Shapes Within

Greg Masello walked across the front of the classroom, carefully watching his students as they wrote. Some of them squirmed, some were focused, and some looked tired, but overall, Mr. Masello’s 5th grade class seemed peaceful as they worked on the writing assignment he gave them.

Except for one little boy"David. Mr. Masello’s calm expression frowned as he spotted clear frustration in this young child’s face. David was scrawling on his paper, painstakingly trying to form words and sentences, while the rest of his classmates seemed to be getting along all right. Masello walked over to see his progress.

“Hey David, can I see what you wrote?” he whispered to him. David looked up at his teacher and reluctantly revealed a crude paragraph about his family’s summer vacation; or was it about how he got sick on the bus? Only a few words were truly legible. Masello looked into the poor boy’s defeated eyes. He could tell he expected to be reprimanded, or embarrassed"Mr. Masello did plan to give him an easier assignment"but something stopped him. A memory.

Just three days ago, on Monday, Mr. Masello’s class started a multiplication tables review. Most of the students needed a little help remembering many of the equations, but curiously, not David. When Mr. Masello collected homework, David’s numbers, lines, and symbols were neatly written and all correct. The young boy even looked proud as he handed it in"a stark difference from the way he looked now. Masello wasn’t one to make fun of his students, but if he had to be frank, he had to admit that today, David’s paper looked like it had been scrawled on by a trained chimpanzee.

Greg Masello looked at David one more time, at the boy sitting in a little chair made for little people, then did something that surprised even himself; he turned over David’s paper and whispered, “If I bought a box of three pens, and I bought three more boxes, how many pens would I have? Write it out for me.”

David’s eyes met his, and his young face brightened as his mind enveloped the new problem. He picked up his pencil and began to write with cleaner, neater strokes. “Thanks, Mr. Masello,” he whispered, without stopping.

Greg returned to his desk, filled with the same inspiration that made him want to be a teacher years ago.

A week passed, and the moment that Mr. Masello and David had shared was soon crowded by the arrival of many more, less interesting moments. The Thanksgiving holidays were close and responsible teachers were trying to finish fall lessons and tests before the break. It was on this morning that Katie, a tall but normally shy girl appeared at Masello’s desk before school started.

“Sir,” Katie said, “I have a question.” Masello looked up from his day’s itinerary.

“Of course, Katie. What’s up?” he answered.

“Math has been really hard… Can I do something else during math time today?” she then said, sheepishly. “I did all my homework, but whenever I see numbers it’s hard to think.”

Greg watched the girl’s face, wondering what she expected him to say. He could see that she did not expect to get what she wanted; yet she had spoken up anyway. Her tone had not been selfish, either: if anything, this seemed to be an expression of need. After another moment, he answered.

“Well, Katie, what would you rather be doing?”

Her face brightened. “Can I have writing time instead? Or reading! Reading is fine too. And I’ll do more homework if you want me to.”

Suddenly the memory of the math lesson with David came rushing back to Masello. He glanced past Katie to see the boy hanging up his coat at the other side of the room. Could she have known about that? Did David tell her? How strange that she is expressing the opposite struggle as David…

Not a moment passed before Greg found himself speaking something that again surprised himself as much as the little student standing at his desk. “Yes,” he said, “yes, you can work on your writing assignments during math. But Katie, because you will be doing more than is normal, I’ll be giving you some harder assignments. Do you think you can handle that?” No trace of reluctance or hesitation showed on the girl’s face, as she nodded immediately. She even looked like she wanted to hug him"which was not what Greg expected.

After sending Katie back to her seat, still looking like she had discovered some incredible treasure, he wondered what he was getting himself into. State educational standards and difficult parental questions flowed through his mind. His eyes panned over the rest of the students and wondered how many other kids were finding one thing very difficult and another thing very fun.

He remembered James’s difficulties with Social Studies a month prior. The child had troubles with bullying and his strict, traditional parents didn’t make things any easier for him. Yet that 9-year-old showed an interesting curiosity for cars; and now that he was thinking of it, Masello had noticed he tended to take apart anything that reached his desk, from pencil sharpeners to calculators. He just seemed to have the ability to figure out how things work.

Then there was Mandy, who loved drawing Japanese manga… and was darn good at it. Masello thought of his own art skills with some humor"he could hardly draw simple shapes. Yet this obviously talented girl got a “Needs Remediation” grade in reading last year, earning the poor girl a very stressful and shameful stint in Summer School. Then there was Kira, the soccer star… you could hardly get a ball away from her at the end of recess. Thomas, the talker, whom everybody"including Greg"loved to hear tell a joke.

He found himself feeling the same compassion for all of these young lives that he’d just felt for Katie and David. He’d always known that all his kids were unique and gifted… but he realized that he wasn’t teaching them as if they were. In fact, the “Talented and Gifted” program at this school only officially recognized three of these amazing children as “gifted.”

Am I going crazy, or do all of them need a TAG program? Masello thought. Why wasn’t there a TAG for athletes like Kira? Or one for artists like Mandy? He could name three other artistic kids just in Mrs. Keller’s class next door. What if they could draw and paint all day? Would they? Of course they would! Art would be play for them. He remembered Katie’s face when she found out she would have just one more hour of writing time today. With even more time, how good at writing would she get? What if her Social Studies time was also writing time? What grade level could she get to by Christmas? Or conversely, what if David’s writing time was dedicated to learning algebra? That kid was a math whiz"Greg was sure he would be able to pick it up faster than anyone in this room, including himself.

He took one more look around the room, at each of their faces. All of these kids need a TAG program, he thought. Even the kids who didn’t exhibit clear professional affinities, like Raquel: she needed a TAG for graffiti and sidewalk chalk. Wesley needed a TAG for skateboarding. For Shannon, a TAG for singing.

Each of them was gifted, and Greg was the one responsible for growing those gifts. He realized that he’d never truly put the kids first. He’d never been a true teacher. A true teacher would do everything possible to make sure his students were pushed to become all they could be"but all he’d ever striven to do was to make “well rounded” students, who were mediocre in a lot of things and excellent at nothing. He was guilty of forcing children like David to uselessly exhaust themselves on tasks and subjects that they had no passion or affinity for. Because of teachers like him, innocent children were falsely accused of having bizarre disorders because they couldn’t sit still while being forced to do something they hated.

Enough, he thought. Choking back tears, Greg began writing a list of students and their favorite activities. He realized that he knew what each of them was good at, and what they enjoyed. Why hadn’t he applied this to their lessons yet? Why the mental disconnect? It hit him like a ton of bricks. These children were his to shape"and he resolved to honor the way they were already designed. They deserved more than toil, drudgery, and a hatred for learning. They deserved to love it.

This was why he became a teacher. Not for tenure or benefits, and certainly not for the money. He remembered being a younger man, in college, and the feeling he had when he decided to become a teacher. He wanted to make a positive impact on people, on society. Teaching was his calling; it was the only thing he could imagine doing, the only thing he truly loved. Even Greg, as a child, loved to help people learn. All the way back then, he was a teacher, wasn’t he?

And yet, one little compromise at a time, he had allowed his passion and love for students to be drowned by requirements, lesson plans, and timetables. He had forgotten why he was a teacher. It was time to remember"it was time for a revolution, and Greg Masello resolved at that moment that it would start with the kids he had in his classroom, the ones in his care.

The state education standards can still be met; we’ll start small, with some individualized lesson plans that simply emphasize subjects of interest, he thought. They could take field trips every month to businesses that deal with mathematics, or writing, or require physical aptitude. The kids could see what their knowledge looks like in action!

As Greg furiously scribbled all of this on his notepad, his fifth-graders looked at him, and looked at each other. School started 15 minutes ago. What was Mr. Masello doing?

Little did they know, their fifth-grade teacher, in spite of his 12 years of public school and 8 more in a university, had finally just discovered education.