Somebody Else’s Kids Read Online Free PDF

experience than I and had seen so many more children that I respected her overall knowledge.
    “I’m taking your advice,” she told me as we walked into the teacher’s lounge.
    “My advice?”
    “Yes. Remember how I was complaining earlier about how I never could get the children to finish up their work on time?”
    I nodded.
    “And you suggested that I make the ones who did finish glad they did?” Edna was smiling. “I did that with the reading workbooks. I told the children they could go out to recess as soon as they finished their pages. And you sure taught this old dog a new trick. We get the work done in just fifteen minutes.”
    “Do you check the work when they’re done?” I asked. “Before they go out?”
    She made an obtuse gesture. “Nah. They do all right.”
    “What about Lori Sjokheim?”
    Edna rolled her eyeballs far back into her head. “
Hers
I have to check. Why, that Lori has no more intention of doing her work carefully than anything. The first few days I let her go with the other children, but then I got to looking at her workbook and you know what I found? Wrong. Every single answer wrong. She’ll take advantage of you every chance she gets.”
    I had to look away. Look at the wall or the coffeepot or anything. Poor Lori who could not read, who could not write and who got all her answers wrong. “But I thought she was to bring in her workbooks to do with me,” I said.
    “Oh, Torey.” Edna’s voice was heavy with great patience. “This is one thing you have yet to learn. You can’t mollycoddle the uncooperative ones, especially in the first grade – that’s when you have to show them who’s boss. Lori just needs disciplining. She’s a bright enough little girl. Don’t let her fool you in that regard. The only way Lori’s kind will shape up is if you set strict limits. It’s modern society. No one teaches their children self-restraint anymore.” Edna smiled.
    “And with all due respect and credit to what you’re trying to do, Torey, I can’t see it myself. Giving her all that extra help when nobody else gets it. It’s a waste of time on some kids. I’ve been in the business a long time now, and believe me, you get so you can tell who’s going to make it and who isn’t. I just cannot understand spending all the extra time and money on these little slowies who’ll never amount to anything. So many other children would profit from it more.”
    I rose to wrestle a can of Dr Pepper out of the machine. The right thing to do would have been to correct Edna, because to my way of thinking at least, she was dead wrong. The cowardly thing was to get up and go fight the pop machine. Yet that was what I did. I was, admittedly, a little afraid of Edna. She could speak her mind so easily; she seemed so confident about her beliefs. And she possessed so much of the only thing I had found valuable as an educator: experience. In the face of that, I was left uncertain and questioned my own perceptions. So I took the coward’s way out.
    Unfortunately, the situation did not mend itself. The next day, too, Lori was kept in during recess and still she lugged her reading workbook in to me all full of errors. She was more resigned. No tears. The day after that was no different either. Or the day after that. If we did not get through the book during our time together, if mistakes still existed at the end of the day, Edna kept Lori after school also. Edna continued to perceive Lori’s mistakes as carelessness. That Lori maintained a sort of gritted-teeth composure throughout Edna’s disciplinary campaign and still did not get her work right convinced Edna it was a battle of wills.
    The tension began to show on both sides. In with me, Lori could not concentrate at all. Everything would distract her. As the number of days lengthened, a distressful restlessness overtook her. As soon as she came into the room and sat down, she would have to get up again. Down, up, down, up. While working, she