Out of My Mind

Melody reflects on the difficulties that aides and teachers must have working with kids like her, and those issues probably tie into the high turnover rate at her school. Of all of her teachers, it’s Mrs. Tracey, Melody’s second-grade teacher, with whom Melody connects. Mrs. Tracey recognizes that Melody likes books and reading, and even more importantly, realizes that Dr. Seuss level books are not at all challenging for her young student. The teacher gets higher-level audiobooks for Melody, then asks her critical thinking questions about what she has read when she finishes listening to the recordings. This process provides Melody with an outlet to expand her mind and feel engaged at the same time.

The third-grade teacher, Mrs. Billups, does not follow the same process. Instead, she treats the students as if they are incapable of basic understandings, treating them to a CD of music for infants, and goes over the letters of the alphabet daily. Melody hits a breaking point where she begins to screech and scream, “because I couldn’t talk and tell her to shut up! And that made me cry because I’d never be able to tell anybody what I was really thinking” (54).