Sherlock

Joy Ryan, President/CEO

The dog didn’t bark.

I admit it. I have been a Sherlock Holmes fan since I was about 10 years old. I have multiple copies of the books. I especially like the ones with the original Sidney Paget drawings that accompanied the stories when they were in serial form. I was a short-term member of the “Baker Street Irregulars” fan club, took a class on Sherlock Holmes (1 credit in English) in college, and last year, my son gave me a “Dear Holmes” subscription where I receive regular letters in which Holmes or Watson asks for my counsel in solving a case.

Yup, it’s a thing.

In “The Adventure of Silver Blaze,” Holmes solves a case of horse theft. The biggest clue is that the dog didn’t bark. That meant to Holmes that the guard dog knew the thief and felt no need to alert anyone. By understanding the absence of alarm, he was able to quickly identify the guilty party.

That’s a long way to get to my story. It is the first thing I thought about when one of our students was aggressively pounding the wall outside of one of our classrooms. He had reached his patience threshold. He has survived much trauma and bullying. He has a long history of struggling at school. He started calling himself dumb, yelling that he hated everything, and then pounded the wall. He was only about 15 feet from my office door, so I heard it all.

It was what I didn’t hear that impacted me the most. I didn’t hear anyone yelling at him to stop. (The high-impact sheetrock on our walls can take quite a bit.) I didn’t hear anyone tell him this was wrong. I didn’t hear anyone call for help.

Quietly, as the pounding slowed down and weakened, I heard our Special Education teacher ask him if his hand was all right. She encouraged him to take deep breaths. He slid to the floor and wept, and she sat next to him. I heard her say that if he didn’t get it today, he would get it another day… and that was okay.

The dog didn’t bark.

Instead of heightening the child’s frustration, escalating the situation, and reinforcing his belief that he is bad and stupid, the teacher let him hit the wall. She knew him. She saw him. She recognized his anger was directed at himself, and she waited to support him and reassure him. She showed him he was safe and she believed in him.

That is a lot of progress in exchange for five minutes of banging.

A half hour later, I walked by the classroom. He was back at his table… learning.

Sherlock would be proud of how this teacher saw the clues and solved the mystery of a precious boy…

Please keep the children and staff of Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch in your prayers.