Arneshia

Arneshia is a beauty waiting to bloom. She's a perfect cocoa-brown, and her almond-shaped eyes are rimmed with the longest of eyelashes. At sixteen or eighteen she'll be a knockout. Right now, she's not the boys' type. A little too chubby and she doesn't get her hair done often enough. A little too quick to actually catch the pop-up when we play kickball.

Arneshia is a round-the-way girl. She lives in one of the apartment complexes that is a nerve center for neighborhood intrigue and local knowledge. She knows who got shot most recently and how and when to talk about it. She can do all the currently popular dances, even the heel-toe, which the other girls in the class say they don't like because they can't do it yet.

Arneshia has a temper. Little things set her off. If she doesn't called on right away, she might start crying. When her missing pencil turns up under someone else's desk, she might push or pinch the putative pilferer. (Sorry; couldn't resist.) Last year she kicked her teacher.

Arneshia is behind. She reads at a third-grade level, at best. Last week I made some time to work with her one-on-one and she took a full ninety seconds to figure out eight minus one. Her vocabulary is sorely lacking. We played I-Spy yesterday and she couldn't come up with the word for a display case. "That thing, there, with the stuff in it." This is her definition for many items.

Arneshia hides. She writes the longest book reports in the class to cover up the fact that she didn't understand a single word she read. She picks fights with Ernest five minutes before math starts to give her an excuse to check out of the day's lesson. If Ernest is absent or unusually pacifist, she might try to pick a fight with me. If I ask her if she needs help, she gets offended. If I don't ask, she pouts because I'm neglecting her.

Arneshia is...ashamed? scared? insecure? She once said, aloud, that she hates herself. She cheats constantly to disguise her lack of skills. She cries easily and often. It's clear that the anger she shows outwardly so often is also burning a deep wound inside.

I love Arneshia, but she terrifies me. I'm more comfortable with the students in the middle, the students who could compete on any academic stage but haven't been invited or even auditioned because of their skin color and their address. I'm confident that I'm a good teacher for those children. I'm not as sure-footed with students who are two or more years behind and have developed counterproductive coping skills to compensate. Do my three fancy degrees and my years of personal and professional experience add up to an ability to be counselor, tutor, and teacher?

Arneshia will tell...