What happened to Jasmine?

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When you look inside a classroom there are some things you can not see….

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Jasmine was one of my favorites.

She was one of the shortest, scrawniest children in our second grade classroom.  Maybe 45 pounds with her coat on.   Her tattered backpack seemed as big as she was. She occasionally flashed a big smile, but she was always active and impressive with her world-class street-smarts.

Somehow the tiniest children can hold the most energy, the most emotion, and somehow they manage to get the most compassion from me.

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When you peek in our classroom you may see Jasmine stealthily surveying the classroom for the child most likely to respond spiritedly when she gives them the “the finger”, or when she “gives them” a freshly sharpened pencil, in the side of the head, a perfectly thrown ‘dagger’.

There were not many good days. . . only random moments of calm, in the ‘eye’ of a violent storm, all on a ‘hair trigger’. 

When you look inside a classroom there are some things you can not see….

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