Micaela Blei - Lego Crimes

 

In the elementary school where I teach, there are Legos that are very valuable and Legos no one gives a [beep] about. [audience chuckle] The ones you don't really care about are the ones there are thousands of, the gray 2 x 4s, the black 2 x 4s, anything that's red. For some reason, all we have are red Legos. And the ones that are valuable are the things that you can't really find. So, there's a second grade, a third grade, and a fourth grade, everyone's got bins. And in these bins the things you very rarely see are anything lime green. I think once upon a time we had a set that was lime green. Anything that has a picture on it, it's kind of magical. And then these jewels, they're these little plastic, clear colored Legos and they really look valuable. [giggles] I mean, I'm kind of psyched about them too. [audience chuckle] 

 

And every class has--, and especially my class has what I like to call the Black Hole Boys. They are the boys who sit anytime there's choice time and put together Legos and discuss theories of outer space and infinity and they build spaceships and they're like, "Well, but okay, but could there be a black hole that would be strong enough to pull other black holes in?" And they all sort of think about that for a while [audience chuckle] and they're my boys. I like them, I'm really into them. And most of playing Legos anywhere in my school is really mostly just pawing through looking for the valuable ones. [audience chuckle] Of course you could build with them, but that's not the fun part. The fun part is I found this orange jewel or whatever. So, that's always a big deal. And all the bins are outside underneath the cubbies. So, every class has their bins near their class as cubbies.

 

The second-- I teach third grade. The second graders come to me one day and they say, "We need your help. We think someone's been stealing our jewels." [audience chuckle] Now they have to dismantle all their Legos at the end of every week so that it's really fair so you have a chance to paw through and find the jewels anew every Monday. And they have been noticing that over the course of several weeks, they find fewer and fewer jewels and they suspect my class. And I say, "You know what? That's not really fair. I'm sure that it is not my guys who are doing that." And they say, "Well, we think you should look through their bins at their spaceships and find out if they've got our jewels." And I said, "You know what? That's not what we're going to do. We're going to trust them. We're going to ask them, 'Did you take those jewels?' And if they say no, we're going to believe them."

 

Because secretly I'm thinking, “There's no-- A, there's no way my boys did it, and B, I don't really want to get in the middle of that if that's what's going on.” [audience laughter] So, we ask my boys and the sort of ringleader, the head of the Black Hole Boys, Edward, is this very smart, very sour kid whose spaceships are amazing. I mean, they look like they could really go. [audience chuckle] And he says, "No, we have not. Have you tried the fourth grade? Because those guys think they're so big." [audience chuckle] 

 

And so, me and these three little second graders go to the fourth grade and we say to some of the fourth graders who are playing with Legos in a very much tougher, apparently way, [audience chuckle] "Did you guys take these jewels?" And the fourth graders say, "No." And then later, privately, they say, "You know, are you sure the second graders are telling the truth? Because they think they're so cute." [audience laughter] There begins to have-- there's a culture of fear developing [audience chuckle] across all three grades. No one trusts each other. Everyone's sort of looking at each other's things that they're building. And the teachers are picking up on it, too. I'm sort of watching everyone's spaceships being like, "I don't remember that orange one and that green one and the blue one in the second grade of 2A, that's not-- I don't know if that's right."

 

And I'm sort of getting there too, but we're all kind of watching each other and then I am getting homework. Edward does his homework and does more homework than he needs to, but he always forgets to hand it in. And so, I just randomly-- I go into his cubby just to grab the math homework that I know is in there. Under the math homework is a jewel encrusted spaceship. [audience laughter] Dazzling. [audience laughter and applause] The wings have wings, and those wings have other things. And there's a glass window that I have literally never seen before. In the six years that I've been teaching there, I have never seen this glass window. He must have had it since the beginning of second grade and just hidden it in various places. [audience chuckle] It's beautiful. But I'm stuck with a dilemma. What do I do with this?

 

If I accuse him, then, number one, the second graders are kind of intense and I'm a little worried about what they would do. [audience laughter] Number two, I already told the second graders it couldn't have possibly been my boys. This is my reputation on the line as well. I don't want it to have been him. I could, it occurs to me, just steal it back. [audience chuckle] I could just take it. Because if he tried to say someone stole my jewel encrusted spaceship, that would be on him. That would be his-- that's a dilemma he would have. [audience chuckle] But then I realized that could possibly be framing another kid. And I do have-- I have my line I will not cross. [audience chuckle] So, I'm not going to frame a kid.

 

So, instead I wait for a Friday when we should be taking apart our things and he has not been taking apart the spaceship. [giggles] And I wait till Friday. I get him alone and I say to him really casually, "So, don't forget to take apart your spaceship." And he looks at me and he knows I know. [audience chuckle] And he says something really ballsy. He goes, "I did. I already did." [audience laughter] I sit down with him, I open the cubby, I show him the spaceship and I say, "This is an amazing spaceship. [audience chuckle] You did a really great job. But you got to let it go." And we cut a deal.

 

And over the course of several weeks, we dismantled the spaceship very, very slowly. I can't just smash it. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to just take the whole thing apart. And I start secretly putting those jewels back in other people's cubbies [audience chuckle] for him so that he can still be the head of the Black Hole Boys and not lose that reputation that he has that he loves and so that I don't have to go back on my word, that my boys didn't do anything. I was an accessory to a third-grade crime. [audience laughter] There's no way around that. That's it. Thank you.