Two and the trip to the Emergency Room in an ambulance

Yes, Two and I ended up in the ER late one afternoon. I left a substitute teacher in my room to go help administer testing in the computer lab. We had already had a run in because I don’t have ‘bad’ students. I have students who behave badly or make bad choices, but that doesn’t make them a bad person. I recognize that to some people, like my substitute, that is semantic. To me, it is a very clear message that you must not ever do anything wrong or ever fail or disappoint because if you do you are bad. I don’t think that’s a message we should send to a child.

Two’s story reinforced that belief.

In between testing sessions, I went back to my classroom to check in and be sure the chaos was contained. If you’ve ever had someone try and do your job for a day you understand what chaos truly is. I’m half convinced that said chaos is a direct karmic gift from being a Sid and Nancy groupie in high school, listening to Coup D’état from Repo Man, and wearing my red and black “A” for anarchy pin back in the 1980s. Hey, cut me some slack, I was fourteen! I’m actually a full 99% sure the universe is laughing it’s butt off at me every time I leave my classroom to be managed by someone else as the giant karmic genie says, ‘You wanted anarchy? Here you go!’

As I walked in I saw a couple kids in the big prize jar, no problem, they’re allowed to send each other to the jar if they see someone do something exceptional. I actually believe it’s more meaningful when your peers tell you they’ve seen you do something great. I saw them pick the glow in the dark bracelets that you snap to activate and then turn into a bracelet with the use of a little hollow tube that captures both ends of the bracelet to hold it around your wrist. No problem, they were allowed to have them. I was teaching 7th and 8th grade at the time so I didn’t think I had to worry about them.

After I left, Two decided to use the hollow tube to whistle. By breathing in and out. As he held the tube in between his teeth. You see where this is going, right? Yes, Two inhaled rather too forcefully and swallowed the little hollow tube and it got stuck in his throat. They came to get me when they couldn’t reach anyone in his family and I rode with him in the ambulance to the ER where we waited until his mother and sister showed up. They were hysterical. Rightly so, I mean all they knew was that he’d been taken to the ER because the school had no more information to give them. Once everyone calmed down and Two expressed how very sorry he was for making everyone so upset I went home and thought it was a story I would definitely tell future classes before giving them access to the prize jar. I also thought that was the end of it.

A decade later I was at a long stoplight trying to make a turn and heard someone shouting my name from the car behind me. It was Two!

He was shouting at me, “Do you remember who I am?”

I shouted back something like “Yes, Two, in my almost twenty years of teaching I have only ever had one child need me to go to the ER with them”

“Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you remember that!”

“I can’t believe you can’t believe it! Who would forget that?”

The bystanders at the light had to have been amused by this since it was a nice night and everyone had their windows down and we were shouting in between cars at a red light in full evening traffic.

The last thing he said as the light changed and we went our separate ways was that he was happy to see me. I told him the same. What I remember thinking was that not only was I actually glad to have seen him, but that I was happy to remember the story, which had slipped into memory as time had gone on. I had been trying to figure out how to explain to my current class that it matters how you treat someone. This was the perfect story. Two would not have been glad to see me or to remember what could have been an embarrassing story if I had treated him badly or made him feel like he was a bad person because of what he had done. I knew it was an accident. I knew he was likely feeling overwhelmed because he was in an ambulance and ER without any family. I knew the other kids would know what had happened and would follow my lead. I chose to be kind and supportive. I chose not to make him feel bad because I had spent hours in the ER. I chose not to make him feel silly the next day when it would have been an easy joke to make. I chose to assume it was an accident, not someone behaving badly. He made a bad choice, we all do it. That’s part of growing up.

The lesson I took away from Two’s accidental inhalation of a plastic tube was that anyone can do something that is ridiculous and/or inconvenient, but it’s how they are treated afterward that decides if it will be an experience they learn from. I learned that only by using the experiences of our daily lives could I hope to teach the children I spent my days with lessons about resiliency, about being who they were, flaws and all, and about owning their mistakes and learning from them.

Now I don’t use that story when I introduce my prize jar, I use it when someone has that look every child gets when they do something they are afraid has made them look stupid. We all know what it feels like to have done something you instinctively know is going to make people look at you and possibly judge you. As the adult, it is my job to set the tone and let my students know that doing something like swallowing a plastic tube, saying something inappropriate when you’re angry, ripping up your paper when you’re beyond frustrated, or any of the other things children do every day doesn’t make you a bad person, and it doesn’t mean there is something wrong with you. What I learned from Two is that when you set the right tone learning happens that makes a child remember you, but more importantly they remember the life skills they learned during their time in your class.

Thank you, Two.