There is Jerome in my class...

The story of Jerome…

It was the first day of school when everyone was excited. I noticed this very uneasy child who belongs to my first year class. He stands taller than his classmates probably because he’s old enough to be a freshman. And I was right. His records show that he should have been a senior student by then had it not been he spent a year for his every grade while he’s in elementary. His permanent record revealed that he entered grade two twice and thrice for grade five. His name was Jerome.

For more than a week or two, I observed in my class that he’s not a very ordinary student. Whenever he walks around inside or even outside my classroom many of his classmates seemed to ward off as if he was lava.

I observed that he has only one close friend. I was not sure either whether he treats him as a friend for there was an instance that I saw Jerome beating him with his fist just because the latter failed to lend him his ball pen at an instant. This friend of him carries inside his bag all of his school stuff, too.

As a student, Jerome performs just all right. He was compliant whenever we had writing activity for he managed to write obediently…only that the pen’s cap was still on. Yes, he participated in the class activities. When there were group activities, he was the first person to disarrange the chairs in a very disorderly manner. In one of his classes, I observed that he enjoyed his role-playing session for he happily whipped a wooden stick on the air without minding whether it would hit his group mates. . I vividly recall how he courageously answered me with a mocking ‘inda man sa imo’ (I don’t care about you) when I called his attention after he tirelessly echoed his classmates oral responses to my questions in our Araling Panlipunan (Social Studies) class.

He was very versatile. He knows how to mimic the sounds of almost all animals (and even insects) he was familiar of. I heard him sounding like ‘tuko’ [gecko] while most of his classmates were hooked on an article they were told to silently read. He did it recurrently and obviously he liked what he was doing.

When he was prodded to read a paragraph on a page of his textbook, I noticed two things. First, he hardly knew where to find page 32; his seatmate needed to guide him just to turn to the right leaf. Secondly, his ‘reading’ gave me the impression that he was extraterrestrial. I thought I was hearing an alien for I did not understand a word. He found it very difficult to figure out how the words are supposed to be read even syllabically. But I was thankful for his effort to recite after he impolitely grabbed the textbook from his classmate and for the mumbling sound he managed to share.

As a child, he was very playful and had a lot of surprises. One time I’ve heard one of our teachers screaming and literally out galloping from her classroom after Jerome presented her a snake he just killed. He loved centipedes, too and he loved to hand it as a surprise to his classmates.

Honestly, I was not feeling comfortable to have Jerome in my classroom. I knew I was not in a proper authority to assess him but I believed he was abnormal – to be politically correct, I should have said he was ‘intellectually challenged’. He was behaviorally perverted. And I also thought that he deserved no space in my class of heterogeneous regular students.

We tried inquiring about Jerome in a more personal level. We dared talking to his parents and were dismayed to know that one of the main reasons why he was in school. His parents believed Jerome would be more obedient to us, his teachers, because behaviorally speaking; he was such a handful to them. I also heard one of his neighbors commenting, ‘mas marhay ng nasa eskwelahan an kaysa sa magpasaway digdi saindo’ (it’s better he misbehaves in school than [he bullies] here).

But I knew he was not entirely useless at home. When passing by while we were on our way to school, we saw him helping his father sort out fish. As one of the youngest brood, he did most of the errand.

I could not blame myself for feeling differently against this child though I wanted to try helping him out. For whenever he bullied his classmates and heard him talking back, I was beginning to think he was as an eye-sore. I wished he’s not enrolled in my class. I even prayed he quit schooling.

After a month and a week, my prayer was answered. It was such a relief to see no presence or even shadow of Jerome within the four walls of my classroom.

But I must admit… I miss Jerome’s frolics and bullying!