The Foxes
The strong readers. The quick ones. The ones who were already expected to know.
But foxes were sly. Clever in a way that made people distrust them. Praise could be another kind of cage.
A classroom memory
The Sparrow
In second grade, there were three reading groups. I was assigned one of them. I chose another name.
Choose your reading group.
The Rabbits
The largest group. The ordinary readers. Safe in the middle, if you could call it safe.
Rabbits were plentiful. Timid. Always somebody else's lunch. A crowd can be a way of disappearing.
The Toads
The small group. The readers who needed help. The group no child wanted to enter.
A toad belonged to mud and shadow. It was stepped around. One girl carried that word long after the lesson ended.
The teacher may have meant the animals as a cheerful classroom device. But children understand rank. We understand who is praised, who is ordinary, and who has been made to feel small.
I was in the Fox group. I was meant to be pleased. But I did not want an animal chosen for me.
I did not want to be sly, or selected, or pinned to a reading level as though it were a permanent truth. So I gave myself another name.
I was a Sparrow.
Small, but tough. Able to soar. Able to see the world beyond the classroom, beyond the charts, beyond the name somebody else had written beside me.
A sparrow was not the grandest bird. That was the point. It was free.
The teacher had three groups.
I had four.