"Make friends with my daughter, and I'll pay you a thousand dollars."
Tara's junior year of high school is turned upside down after she collides into the life of Aurora Rosenberg, the autistic teenage heiress to Rosenberg Technologies. Mr. Rosenberg...
I've never seen a classroom like this before. A few rows of tables with chairs, stools, and therapy balls are lined up to the left of the room. To the right are sofas, beanbag chairs, and miscellaneous weird seats. Students sit at desks or in the other areas with trays for paper on their laps.
Aurora and Dawn sit at the tables, Aurora bouncing on a therapy ball seat and Dawn sitting on a purple stool. Debra has sunk into a beanbag chair, holding a tray with a cushion on the bottom in her lap. I also recognize the hijabi girl from my calculus class bouncing wildly on a therapy ball while a butch girl hovers over her nervously, apparently worried about her falling off.
A pretty hijabi woman with glasses and rosy red lipstick greets me. "Hi, I'm Ms. Sharma. You must be Tara, the new student."
I nod.
"It's nice to meet you," she says.
The bell rings and people arrange themselves in their chairs. Adam has taken my bag and sat down on a couch; he winks at me and shows me that the seat next to him is still open.
I notice two aides in the classroom. One of them has approached a boy who is chewing on a large eraser. She hands him a rubber toy and he relinquishes the eraser. She says something to him and he nods while chewing the toy. The other aide has approached the bouncing hijabi girl. He says something and points to the corner of the wooden desk, probably explaining the danger of her wild bouncing. She slows her bouncing and he gives her a thumbs up.
I've never been in a classroom like this.
Ms. Sharma notices the way I'm looking around the room. "This setup is called a flexible classroom. Students get to choose wherever they sit. It looks like Adam is hoping to sit with you, but you should choose what makes you comfortable."
The couch next to Adam seems just fine with me.
Ms. Sharma points to two doors in the back of the room. "Those are our calm-down rooms. If you're ever feeling too stressed, you can go into one of them to take a break. If you stay in there for more than a few minutes, an aide might come and check on you."
I nod. I've never heard about anything like that.
"Do you feel like introducing yourself to the class?" Ms. Sharma asks.
"Sure."
Ms. Sharma holds up her right hand in an odd position, with her middle and ring fingers touching her thumb and her pointer and pinky fingers up in the air. The students notice and begin doing the same gesture. "Quiet coyote!" one student whispers to another. The class settles down.
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[A digital drawing of Ms. Sharma and Tara. Ms. Sharma is a sweet-looking hijabi woman with tan skin and glasses. She is doing the Quiet Coyote sign, with her index and pinky fingers up and her other two fingertips touching her thumb, making her hand shape look like a coyote head (which might be more obvious if you try doing it yourself). Ms. Sharma is smiling, and Tara looks awkwardly optimistic.]
