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Page 4 of 5
The Popping Fingers and Neck
In the special education room, which doubles as the computer lab, Wilma Woods works with Santwain Hammond.Santwain is between first and second grade. He is filling in missing consonants on a ditto sheet. He moves constantly. The noise his shiny pants make as he twists in his seat becomes grating. His feet, in new shoes, bounce nonstop. His body wiggles like a broken rubber
band.
Halfway down the sheet Santwain is stuck. He works with “Le_on.” The picture above the word looks suspiciously like an orange, he
says.
“That’s a lemon,” Woods tells him. “Sometimes I like to squeeze a lemon into my
tea.”
Santwain agrees. His grandma does the same, come to think of it.
“Or sometimes you put it on baked fish,” Woods continues.
“Eeeewwww. My people don’t like fish. They’re nasty,” he says, utterly repulsed. He starts talking about the time his dad made him eat fish. Woods tries to get him back on
track.
When he finishes the paper he cracks his knuckles, placing a note of finality on his latest academic
triumph.
“Do you know all my fingers can pop? And my pinky? And my neck?” he asks in his low, raspy voice, twisting his head to produce a series of painful-sounding clicks and
pops.
Story time is next. Woods holds the book open and reads to Santwain. He wiggles out of his chair in an effort to get a closer look at a mouse hunting for Easter eggs. Now entirely on top of his desk, he reaches out for Woods’ desk and pulls himself and his desk closer. Woods makes him count and describe shapes on the pages. The two point at the pages together, their hands about the same size, conducting a thorough search for all red circles, blue squares and Easter
eggs.
Santwain notices a jar of pasta in one illustration. He drops the shape count and reflects upon the last pasta dinner his mother
made.
“Sometimes we go on tangents,” Woods says calmly. When Santwain’s time is up, he politely says goodbye and heads back to his regular class. Woods says he was very obstinate the first time they met. He said he did not like her and was hesitant to go off alone with a new face. This was a minor challenge to the teacher who tells of student assaults on faculty members in the West Palm Beach, Fla., schools where she used to teach. By the third week of school, Santwain’s attitude and trust had improved so that language arts can take over as the focus of his visits with
Woods.
Three girls are the next to visit. They are in the fourth grade and are here to work on their organizational skills. On the chalkboard is their detailed lesson plan, which they copy and take home for their parents to sign. Next, they put their ditto sheets in numerical order. Woods goes into a lesson on diacritical markings in hot anticipation of the soon-to-arrive dictionaries. She is amped on teaching the “old-fashioned phonic
method.”
“Dictionaries are great,” she tells the girls. “You can learn things from a dictionary even when you’re in college.”
Shanice Knox is more interested in the lunch being served outside the room than in breves and macrons. “I need to eat so I don’t fall asleep,” Knox says, lifting her head, letting her pencil roll off her desk for the umpteenth time in the session.
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