Snapshot From RHS: Busy Students Discuss Value of Patience

Two black couches sit at right angles to each other in the back of a classroom above the gym, where Sara Olson’s Leadership classes meet. Rolled up posters and Christmas decorations (a wreath, two evergreen bushes) fill the couches and students, in desks, discuss a Jane Haddam quote written on the whiteboard: “In my day, we didn’t have self-esteem, we had self-respect and had no more of it than we had earned.”

Boy in Pink Polo: We need to have respect for ourselves if we want others to respect us.

Girl with Flower-Print Headband: You have give respect to get respect, and you won’t be able to gain respect from others until you respect yourself first.

Girl in Blue Toms: It’s kind of like your dignity. Your pride.

Boy in Cargo Shorts: Without being cocking or arrogant.

Ms. Olson: Thank you for those contributions. Today, I want you to work on two notecards. Whoever is done first, take out the boxes.

Students transition into writing compliments on index cards. After a few minutes, a girl with orange highlights gets up and removes shoeboxes from a tall cupboard by the wall. The boxes are covered with paper in a variety of colors – sky blue, purple, red-and-black checkerboard – and decorated with comics and foam scrapbook letters. On one shoebox, the mail slot mouth has fangs. Another is made to look like a retro stereo system with tape deck, speakers, and CD port.

A girl with peacock feather earrings eats the free, school provided breakfast: Signature 100% apple juice in a four ounce cup, distributed by Food Services of America, and a frosted brown sugar cinnamon PopTart.

While students drop compliment cards in shoeboxes, Ms. Olson distributes a handout on green paper on “the essential characteristics”: patience, kindness, humility, respect, selflessness, forgiveness, honesty, and commitment. The girl with orange highlights volunteers to read.

Reminders of the passing of time – a small paper birthday calendar taped to a pillar, a laminated 2011-2012 calendar mounted on an adjacent wall, a detailed five-day calendar drawn on the whiteboard – pepper the room. (On Monday there is an Executive Board Meeting; on Tuesday, a Tri-High Meeting; on Friday, Marines will be in the commons during lunch. Don’t forget the food drive!)

Ms. Olson: When do you show patience?

Cargo Shorts: Walking in the hallways.

Ms. Olson: What does “patience” mean?

Girl with Pearl Bracelet: Being able to wait without being irritated or upset.

Pink polo: Taking your time, staying relaxed and calm.

Blue Toms: Working with others and doing it at their speed and not getting angry.

Pearl Bracelet: Not trying to fight someone because they say something bad.

Ms. Olson pauses, then continues: What’s impulse shopping?

Girl with Leopard Print Shoes and Louis Vuitton Bag: You keep on buying and buying. And you don’t ask, “Do I really need this?” It looks shiny at the moment, and you collect stuff like on “Hoarders.”

Flower-Print Headband: I was watching “The Tyra Banks Show,” and it was about this exactly. Shopping can be a habit, an addiction, and people don’t know how to control themselves.

Ms. Olson: So how can we connect this to self-control? Do you have good relationships with people who are out of control? Maybe they’re not out of control in their work or their studies but out of control in their shopping, or how they react to you…

Pearl Bracelet: People should be able to summarize how you’ll react to something. It shouldn’t be up and down all the time.

Ms. Olson: I want you to stand up and find somebody with the same color shirt as you. Once you’ve found that person, go sit by them. With this new person, discuss: Are there specific individuals who challenge your patience? And how can you respond to them in a more patient, self-controlled way?

Blue Toms and Pearl Bracelet pair up and talk.

Toms: My mom is one of the strict parents. Sometimes I feel like I live in jail. And my sister gets on my back, and my brother practices his wrestling on me. He always finds a way to insult me. He calls me dumbass. He calls me midget.

Bracelet: What’s your response?

Toms: Sometimes I go off and I push him. Sometimes I hit him. That’s when he really breaks me, though, so I have to be nice.

Note: This column is a cross-section, a slice of life, a glimpse into the ordinary and sometimes surprising moments that happen at the real Renton High School. It is not comprehensive. Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of students.