Meet The Kids!

Hi everyone! You know I am starting to get over my depression about being an aide, when I am excited to introduce you to the newest kids I'm working with. The job is still a little confusing... one minute they're telling me to back off from Wyken and let the teachers deal with him, and the next minute I'm being told that I should be disciplining Wyken for getting up during a lesson... but the kids make it worthwhile. Some of them I know better than others. So without further ado...

Wkyen is the boy I supposedly work with. He's a spirited 7-year-old with a ton of enthusiasm for just about everything. Warren is always the kid singing the loudest in music class, running the fastest in gym class, and writing the most letters on his handwriting practice sheet. He's the one constantly raising his hand to ask a question, make a comment, or share some wild story. Wyken has a story for everything. For instance, today while were talking about Red Ribbon Week, Wyken said that once someone put out a cigarette but it somehow flew right into his mouth, and he chewed it, and he got sick and had to go to the doctor. He also told me that his best friend at home is a man who has an 800 pack instead of a 6 pack. In many of his stories, Wyken is beating up "bad guys." He keeps life exciting!

Annie Elizabeth is a tiny little girl who wears glasses and has learning problems. She acts much younger than 6 years old, but she is pretty smart in her own ways. While she has trouble with school work, she often succeeds in getting one of her friends to do her work for her, while calling it "help." We've had to explain to other girls in the class that if they do Annie Elizabeth's work for her, she won't learn! She greets me with a hug every day.

Ginger moved here from Poland last year, and spoke no English at all when she came. She now speaks English pretty well, although she is a little behind on her reading skills. She's friends with Annie Elizabeth, and is one of the girls who always helps her. The other day I told Ginger, "If you keep helping Annie Elizabeth, she'll have to take you to college with her so you can do her work for her there, too!" Ginger found that quite funny.

Antonovka is one of the boys I don't know as much about, because he's been absent a few of the 6 days that I've worked. The things I know about him are that he's very friendly and helpful, and loves football!

Redfree is a boy I don't know much about. Sorry, Redfree!

Ariane is a sweet girl who talks with a cute lisp, and is usually smiling. Except today, when I found her crying on the playground. I asked her what was wrong and she told me, "My grandma is going to die tomorrow!" I couldn't figure out why she thought that, except that during our Red Ribbon Week talk the kids had been bringing up grandparents who smoked, some of whom had died. When I asked Ariane why she thought her grandmother would die tomorrow, she told me, "Because she's 100 years old!" I tried to explain that being 100 didn't necessarily mean a person would die the next day. She seemed to feel better and went off to play on the monkey bars.

Johnny is from Russia, although he looks Japanese. Apparently there are a large number of Japanese people in Russia! He's a sweet and funny boy, who has a lot of difficulty with reading and writing. He is notorious for cheating on spelling tests by trying to look at his friends' papers. He usually gets sent to do his spelling test at the back table in private, to keep him away from any temptation.

Nittany is the class tattletale. Every time I turn around, she is tattling on someone for something or another! It is actually hard for me to think of anything else I know about Nittany, because just about every interaction I've had with her has been her tattling on someone.

Davey is my little buddy. He's a very somber and quiet boy, who reminds me a lot of Ani, the angry little boy from the at-risk preschool program where I did some of my student teaching, and also a little boy in one of my field work placements who had selective mutism. Davey often refuses to talk, especially when things aren't going his way. It drives the teacher crazy because he thinks Davey is being rude. But because something about him reminds me so much about those other boys, I have to wonder if Davey is being rude or if it is something deeper than that. The other day I had to take Davey, Johnny, Ginger and Annie Elizabeth out in the hall to give them a spelling test that they had missed while they were getting help from the Resource teacher. All four of them were moaning and groaning the entire time. Talk about the worst four kids ever to put together for a spelling test! Annie Elizabeth cried because I wouldn't "help" her by giving her the answers, and Ginger and Johnny just took forever to write each word. But Davey actually started crying, the first time he wasn't sure how to spell a word, and he refused to write any more. I knelt by him and assured him that he should write the word down however he thought it was spelled, and that if he got it wrong it wouldn't be a big deal... the test was only a way for him and the teacher to discover what words he still needed to practice. But he continued to cry, and said, "My mom will yell at me if I miss one!" I wasn't even sure what to say about that. There was no way I could assure him that his mom wouldn't be mad, nor could I tell him he didn't have to take the test home. I finished up the test with the other kids and sent them back to the room, and then sat with Davey and coaxed him to write the rest of the words, letter by letter.

Beeley is a smart boy who likes to show off his smarts. Whenever the teacher is explaining something new, Beeley will raise his hand, and then rephrase what the teacher said in his own words. Not sure why. For instance, when the teacher was explaining to the kids that they had to stay off a certain playground after a rain because the surface was slippery, Beeley raised his hand and said, "If you're running, and you slip, you might get hurt badly!"

Malinda is also very smart, and is in a special program for gifted children. She goes down and does extra work, on a higher academic level, a few days a week. I think she reads on a fifth grade level. Everyone in the class knows how smart Malinda is, except for Malinda. She just acts like an ordinary first grade girl, always smiling and friendly and compliant.

Galarina is kind of mischievous. She has an odd sort of friendship with Wyken, and they goof off together during classes when they are able to sit together. She can also be bossy and kind of mean to the other kids, in a way that you'd expect to see in a fourth or fifth grader. You know, kind of snarky. For instance, she told Johnny that he couldn't play with her and some other kids. When Johnny told me about it and I confronted her, she said, "I didn't say that!" With a little more prodding she said that she had said it but was just kidding. I explained to her that it wasn't a funny joke and that it had hurt Johnny's feelings, and she agreed not to say it. Then she and Annie Elizabeth got up and walked away. Galarina glanced back at Johnny, and then looked at Annie Elizabeth and said loudly, "I hate when people follow us, don't you?" Sneaky!

Adam is another buddy of mine. When I started this job I was told that he was another kid I'd have to keep an eye on because of his behavior. The teacher indicated that Adam was not a very nice boy. But he is all smiles whenever I talk to him. He is definitely off task a lot of the time, and sometimes he does things such as insisting that he is the only one who can play with a certain soccer ball at recess, but that isn't too unusual for a first grade boy. I haven't seen any "terrible" behaviors from him, so far.

Richared's desk is near Wyken's, and so I am often on hand when he needs help with something. He's often daydreaming and just misses the directions, and I have to remind him what the teacher just said. Today, though, he started being plain old naughty. First, when the teacher asked the kids to take out two crayons, he took out his pencil bag and taking out all of his crayons, after he just watched Wyken get redirected for doing the same thing. A few minutes later, Wyken was rocking his desk. Wyken needs to be moving a lot, and he's allowed to rock his chair forward, but rocking the entire desk looked kind of dangerous. I asked him to stop, and he stopped right away. But then Richared started rocking his desk, and when I asked him to stop, he just grinned and kept doing it! I asked him again, and he still just laughed and did it even harder. I quietly asked him if I should "turn his card." (They have red, green, yellow and purple cards for their behavior management thingy.) He said, "No," and stopped... but then started up again less than thirty seconds later! This time, I put my hand on his desk and said, "Stop now," in a firm voice. He stopped for good. Maybe Richared is there to teach me a lesson on being a little more firm when I need to!

Sharon is a cute, tiny, dark-haired girl. I really don't know much about her. It seems that the kids I know the best are the ones who sit on Wyken's side of the room!

Scarlet is a tiny girl who has severe allergies. Her allergies are so severe that we have an air purifier in our classroom, and she goes to the nurse's office at lunch time each day to take an allergy pill. I have allergies too, although mine are more likely to give me sneezing fits and itchy eyes than to endanger my life. Still, the two of us have had several conversations about how allergies are a pain in the butt!

Lyman is another kid I don't know much about, although I've recently been told that he is one of the kids that I am supposed to keep an eye on, because he frequently ignores directions when the teacher says something. Like, blatantly ignores them. Not like a kid who is daydreaming or a kid who is so involved in what he's doing that he can hardly tear himself away, but a kid who will look right at you and then turn around and not do what you asked him to. Other than that, he is a super cute kid, little for a first grader, with beautiful red hair!

Nehou is a quiet little boy. I've helped him with his work a few times, and yesterday I helped him retie his shoe after it flew off his foot while he was playing soccer! Don't know much else about him yet, though. \

James is yet another kid I don't know a whole lot about, except that he is cute as a button and kind of hyper. During gym class, James is often playing so intensely that he hurts himself. For instance, chasing a soccer ball, he'll run so fast that his body gets ahead of his feet and he flies to the ground! I've seen that little dude take so many face plants... but he always gets up, with a grin on his face, and runs off to play some more.

Spencer is one more kid I don't know much about, because he rarely talks to me, even when I talk to him. But today we did have an odd conversation. It was right after our Red Ribbon Week talk, and the kids were all still talking about cigarettes, alcohol and drugs, as they lined up to go out for recess. Spencer came up to me and told me, "My big brother drinks wine, but I don't." "Well, I'm glad you don't, Spencer. That's a good choice," I replied. He nodded and said, "Yeah, I don't like wine. I drink piña coladas." I kind of drew a blank at that one!

They are a fun class! I am starting to enjoy being there! I guess it was inevitable, wasn't it?

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Day One, Week Four... Update!

Hi everyone! You haven't heard from me for a while... I was sick all last week and was basically just dragging myself home from student teaching and falling right to sleep, waking up to work a little bit on my major project, and then sleeping again! I am feeling a little better now so I thought I'd take some time to update. 
Today begins my fourth week of my five week internship at Sky Elementary! I am almost done!
Last week I had my first observation by my professor. I worked 1:1 with kids at a sort of mundane shape matching file folder. I had already warned the professor that this wasn't my lesson plan or anything, and I'm glad I told her because the professor later basically told me the file folder game was silly and not challenging the kids. The best thing that happened during the observation, ironically, was that Ani acted out and didn't want to work with me! The reason I say it was the best thing is because the professor wrote down that I handled it by giving Ani a choice of where to sit, and gave him lots of praise during the activity. So it actually looked good for me! 
Something odd that happened... Remember Phoebe, who had strep that spread to her heart? (She's fine now, thank goodness!) This week she is on vacation with a family member. I think they went to Disney Land. Her little brother Pewee, who is three, came to school, though, and was his usual happy but mischievous self! 
The day went along as usual. At lunch time we put Pewee and the other AM kids on the buses to go home. We had our our long lunch break. We went out to get the PM kids off the buses. And there was Pewee, with a big smile on his face, getting off one of the PM buses! Apparently his mother had never showed up at the bus stop to pick him up. After failing to get ahold of Pewee's mother or any emergency contacts, the bus driver brought Pewee back to school for safe keeping.
Having to come back to school after sitting on the bus for an hour can be traumatizing when you're three! So we gave Pewee a hero's welcome. We all told him we were happy that he came back to visit us, and we introduced him to the afternoon class kids. Since Pewee hadn't had lunch yet, Mrs. Wing scraped up some random lunch food for Pewee to eat in the class. He got to have a granola bar, several chocolate chip cookies, half an apple, and a carton of chocolate milk. LOL! Pewee good-naturedly went to gym class with the afternoon kids. Then he came to the library with us, where he laughed at having to hear the librarian read the same story again! The whole time he had this amused grin on his face. It was probably so weird for him to see the same classroom, and the same teachers, but all different kids! 
Meanwhile, the office was frantically trying to get ahold of someone for Pewee. The thing that made the situation a little shady was the fact that there is a restraining order against Pewee's father. Because he's abused them in the past, he is only allowed supervised visits with Pewee, Phoebe and their siblings. So there was always the possibility that the father could have done something to the kids' mother, and that could be why she didn't meet Pewee at the bus stop or answer any phone calls. The office staff decided that if they couldn't find Pewee's mother by 1:30 they would call the police.
Well, at about 1:15 they managed to get ahold of Pewee's mom! She had had a court date, and had lost track of time. Instead of calling the school or the bus company to let them know that she wouldn't be there to meet Pewee at the bus stop, she had just assumed that Pewee would spin his way back to school and that somebody somewhere would take care of him. After answering her phone and explaining the situation to the office staff, she actually asked, "So, do you want me to come get him?" 
Uh... yeah, probably, that would be thoughtful! We're sure Pewee would appreciate it! 
Have I mentioned how I've grown to love these kids in the past three weeks? I can't believe next week I'll be getting ready to say goodbye! 

Student teaching With A Substitute Teacher

Hi everyone! Today was such an odd day!
First of all, you'll be happy to know that Phoebe was back at school today, after missing about two weeks! (If you missed the post and don't want to go read it, Phoebe caught strep throat, which somehow spread to her heart and caused her to go into heart failure last week.) She was nervous about coming back to school. When you're four, two weeks is forever! So her mother dropped off some bags of mini donuts for her to pass out to the class, as a surprise. I was so glad to see Phoebe alive and well... I was really worried! She reported that she had a "rash," (scarlet fever connected to the strep) and was in the hospital, and that although she didn't get to play with any toys, she did get to watch Barbie movies!
Mrs. Wing was out, so we had a sub. I'll just call her Ms. Sub. In one way it was a good day for me because, without Mrs. Wing there, I was able to see how much of the schedule I'd learned and how well I'd gotten to know the kids! I was able to help the sub out a lot, which was kind of a good feeling. And Mrs. Sub was a nice person and everything, so it was all good. Except...
Well, many of my readers (LOL or should I say a fraction of my 8 readers) are teachers. So you have probably had someone fill in for you when you are not at work. But have you ever worked with a sub? When I was an aide in a school I worked with many subs, and I know there are about four different ranks. First of all you should know that being a substitute teacher is a hard job... its like every single day is your first day of work, and everyone expects you to already know everything. So you get the freaked-out subs who are sure they are messing up everything at all times. (I'd probably be that type, if I tried to be a sub!) There are the good subs that are great at following the teacher's sub plan to a T and get everyone through the day in one piece. There are great subs who not only follow the teacher's sub plan, but add some of their own charm (like teaching the kids a new song, or doing an extra art project, or playing games during recess.) And then there are the subs who are like, "I am an awesome teacher, and clearly you are doing everything wrong, and while I'm here I will give this classroom a total makeover!"

Mrs. Sub subs at many different schools in the area, and she actually knows Ani's older brother. Before the kids even got off the bus, when Mrs. Sub noticed that Ani was in our class, she said, "Ani's brother always comes in with a scowl on his face!" I told her that Ani was the same way, and that he also often refuses to talk to anyone or do any work. So Mrs. Sub decided that today she was going to totally fix Ani. She spent the whole day talking to Ani and trying to get him out of his shell. She actually pulled him onto her lap and started tickling him at one point when he wouldn't listen to her about something... Ani looked flaming mad... and when he didn't want to play catch in the gym, she stood behind him and moved his arms so he had to catch and throw the ball. And things like that. For a while I was a little irritable about it, but I figured its just one day and a little extra attention for Ani couldn't hurt. But the thing about it was she was doing it with an attitude like, "I will be the one person to reach this child that everyone else has failed to reach!"
Also, all through the afternoon class she kept translating everything she said into Spanish for this one little kid, Chickadee, who is Hispanic. The thing is, Chickadee is three and has a developmental delay and a speech delay, so he doesn't really speak much of any language. But his mother was raised in the USA and they speak English at home, so Chickadee understands both languages equally. But she just assumed that, because he was Hispanic, he needed to hear everything in Spanish. If anything, he just looked a little confused.
Mrs. Sub was good in many ways, however. She'd make a great preschool teacher if she had her own class!

Another Ani story for you... Did you ever have a little kid who asks you permission for every single motion he makes when he's doing work? This is Ani whenever we work on an art project or do any type of school work. For all the scowling and refusing to participate Ani does the rest of the time, when he's sitting next to you at the work table he's so uncertain! Today, for instance, we were making these paper plate tambourines. You give the kids two paper plates stapled together except for one opening. Then the kids fill the opening with dried macaroni noodles, You staple the opening shut, and then they get to decorate it. Yay, a tambourine! When it was Ani's turn, he would just ask me for every little thing. Like, asking permission to put each individual macaroni noodle into the opening. "Do I put this in?" "Yes!" "This one?" "Sure, put it in." "This one?" "Put as many as you want in!" "This one?" "Yep!" The same went for decorating. He'd ask permission to pick up each individual  marker, and to make each individual mark. Each time, with this nervous look on his face. I tried telling him, "You're the boss of this project, Ani. You can put anything you want on it." Still, he was so nervous about making any moves. I've seen him be like this before when working with Mrs. Wing and with the aide, and today with Mrs. Sub, as well as with me whenever I work with him at anything. Its almost like he's afraid of getting yelled at (or worse) if he makes a wrong move. But on the other hand, this same little dude will refuse to sit with the other kids, refuse to answer a question at circle time, refuse to put away the Legos when he's not done making a fire hose (which he likes to do pretty often for some reason.) One minute he can be so talkative (well, talkative for Ani) telling you all about how he went trick-or-treating on Halloween The next minute he can be scowling and glaring at you because you told him you like the motorcycle picture on his sweatshirt. The next, he can be asking you permission to put a single bead onto a string. And the next, he can be standing with his arms crossed and his head down because he doesn't want to play with a ball in gym class.When he opens up to you, you can tell he's this sweet, sweet little boy who is desperate for approval and acceptance. But then when you ask him to let someone else have a turn with the fire engine, he acts like you just called him a rat bastard! What gives?
This was the first day of my third week, by the way. Third of five. I can't believe it is almost halfway over!

One Of My New Little Friends

One of the first little friends I noticed, when I began student teaching in the at-risk preschool program at Sky Elementary, was Ani. Ani is a little boy who barely talks. When you say hello to him, he stares at the ground. When you ask him how his bus ride was, he stares at the ground. He can talk... at calendar time he will participate if the mood strikes him. Today he talked about the cookies we ate at the grocery store on our field trip last week. He'll make noises when he's playing in the toy area... which usually means he's shoving animals and people figurines down the trap door of the Fisher Price castle. But most of the time he will only nod, shake his head, or ignore you when you talk to him..The longest sentence I ever heard him say was "I don't want to," when I tried to get him to take off his backpack in order to put his seatbelt on on the bus. He usually refuses to do the tasks all the preschoolers do, like painting a polar bear white or sorting buttons by color. But when the teacher gives him an ultimatum... do the work, or no playing... Ani will go in the other direction, concentrating with all his might and refusing to stop when the teacher says its time to be done. "Its his way, or no way," the classroom aide explained. 
When I first started at Sky Elementary, Ani looked like he was glaring at me all the time. But by the end the first week, he'd started getting used to me. One day he came up to me and stomped his feet, to show me that he'd gotten new boots. Another day he showed me a large, silver thumb ring with skulls and crossbones engraved in it. "Mine," he said, before he hid it away in his backpack. 
Today when Ani got off the bus, I asked him to sit down with the rest of the kids, in the hallway where they wait for all of the bussers to arrive. Ani shook his head.
I don't know the kids well enough to be too firm... I'm still a guest in their classroom... so I tried to make him smile. "You won't sit down? What will you do instead?" I asked. "Will you stand on your head? Will you do jumping jacks? Will you swing from the ceiling like a monkey?" Ani almost smiled at that! But then he caught himself and  looked away, rolling his eyes. 
Ani is three. 
"Why is Ani so angry at life?" I asked Mrs. Wing, during a brief moment when the kids were out of earshot. 
"He has a very messed up home life," she replied. She didn't elaborate, and I didn't want to seem nosey by asking more, but I just can't help wondering.
The three year olds I've known throughout the years are emotional rollercoasters. They're laughing and being silly one minute, screaming and throwing a tantrum the next minute, and planting sloppy kisses on your cheek and declaring their undying love for you the next. Even the preschoolers I worked with who were in foster care and had Reactive Attachment Disorder were no exception. If anything, they were just bigger rollercoasters, with more violent lows and more joyous highs. But Ani is just... there. What happens to make a three year old withdraw like that?
A lot of the kids in the class have questionable home lives. The other day I asked you guys if you know what makes a child qualify as being at risk. Today I found the answer in an online manual for the state's at-risk preschool program. Basically, when screened, children are given numbers of points for different factors that put them at risk. For factors that involve their biological and physical needs, such as being on the federal free lunch program, living in subsidized housing, being homeless, having a chronic illness, having been exposed to lead , being malnourished, having a teenaged mother, having low birth weight, having been exposed to drugs or alcohol as a fetus, etc, they would get four points for each, because these factors are considered the most pressing. Safety needs... having parents with poor behavior management skills, an unstable family structure, having been abused or neglected, being in foster care or under DCFS supervision, having an incarcerated parent, etc... would score them three points each. Factors that are considered "belongingness and love needs," such as speech issues (I'm not sure why thats grouped in with belongingness and love, unless they rule out that the child has an actual speech delay and decide that his speech issues have to do with his home life,) lack of self control, lack of self esteem, having been through a trauma or serious loss, etc... score two points each. (Having a non-English primary home language is also listed in this category, inexplicably!) Finally, "esteem needs," such as a short attention span or poor gross motor skills (???!!!) score one point each. So whoever is screening the child eventually adds all of these points up. Then, the children with the most total points get spots in the preschool program. If there was a program with one hundred spaces, the one hundred worst-off children screened would get them. 
Yep.
So basically, in order for a child to be in the program, a lot has to have gone wrong for them in their short three or four years of life! 
This is another reason why I feel like, if (hopefully when) I am a teacher, I want to make school as safe and happy a place as possible. I don't want to complain about the preschool program I'm at, because Mrs. Wing is great and the school is great and everything... but I just feel like something is missing. The joy is missing. 
I feel like a child like Ani should be able to come to school and have it be a shining spot in his day, a magical place where he feels safe and loved and has chances to try new things, to succeed at things, to be proud of himself. But here it just seems like its all about teaching them what they need to do... teaching them to sit quietly and raise their hands, to walk in a single file line, to clean up the toys and hold their pencils correctly and learn beginning academic skills... and not at all about their emotional needs. 
Its frustrating for me because I'm only there for five weeks, and I cannot make a difference there. I mean, even if I reach out to kids like Ani, in five weeks I'll be gone.
I love student teaching in the preschool! But sometimes it also makes me so sad. 

A Sad Story

For some reason today, as I drove to school, I kept thinking about a little girl I once worked with while I was in AmeriCorps back in 2001. After a while, I realized it was the fall air, and the colorful leaves, that reminded me of Brandie. Although I was in AmeriCorps for all of 2001, October of 2001 was the last time I saw her.
At the time, I was a full-time volunteer at a therapeutic learning center for preschoolers with special needs. Most of the children there had behavioral disorders, and a few had autism. But that spring we got a new girl who had a very severe and life-threatening form of scoliosis. She had been in and out of the hospital since she was a toddler, including having spent most of the past year in the hospital. She wore a serious-looking brace that forced her to hold her chin straight up, and she walked stiffly, like a robot. We were told that Breann had to be careful all the time, to be kept from playing too roughly, because if she fell she could be seriously injured. But trying to keep track of ten preschoolers with severe behavioral disorders (we had children who were placed there for things like attacking teachers at their former day care centers with scissors, acting out sexually with other children, starting fires, attempting suicide, etc) it was hard to monitor Brandi all the time. That was probably a good thing, for her. Within a few weeks she was running around and playing like all the other children. She knew her own limitations and was reasonably careful, but we also didn't stop her from doing things like going down the slide on the playground.
Brandi's mother was a single parent with two other children. The father of Brandii and one of her siblings lived in another state and struggled with alcoholism. The mother worked full time and also went to school, and whenever we saw her she was in a huge hurry, trying to get from one place to the next. There was one time that, as her mother rushed Brandi and her sister (who also went to our center, although she had no special needs at all) out of the classroom, Brandi tripped. Her mother and sister didn't notice and hurried outside, and Brandi burst into tears. "Now she really forgot me!" the four-year-old wailed. I picked her up and carried her (very awkwardly because she couldn't bend at the waist) out to her mom's car, assuring her that mommies never forgot their children.
One weekend towards the end of October, Brandi's mother went to spend a weekend with a friend in the city. It was a rare vacation for her. She and her friend went out for drinks that evening. The friend had too many drinks, and attempted to drive anyway. On the way home, they got into a car wreck. The friend survived. Brandi's mother didn't.
We learned of Brandi's mother's death the next morning, when her grandmother called to say she'd be coming in to pick up the girls' things. They would be going to live with their grandparents, and would not return to our center. I never saw them again. Throughout my life the memory has always haunted me, of the little girl crying for her mother not to forget her.
When I came home today, I did a Google search. I couldn't remember her last name, but just searching for her first name plus "scoliosis" turned up a few results. Since her form of scoliosis was so rare and dangerous, she has been in the news a few times, and her grandmother has also written about her on a few scoliosis websites. As of the age of seven, she was still living with her grandparents, attending various kinds of therapies, participating in Girl Scouts, and describing herself as "trickster who likes to play pranks on people." She got to go to Disney Land, where her grandmother used a towel to hide her brace, believing that Brandi should experience the rides and have some fun. Tragically, her father committed suicide that year, leaving Brandi and her sister orphaned.
There was no more information about Brandi beyond the age of seven, except for the news that she recently won second place in a statewide essay contest. Unfortunately I couldn't find any links to the essay... but it shows how smart she turned out to be!
I doubt I'll ever forget about Brandi. She had so much going against her, from the beginning, but she always had tons of spirit. In many ways her story reminds me to never take life for granted.
What about you? Are there students you've worked with that you will never forget?