‘So tell me where you live’. Arms start waving. ‘Okay Miss…so okay. You know the school right?’ ‘Yes, where we are standing and sitting right now’. ‘Yea, you know the other side…the side where you go out and there’s a park and you go this way?’ Arms wave madly in a straight ahead direction. ‘Yes, I think so, yes’. He continues. ‘Okay, so you go by the park…so you go this way, this way and then around the other way and then you, you see a red house and a car. And, and then you go right…you go right…(the student points fiercely toward the left)…and then, there’s a, a…what’s the name of that color? Oh, teal…that color. There’s a house there…teal…and…and a bush. There’s a bush there’. Silence.
I take a deep breath. ‘That’s where you live? By the bush?’ ‘Yes, yes…by the bush there’. I ask, ”Do you know the name of your street?’ Silence. ‘No, no’. ‘Any idea at all what the name of your street is?’ He shrugs. ‘No’. Silence. ‘But we’re moving soon, I think’. I look at him. ‘Do you know where you are moving? When you are moving?’ He shrugs again and shakes his head. ‘Oh no, Miss…I don’t know where I am moving and I don’t when I am moving’.
We both look at each other and laugh because what else can we do? Fourth grade is keeping us intolerably busy…
690 Saint Paul 