The Panda

Mid-November of my teacher training year and I was panicking.

I stood at the front of the classroom, watching the windows steam up from the relentless rain as the noise levels rose to a roar. I had mistimed my lesson and my Year 9 class was going off the walls on a pendulum swinging from apathy to deliberate aggravation. I felt like a failure as I surveyed the chaos and contemplated crawling into the cupboard for a good cry. I doubted if they would have noticed.
“Is this really for me?” I silently wondered. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

I caught the eye of one sweet student who will be known as J, and who had given me a tour of the school on my first day. Softly spoken, J had shown me every corner of the school with a shy smile, which had widened into one of genuine joy when we reached the Art department. She told me all about a huge chalk drawing of a panda she had created which had been put on display, but, as it was in a classroom where a GCSE exam was taking place, she promised to show it to me another day.

Flash forward six weeks later and something had gone wrong for J. The shy smile had been replaced with a sullen sneer, black eyeliner now coated the once eager eyes and the once earnest student now came into a lot of her classes earnestly looking for a fight and had been kicked out of too many lessons to keep count of.

Maybe she instinctively sensed my vulnerability due to a lack of experience, maybe we had bonded on that first day, maybe I just didn’t rise to it, but J went easy on me in English. Yes, she had an attitude, but she never kicked off in my lessons. And I felt for her. The anger arose from incomprehensible pain. Mum had left, then Dad had left. Her current living situation was complex.

“I’ve been angry since Year 5.” she once told me, in a matter of fact tone that made my heart ache.

The school were aware of J’s struggles and so she had avoided being put on a behaviour report card. Until the day of that disastrous lesson, which is also partly why I was sad, when she traipsed in with ten other pupils to leave her report card on my desk at the beginning of the lesson. (I really did teach the naughtiest class in the school, for more on them, click here.)
She flung her tightly folded report card onto my desk. I didn’t comment but was unable to suppress a sigh of disappointment.

Miraculously, they all eventually settled and cracked on with some writing. I circulated the room, inwardly relieved. Ten minutes before the end of the lesson, I went back to my desk to fill out the report cards. I ticked methodically, leaving J until last.

But when I unfolded it, it wasn’t a behaviour report card. I stopped, swallowed hard, tears welling up inexplicably.

The panda.

J had gone to reprographics, borrowed a camera, gone to the art department, taken a picture of her panda, and printed off a copy for me.

I held it in my hands wordlessly and when I looked up I saw her watching me, nervously. “Thank you” I mouthed silently and her shy smile from September made a brief reappearance as she nodded “you’re welcome.”

I will never know why she had taken the time to be so thoughtful, why she had chosen that particular day or how she had remembered her promise with all that was going on in her life.
What she couldn’t have known was that what she saw as a small act, was not small at all and it spurred me on in a moment where I was seriously considering giving up. A gift of encouragement from God Himself.

Thank you, Lord, for J and students like her. As it was then, it still is now: my only hope is that You hold all of us in Your hands.