Somebody Else's Kids- Claudia

In Torey Hayden’s Somebody Else’s Kids, four extraordinary students are highlighted, Boo, Lori, Tomaso, and Claudia. They each struggle with learning disabilities and throughout the book, Torey addresses each one in a different way. She is compassionate towards her students and is dedicated to giving them the best chances for success in her classroom by trying different ways of helping them. One student that she goes above and beyond for is Claudia.

Claudia is a well-behaved 12-year-old honors student who came from a private school on the other side of town. She has had no history of being a bad student, behaviorally or academically. She struggled was being pregnant. Due to the lack of educational programs for pregnant students, Claudia was placed in Torey’s class. Torey also noticed something else about her that Claudia was struggling with that no other one of her teachers had seen as an issue. She struggled with being immensely shy, becoming physically ill when presenting in front of people and had to be coerced to work in groups.

To accommodate Claudia, Torey made may efforts to help her be successful. Academically, Torey would have all of Claudia’s assignments ready for her when she entered the class because Claudia, in the beginning, was not interested in socializing. To help with her social skills, Torey would encourage Claudia to work with others in the group. This was demonstrated when Torey joins the group when they are painting because she had seen Claudia just watching and when Torey joined, Claudia began to participate and loosen up. She began laughing with the group and volunteered to help others in the group. Torey also took the time to get to know more about Claudia and showed care for her. Torey also gave Claudia responsibilities in the classroom, for example working with Boo to help her social skills. Torey also made attempts to build a relationship with Claudia’s parents by inviting them to informal meetings to give them incite to what the program for Claudia and to try and work with them to help Claudia, though they were not very interested in helping. Torey does give Claudia an outlet to talk about her pregnancy and other problems and worked to find her support groups.

Though Torey did as much as she could to accommodate Claudia, there were some setbacks. The first setback was Claudia’s lack of social skills. She entered the classroom very shy and timid with little interest in interacting with the group or even Torey. The next setback was Claudia’s parents not being on board with seeking help for their daughter. Torey made multiple attempts to try and reach out to Claudia’s parents at the meetings, encouraging them to get Claudia help to deal with her pregnancy, the baby, and educate her on the process. They were very resistant and saw Torey’s attempts to be helpful as crossing the boundaries. Claudia’s father, mainly, only saw things his way and did not think his daughter needed help in dealing with anything. Another setback was that Torey allowed Claudia to come to her and talk about her situation and everything, which could be seen by others as crossing a teacher-student relationship boundary.

With the setbacks that Torey faced in trying to accommodate and help Claudia, this did cause some potential issues. With Claudia’s social anxieties, it made it hard for her in interact with others and have friends at her Catholic School. Her previous teachers acknowledged her shyness, but it was not need as a hindrance because she academically thrived. This issue was noticed by Torey when Claudia came to her class because she would come in, grab her folder, and work on her assignments before going home at the end. She did not socialize with the other students voluntarily at first. Another potential issue for Claudia is that since her parents, mostly her father, were not on board with helping her seek help to deal with her pregnancy and social issues, Claudia suffered before meeting Torey. If this had continued, Claudia would be more socially distant from others and she may have continued with another suicide attempt.

If Claudia was a student in my mathematics classroom, I would try many different things to accommodate her. Because Claudia was an excellent student, I would focus more on her social anxieties. I would have her focus on her academics to help continue her education, but I might have her display her understanding of the concepts by teaching it to the other students. She struggles immensely with presenting in front of a large group, so I would have her teach one or two students at a time. I would also give her responsibilities in helping to improve lessons for the other students, by allowing her to create her own lessons for topics we are learning. I would also direct students to her if they needed extra assistance and treat her almost as a co-teacher. Giving Claudia jobs to help the other students forces her to interact with others, which can help her become more confident in social settings.

In my classroom, though I have been able to see how Torey was able to help her, I think I would still have some challenges. I have students that come to me with every problem they have in their lives, so I do not think it would be a challenge to allow Claudia to feel accepted and cared about by me. I think the struggle would be more getting the rest of the students in the class to accept her because students can be very judgmental with those who are different from them. I also think that I would struggle getting parental involvement because I have called many parents in my few years at my current school and I have had parents say they have given up on their kid and I have had parents say they will talk to them but if they don’t want to they won’t. Not becoming discouraged to help my student may be a struggle because as an educator, there is only so much I can do, but I would stop trying to help as much as possible.

Claudia struggled with more social skills than academia. Her pregnancy then further hindered her ability to make friends and be accepted by her family and her previous school. Torey accommodated her by giving her supports, a person to come to for guidance, and pushing her socially. Though there were setbacks with Claudia’s family not being fully onboard with seeking counseling or supports for her during her pregnancy, Torey still managed to give her a person to talk to who actually cared. I think that if Claudia were a student in my classroom, I would try similar tactics to help with her social skills, though it may take some time for the other students to accept her.

References

Hayden, T. (1981). Somebody Else’s Kids. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.