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Kristin SmithWRT 150 8:00 a.m.Literacy AutobiographyRough DraftAnd for my Next ProjectElmers’ glue is pretty good. It’s really good for paper, but not so much for other things like sticks or beads. For that you need the really good, expensive craft clue or adhesive el Diablo; the hot glue gun. They don’t allow those in classrooms though. In kindergarten we used paste that smelled amazingly minty. I could see why some of the kids would taste it. I even heard some kids ate paste. Anyhow, it wasn’t great for sticking stuff, but I liked it because it came in cool jars with spatulas on the lid. It was lumpy, but sticks as good as Elmers’. By fourth grade I am now an adhesive expert. I have made lots of things with glue. I am hoping to expand someday into other media, but this is all I have. This is mainly because more complex materials are not allowed in an elementary school classroom. Mrs. Huff, my fourth grade teacher, understands this. She said she decided kids should be taught to be independent and brought a toaster oven in the classroom. She lets us, for parties and such, bake muffins and toast pumpkin seeds in it. Mrs. Huff is a genius. I do all sorts of stuff in school when I’m not coveting craft materials. I have to admit, I don’t pay much attention in class. Math is really frustrating and boring. It’s hard to remember what numbers go where and when and why they go there when you really don’t give a damn about the process altogether. Besides, I’m getting good grades without giving a damn. Coach Proprave, the gym teacher, told me I have a good vocabulary because I used the word sarcasm correctly. I told him I heard it when Lucy said it on Snoopy. I learned to read before kindergarten by memorizing books on tape my grandma bought us. So, reading was way easy. Besides, reading was way better than math because at the end of a reading project you got to hear a story. What’s better than a good story, especially if it is a really good, scary story? Science books have amazing stories; cool stuff about cut up things and microscopes. History? Please. The best stories are the ones that are true, especially if they’re really good, scary stories. At the end of a math problem you just get more math problems. There are no good stories in that.The thing about the stories I read in school is that they are not just stories. They are in my head for a long time after I read them. It doesn’t matter what I read. I like to read at home, stuff like Sweet Valley High and the Babysitters Club. I also read A Wrinkle in Time and love fantasy novels. But, each book doesn’t end at the close of the cover. I have to get these pictures out of my head. I draw fairies really good. Some kids at school bought some of the bookmarks I made with fairies on them with their milk money or money their moms gave them for the pencil machine. I take scraps of cloth I found at home or in school and collect them. Sometimes, I sneak thread and needles from the sewing stool that opens up. I make costumes for my dolls. I read somewhere that tomato leaves were poisonous. So, I mashed them up, made a smelly soup out of them and tried to kills bugs with it. The things that I read need a space to exist in my world. Every amazing story needs cool stuff like costumes and props and cool places for them to happen in. So it is up to me to create them. When other people are impressed with the things I make, I get super happy. I think the stuff that comes into my head is great. When I read it’s like each page is a do-it-yourself manual for awesome art projects. Reading is the pool in which my brain can swim. It’s a wonderful feeling to be into a book and pull out all the “I wonder if I can”s and the “hey, what if I”s and turn them into real solid proof. Good grades are easy. To draw something people oooh and aaaah over is hard. To create something out of the nothing materials they give us in school, something that can really function, is a challenge. Once, I made myself a shirt out of scrap fabric from the craft bucket, stitches on the inside and everything. That really impressed the teacher. When it came to school work though, I never thought any of this stuff would really apply. This is all stuff I do when my school work is done. I can do projects at home sometimes, but not for a grade. School work for me is sitting at my desk, turning over page after page of busy work. Most of the time I do it fine and wait for the rest of my friends to be done. I rarely get answers wrong and was assigned a partner that I was to help do his work. Robbie is absent a lot. I think his parents are not around much because he missed the last four weeks straight after he put a bottle rocket in the back of his shoe and let his brothers light it off. He was burned so badly he had to sleep at the hospital for weeks. He has a cast now, but needs a lot of help on his school work. At least he didn’t lose his foot. But really I don’t know if it matters. He wasn’t doing too well before that either and his writing is awful. I help him, but I think he has a crush on me. Mrs. Huff has him sit next to me so we can be partners. I don’t much care because teachers rarely put you next to your friends anyway. So what if he smells like cigarettes?I am a very dutiful student and am always on task even if I have free time between assignments. I don’t let my projects interfere even if I make it annoyingly clear that I was really hoping we’d do a craft that day. So when Mrs. Huff approached me at the pencil sharpener, I was a little off guard. “I need to speak to you about your grades on your reading tests.”I flash review in my mind of what scores she could be referring to. I can’t remember getting even one answer wrong on any of those. Reading this year is a joke. I thought she gave those just for fun exercises until we went to gym. Why would there be any reason to discuss those? My palms sweat.“You seem to get one hundreds a lot. In fact I looked through them and they are all %100.”I swear I never cheated. The very idea was insulting. I never copied and if Robbie copied off of me it was not because I let him. He’s gonna fail and it is not because I didn’t try to help him. But, I never cheated. I hope she hasn’t called my mom and told her I’m a cheater! All I could squeak out as my heart hid itself somewhere under my stomach like a scared kid under covers was a lousy, “Uh-huh.”“I think maybe you’re not being challenged enough. I’ve talked to Mrs. Belger and she’s agreed to let you go to her fifth grade classroom for reading. You’ll go next door for the hour they do their reading and then return here for the rest of the day.”I had never heard of a problem where a kid wasn’t challenged enough. I always thought if you got all A’s you just were lucky and smart and your reward was a first class ticket down easy street. That’s what I heard. I guess I just imagined me circling numbers, blackening in circles, underlining the appropriate selections, and bull-shitting answers until graduation. It worked so far. The school even bussed me and a couple other kids to McDonalds for lunch one day because we got %100 right on our state assessment tests. You can’t even study for those.You mean I should want be challenged? This is brand new for me. I had never thought to be offended by not being challenged. I guess I was busy challenging myself with other things. Besides, no one has ever been bumped up a grade for anything in my school. I will be the only one. I go to the new class and it’s strangely exciting and oddly terrifying. Mrs. Belger is teaching stuff I don’t know and everyone seems to be right on board. I don’t know anyone and the girls in here treat me like I’m a baby. “Ooooh, she’s so cute! Don’t you think Lindsay? Look at her cute shoes!” Cute or not, I’m doing the same work as you. We’ll see who’s cute when I beat you on the next test. This might be my best project yet. ................
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