You never really recognize the unusual circumstances you might find yourself in if you have nothing with which to compare that circumstance. When I moved from Garden Grove to Clovis, California in the fourth grade, the discrepancy between the two schools was something that would inform my life and place me on a trajectory I might possibly never have traveled otherwise.
I loved school, and in my early elementary days I was a good student. I was the kind of student most teachers enjoy having: quiet, compliant, relatively intelligent, and a people pleaser. What’s not to like? I caused no one any trouble, nor did I ever raise any alarms, neither behaviorally nor academically. I was the kind of kid that made a teacher feel good about herself, because I was a ‘success’ under her tutelage.
In Garden Grove, we had a specialized Reading Lab. Once a week, our teachers could schedule time to go in and rotate through various stations designed to grab our interest and attention. There was a variety of machines, presumably state-of-the-art at the time (but which would now be seen as amusing relics of the past), on which we could take turns playing games, challenging ourselves to speed reading, and creating art to signify short stories we read. We clamored around the stations and excitedly awaited our turns at each. Reading Lab was seen as a privilege, and it was one that could be taken away if the class misbehaved during the week. It was a powerful incentive; we thought when we were in the Reading Lab we were getting away with playing during school hours, instead of what many saw as enduring the tedium of the classroom. Little did we know that our teachers knew something we didn’t; having the reward of self-selected and self-directed reading was one of the most powerful learning tools at their disposal.
Reading at my elementary school in Garden Grove wasn’t celebrated or made to feel unique or even aspirational. It was simply part of the culture of the school. As far as I know, our teachers didn’t preach about how important reading was, or how we needed to excel in it if we intended to succeed in life. We just lived it. It was understood.
In the middle of fourth grade, I moved to Clovis and started just after Christmas break. Naturally, on my first day my teacher needed to assess my abilities and skills. She needed to know what I knew already, and where I would need support. At the beginning of the day, she sat me down to run through a series of diagnostic reading tests. I found them to be almost comically simple at first, and even as we progressed through the levels I flew through each one, missing no responses. My teacher was impressed. She continued with the assessments until I had reached the highest level, which still posed no challenge. She showered me with praise and her wide smile gave me all the feedback I needed. I felt like a genius, and she looked like she had won the lottery with her new student. I was going to like this new school. In my old school I was a good student, as I said, but as far as I knew, nothing remarkable. This new teacher seemed to think there was something special about my aptitude for reading and vocabulary.
I rode on that emotional high throughout the morning. We went to lunch (where the cutest, friendliest boy was ‘assigned’ to help me navigate the cafeteria and the playground, which he did with charm and a willing attitude), and once the bell rang to return to classes, I found where my classmates were congregated to follow them back to our room. That’s when the trouble began.
Since I started in January, classroom routines and procedures were already well-established and ingrained in the students. They all knew that after lunch they would silently file in, sit in their seats, and await the next task. I found my way back to my seat and waited silently with them as my teacher efficiently passed row by row to deposit an assignment on each desk. Without saying a word, she moved from the last student’s desk to her own, picked up a timer, and elaborately set it. “You have three minutes. Go!” Her voice was loud and abrupt, breaking through the silence.
My classmates ducked their heads and began furiously scribbling. The only sound in the room was the sound of pencils on paper. I looked down at my own paper. On it were rows and columns of boxes with numbers and ‘X’s in each one. I sat staring, not moving. “What am I supposed to do with this,” I thought, bewildered, “and why on earth is the alphabet mixed in with the numbers?” In fourth grade at my old school, I had not yet been introduced to multiplication, and certainly not to the very competitive, speed-driven 3 minute Math Facts exercise that was so popular in my new district. I couldn’t begin to fathom what I was supposed to do with 3 ‘x’ 4, let alone know how to do it in a speedy fashion.
I am a people-pleaser at my core. I had never encountered a situation where I was utterly at a loss in school, and I was horrified that the teacher who was singing my praises earlier that morning was going to be disappointed in my complete lack of ability to understand the task at hand. I was also a relatively shy kid, and being new, I was reluctant to simply tell my teacher I was confused. It was humiliating. So I did the only thing I could think of. I lifted the lid of my desk quietly and pretended to search the inside of it for a pencil, presumably to be able to get my Math Facts done alongside the rest of my classmates. Tears had sprung to my eyes and I couldn’t keep them from rolling down my hot cheeks, so I tucked myself further and deeper into the desk. It didn’t occur to me that the sight of me hiding under the lid of my desk wasn’t nearly as discrete and clandestine as I thought it would be. Within seconds my teacher was kneeling at my side, trying to quietly lure me back out from inside the desk. She seemed surprised and concerned to find me crying. “What’s the matter, Donna? Are you okay?” I explained to her that I had no idea what this paper was on my desk, or what to do with it. “It’s multiplication,” she said quietly, as if that was all the explanation needed. I blinked at her, a blank stare indicating the words meant nothing to me. “You don’t know your times tables?” Continued blank stare. A slight shaking of my head. She went over to her desk and pulled out a little study sheet to help me learn them. I thought that perhaps she was rethinking her earlier assessment of me as a star pupil. Math would be my undoing–in my eyes and in hers.
My old school was apparently pretty advanced in the teaching of reading–and woefully nonchalant about teaching math. My new school, though they took reading seriously, was much more enamored of math, from the very early grades. Being able to score 100% on a 100-problem math facts sheet (front and back!) in the three-minute time frame was a badge of honor. Naturally, it took a very long time before I was able to catch up to my classmates and achieve that benchmark. From my very first day in my fourth-grade classroom, I started to see myself as a star reader, and a sub-par math student. Before I had only ever seen myself as a student. The distinction wasn’t really anything having to do with me–I hadn’t suddenly grown as a reader or lost I.Q. points as a math scholar between schools. It had everything to do with the focus each school had placed on the different subjects, though I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it at the time. But on that day, a divide began to grow between my reading and my math-oriented selves. When we experience success at something, we have a positive connection to it, and it makes us want to do more of it. When we experience failure, we often avoid the very thing where we feel we failed. After that day in elementary school, I wanted to read often, and as much as I could. I felt validated, strong. I continued to get positive reinforcement from my teachers and my peers for my reading ability. I tried to engage in math as little as possible, because I associated it with that feeling of confusion and helplessness. The more I read, the better I got, and not giving that same kind of attention to studying math, I did not grow at the same rate. I fed what I perceived to be already strong, and reinforced that reading and language were the subjects for which I was best suited. Years later, I find it no wonder that my chosen path was to become an English teacher.
And yet…I have always wondered what would have happened if I had not changed schools. What would have happened if I had continued on the same path, feeling right on par with my classmates in both of those core subjects? What if I had never gone to a school where suddenly the differences in my schools had instead translated to a difference in my own ability–to myself and to my teachers? I think I still would have enjoyed reading had I remained at my first school, but would I have thrown all of my concentration into that subject because that’s where I found comfort and solace? Would I have ever encountered a time when my math abilities were a disappointment at my former school, or would I have continued to give my studies in math equal weight, as I would not have shifted my perception of myself as a math student? That single day, decades ago, defined a part of me, and every step I took thereafter solidified and reinforced that definition, without me having realized it.
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