Rough patch

I was called in to speak with Ella's teacher yesterday: they have their concerns.  Ella, they think, has been daydreaming a lot in class, and they feel like she's not putting enough effort into trying to learn and speak the language. They say she's wonderful at math (for she knows all her numbers and understands what's going on), but otherwise she seems to tune out.  And they say she looks sad, quite a lot.

When I told Ella that I was going in to school to speak with her teachers, she asked me why, and I explained that they were worried about her.  "They're worried about me? I didn't think they even thought about me!" She told me, but in more effusive Ella-language, that she feels like her teachers are cold and scary, and they only speak to her to say "Pay attention, Ella! Concentrate, Ella!"

Now, I know that's not true, and I know that the school is spending a lot of time and resources on our teaching our daughter. But I also know that Ella doesn't feel safe in her classroom, and her teachers don't seem to believe that.

Yesterday she had an assignment in which she was supposed to write about her favorite toy.  The teacher asked Ella to come to the front of the classroom and tell her about her Turtle in English, so that she could translate it into German.  Ella, apparently, came up without one sentence before breaking down, saying she was too shy and she really didn't couldn't do it. Which made her teacher really upset: she scolded Ella for making up excuses and being lazy.

If you've met my daughter, you'd probably have trouble believing she's shy, as well: she's comfortable with most adults, perhaps to a fault.  But she's an extremely sensitive girl, and she's very, very worried about looking silly or babyish in front of the other kids.  Talking about her turtle surely was mortifying for her, as, I'm sure, is speaking in class when she's not certain she understand what it she's supposed to say.

The teachers really want to get Ella over the hurdle of being willing to try and make mistakes, so they decided to use an incentive system for her.  They're giving her a little cup with three marbles, and every time she tunes out or doesn't speak, they're going to take one away.  If she loses her marbles, she goes down a level on the behavior chart and needs to do another half-page penalty assignment.  But every time she tries to speak, even if it isn't correct, she can earn a paperclip, and if she earns twenty her teacher will give her a note to take to me, and I can buy her treat.

They gave me her little cup of marbles and told me I could take it to Ella to decorate.  She turned them over in her fingers, wondering "How can anything so pretty be so bad." But, thank goodness, she focused on the positive, asking me eagerly if her treat could be all of 10 cents to buy a stick of gum at the train station.  I told her I would even spring for a gummy worm.

As you might imagine, I'm quite anxious about all of this, and I'm dreading having to watch her do more punishment papers because, surely, she'll daydream.  Ella's a dreamer. I did explain to her teacher how long those half-page assignments take Ella because she's working on correcting her pencil grip.  They're painful.  The teacher told me, oh yes, I wanted to talk with you about that as well, and she gave me a first-grade handwriting exercise book that she wants us to work on with her each night.  Oh, good.  Extra homework.

I showed that book to Ella tonight and she looked at me with absolute amazement. Her very words, "Mother, I'm offended! This is a baby book!"  But she she knows she needs to improve her handwriting, and philosophically started working through her page of lowercase a's.

Because of my after school meeting with Ella's teacher, dinner was late and getting started on homework was later, so at 8:00 last night (when Dennis is usually closing her storybook and turning off her light) she was still at her desk, trying to line up her math neatly. And she was exhausted and stressed and feeling really, really bad about herself.

I think that's what makes me most anxious of all: I worry what all of this will do to Ella's confidence.  I'm not sure why, but she seems to believe that if something's hard, it's because she's not smart enough, and not that she's simply not capable of doing it. She's never really been challenged before, and so I see this year as an excellent opportunity for her to that it's okay to work hard, and to see what can come of her efforts.

I suppose she'll only learn that lesson if she feels, at the end of this year, that she's learned to speak some German, enough to feel comfortable in school again. And if she doesn't have a nervous breakdown midway. I hope it's not too much of a gamble that we're taking.

There's a bright side, though: Ella came out of school today, waving a little card that nochElla (who had my Ella over to play yesterday) had made for her, covered with pictures of strawberries, reading "You and me are the very best friends."

As Bill Murry and my sister remind me, "If you make one good friend a summer, you're doing pretty well." And it's scarcely spring.


Epilogue (3/25/11): Ella came home triumphant today. "Mom, this was the best day, ever! I didn't lose any marbles, and I earned a paperclip for having a big giant-long conversation with a classmate about our homework...Um, mom, maybe, since paperclips seem a little hard to earn, do you think I could have a whole jawbreaker, maybe instead, for getting twenty?" 

I love a fresh morning.