Watch Out Terry!

Many years ago, at a time when I kept careful track of students’ independent reading choices and progress, I was going through the weekly routine of a check-in and mini-conference. On those days I would record what each kid was reading, what page they were on, and ask a couple of comprehension questions in the form of a conversation about their book. The method was effective, whether I had read the book myself or not, and I learned a lot about adolescent literature, both current and classic. It also helped that the students were required to have their books with them.

One day, I asked a student what she was reading, and she told me the title of the book was Watch Out Terry! a book I had never heard of. This particular girl was not always a committed reader, and I had reason to doubt her truthfulness. I asked a few questions about plot and character, and her convoluted replies did nothing to reassure me.

“I never heard of that book,” I finally told her. “Does it even exist?”

She looked at me appraisingly and accepted the challenge. “Yes,” she insisted. “I was reading it this morning.”

“Can I see it?” I asked.

“I don’t have it,” she replied in a dismissive tone, as if I was crazy for asking.

“Where is it?” I rejoined with a bit of an edge in my voice, because truthfully, she was pushing my buttons.

“In my locker,” she shrugged.

“Let’s go get it,” I said.

Impressively, her eyes widened only the tiniest bit, and she stood right up and said okay.

Of course it wasn’t in her locker, or anywhere else, because the book did not exist. The fact that she lied so brazenly made me mad, though, and I wrote up the incident in detail, and she received some consequences from the assistant principal. Yeah. I showed her.

A month or two later that particular student ended up being identified as emotionally disabled, and she was put in Heidi’s class, a program with the highest level of support for kids who needed it.

Whenever I remember this incident now, it always makes me think of how much I have changed. If the same thing happened again, there is no way I would take a kid to their locker just to prove that I knew they were lying. It’s a dumb waste of time that can be avoided by building relationships with students so that they don’t feel like they need to lie to you, and showing a little grace when they do.