to be "dumb" or "failing"? What happens when he just gets sick of the whole charade entirely and casts aside public education for something he deems more fulfilling and worthwhile---or worse, more suited to his lack of academic prowess?

How do you reach students like him? How do you make learning seem not only important, but also possible and accessible?

Because I know his feeling. It's the feeling of trying as hard as you have strength to try, and still coming up short. It's the feeling of everyone else getting it except you. It's the feeling of sitting in class, not knowing what the teacher is talking about, feeling like a complete failure.
Because you just don't know how you will possibly figure it out. It's an impossible task (in your mind), presented as something not only possible, but perhaps simple, and seemingly mastered with ease by your peers.

I felt it in one of my college courses when I was overwhelmed with assignments, sick with frustration and worry at the mounting work I had to complete. I just didn't have the time, I felt, to do everything I needed to do. Something had to give.

Sitting in that class, tears threatened to spill over as I contemplated my shortcomings and detailed the things I should have already accomplished. The teacher continued to talk about even more assignments that I hadn't even gotten around to worrying about, let alone complete. My peers scribbled notes, nodded, and asked intelligent questions. I felt like a complete failure. I felt like I would fail out of my program. I didn't want to be there. It was misery.

Later, when I thought about the experience, I wondered what it would be like if every day was like that. If everyday I had to struggle against my own misconceptions of my abilities. If everyday felt like even though I was trying my hardest, I still wasn't measuring up.

That's what some students face.

Now what do I do about it?