Andrew

Part 2

After ten minutes of sliding down the embankment, grabbing hold of weed stalks and thorny bushes along the way, I found myself on the edge of Gore Creek.  I tied on a Parachute Adams and made a few casts behind some boulders and along a fallen log dipping from the opposite bank.

Owners of land in Colorado, unlike owners in many other states, can own streambeds.  I was warned in the flyshop in Vail NOT to wade on the southern side of Gore Creek near the railroad because some rancher owned that half of the stream.  I was careful until I came to a large boulder jutting out from the northern bank.  The only way to negotiate the boulder was to go around it by stepping in the southern portion of Gore Creek.  I looked around, but except for Polley reading her book on the railroad embankment, there was no one.

I stepped in the southern streambed of Gore Creek, and, in four large steps and less than one minute, I was back on the northern streambed of Gore Creek, when a few pebbles landed on my fishing hat.  I looked up at the trestle, a railroad spur crossing over Gore Creek, and there was a tall man in cowboy boots which kicked more pebbles onto me.  His hand was on the pistol in his holster.

Okay…..I forced a wide smile and tipped my hat.  The tall man with the cowboy boots and the pistol stared at me for a while.  He may have been deciding whether or not to shoot me.  He opted to let me live, and just walked away.  Where did he come from?

I stepped out of the water and walked back upstream, this time tying on a Griffith’s Gnat.  Polley saw the man on the trestle too.  “Where did he come from?”  I shrugged my shoulders.

I lived to teach Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales once again.   Andrew’s class had performed especially well on that project in which groups of students, assuming the characters of the pilgrims in Chaucer’s work, competed in a Whose Line Is It tournament.  Andrew, as the Pardoner, was applauded for his participation as that pilgrim, winning several events for his team.  Yet, he only received a 68 on his Canterbury Tales test. He obviously had read the assignment.  What was going on here?  I called him in to discover why.

“Mr. Maltese?”

“Andrew.  Please sit down.”

He dumped his twenty pounds of books on the desk next to mine and straightened the glasses on his nose.

‘’Andrew, I truly enjoy having you as a student in my class.”

The look of worry evaporated on his face and was replaced by a smile.

“Your contributions to class discussions are poignant and reflect deep thought, your collaborative skills, working with your classmates are excellent, and your performances on class projects are exceptional, like the Pardoner you played in the Chaucer project.”

The smile grew wider.

“So, Andrew, I am troubled by your low test scores.  I do not understand how such an intelligent, self-motivated, pleasant young man can get a 68 on the test.   I know you read and took notes on the material.”

The smile quickly faded.  Andrew looked down at his shoes.

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Andrew, you don’t understand.  I did not call you in to criticize you.  I want to understand why your test scores don’t reflect the excellent student that you are.”

Andrew looked up into my eyes, searched for trust, and looked down again.

“I shouldn’t be in this honors class.”

I took off my glasses and tossed them on the desk.  Now I truly did not understand.

“Andrew, why don’t you belong in this class?  I certainly think you belong in this class.  If you don’t, no one does.  Are you an undercover CIA agent tracking expired milk dates in the cafeteria?  Why?  What?”

He replied as if he had a virulent strain of the bubonic plague which would kill him in two days.

“I have dyslexia.”

“Uh huh.”

Andrew looked up at me.   “The letters in the words all look scrambled to me.  I have to unscramble them first and then I look up the words in my pocket dictionary.”

I nodded my head.

“Mr. Maltese, I read all your assignments.  I leave your homework to the last, and by the time I am through it is one or two in the morning.”

“Andrew, if anything, I am more impressed with your work ethic and skills.”

“I don’t do well on the tests because it takes me forever to read the questions.”

“Andrew, now I understand.  We can work around that..”

“I was surprised when you gave me an “A” in English because my quiz and test scores were low.”

“Andrew, first, I did NOT give you an “A.”  You earned that “A” by your work ethic, your intellectual curiosity, and your performance on projects.”

“Mr. M., are you going to transfer me out of honors now?  My mother had to push and yell and stomp her feet to convince my counselor to put me in your honors class.”

“Andrew, you haven’t been listening to me.  You belong in an Honors class, and I am so very honored you are in my honors class.”

We worked it out.  I would create a separate quiz and test for Andrew and I would administer the quiz or test orally during his study hall.  He consistently scored in the nineties.

I made a few casts to some riffles up stream with no takes.  I looked up at Polley reading her Scandinavian mystery.

“You see any good water?”

Polley got out of her chair.  “I was just about to go for a walk.”

“Okay.  Let me know if you see any good holding lies.”

One of my favorite projects involved F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.  After we read and discussed the conventional themes—-mythologies associated with geographical biases, the dream concept, the “morally corrupt” 1920s, etc.—groups of students would select one of several projects to demonstrate their understanding of character and theme.  Most groups chose the Yearbook Project.  Assuming that Gatsby and Daisy and Tom and the other characters all went to the same high school, what would their yearbook look like.   Students liked to exercise their linguistic and visual skills and jumped into the assignment enthusiastically.  Andrew chose to work alone, which was unusual.

“Hey, I see a trout, a big one, right across from you.”

Polley was high on the embankment pointing straight down to a cluster of rocks next to the bank.  “He’s a nice one….I think a rainbow.”

I maneuvered my way gingerly across the stream to a casting position just downstream of the cluster of rocks.  I checked the Griffith’s Gnat and applied more floatant.  My first cast was a little splashy, and I was afraid I spooked the trout.  A few more casts, more delicate.  Nothing.  I yelled up to Polley.  “Is my fly going over him?”

Polley nodded.  I snipped off the Griffith’s Gnat and tied on a Gary LaFontaine pattern, an Aft Sparkle.  I had tied up about fifty Aft Sparkles after catching a bunch of browns on the pattern on the Rio Janeros in Colorado last year.

Two casts brought nothing.  The midday sun was up and the desert land around Gore Creek embraced the heat and reflected it back onto me.  Time for a break.  I stopped casting and looked around for the guy with the cowboy boots and pistol. He had been an unpleasant surprise.

Andrew’s choice of Great Gatsby projects was a pleasant surprise.  He chose the option of writing music for each of the characters in the novel.  When his turn came, he handed me a list of selections he had written for his clarinet, and across from the piece of music was the name of the character the music described.  His classmates did NOT have the list I was holding in my hand.

Andrew sat in a small chair in front of a small podium which held his score.  Andrew was first clarinet in the school orchestra, so his classmates grew silent as he placed his fingers on the instrument.  He played the first selection and then looked up at the class.

“So which character does that piece represent?”

The class, in unison, responded, “That’s Tom Buchanan!!”

I looked down at the list in my hand.  The piece Andrew played reflected Tom Buchanan!!!!

Andrew played his next piece.

He finished and looked up.  “That’s Daisy!”

I looked at my list.  It was Daisy.

And so it went for twelve characters.

What Andrew had done was to demonstrate his understanding of the novel’s characters by expressing their traits through music.  Did he demonstrate an understanding of character?  Yes he did.  Would he have done well on a paper and pencil test on character?  Maybe not. Did he get an “A” for his project?  Yes he did.

One of the essential concepts that formed my teaching was Howard Gardner’s book  on multiple intelligences.  Schools only focus on two primary intelligences, verbal and mathematical, but students like Andrew are proof that, if given the chance, there are other ways to demonstrate understanding of content.

I snipped off the Aft Sparkle and rummaged through my dry fly box searching for that magic pattern that would fool that trout by the cluster of rocks.  I decided on a Foxy Quill, size 16.  I yelled up to Polley.  “Is he still there?”

Polley was standing on the embankment, hands on hips, watching that trout.  I made another cast upstream, just above the cluster of rocks, and watched intently the Foxy Quill float right over the trout’s position.  I braced for the take.  Nothing.

Another cast.  Same result.

Then I noticed something I should have noticed earlier. I shouted up to Polley.  “Which way is he facing?”

Trout face upstream, the current becoming a conveyor belt of food for them.

Polley yelled back.  “He’s facing downstream.”

Of course!  The cluster of rocks formed an eddy, and the food chain swirled around the rocks and that clever old trout was feeding in the back channel.

I made my next cast downstream and into the eddy and the rainbow took it immediately.  He was huge, taking me upstream and downstream and tail walking at least four times. I held on, to the trout as well as to my heart which was thumping wildly and loudly against my chest.

I worked the nineteen inch rainbow into a current of slow moving water, picked him up to show Polley when his body suddenly contorted and he was out of my hand, out of my control, the 5X tippet snapping and he was gone.  Just another style of catch and release.

Once my heartbeat sought its normal level, I thought about the problem.  I broke with convention when I presented the dry fly downstream rather than upstream in order to get it into the trout’s window.   There are a number of ways to demonstrate proficiency.  That rainbow on Gore Creek helped teach me that.  And Andrew was able to present his proficiency through his clarinet performance. Those experiences convinced me that I had to create other opportunities for my students to demonstrate their knowledge and their proficiencies.