A Writing Journey

My student K. has a certain knack for interruptions.

I don’t blame her, really. I recognize that for a struggling reader, especially one for whom English is her second language, the mind has a way of looking for something to distract from the heavy mental load. Doodling on the whiteboard. A walk to get a drink from the water fountain. Watching a video about skunks. 

“Ms. Panzera, can we watch that video, PLEASE?” she pleaded.

She had struggled with the word skunk in the text we were reading. Thinking it was not just a diagraph problem, I asked, “Do you know what a skunk is?”

When she responded that she didn’t, I wasn’t surprised. It is not uncommon for students I work with who were born outside of Canada to need a little boost in background vocabulary. K. is Turkish. So, my reflex was to open up Google images and introduce K. to her first skunk. 

But the computer, while useful in these situations, also opens up a world of distractions. K. often asks to watch videos.

This time, I was able to divert quickly and get her back on track with the reading. Until…the next interruption. And, this time, I was to blame. My cellphone rang.

K. continued to read the text. “Briiiiingggg! Briiiiiinggg!” She ignored the ringing, perhaps taking my lead because I pretended not to notice. The ringing — which continued for at least 10 times (I recently lengthened the ring count to allow my aging legs more time to reach it before going to voicemail) — eventually stopped. I did not say a word. And by some small miracle, K. didn’t either. She had finished the reading and now seemed poised to begin her retell of the story.

Just as she started, “In the beginning, the girl -” her voice was cut off by a “Briiiiiiiing!”

“Oh no,” I thought. “That person is calling again! Talk about persistent!”

This time, I didn’t ignore it. I answered it, thinking if they had called again maybe it was really important. I picked up my cell phone without looking at the screen or looking back at K.

“Delivery! Can you let me in?” the voice bellowed. 

“Oh, you must be downstairs,” I paused, a little irritated that it was not an emergency afterall, as I glanced down at the phone to see the number of the buzzer board of my apartment building. “Yes, come on i-” and with that, the sound of the door opening and closing cut me off.

I quickly turned the phone on mute and put it in my backpack (where it should have been all along). I then sat back down beside K. hoping she would just continue talking about the main character. But the interruption held on.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“It was a delivery person at my apartment building. He needed to enter to drop off a package,” I explained, the remorse evident in my voice.

“Oh,” she said, her face a bit concerned. “I thought it was a robber!”

Already a bit embarrassed that the call had interrupted our lesson, I could feel nervous laughter about to erupt at the image of a robber using the buzzer code to gain entry. But I didn’t react at all.

“No, K. A robber would never use the buzzer code,” I said, with complete conviction and not an ounce of laughter.

K. seemed to take my word on that and I considered it a win. She continued retelling the story, until the next interruption.