We, the Jury...

When we lived in Vermont, I was summoned to do my civic duty and serve on a jury.  Those of you who have shared that honor know how it works.  I really didn’t have a clue at the time.  I thought a prosecutor, who looked like Matlock – bad suit and all - would show up, take one look at me and decide on the spot, “fair-minded!” and I would be ushered into the foreperson’s chair immediately.  Turns out I had to prove my fairness through a series of unending interrogations.  Really, the nerve… 

I was chosen for two trials, both rape cases.  I was hoping I could choose my trials; sort of like sitting in a restaurant and poring over the menu.  “Let’s see, I think I will have the forgery, oh, and a robbery on the side.”  Rape?  I didn’t like where this was headed. 

Sitting through those train wrecks was like plopping down in the middle of a cow pie.  I felt dirty and disheveled at the end of every day.  The prosecution spared no detail from us, no matter how smarmy or indelicate.  Watching the victims testify in shaking, tearful voices was agony.  Every strand of my Southern DNA wanted to march up to the witness stand, pull them into my embrace and coo, “There, there, now darlin’.  You just cry it out…”

Deliberating was an education in itself and a very interesting study in human behavior.  The strong personalities rose to the surface rather quickly and the followers did lots of nodding and “MMhhmmm-ing.”  I innocently asked what was in the paper sack in the middle of our table.  “Her underwear,” I was informed.  Eww.

The outcomes of our decisions took different paths.  The first trial we found the defendant guilty.  He looked ashen as they arrested him on the spot and lead him away, but he kept silent.  I suppose the shock at a moment like that is quite severe.

The second trial we voted in favor of the defendant.  Here’s the judicial system education part.  Most of us felt he was, indeed, guilty.  But the judge was stern.  “Beyond a reasonable doubt.”  There were simply too many holes and not enough evidence.  We could not send a man to prison without hard proof. 

When we read the words, “not guilty,” he slumped to the table and burst into tears.  In spite of my feelings about what a less-than-honorable man I felt he was, I could not help but be moved.  I nearly cried myself.

I tell my story for this reason; it is mid-year and teachers must now make some hard decisions about student progress and who might gain favorably from repeating a grade.  I am experiencing emotions something akin to what I felt in the jury room.  Both trials, and both deliberations, we jury members paused before taking that final vote.  We felt the oppressive weight of holding a man’s future in our collective hands.  Lives forever altered based upon our faulty logic and reasoning. Scary.  I hope if I am ever a defendant in a jury trial I get jurors who a mite smarter than I am.

I have a stack of assessments on my desk like you cannot believe.  There are graphs in pretty colors and numbers and ranges and comparisons.  Good grief, you have to be part NASA analyst to figure this stuff out.  All of that must be weighed against my own classroom assessments and my observations.  Level of current ability and level of maturity must be factored.  It is a heavy responsibility.  I do not take it lightly.  It is not because I think retention is such an awful thing.  I don’t think so at all.  Here’s why:

My second child went to kindergarten very young.  Too young, really.  At the end of the year, I felt (and his teacher agreed), that repeating the year would give his maturity level time to catch up to his academic ability.  It did.  He rose quickly to the top of his class and stayed there all through his K-12 career.  This same child is now in dental school.  I not only believe that retention did not harm him, it gave him the edge to be successful.

That being said, it is still life altering to make that call.  His friends will change, the dynamics of his new and old class groups will change.  Will he or she be challenged or bored?  And of course, you cannot know what the summer months will bring in terms of having the light bulb go on.  It is not a perfect science, in any sense.

The good news is, it is a complicated process that requires the input of many people who are good at what they do.  And most importantly, the parents will make that final call.  They will judge for themselves what path to take.  Hopefully they listen to the counsel provided them, but I still believe that caring, engaged parents know their child best.

So I read graphs, and I look at pretty colors, and I weigh the “evidence” and I pray like mad.  Maybe I take it too seriously, I don’t know.  All I know is, the path to success is defined differently for every student.  I am part steering wheel and part cattle prod.

For those that will experience retention in my classroom, I hope I will bump into them somewhere down the road when they are adults themselves, and they will look me in the eye and simply say, “Thank you.”

But then again, by the time these kids are adults, I’ll be so old and senile I guess it won’t really matter…