Double Double Toil and Trouble..

Life and teaching is harder when there are two. Two identical faces in the same class. Two khaki jumpers with navy blue polos, black shoes, and braided heads of hair. It is hard with twins, at home or in the classroom, especially when those twins have the exact same schedule, same face, same height, matching voices, and same need to shine. My twin’s names were hardly different and each day they were dressed in identical outfits. They liked stirring the pot and were insanely boy crazy. Both had an inability to decipher the line between flirting and annoyance, and one thing was for sure, if both were in attendance a teacher’s life would not be boring.

Diana and Dea were quick as a whip. Before you knew it they had written a note, sent it across the room, told a secret to the person behind them, laughed about the contents of the note, and left another student highly frustrated. Their tactics were impressive really and my ability to dish out consequences was mild. Teachers rarely sound as serious as they need to when they go, “Diana...No Dea...No Diana, hands on the desk, pencil down.” The value often gets lost in the mix up with whom you are actually speaking.

The first year brought several phone calls home, multitudes of silent lunches, and I should have been named MVP wide receiver for the notes I intercepted by Christmas break. By spring, I was begging my administrator to separate these two enthusiastic young ladies.

Both Diana and Dea could read fluently. They flew past words students in grade levels ahead of them struggled with and breezed through books. Whenever we read out loud the two would fight over who would get to read next. While fluency was high, comprehension was low. This was their biggest struggle and the one hindrance that held them back from truly being proficient according to standardized tests. I also believed their constant need to one-up each other in class held them back from academic achievement and confidence that they could handle a bigger setting.

There were good days. The girls were people pleasers. They wanted to help and appreciated positive praise. Each girl liked having a job and appreciated the responsibility of being accountable to something. Especially if separated, they generally followed instruction, would always share what they could, and were never afraid to be the one with the speaking part during our drama section.

The problem was they acted as a pair. When picking on someone, or when being picked on they were absolutely grouped together. After I was on the receiving end of a punch from a boy, originally meant for Dea I decided something had to be done. We tried Dea out in a different classroom setting and the waters seemed to settle, for awhile.