Meet the Heart Melter

"Teacher, what's dancing?" Abdul-Ahmed asked.

I performed a mini waltz at the front of the room.

"Ooh! Ballet!" Ali cried. This was a word he knew.

If Abdul-Ahmed is the student who makes me smile, Ali is the student who makes my heart melt.

His name isn't actually Ali, so it's a little hard for me to get all soupy over that name, but oh well. I think it's better if we call him Ali.

He came to class on time every morning, and he usually sat in the second row along the aisle. His twelve-year-old eyes would light up when I called for a game or darken with terror when he heard of a test the next day. Then he'd come early and pore over his textbook.

"Studying is for babies," an older boy remarked. I chided him.

Yes, when the other boys were too shy or cool, this is the boy who loved to volunteer for charades or pictionary or whatever, and he seemed to enjoy acting out fighting--particularly punching scenes. If I gave an optional writing assignment when they finished their test early, Ali was one of the few who would scribble away. One time when I asked them to tell me a funny story, he put his soul into a tale about a ship that crashed on an island that had dragons in it. He would ask me to come over so he could figure out words like "cave" and "scream." The story was chock full of grammatical errors (this was only level 2 after all), but it was one of the most charming things I've ever read.

I only wish I'd saved a copy for myself. Still, I told him that I think he will be a great writer some day. I am convinced of it.

"Teacher, are you always happy?" Ali asked me once.

"Teacher, am I good?"

"Teacher, I don't understand."

Gaah! Those last words are ones that an English teacher LOVES to hear! I mean, half the time you're only half-sure that everybody really "gets" it, so when somebody is humble enough to tell you they don't, I'm delighted to know.

One day, as Ali handed in his homework, he said, "Teacher, I'm sorry. My auntie--she help me, but, uh--" I looked at his paper. Yes, he obviously had gotten help, but the "help" had turned into her doing most of it for him. He had tried to cross it out or work around it, but there it was.

I saw it for what it was. We had been told to expect our students to cheat. Of course, I had laid a pretty hard line about it repeatedly. I had explained what cheating was, asked them again and again if it was okay, and even told them why we don't do it.

"Do you think you'll learn if you cheat?"

"No."

"No. That's right. If you cheat, you are hurting yourself," I smacked my own wrist. Point, smack, point. "You are hurting yourself!" Point, smack, point.

I don't know if my class was especially good or if I just got the message across, but as far as the tests went, I only caught one boy kind of cheating twice. That might seem like a lot, but then you haven't heard all of the problems that my fellow teachers had in their classes. To put it bluntly, my class was made up of angels.

Still, I had no way of knowing if they were cheating on their homework, so I just hoped for the best and graded away.

I now looked at Ali's paper. Here was a boy who was telling me he had cheated and was apologizing for it. He didn't have to tell me. I might not have noticed. But he did.

I rewarded him for his honesty by taking very few points off for errors. I hate cheating, but I love honesty more.

Ali did one more thing that caused him to burrow his way into my heart even further. Not that he needed to do anything to get there, but this made him nestle and lodge there all the more firmly.

"Whose extra homework is this?" I asked one of the boys who was still in the classroom after everyone had left. It was the same boy who had mocked Ali for studying.

As a deterrent for speaking Arabic in an all English class, I usually handed out extra homework to the guilty person. But if he or she heard someone else speaking Arabic in class, he or she could pass it on. This was sometimes a brilliant scheme and sometimes a disaster. It was brilliant because it slowed the flow of Arabic considerably and it got them listening for it so that I didn't have to. But it was a disaster sometimes when people on both sides of the room were accusing different people of speaking Arabic.

"Teacher, she speak Arabic!"

"Teacher, he lies!"

"No Teacher, she lies!"

Aah! Lord, give me the wisdom of Solomon! I would have divided that baby in two, but that would have defeated the purpose of giving out the homework.

Other times, they handed the homework around almost like a joke. Who was going to speak Arabic next?

When A had decided once to keep the extra homework because he "needed it," I chose to have two copies of homework floating around the room.

But now, almost everyone had left, and someone had left their extra homework behind. An accident? I doubted it. The only problem was that I couldn't remember who had it last.

"Hassan, do you know who had this?"

"It was Ali, Teacher."

"Okay. Please take it down and give it to him."

"Yes, Teacher."

Two minutes later, I heard someone huffing on the stairs. Ali dashed into the room to where I stood in front of the whiteboard. He gasped like he'd just run a marathon.

"Teacher!" Pant, pant. "Teacher! Hassan--he always speaking Arabic! But you don't see! This is his!"

I looked at him for a long hard moment. Pain and indecision battled within me. This was still early on in the class, and I didn't know who to believe. Hassan had always seemed trustworthy to me, yet here was Ali telling me otherwise. Who should I believe? What should I do? Was I going to have to keep chasing boys down?

As I deliberated, Ali read everything in my eyes in just a couple of moments. "No problem, Teacher." He closed his mouth, gripped the homework, and marched out of the room.

He may as well have puffed and pasted me to the whiteboard.

Maybe he was lying all along and recognized his guilt. But I suspect that in that little moment, his twelve-year-old heart grasped the concept of grace. Grace is willing to take the punishment even of the undeserving. And in that little moment, a Muslim boy displayed the kind of grace that Jesus Christ has shown toward me.

He melted my heart indeed.