I made another child cry today. It's only the second, but then it's only been three weeks... two and a half with kids. I'm not looking for a response, affirmation or condemnation, as to my manner with children. I find that most children respond to me on a sliding scale with either laughter or tears on the terminus ends.
It started with the homework. The child in question is taking two weeks off of his/her vacation to go back to school. I assigned for the two weeks one Unit (9 pages) in her/his workbook, and a children's book to read in its entirety. I met with the five stages of grief flashing before me in a five-second span. They were then repeated throughout the remainder of our silent lesson.

1. Denial: The immediate response was a honed gaze of abject horrified shock accompanied by an incredulous, emphatic, and rather irate (See "2." below) "No." S/He simply refused to do the work. However before the entire breath escaped her/his lungs, s/he had already moved on to...

2. Anger: This was pretty much included in the "No" above. Then expounded on in the duration.

3. Barganing: "It's too much." (I'm cleaning up the grammar and usage for the ease of communicating this story to native English speakers as I presume the vast majority of my audience to be; it sounded more like "Too much" which still gets the point across, but I'm an English major and (just recently) Teacher, so I thought it better to clean it up a little bit.) Inherent in the claim "It's too much" is a barter for less. The terms for how much less were far clearer the third or fourth time around.

4. Depression: This first bout ended in a good quarter hour of a dejected, I'm-going-to-turn-my-chair-around-and-look-out-of-the-window tantrum during which I whistled a little tune and drew a picture on the whiteboard. It is a common practice when things get a little too tense in the classroom, especially since "hangman" here requires a monster to inflict bodily harm to the drawn effigies of unknown English words.

5. With ten minutes left in class, the student rose and started drawing too. It was partially to examine and admire my version of the Pan's Labyrinth "Cyclops" with eyes on its palms, and partielly out of sheer boredom in my unwillingness to engage in further entreaties to a silent youngster. Shortly before our time to go we ran through the first four stages a few more times. I believe we reached some level of acceptance and understanding when I sat the child down, blinking at me through tear-flooded eyes and said, "Do what you can. I'm not trying to make this hard for you. I want you to enjoy it. I want to make it easier. Tell me how I can help, and I'll do what I can. I'll see you in two weeks." I picked the book up off of the floor and handed to the student who walked slowly out the door without looking back.

I felt like a teacher. I'm just sorry it took a child's emotional breakdown.