Where They're From

My students are wrapping up an activity in which they use George Ella Lyon's poem, Where I'm From as a model for a free verse poem of their own. This is an activity that Nancie Atwell outlines in her book Naming the World. Her students developed a questionnaire which they used to interview their parents and grandparents to gather material for their poems, and we use a version of that, too.

Ours is a chart that has space for the answers to 12 questions in four columns. One for mother, one for father, one for grandparent, and one for other. One of our students has two dads, so before I gave the sheet out this year, I changed the first two columns to "parent." The questions are about nicknames and birthplaces, toys, games and hobbies, favorite books, candy, TV shows, and singers, hip expressions, heroes and hoped for careers.

We have several adopted and foster kids on the team this year, and many of our students and/or their parents were born in countries other than the United States. It was difficult for some kids to gather much information about the lives of the people in their family. It was also challenging for them to fit some of the non-traditional details of their lives into the template based on Lyon's poem. We talked our way through it, though, and everyone wrote a poem of which they were very proud.

We have one student, who was born in India and adopted into a family with a brother from Vietnam and a sister from Guatemala. Her mom e-mailed this morning to say how touched their family was by the poem. Her daughter wrote, in part:

I am from black shoes,
from Razzles and Legos.
I am from the crowded streets of India,
hot and noisy...

I am from watching American Idol
and arguing about the results.
I am from jocks and book worms,
from "Stop talking!" and "Do your homework!"

... from the love of my parents
when they tuck me in at night,
the funniness of my brother,
and the grumpiness of my sister.
I am from the wooden box in my parents' room
filled with pictures,
and all the things in my family
that make us who we are.

What can I say? It's a great assignment. They were all that sweet.

Post-Game Analysis

No, she didn't make the team. We went with a younger, less experienced, but definitely more positive squad. We were afraid that the strength of her antagonism might poison the attitude of the team. I'm still not sure that we made the right decision, though, especially because we were responsible for some of that negativity.

Who knows? Had we been able to intervene more effectively when she was bullied in sixth grade, the outcome might have been different, but now it was a case of trying to balance the good of the group with the good of the individual. We were afraid that she would take the opportunity to treat younger players as she had been treated, and in order to break the cycle, we kept her off the team.

I wish that sometime in the last two years, one of us had been able to forge a constructive relationship with her, so that the positivity of this team, along with our support, might have turned the experience around for her, but her behavior and choices during tryouts showed that we hadn't done that. It was definitely a loss.

At the Buzzer

In the words of Yogi Berra, "It was deja vu all over again," with a few key differences. Sixth grade girl was now eighth grade girl: she was taller, stronger, and fitter. She had mostly kept out of trouble for the first six weeks of school, and this time, we needed a point guard.

The taint on our team of the mean girl who had bullied her two years before had faded considerably and was almost gone. There was only one other girl left who had ever played with her. The eighth graders the year before had had a few spiteful moments, but their unkindness had been nothing compared to hers. Even so, the younger girls who were back now for a second season had come to me after tryouts to say that they really hoped that this year would be more positive. "No offense," one said, "but some of the eighth graders last year were scary." How impressed was I when they decided on their own to be supportive of the new players? What a change.

Our prospective point guard couldn't make the seventh and eighth grade trials, so we let her try out when she showed up with the sixth graders the next day. Once again, her skills were solid, and her game was good. When it came time to scrimmage with the other girls, though, it was as if no time had passed. She didn't listen to directions; she was shoving other girls on the sidelines; in the game she didn't pass; and she called her teammates out for their lack of talent.

At the end of the tryout, when everyone gathered at center court to wrap it up, she brought a ball and stood with her back to the group, dribbling it. "Hold the ball," the other coach said, and she lifted it to her shoulder as if to shoot. "Do not shoot that ball," he said, and turned to the other girls. As he did, she shrugged and stepped hard into that half-court shot. I watched as the basketball hit the rim, bounced straight up and fell back through the net. It was an amazing shot, and she could not contain her glee, but it was game over.

Play through the Pain

We wondered if our erstwhile potential point guard would come out for the team the next year, and we debated what we would do if she did. After leaving the team, she had continued to find trouble, even getting arrested for stealing a wallet off the counter at a near-by convenience store. My colleague wanted to tell her not to bother, but I didn't agree. I felt like kids should be able to make mistakes, and I hoped that a year later she might be more mature. I also believed that on some level we had mishandled the episode the year before, placing most of the blame on the player who was least valuable to the team.

She showed up for tryouts, and she was good enough to make the team. Her attitude was subdued and cooperative. On the afternoon we cut the roster, the other coach and I sat in his office a long time discussing the pros and the cons. "We're the adults," I told him. "Let's not set an example of holding a grudge. Everyone deserves a second chance." We compromised by putting her on the team provisionally. We agreed that we would talk to her first and let her know what we expected.

It didn't matter though. The asterisk next to her name was enough to make her mad, and she never showed up for practice. That was seventh grade... what about eighth?

Looks like we're headed into overtime.

After the Pep Talk

Exactly what happened between the girls will never be clear; it was a classic case of she said she said. What I do know is this: A couple of days later, the sixth grader pulled me aside during a water break at practice. Her usually lackluster performance had dipped to an even lower point that day, and I asked her if everything was all right. To my surprise, the tough little girl teared up and told me that she "couldn't take it anymore." She reported that the eighth grade girl was constantly harassing her, criticizing everything she did and said.

I asked her when this was going on, and she told me that it happened in the locker room and whenever the coaches weren't looking. I promised her that we would talk to the other girl, but she didn't believe it would help.

"I don't care what anyone says," she told me. "I know I'm a good player," and she walked off the court, quitting the team.

We talked to the other girl, but she denied everything, and no one else would verify the story, either. The guy I coach with thought that sixth grade girl had turned out to be more trouble than she was worth, with all her trash talking and lack of effort, and he was glad to see her go. And that seemed to be that, until seventh grade try-outs the next year.

Get some water. The fourth quarter is coming up.

The Second Six Minutes

So, our sixth grade protege and our eighth grade mean girl were headed for a show down. There was a twist, though. The sixth grader was the kind of kid who gets in a lot of trouble. Angry, confrontational, and downright defiant, she was hard to like. The eighth grader on the other hand was good at staying out of trouble. Intelligent and shrewd enough to be generally compliant and polite, she was widely considered to be a good kid. Not everyone was fooled by her nice girl act, but enough adults were that she was able to get away with certain things.

On our team, we value effort, and physically, we push the girls hard. This didn't go over too well with the sixth grader, who was more inclined to jog than to sprint through the drills. She had no patience for practice, she just wanted to play her game, and she got a fair amount of redirection from both of us coaches because of it. She had a bit of an inflated opinion about her skills, too; despite her lack of experience and conditioning, she honestly believed that she should be our starting point guard, and she said so to whoever would listen.

At the first home game of the season, sixth grade girl sat on the bench and watched the team lose. Afterward, her well-meaning friends all assured her that the outcome would have been different had she been on the court, a point she eagerly raised at the next practice. Did eighth grade girl feel threatened? I doubt it, but the audacity of the challenge was something she couldn't let go, and after all, she was a mean girl.

Half-time.

First Quarter

Two years ago there was a sixth grade student on our basketball team who showed promise. Even though she was short and a little overweight, her ball-handling skills and game instincts were strong. We put her on the team in the hope that with time and experience, she would become a starting point guard.

It's hard for sixth graders to get much playing time on a middle school team. They are competing against seventh and eighth grade students who are generally older, bigger, and stronger. We usually practice with a squad of 15, but only about half will get significant game time, most of them eighth graders. For the younger girls, we view their first, and sometimes even their second, year as developmental.

A couple of things happen as a result of this dynamic. One is that the older girls feel entitled to the playing time: they've paid their dues, practicing hard and then sitting on the bench for two years, and now they feel that they have a right to the spotlight. They are also the leaders of the team, and so their attitude sets the tone. As closely as we supervise middle school kids and as much guidance as we provide them in the classroom, in the cafeteria, or on the court, they always find an opportunity to reinforce their hierarchy. That's how it is on the team.

That year, our strongest eighth grade player happened to be a point guard, and so it was never very likely that this sixth grade girl would play many minutes in a game. This particular eighth grade girl had played her first couple of seasons with her older sister, who was incredibly cruel to her. It didn't help that the younger sister was a better player; in fact that made it worse, and when it came time for her to lead the team, she was almost as mean to the younger girls as her sister had been to her.

There's the whistle-- let's pick it up in the second quarter.