Go ask Alice, I think she'll know!

Alice is my hero this week. Not so much for anything she's done, mind you, as for things she hasn't done.

Alice is in one of my more energetic classes, one which features a lot of talkers and a few truly rambunctious 10-12 year olds. I get the impression she's at the higher end of that scale, because she's a little bigger than most of the others, even the boys. (Their age group is at the tail end of those few years when the girls are taller.) But Alice is not one of the talkers. In fact, she doesn't say much of anything if she can help it. She knows the answers, and she'll give them to me if I call on her, but she never volunteers.

In other words, she's just about exactly like I was when I was her age - and for several years after that. At the risk of sounding self-pitying, the reaction I often got from my teachers for being so quiet back then is still a slightly sore point for me. I ran across quite a few teachers in my time who would never think to make sarcastic comments about a child's appearance or height or weight or clothes or most any other personal characteristic - but for some reason, they thought nothing of ridiculing shy kids for being shy. Many is the time I was made to feel three inches (7 1/2 centimeters, but it's just an American figure of speech) tall for not being very outspoken. I have always suspected they were only trying to bring me out of my shell, but of course it had the opposite effect. It also made me aware very early in life about the absurd degree to which most people assign value to charm. That issue still tends to rub me the wrong way these days. Hey, they say Ted Bundy was an amazingly gregarious and friendly guy!

In any case, no, I'm not still bitter about the occasional humiliation I received from some long-ago teachers. I grew up quite a while ago, thank you. But I am still aware of the unfairness of it all, and now that I am on the other side of the teacher's desk, one of my guiding principles is that I should never give a kid credit just for being an extrovert or punish another just for not being one. (I know that a few of my friends are firmly of the belief that anyone who remembers a past injustice at all is by definition bitter about it - yes, Berkeley, I am looking in your direction - but I hope you'll take my word for it that I'm not! Learning from your own hard times can be a very valuable thing to do, I think.)

More to the point, not everybody learns through class participation (a lot of experts think the Socratic method is supremely overrated, if not downright worthless, actually), so it's important for teachers to recognize that just because that tired looking kid in the back row
looks like s/he's goofing off doesn't necessarily mean that's really the case. Sometimes they're just soaking up all the information just by being there.

All of which brings me to Alice. Her class had its final exam last week, and it wasn't their finest hour. Our school, as I have mentioned, grades quite leniently, so anytime you have a test where no one gets a perfect score, that's not a good sign. Such was the case this time, when scores ranged from 96% all the way down to 77% - in a school where anyone who scores below an 85 is entitled (and usually forced by his or her parents) to take the test again.

And who got the 96? It wasn't the girl in the front row who always has a sentence ready with the next vocab word when I ask for one. It wasn't her friend who is always asking me who got the highest score on the latest quiz or test; she came in second this time, but her A is still pretty safe. It wasn't the boy who always yells out all the answers without raising his hand - in fact, he didn't do particularly well this time. No, it was Alice. For 12 weeks - since before I even arrived in town - she's been sitting back there in the corner, listening and apparently taking notes now and then, talking when she must and keeping to herself the rest of the time, and it all paid off! I can still recall all too well what my teachers had to say about students like that, and from my new perspective, I must admit that it's sometimes frustrating when somebody never wants to participate. But not participating is not the same as not learning, I always told myself - and tried to tell most of the adults in my life, though most of them wouldn't listen. I hope I learned from their mistake - and from what I've seen from Alice, I think maybe I have.

I can't help but be reminded of one of my favorite "Simpsons" gags, when Bart decides to participate in class more often for some reason or other (sibling rivalry, I think) and we hear Mrs. Kerbapel calling on him again and again: "Bart!" "Bart!" "Bart!" "Bart!" And finally, "Bart Simpson, stop putting your hand up! You haven't had one right answer all morning!!!"

Ain't it the truth.