Jesse for the Win

by Kris Rasmussen

Ashley started swinging her legs, slightly. Across the classroom, Mia’s ever-so-innocent grin warned me she was about to do the same. Which meant Brie, Matthew, and Jenny would probably join in as well.

Five, four, three, two, one.

Jesse slapped his face then shouted, “Stop it.”

I shot the girls my best teacher glare as I said, “Enough, ladies.” And then, in the lamest teacher voice ever, I said, “Don’t, Jesse, don’t. Please, don’t. “

Jesse came to my classroom in a tiny charter school from a larger, traditional public school. No one prepared my students or I for his Legos obsession and the shriek he would make if I assigned homework. Quickly his new classmates began to prey on one of Jesse’s strongest tics—repetitive motion or sound. Jesse’s tic became a new game for his peers to see which of their antics could get the biggest rise out of him. One day it would be repeated tapping on their desks. Another day it would be a chorus of sneezes choreographed to explode one after another around the room. Each incident led to me admonishing students while sending Jesse out of the room to a designated quiet space to calm down. I tried the group pep talk about accepting differences. I tried consequences. I sent e-mails to parents about empathy.

Fail. Fail. Fail.

Jesse’s parents stuck by me, though. They didn’t helicopter into my classroom after school, admonishing me for not controlling the leg swinging. They didn’t blame me for my lousy classroom management. They had fought to get him here, especially after Jesse’s former school had refused to put him in a less restrictive setting, insisting he remain in special education classes or in a resource room with other kids with various labels. His parents were warriors. The gentle, foundry-working kind, but nonetheless warriors who believed their son could go to college and learn social skills necessary for the real world if he was mainstreamed into a general education classroom.] .

By January, students stopped swinging their legs though I’d catch eye rolls and sighs over Jesse sharing another essay on Legos or his favorite computer games. Jesse adjusted to my sense of humor—something some students never accomplished. One day he came in doing his impression of John Travolta in “Saturday Night Fever.” He continued after the bell rang. “Oh, Jesse”, I said, “It’s way too early in the morning for Ms. R to disco dance.” He chuckled, but then he stopped.

In February, Jesse’s dad suggested that Jesse join the quiz bowl team. Mia and Ashley were the school’s aces in literature. Matthew could crush it in history. Math and science remained the weak spots, and that’s exactly where Jesse could excel. But I wasn’t sure that would motivate my students to play nice. I worried Jesse’s ]dad seemed to overestimate his son’s ability to face strangers in a competitive environment and not melt down. It didn’t matter. I didn’t have the last word; the head coach did. The decision was made that Jesse could compete if his father came with him to competitions.

 At first, it was hard to tell if the experiment [was working. Sure, at some competitions, Jesse would solve an equation while everyone else was still writing the numbers down. But at others, he’d simply stare out the window or count the bricks on the wall (hopefully silently). The team and I settled into a hope-for-the-best-don’t-worry-about-the-rest approach to the season.

Then, in the final round at one of the last invitationals of the season, Jesse answered one question correctly. Then another. Then another.

Which of the following scientists was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1911 for the discovery of the radioactive elements radium and polonium?

Buzzzz. “Madame Curie.”

How many times louder is a sound of 40 decibels compared to a sound of 10 decibels?

Buzzzz. “1,000.”

Then it was time for a literature question, which meant it was time for Mia or Ashley to dominate the competition.

What character was made famous in a short story by Washington Irving and takes place in Sleepy Hollow?

Buzzzz.

Jesse hit his buzzer first. “The headless horseman.”

Ashley, Mia, and Matthew attempted to high-five Jesse, who clapped his hands and turned to the other team. He pulled his turtleneck up over his head. He even did a little gallop in place.

Lizzie gasped. Mia groaned. I froze. Jesse’s dad touched Jesse’s arm before I could say anything, and Jesse reappeared from inside his turtleneck.

The round ended and the other team won, despite Jesse's  impressive effort. Mia stormed out of the room after the members of the other team. I raced after her into the hallway. Was she that unhappy that the team lost?

Mia’s cherub cheeks flushed, and I watched her Goldilocks curls swish as she pressed her face too close to one swaggering kid. “I saw what you did,” she snapped. Mia moved in closer, backing the guy against the nearest wall. “Jesse is my teammate. I will not see those pictures on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat—anywhere.“

She took one more deep breath and plunged ahead. “I will be checking. And my friends will be checking. We will know if you do, I promise.”

The kid slinked away into the throng of competitors as Lizzie and Matthew swooped in and hugged Mia. I rushed up to join them at Mia’s side. I fussed and fumed with them about the loser daring to pick on Jesse; I also thought about the desk tapping and the leg swinging and how they had all faded away. Today, in this moment, it was Ashley, Matthew, Mia—and Jesse. Classmates. Teammates.

            “Mia, I ….“ I could tell it was going to sound too much like a John Hughes film, but I said it anyway. “I have never been prouder of you. Nothing else today will be as important as what you just did.”

Instead of a Hollywood fade-to-black ending under a kicky soundtrack, however, the team and I would return to school and face the battle of the farts—when Jesse went through his all-bodily-functions-need-to-be-shared-at-all-times phase. We didn’t always face the sounds—or smells—with patience and kindness. And the glazed donut episode will never be a career highlight. (I became unhinged momentarily over Jesse’s relentless fixation on a leftover piece of pastry sitting on my desk.) Yet as freshman year gave way to sophomore year, these moments no longer felt like battles to win. And even Jesse’s successes felt less like victories to high-five and more like a wall of  bricks I could silently count to myself.

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