“Are you going to decorate your door, Mr. Hasan?” a student asks.
“Well, I’ve kinda started.”
“That’s it? That red paper? I thought someone was helping you.”
“They’re not finished.”
“Judging is Friday, Mr. Hasan. You want us to help?”
Easy question to answer.
And so they take the snowflakes cut out from handed-in worksheets. And they take the elf with my face superimposed. And they ask for tape and scissors and pens and more butcher paper (because the red paper on the door was ragged at the bottom and needed to be neatened up).
They’re in the hall as I write. I see movement under the door. And periodically I hear the sound of packing tape being pulled from the roll.
“We’re going to redo the tape at the top,” they say.
“Yeah, the top of the door is dusty, so the tape didn’t stick. If you want, you could…”
“Mr. Hasan,” Sonya says peering around the door with a smile to reassure me. “We got this,”
And so they did.