<hr/><div class="floatleft">(http://i.imgur.com/JhIggyw.jpg)</div><strong>Name:</strong>Bridgette Desjardins<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Ms. Desjardins’ psychology classroom -<strong>COPING SKILLS</strong><br/><strong>Date/Time:</strong>Tusday September 9th - 7:35 AM<br/><strong>Tagging:</strong>Gabriel Summers, Tessa Cantrell, Neena Thurman<br/><strong>Content:</strong>Bridgette has just finished role call, and she carefully starts the class, aware that this class at the start of the day is not ideal.<br/><hr/><br/>Bridgette preferred the students to use one of two names, ‘Ms. D’, or if they were capable of saying it, ‘Ms. Desjardins’. She responded to almost anything, and it was never difficult for her to tell when one of her students needed her attention. So, ‘Bridges’, ‘Dessy’, ‘Hey teach,’ and a number of other names were used on a daily basis. But it was a small joke between her and almost every student, they all knew that she most preferred her full last name, and students mispronounced it on purpose to tease her.<br/><br/><strong>“And Barry?” </strong>York, Barry was always the last name on the role call for this class. A yawning ‘here.’ lifted from the quiet air of the students in her class, and she marked the appropriate box by his name. There was one student missing, one Chris Claire, he was often absent due to his unpredictable mutation. So, she continued on without inquiry.<br/><br/>Ms. Desjardins didn’t seat her students in rows and columns. She didn’t like the systematic approach that most teachers used. Instead, she had two large circular tables with five students sitting at each one. She made an attempt to balance out gender at each table, considering it important that men and women interact with each other freely.<br/><br/>Table one had Michael, Sarah, Tess, Gabriel and Neena<br/><br/>Table two had Shane, Leslie, Josh, Haily, and Chris. But Chris was absent.<br/><strong><br/>“Alright everyone! Good morning.”</strong>Her accent was as slurred and as sharp as ever. It had taken some time for her to be intelligible, but she had figured it out when she was about twenty five.<strong>“I hope we’ve all had our coffee,” </strong>She could tell that over half of the class was tired. Three of the students had taken Coping Skills last spring, and they had benefited so much from the class that they came back to assist other students who’d never taken it before. This collection of kids hadn’t been exposed to the real course yet, and it wasn’t exactly an easy class. It was closer to group therapy than it was to a class. Students did study psychology, but everything was focused toward emotional development and forging a path into a healthy adulthood.<br/><br/>Bridgette brought the roll call sheet to her desk and leaned against the it to speak to her class. She had a signature coffee mug that she was almost always holding in her left hand, especially during this class, the first of the day for her and most of the students.<strong>“Alright. How are we?”</strong>It was an important question, and unlike most other courses, the students feelings were part of the syllabus.<strong> “I know zat zis class should probably be later in zah day, but, alas, it is not.”</strong><br/><br/>This was the first day that people were going to share. More than a fifth of the students dropped Coping Skills after this day in the course. It was not a class for everyone, and not everyone knew that they signed up for something similar to group therapy. But for the students who stuck around, bonding was a natural consequence to sharing each other’s lives. Learning how to deal with real pain and real loss, real objectification, and real oppression; that all took exercise, and the students were expected to be confidential about what they heard in the class from other students.<br/><strong><br/>“If you check zah syllabus, today will be zah first day zat we are sharing with each uzah.” </strong>Her tall frame lifted away from the desk, standing she made her way to the chalkboard at the front of the class. Other teacher’s preferred the white board, but Bridgette absolutely hated the smell of dry erase pens, and she would not have it. White chalk and blackboards were the only way, and it was easier on the student’s eyes.<br/><br/>She started scratching onto the board in her relatively sloppy handwriting. “Fear, shame, humiliation, pride, confusion, grief, depression, anger, anxiety” Each word was in all capital letters, underlined, and each word appeared to be a title for lists that they were going to form. As she wrote them down, she talked about why she was doing so,<strong>“I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. Zis is difficult, to meet one anozah, and to talk openly about our lives at zee same time. It is not fun. And it will usually evoke zeese feelings from zee speaker as well as zee rest of zee class.”</strong><br/><br/>She turned now, still explaining,<strong>“We are humans, and humans are empathetic creatures.” </strong>She was careful not to let her accent dominate that sentence.<strong> “It is natural. Zeese feelings are natural. It is important to learn about zeese feelings. We cannot let zhem control us.”</strong><br/><br/><strong>“So. we will be telling short stories to each ozah about our lives. Specifically, about somezing zat makes us feel one of zee emotions on zee board. …”</strong>She let that sink in, it was not a traditional teaching method at all.<strong> “I will start…” </strong>She paused and made a small adjustment to her broadcasting emotion. She tried to even out, to limit the station to static, so to speak. She didn’t want to confuse anyone by allowing her own feelings to impact them.<strong>“Zhat is… unless we have some one brave in zee class today. Anyone?”</strong><br/><br/>The three students that had taken this class before looked on with adoration. They remembered this day in their last time through the course. And, each of them knew that it was an important day for anyone who hadn’t taken the class. Like Ms. Desjardins, they sat back and waited for other kids to speak up. Even if no one wanted to, they would only share if their teacher called on them directly, They were Sarah, Josh, and Shane, all nineteen, and happy to help anyone else in the class. This course had changed each of their lives, and they were unofficial T.A.’s on days like this. Bridgette had mentioned it to the class last week, that they’d been down this road before.<br/><br/>Most of the class was still, they looked around at each other. Bridgette could hear a cacophony of confusion. She was an empath, and everyone’s emotions were stirring around, some of the kids were scared, others were nervous, and a few looked like they were already close to tears by the mere prospect of sharing their lives like that in front of their peers. Bridgette waited, she could tell that a few kids were close to raising their hands.