An opportunity to visit the nurse is the holy grail for many students in my classroom.

One day recently, M. had asked to head to the nurse more than once. Considering that she’d been bouncing around both in and out of the classroom, and was silly and smiling between strategic, puppy-eyed requests, I’d denied her repeated pleas. That didn’t deter her though, as clearly, persistence is one of the key traits needed on the quest to the Kingdom of Nurse.

As the day wore on, I wore down and M started to look a bit less bouncy. Maybe. Or maybe her persistence was paying off. At any rate, in a brief lull between requests, I realized I needed more band-aids. I decided to head off yet another request, and to kill two birds with one stone.

“M, would you be willing to go to the nurse and get some bandaids for the classroom? You could also mention to Mrs. G. that your stomach hurts and see what she says.”

M perked right up.

“Okay! Do you need big band-aids?” she asked.

“No,” I replied, “I just need the regular sized ones.” I held up the bag of bandaids and pulled the last three out. “This is the size I need. You can take the bag with you and ask her to fill it up.”

M. took the bag in her hand. She pivoted to leave, then paused and turned back to me. “Do you think I should bring a mentor band-aid?” she asked.

Mentor* what? …… Ohhhhhhh….the light dawned, and after that split second of confusion, I understood.

“Oh, that’s a great idea!” I said. She reached out and I handed her one of the bandaids, which she tucked into the bag. Then she bopped happily out the door and down to the nurse’s office.

I’m happy to report the use of a mentor bandaid was successful. M returned not too much later with her stomach ache mysteriously vanished, holding a bag full of the correctly sized bandaids.

*In case you’re not in the education field, a mentor text is a piece of writing that students can use for many different purposes. Often in our classroom we use mentor texts to explore how authors craft their writing within different genres and to get ideas of different strategies/moves we can try out in our own writing. In a nutshell, mentor texts can serve as examples to guide us. M. clearly has a full and flexible understanding of mentors!