LA MORENITA, Chapter 9

When the next school year started, Araceli discovered that second grade wasn’t much better than first grade. Her teacher now was Mrs. Bear, a large, friendly woman with orange hair and freckles who liked to hug her students. But Araceli was still trapped in the same reading group with Mary Jo and Gordon. It bothered her that the reading books were so boring and so simple, and that her reading group was still two books behind everybody else. That nasty girl was still calling them “Pee-Pee, Snotty, and Mexie”, and the other students were still laughing.
One lunch period, Araceli picked up the advanced reading group’s book and read the first twenty pages to see if it was any better. It wasn’t.
It also upset Araceli that Mrs. Bear wouldn’t call on her to answer questions in class. Araceli was beginning to think that she could put one of her Barbie dolls at her desk and nobody would know the difference.
After weeks of frustration and boredom, Araceli finally complained to Maria about being trapped in the slow reading group. This time, Maria heard her complaint. She went to see Mrs. Bear.
“Oh, Mrs. Schmidt!” Mrs. Bear gushed. “It’s such a pleasure to meet you! Araceli is one of my favorite students.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Maria said. “The reason I’ve come is I have concerns about Araceli being in your slowest reading group. I know how well she reads at home. She just finished reading Little Women, and I don’t understand why she’s still reading with your slowest group.”
“Oh, my goodness!” Mrs. Bear said. “Do you think we think Araceli is a slow reader?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Maria said. “What else can I think?”
“Araceli may be the best reader in my room,” Mrs. Bear said. “I’m not sure because we don’t really test reading until the fourth grade, but I think she probably reads somewhere above the eighth grade level. She certainly doesn’t need any tips from me on how to read.”
“Then why is she in the last group?”
“Because she’s a natural teacher. If it weren’t for her, those other two students wouldn’t be able to read at all. It’s remarkable what she’s done with them. Miss Piccolo and I were just talking the other day about what a remarkable person your daughter is.”
Maria wondered why no one had ever said this to her before. She started to say this when Mrs. Bear interrupted her. “Really, Mrs. Schmidt,” Mrs. Bear continued. “I think you should stay and watch your daughter in action.”
Maria agreed.
After the Pledge of Allegiance, Mrs. Bear told Araceli’s group to read a story in their reading books. Mrs. Bear took one of the books and gave it to Maria. The story was about a family in which everybody had two names which were exactly the same. The sister and brother in the story were named Penny Penny and Billy Billy. They had two names so that, if they didn’t come when their first name was called, they would always come after their second name was called. The family lived on a farm where they kept a lot of corn in a silo. One day the temperature got so hot that all the corn in the silo popped, and there was so much popcorn falling that Penny Penny and Billy Billy thought it was snowing.
Maria noticed that all the students in the class were reading individually at their desks except for Araceli, Mary Jo, and Gordon. The three of them had gathered together in a corner. Maria grabbed a student chair and came over. As she sat down, she heard Araceli ask the boy if he had to go to the bathroom. The boy said no. Araceli handed the girl a tissue. The girl blew her nose twice, then got up and deposited the tissue in a nearby wastebasket. When the girl came back, she smiled sheepishly. “I wish it would stop running like that,” she said. Araceli smiled and turned the pages until she found a word that she was looking for. She pointed to it. “Do you know what that word is?” she asked.
Mary Jo nodded, but Maria thought the girl wasn’t sure.
Gordon stared at the word for a while. “Isn’t that ‘popcorn’?”
“That’s right,” Araceli said. “But how did you know to say it like that? Why didn’t you tell me it was ‘popecorn’.”
Mary Jo laughed. “There’s no such word as ‘popecorn’.”
“Sure, but why isn’t ‘popcorn’ pronounced ‘popecorn’?”
Gordon and Mary Jo stared at the word for a while. A glimmer of recognition flashed in Gordon’s eyes. He smiled. “No silent ‘e’.”
Mary Jo’s face lit up. “Yeah!” she said.
“Okay,”Araceli said. “Look at these other pages. Do you see any hard words that you don’t know the meaning of, or how to say them?” Gordon and Mary Jo shuffled though pages, searching for hard words. They turned to Araceli and shook their heads. “All right,” Araceli said. “Let’s get started.”
Maria got up from her chair and walked up to Mrs. Bear’s desk. Mrs. Bear looked up and smiled. “So what do you think?” she whispered.
“You’re right,” Maria said in a low voice. “She seems to be helping the others. But what about her?”
“I’m not sure I understand you,” Mrs. Bear said.
“Shouldn’t she be reading more difficult material?”
“She does that at home, doesn’t she?”
“But why can’t she do that at school?”
“If we put her in a class that matched her reading level, we’d have to skip her to the eighth grade, and she’d lose out on basic instruction for other subjects like Math and Science. Those are subjects you just can’t take a giant leap in. If Araceli misses out on the learning steps for those subjects, she’ll always feel behind. Besides, there are several emotional and social development steps she’d miss.”
Maria thought about her group sessions at the mental health center. One of the women in group had been an immature, needy soul who had been a violin prodigy as a child, but now she was so overwhelmed by life that her constant child-like whimpering irritated everybody in the group.
“If you don’t believe me,” Mrs. Bear continued, “You should talk to our principal, Mr. Diggs. He was skipped a grade when he was in grade school, so he knows the damage it can do. That’s why he refuses to let any of his students go through the same pain.”
Maria considered this. She wasn’t sure whether the people at school had a point or if they were just banding together to deny opportunities to her daughter. She didn’t meet with anyone after that. But the more she thought about it, the more she was convinced that Araceli was being short-changed and there was nothing she could do about it.