Brandon C.

It’s been a while.  A new grade, a new curriculum, new standards, 33 beings each with his or her own concerns and quandaries, and not to mention my own in-house proto-teenager draped over the couch in poses of iPodded distress.  Not a lot of energy to write.  Complete sentences.  Even.

When there are that many kids in a class, no teacher can focus simultaneously on them all.  In any given moment  or arc of time, one or a few fall into the purview of my spotlight.  Last week it was Brandon C.

I’ve known Brandon C. for over three years.  I was his teacher in 2nd when his father punched his mother and broke her nose while they were seated in the car with the kids in the back.  I was his teacher in 3rd when he and his mom were living out of their truck after the dad had been jailed and then deported and they’d been through a succession of shelters and homes and relatives’ back bedrooms.  And now I’m his teacher in 5th when his mom has worked her butt off to go back to school and get an apartment and take care of her kids.  Just two weeks ago she told me Brandon now has his very own bedroom.

But somehow that’s when problems begin.

Brandon is Armando’s nephew.  Uncle and nephew in the same class.  It’s not as odd as it seems; at our school, every teacher has a similar tale.  The extended clans of Oaxacan villages have migrated to our neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Amando also has daddy issues and a mom who works her butt off to hold the family together.  Both these boys have been forced to become the men of the house before the age of ten.

Last year Armando went to the dark side. This year he’s shining.  Brandon seems to operate in reverse.

Armando is a math whiz; Brandon, a reading one.  I told the mothers last week: You guys have some great genes in your gene pool. If only we could get the boys to work together.

But instead, they compete.

And it seems the more Brandon sees Armando shining, the more Brandon chooses to get attention by going to the dark side: playing pranks that get ever more serious, being sarcastic in class, refusing to do his work.

I know that beneath their veneers of coolness both these boys run deep.  I know they both grapple with their fathers’ actions and their own relation to those dark deeds.  I just wish I could figure out a way to reach Brandon the way (I think ) I have Armando.