I know you’ve been dying to know if Guppie, the beta fish, survived the summer in my care. Well, it did…barely, I had to google symptoms and discovered Guppie was suffering from fin rot. We moved the aquarium to a common area of the house and out of my daughter’s room to ensure that the weekly cleanings Guppie was accustomed to continued. After the 10 weeks of summer, I loaded up the fish and delivered it to the junior high building where Alice would be attending. Her teachers were very accommodating and willing to try anything because they had already heard rumblings about Alice and wanted to start the year on a positive note.
A week into the school year, I received a frantic email from Alice’s special education teacher alerting me that Guppie was no longer with us. Alice happened to be absent that day, but staff were concerned with how she would react when she returned. I replied that I would have time in my schedule later in the week to replace the fish, but to have Alice let me know if that’s what she wanted and if she wanted the same or different color of beta.
When Alice returned to school she sent me an email asking if it would be okay with me if she didn’t get a replacement fish. One of the staff at school had a turtle that had babies and offered her a baby turtle to keep in the classroom instead. I could tell from the email that Alice was concerned about hurting my feelings by “cutting me out” of the class pet deal, but the exact opposite was true. I replied and said I loved the idea of a turtle, but I needed to an email from her teacher confirming that the turtle arrangement was okay with her.
What was great about the turtle is now Alice was making connections with the staff in her building and I could fade myself out of the intervention. Her teacher put things on her reward menu for completing work and attending her classes that Alice could “buy” for her turtle (a heat lamp, plants, rocks, etc). The biggest factor in the success of this plan was never about the fish, but it was about the relationships, connecting with Alice and letting her know that we understood her priorities and what she valued and that we valued HER.
Once relationships were established it created a brave space for Alice to work through some of her struggles with school attendance, peer relationships and staying on task. She trusted her teacher to open up and participate in specially designed instruction based in cognitive behavior therapy and dialectical behavior therapy. (McClure, J.M., et al. (2019). CBT Express, The Guilford Press, New York. & Mazza, James & Mazza, Elizabeth, et al. (2016). DBT Skills in Schools: Skills Training for Emotional Problems in Adolescents, The Guilford Press, New York.)
A month or so later, I was back in the building to consult with a team on a different student and I was paged down to the office. Even as an adult, I still don’t like being called down to the office…it never seems to be for something good, does it? I was told to go down to the special education classroom because Alice had seen me in the hallway and needed to talk to me. It felt good to know that a middle school girl actually wanted to engage with an adult and admittedly I wanted to check out her baby turtle.
When I got to the classroom, she introduced me to Selena, the turtle and then said she had a surprise she had been keeping for me. Alice walked to the full size refrigerator in the kitchen area of the classroom, opened the freezer door and pulled out a little white box when a flower on top made out of pink and green paper. Inside the box, were the remains of Guppie. She had been saving it until the next time she saw me, so we could have a proper burial. We found a spoon in the kitchenette drawer and walked outside to a newly planted tree, dug a hole with the spoon, and placed the box in the hole. Unfortunately in my role, when students do well, my support fades and the school-based team takes over…so we said our goodbyes to Guppie and each other.
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