The knitter

My current job is to help teachers transition through the changes in the special education laws and to support students who are below grade level. From what I've seen at this school, everyone works pretty hard. People stay late, everyone participates in school activities, in general people just look busy. That is, except the knitter.

Since I came to the school mid-year, I work on a section of a long strip of desks occupied by myself, two other teacher's assistants, and a Title One (poor school support) teacher. The knitter is the Title I teacher who sits next to me. She's a rounder woman in her late 50's with an expression that makes you want to offer her some stool softener. Officially, her posted schedule looks very full and busy. To the untrained eye, it would appear that she works with multitudes of students with a few prep times blocked in. Um hmm. Well, in reality her times with groups are quite often cut short because "it's a good stopping point" or the student seems "a little off task and unproductive". And her prep times? Her teaching includes setting students up on the computer or teaching from a very perscriptive program. There is no preparation needed.

So my desk neighbor spends her days knitting. She puts on her reading glasses, pulls out her latest project, and knits. She's finished an entire sweater this week. No joke. One day, her supervisor was here and asked the knitter to look over something he was writing. As she sat there knitting, she told him it was her break time, and she doesn't let other people make her work during that time; it would never make a difference to anyone anyway. The supervisor just sat there with the most flabbergasted look on her face.

So as kids fall further and further behind in school (and come to me for help), she knits. She knits scarves, gloves, sweaters, hats and who knows what else. Maybe her knitting will eventually make it to one of the kids she should be helping. Maybe in some homeless shelter an undereducated guy who used to go to this school will be given a hand-knit hat and be kept warm. He'll probably be thankful to have it, never knowing the irony.