thoughtjunkie

I wanted to blog this before I forgot all the weird little details.

So I have this student. He roams around the school, and my class, looking perpetually pissed off. His eyebrows are furrowed, he doesn't smile, he hates talking to the other students. His hair is buzzed-short. He never takes his coat off in class, and he doesn't participate (he didn't even want to go trick-or-treating, so my coteacher sat in the classroom with him).

The other teachers talk about him as a problem student. The other students avoid him.

But he's a good kid. He loves to come into the classroom when I'm lesson planning, and listen to my mp3 player. He tries to fit the wrap-around earphone on the wrong ear, every day, stands around and pokes at my player for 10-15 seconds, and then runs off.

Yesterday, he came in with another one of my students. I showed them my new player, and he grabbed the earphones off my desk and slapped them onto the wrong ears. The song turned over from the indie music it was playing, and into Take the Power Back by Rage Against the Machines (courtesy of KP). The kid stopped. His head started bobbing, little hands went up around the earphones, and he vibed until his friend got bored and pulled him away.

Today, he came in alone. He pulled the headphones on, and I showed him how to change songs (yay good UI), and off he went. He listened to The Kill by 30 Seconds to Mars, and I showed him where the player displayed the title and artist; he practiced writing it on the board.

It's just so terminally stupid how this kid is labeled a 'bad' kid by the other teachers and the other students. He's not bad. He's an audiophile.