By Joy Baldree

On that first solo day of teaching, I had not met all of my students as my corner classroom had two doors opening into separate hallways and a few had slipped in without the soon to be famous Allen-handshake, but I had thoroughly planned my poetry lesson for the day.  I was engaged in the art of teaching and the students were with me when I noticed the lump in the left corner of the classroom.

I quietly and methodically moved into the lump's personal space zone having picked up a very large dictionary on my way, never missing a beat in my teaching.  I stopped and firmly dropped the thick hard-back Webster on the desktop of the empty desk in front of the lump.  First an eye peeked from the desk-top, and then the lump began to unroll...and unroll...until it was completely free of the too-small desk and staring down upon me.  

"No one sleeps in my classroom," I said firmly to the 6'3" extremely large, now angry adolescent boy who had emerged, leaning my head backwards to look up at him.  In slow motion, it seemed, he lifted 50 pound arms slowly, crossing them at my eye level, then purposefully bending over them to look down at me stated, "I don't wanna be in your dumb class and I ain't gonna do your dumb work."  Without thought, I slipped out of my two inch heels, stepped up into the empty desk, crossed my arms and looked down upon him, locking in his coal-black eyes.  "You were sleeping, so you can not judge the dumbness of my class or the work.  You need to stay awake and participate." 
 
The classroom was completely silent; every breath had stopped including my own.  I realized at that moment that I could die, but I held the eyes and then, after what seemed like an eternity, I saw the left corner of his mouth begin to lift upward, then a full grin, his arms unfolded, my arms unfolded.  My kneecaps were still intact; the class exhaled.  We came to a silent agreement.  He lifted his hand to steady me as I stepped out of the chair and back into my shoes.  I resumed teaching; he forced himself back into the chair.  I gave him a piece of paper and a pencil.  He sketched the most beautiful black roses, signed his name and left.  Period 1 was over, only 6 more to go!
 
I hung the black roses on my office door, and then added more drawings from Cody the lump, then poetry.  When the trust made him brave enough, he shared in front of the class a poem entitled "Teddy Bear" about his struggle to be accepted by his peers because of his size, how he used anger to hide grief, and scared everyone away, when inside, he was a teddy bear.  All the middle-school girls cried and Cody finally found love that day.  He earned a "C" in my class, the Poet of the Year Award and a leather poetry journal that he returned his senior year full of his poetry.  Life was never easy for Cody, but he made it.  From him, I learned to always look inside for what is real and celebrate what you find even if it "appears" as a blackened rose; nothing in life is without color.