“Only in the darkness can you see the stars” Arab Proverb

“There is not coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imaging figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

--Carl Jung

At school we’ve been dealing with a challenging child, R, who arrived in a couple of months ago. He both disrupts the class and is physically aggressive. Today I was in the classroom with the substitute teacher as there was no paraprofessional. The session begain successfully enough with students quietly reading books on the carpet. After a while they became restless and did other things. At one point discovered R took some lanyard out of the paraprofessional’s desk.

“Put it back.” I demanded.

“No! It’s mine.”

“You can ask Ms. Kate when she returns. Put it back.”

“No.”

I took it from him and returned it.

“Stupid!” and he hit me in the chest.

“Let’s take a break.” And I followed him to the door, locking it behind me. He tried to get back in but couldn’t.

At that point Carrie came by with A, another one of our older challenging students. She introduced R to A. “Do you know R? R this is A; he’s one of our leaders.”

A extended his hand to R.

“Maybe you can teach him something about basketball.”

The two sat down at a desk outside the room.

A paged the book to R: “Do you play basketball? It’s a competitive sport. Here, do you know who this is? Lebron James. Yeah he’s pretty awesome. And this guy here is magic Johnson. Do you know him? You know you shouldn’t call a teacher stupid. That is not what you do. And here, here are the rules of the game. This part here tell you about layups and shooting. You hit a teacher. That’s not right. When I arrived last year, I was getting suspended every week. But now look at me. Here is the equipment you need….”

It was amazing how A stepped up to the plate and was a master at calming another child down and reintegrating him back into the classroom. I told A I was so proud of him. I would not have seen him shine if it hadn’t been for R acting up. Grateful.