Dots
There are six boxes on his piece of paper, drawings of arrows pointing from one to another. His number 2 pencil with a worn out eraser is moving steadily across the page. He is drawing ninety dots. I stop and look. I was on my way to my desk, but I notice him there, head bent, eyes straight ahead, his mouth moving silently as he counts to himself. I kneel beside his desk and I look at him, those brown eyes staring at me above his light blue mask. He’s got on that black Puma hoodie I’ve never seen him without. “Can you tell me about what you are doing?” I ask. But I already know. He is working on a math problem. “There are 6 classes and each class collects 90 cans. How many cans do the classes collect in all?” He drew six boxes to represent the classes. He is filling each box with ninety dots to represent the cans. He is sitting there, undistracted, undefeated, determined to draw five-hundred-forty dots and then count each one so that he can get the questio...