Caveat: Either a cry for help, or a strange joke… or both

I have a new student, a 5th grader who has adopted the nickname Mario. He came into my class clearly not wanting to be there. Straight up refusing to answer, and refusing to participate. Shortly, however, it became clear he actually knows English pretty well. He may have the best vocabulary of anyone in the class.

So now, several months on, he still doesn't do homework. But he participates well, and sometimes even seems to be having fun, before remembering he hates being there and puts his scowl back on.

We did an in-class assignment I created, that I've used a few times, to go with a chapter in our textbook about "Why do you want to travel there?" which covers different countries. The assignment is to make your own country, then explain why you want to travel there. Many elementary kids like making their own countries, though most do so in a humorous or cartoonish vein. 

Mario submitted the below. It was, of course, pretty limited in terms of the requirements of the assignment. And desultory, in terms of effort. But where did he learn the term "bipolar disorder"? What to make of the very interesting (in very faint pencil) "… and there are  lonly        "?

picture

The rest of what he wrote (not that much):

I would like to go to   bipolar disorder countxry   

because   It's interesting   

It's my own note, at the bottom corner, where I wrote the Korean term for "bipolar disorder" from the dictionary (조울증). That's because I wanted to discuss the content of the paper with Mario's home teacher, and I wanted to be prepared with what "bipolar disorder" meant – it's not exactly a common concept for English-speaking Koreans. And who knows where Mario found it. The dictionary? His parents? How could he even have known the Korean word for it – Curt observed that it's not exactly a regular word in Korean, either, but rather a medical term. How does a fifth grader wield such a term, it two languages no less? This boy also has offhandedly said he wants to attend Julliard (in New York) and has vandalized one of my toy frogs. Something's going on.

[daily log: walking, 7km]

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