Just a little something

I have a little friend in my class - she tends to drive me crazy! 

She blurts out answers, and if she does remember to raise her hand, she does the Uhn, Uhn noise so I'll notice her. She's always bossing just about everyone in my room {sometimes even ME!}. When I'm teaching, I can almost count on her finding something in her desk to play with. She fights with people I partner her with. She always wants to be first - first in line, first to do whatever (and while I usually like that, in this case it means she's rushing and running). And she likes to tattle.

Am I the only one with a sweetie like this? 

Wednesday, she was just super annoying to me. 

And that night, I started thinking about her. She has a rough home life. Mom was a guest of the state for a while, and even now this girl seems to alternate between living with grandma and mom. A couple times when I've been driving to school (45 minutes early), I've seen this girl running to catch up with her sister and her sister's friend as they come to school, and they aren't even trying to wait for her. She doesn't seem to "get" how to make friends, or even treat people. Nobody came to conferences to visit with me about her.  

And argh, I started thinking, I wonder if she feels like nobody cares about her. And so some of the things she does (see above), are attention getters - not really annoy-the-teacher things :) {since it's already March 1st, you might say I'm a slow learner, but I don't know.}

We have 2 weeks until Spring Break. I decided that I'm going to try, every day, to do 5 positives with this girl. Thursday, I walked by her and gave her a quick rub on the back. I sometimes write little "good on you" notes to my kids and I wrote one to her. I wrote a quick positive on her center paper. I made sure I complemented her for her math work. 

Maybe it will make a difference, maybe not. But can it really hurt anything?