Notebook Paper

“So, I have some questions for you to answer here,” I begin after they read the passage. I slide the half-sheet handouts around the table to my seven students. They are unimpressed, and they sit staring at the half-sheets, as if they are wondering how small they can write to fit their answers into the small papers. “You’ll need to get out a piece of paper,” I prod. I get less of a reaction than I could hope. They sigh—deep, adolescent sighs that somehow shrink them a few inches, making them more a part of the furniture—and make vague, unreadable movements with their hands.

The whole process of paper aches with their burning, dull-eyed resentment. She asks so much, that reading teacher. A piece of paper every day. I try to remember if I have requested anything huge—their lunch money, their cell phones, their youth or beauty or souls—but I come up with only the piece of paper. “C’I get a peica paper?” one boy mutters to the pretty girl next to him. She shrugs and slides one over. He shrugs, writes his name on the top. I smile. All of this takes longer than I could have imagined.

What do they learn in these slow moments, I wonder? I am always asking that right now, in my first weeks of teaching. Are they learning to share, to trust and to help one another? Are the givers encouraging laziness from their peers, or are they even now learning generosity? Are the receivers grateful, or simply entitled?

The paper springs up magically, covering the table like snow. I am exploring their wordless world, their language of glances and hidden smiles and twitching hands. Just a piece of paper. The paper peace.