hey... i actually taught her something!

I have a strange child doing strange things in my classroom.

Of course, there's never any shortage of strange behavior in my part of the world. From kids playing dead, to telling my future, to random meowing, I've wondered more than once if I'm on Candid Camera.

But my colleague and I are just baffled by "Sherry's" behavior (she's one of my first graders with hearing loss.)

We first noticed it during the daily bathroom debacle. Do you know how long it takes for 23 first graders to line up after lunch and use the bathroom? Nine minutes. That's a lot of time. (It's also a lot of saying: "Hurry up in there! Don't crawl under the stalls! Use soap when you wash your hands! Do NOT roll that toilet paper across the floor!").

It maybe wouldn't take as long if Sherry understood about the order of things. Every day, she walks into the bathroom and:

1. washes her hands
2. goes pee
3. washes her hands again

Confused? So were we. She does the same kind of thing right after she sneezes:

1. uses hand sanitizer
2. blows her nose in a tissue
3. uses more hand sanitizer

Whaaaat.....?

So the other day, I had the opportunity to take her to the bathroom all by herself. Before she went in, I got down at her eye level and showed her two fingers.

"Sherry. Number one: go pee. Number two: wash your hands."

She smiled and nodded, eyes darting around... looking at everything except my two fingers.

"Sherry! What's number one?"

"Go pee."

"What's number two?"

"Wash hands."

I watched her walk into the stall and .... actually follow my directions! I was kind of surprised. I was bracing myself for another debacle, already planning to make some kind of two-step picture schedule!

Yay for small victories!