The kids I teach are a handful even on a good day. Though they are in my classes because they have performed poorly on standardized reading comprehension tests, they are not stupid. In fact, most of them are very bright,but they don't know how to play by the rules; they don't know the first thing about sitting still and getting to work. Nevertheless, they can talk what they won't write. So my job is about getting these extraordinary but different kids to do things the plain and simple way everyone else does.

It ain't easy.

Take the Weatherman and Henry. One is gay and proud of it; the other, the picture of urban white machismo--a brawler. They sit on opposite sides of the classroom because they hate each other passionately. While Henry used to badger The Weatherman about being gay, the Weatherman could give as good as he get and would tell Henry, "You wish you were gay."

All of this would go on before they even sat down.

In a sixth grade literacy class.

What's a nice white girl from the suburbs to do?

One day I was at the end of my Standard Operating Procedures for Classroom Discipline rope. Nothing impressed these kids. So I told my gay student to be the Weatherman and look out the window to keep an eye open for atmospheric changes. "Let me know if anything happens." And that's what he did. Just stared out the window. Anybody looking in on us would have sworn he was not engaged in classwork even though he was doing exactly what I had asked. But you have to be there....

Henry functions quietly when I call him Henry rather than his given name. I gave him a new one when he wouldn't respond to me when I called him by name. "If you won't answer me when I call you by your name, I'm calling you Henry. What's the difference?" I asked. Now when he comes through the door, we agree he is someone else altogether: not himself, the tough kid who hates gay kids, but Henry. Anybody looking in on us would swear I didn't know his name. But you have to be there....

Now I get a regular weather report from the one child and a daily reminder--"You know my name is Henry!"--from the other. And things are reasonably peaceful. Which is just fine in my fragmented little world.

The blessing: Sometimes the kids get that I get them sometimes. Sometimes.

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