Teaching and brain lesions, is there a connection? By Dave Hamby
Well I’ve gone and done it again. I’ve volunteered to teach school. The last time I did this I ended up teaching a high school vocational class for three years. That was easily the most challenging volunteer job I’ve ever done, and the most rewarding.
This time I’m teaching a Junior Achievement Class, just one, at Ridgeview Middle School. I’m a little apprehensive about this because I think Middle Schoolers are a lot more intimidating than High Schoolers. I don’t believe this because of my teaching experiences, although I did teach an after-school vocational class at Hopewell Middle School for six weeks. I have this opinion because my youngest daughter is in middle school and my middle daughter was there last year.
Just yesterday Nanoo, my youngest daughter, told me about an incident that happened in her Band class. It seems like one of her buddies, I’ll call him Brandon, decided to demonstrate his dexterity by folding himself into one of the band lockers. Now if it has been a while since you’ve been to school and you don’t know what a band locker looks like, they’re made of a vinyl coated wire and closely resemble the cages at the Humane Society that you’ll find stray cats in. Anyway, here’s Brandon in this cage when another of Nan’s buddies, we’ll call him Justin, grabs a combination pad-lock out of a third kid’s hand, slams the door and locks poor old Brandon in the cage. For the sake of this story we’ll call the third kid Jarell.
It didn’t take long for Brandon to decide this wasn’t very funny and he expressed a desire to get out.
Of course Justin just grinned at him and said “No way dude!”
Brandon began to raise a fuss, and even though the teacher wasn’t in the classroom at the time, Justin knew any amount of squawking would get him in there pretty quick.
Justin told Brandon to cool down and instructed Jarell to let poor Brandon out. This was when Jarell informed Justin that he didn’t know the combination to that lock, that it belonged to someone else and he was just messing around with it.
This wasn’t the news Brandon wanted to hear. He began to appreciate what claustrophobia is all about and proceeded to holler “LET ME OUT OF HERE!!”
Of course Nan, Justin, Jarel, and all the rest of her buddies did the right thing. They all ran to their assigned seats and pretended to act as if nothing unusual was happening.
Brandon’s loud protestations eventually got the teacher in the room. We’ll call him Mr. Smith. You can imagine what Mr. Smith must’ve thought. Here was his band class, sitting in their seats, behaving themselves, everything in order with the exception of a shrieking Brandon caged in a locker.
“Does anyone want to tell me what’s going on in here?” he asked.
No one was forthcoming. Evidently Brandon wasn’t much help. He was much more interested in his freedom than any retribution. Finally Mr. Smith’s eyes locked on my daughter, (she has the most sheepish look of any kid I’ve ever known,) and asked her what was going on.
“Apparently Brandon has some how got himself locked in a band locker,” she offered.
“I can see that” Mr. Smith replied. He then asked “And whose lock is that?”
Nanoo fingered Jarell, who immediately ratted out Justin. All Mr. Smith was really interested in was the combination to the lock so he could free Brandon. Nobody in the class fessed up to owning the lock and he had to get the custodian to cut the lock off with a pair of bolt cutters. You can imagine what Mr. Smith had to say later that day when his wife asked him, “How was your day at school, dear?”
As my daughter relayed this story to me I laughed so hard I almost wrecked the car. All the time I was laughing there was a part of my mind saying, “And I volunteered to teach kids like this?” I’m really hoping I don’t have to explain to some parent how their kid got locked in a locker though.
This article originally appeared in the Round Rock Leader