Drama in the Fourth Grade

Two weeks ago, I had a mother approach me during "Goodies With Grandparents." (This is an activity where we invite grandparents to school one morning for a snack and then they join us for our elaborate and wonderful flag ceremony up on the playground.) Anyway, I was in the cafeteria being a good teacher by meeting and greeting, when my student and her mom came over. Their purpose: pressure me to move the girl from the seat she occupied in my classroom. She'd been saying to me that she wanted to move for about a week. Of course she wanted to move, who wouldn't? She was seated across from a serious pest of a boy, who usually ended up with his desk being slid over to a private area within 10 minutes of his arrival in my room. So, I decided I wasn't going to give in to her "I'm not feeling comfortable where I sit" complaints because it was 70 minutes of her entire day. In her two other classes she didn't sit next to him, so I figured she'd probably survive. (And--there are only so many places during that class where I can move people--it's a group with more than its fair share of difficult students.) But, no...she'd gone home to complain to Mom, and so now Mom was standing in front of me pressing her daughter's case. And the daughter was standing there, with tears in her eyes. Sigh. You know I moved her that afternoon.

So, today I get a special little gesture from this same girl, who has now spent two weeks seated at a new desk, away from the pest, and now the new seat has become toxic to her. I said, "Who is bothering you now?"  Well, once again, tears begin to flow. I finally got it out of her that the problem wasn't even a person in the room with her. It was a person who sits in the desk during another period, but whose notebook and folder are stored in that desk, along with her notebook and folder, and a third student from yet another class. Once, she "liked" that boy, but now, she doesn't. And she was all stressed out about having her things be in with his. Maybe he'd "do something" or....I'm not really sure because she couldn't even say his name to me. She was crying too hard. I looked through the desk, and immediately divined who she must be referencing, so I simply moved his materials to a different desk, and put someone else's things in their place. In the class he travels with, it wouldn't matter where he sat. (And now, his nametag wouldn't be contaminating her notebook by touching it in the desk, and she wouldn't have to see his name everytime she reached in to take her writing materials. Okay?)  This calmed her down, and I sent her over to the girl's bathroom to wash her face and regain her composure.

WOW. She's nine years old.

I'm really glad I'm not going to know this girl when she is a teen-ager. That's all I can say.