Lost and found

Some kids stick in your heart. They follow you around over the weekend, rising up like the ghost of Christmas Past when you’re doing the laundry or making the beds. They remind you that you may be the only person in their lives to show them a little hope.

Julie was one of those students (not her real name). The few off-handed remarks she’d made about conversations with her mother let me know that Julie might be the grownup in the family. It happens. I determined that I would give a little extra the next week, pay a little closer attention and not let her melt into the mix of 30 other sixth-grade faces in my class.

On Monday she broke the rules. It involved personal property of another student and class disruption and sneaking around doing something she knew not to. What timing!

She stood near my desk as I wrote out the required disciplinary paper that would send her to The Office and The Higher Ups.

“I’m disappointed that I have to do this,” I said.

She smiled, an oft-used survival technique employed in the face of pain, I could tell.

“You know better, don’t you?”

She nodded her head, the grin spread. Chin up, with a jaunty step, she headed out the door.

The next morning on my way through the administration office, I saw her sitting at one of the In-House Suspension tables, hunched over, unsmiling and bored.

“I miss you, Julie,” I said and turned over the book that lay face down on the table before her.

“I miss being in class for the next three days with nothing to do,” she offered with no grin and no gleam.

“Just think, you can finish this book, and maybe another one. You’ll have all day to read.”

This was not the way I wanted to reach her.

I don’t know which will do Julie more good – knowing she can’t break the rules and get away with it, or knowing that she still has a place among us and is wanted there?

Maybe both. We’ll see.