Educating Esmé (11 page)

“You can't possibly teach all you say you can teach.
A teacher can teach a maximum of fourteen units per annum.” It was water off this duck's back. I know what I can accomplish. Still, how annoying! One teacher cried when he told her her units didn't meet state guidelines. What a baby! I pointed out to the board of ed guy, “Can't we write up our paperwork so it looks like we're following state guidelines and do whatever we want?” I said, “Can't we just look at the scope and sequence they print in front of all the textbooks and use all the right verbage? What bureaucrat would be the wiser? Once we close the classroom door, who else but us knows what goes on?”

He conceded that technically, yes, I was correct, but that wasn't the right attitude to take. The crybaby looked more cheerful, though. It's like it never occurs to some people that they don't have to do what people tell them.

I call her a crybaby, but maybe after twenty years of teaching with the usual lack of appreciation from the board of ed, I'd cry, too. Maybe after the hundreth time of being told I'm Not Following Guidelines, I'd break down. She hangs beautiful bulletin boards in the hallway, spilling over the edges with children's artwork.
Her baskets burgeon to bursting with tantalizing children's books, I know she bought them with her own money. She never raises her voice, but when she speaks, the children listen, hush each other. She keeps the love letters the children send to her, written in the penmanship she taught them to write, using the words she taught them to read. If I had a child, I'd want her for my child's teacher. Isn't that the real litmus test?

The closed-door teacher anarchy I suggested seems so scary in theory, but in reality, I see it already exists. In my opinion, the prefabricated curriculum and board mandates that are concocted to hide this state of affairs can work two ways. They can be benign suggestions that make talented inventors out of teachers. Or they can make it so people who don't have anything to share can still work, since their scripts are made up for them. Nobody really knows which is happening when the teacher closes the door. At worst, mediocrity. At best, miracles. This curriculum guy went to school, didn't he? He must know this is the case. Anyone who has ever had a really good teacher—or a really bad one—must know this. It isn't that
the curriculum guy was
wrong
. Only, I wonder if he can see that the efforts to try to regulate teaching could limit learning as much as ensure it.

So much of teaching is sharing. Learning results in sharing, sharing results in change, change is learning. The only other job with so much sharing is parenting. That's probably why the two are so often confused. You can't test what sort of teacher someone will be, because testing what someone knows isn't the same as what someone is able to share. This will be different for every teacher.

I am operating from a position where I am personally vested in my approach, which any teacher will tell you is a privileged place to be. Does being personally vested make a teacher successful? Not necessarily. Does it make a teacher accountable? Absolutely.

Education's best-kept secret.

HOW TO TEACH LEARNING

Sing it

Seal it in an envelope

Twist it under a bottle cap

“You Are a Winner!”

Tie it to the leg of a carrier pigeon

and let it soar

Hoard it greedily, with your back turned

Then share it with a magnanimous grin

and glittering eyes

Make it a surprise,

shining like a quarter

under a pillow

Whisper it,

like the tow of summer's breath

through the willow

Or

Hide it

just between the tart skin and sweet flesh of an apple

Make it

Forbidden

Make it

Delicious

Then

let the children

bite

Good news! I won the coveted Dr. Peggy Williams Award for outstanding new teacher in the field of Reading and Language Arts, given by the Chicago Area Reading Association! They give me a few hundred bucks to spend on my classroom, too,
tra-la, tra-LA.
The very best part of all is that no matter what Mr. Turner tries to pull, he can't take that away from me. Another goodie to add to my
raison d'être
, my résumé. I'm quite surprised to have won, and very excited, too. I get to go to an awards dinner this Thursday. The head lady suggested I bring my principal.
Wah
, I could barely keep from laughing out loud. The other fun thing is that it will be announced at school tomorrow, and hopefully Mr. Curriculum Alignment will hear it. Put that in your board of education pipe and smoke it, pal!

Enough gloating. I'm glad to have won, but really, I'd rather not be a teacher. What I'd really love to be is an opera star, but I haven't got the voice for it—just ask my downstairs neighbor! Still, how I would love to
play the witch in Humperdinck's
Hänsel und Gretel
. I'm studying the libretto.

Halt!

Hocus pocus hexenschuss

Ruhr dich und dich deiss der fluss . . .

Hurrop, hopp, hopp!

Rotten day at school. Why? I went in with a positive attitude, but then a package of stickers was stolen and that just made me so mad. It's so aggravating when one of them decides to shit on me and the class like that. It's just wrong, wrong, wrong. I tried to put it behind me, but it wouldn't go. I vowed at least to try not to misdirect my frustration and be cheerful for the kids who don't steal. But the children came back from gym and clearly had not done their homework, so they couldn't participate in the game show–style lesson I had planned. Greedy and slothful! I was disgusted, but I tried to maintain.

I failed. Got so mad, I told one kid I would rip his
tongue out and he'd have to bring in a parent if he wanted it back. See, already practicing for the witch's role!

It's depressing. I always start out well, smiling and whirling around like I'm on a commercial trying to sell them the rest of their lives with no down payment until July, but the kids act so fucking obnoxious, clucking their tongues, groaning, swearing. They are really such wimps, they can't do anything without a complaint. Also, they wouldn't know enough to step out of the way of a speeding train.

“You ask me to do my work too strict! Ask me nice.”

“Will you do it if I ask you nicely?”

“No.”

“Will you do it if I ask you in a tough way?”

“Yes.”

“Then I'll have to ask you in a tough way, until you respond when I ask you nicely.”

“Oh, okay.”

GOD!

I
HAVE TO
listen to the line “putting it my way, but
nicely
,” from “Getting to Know You,” sung by Gertrude
Lawrence in
The King and I
at least eight times before I walk out the door in the morning. In fact, I find myself living life more and more “to the tune of.”

When I am feeling frustrated by Mr. Turner, I blast “Funkier than a Mosquita's Tweeter” by Tina Turner, “Nothing from Nothing” by Billy Preston, or perform an indignant solo tango to “Jealousy” by Jacob Gade from
Tango Argentino.

When I am frightened, “Perpetuum Mobile” by Novacek and “Prelude and Allegro” by Kreisler, both performed by Itzhak Perlman.

When I need to love children more, “Tenderly” by Bill Evans, “The Beautiful Land” by Anthony Newley from
The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd
, or “Sing a Simple Song” by Sly and the Family Stone. “New York Charanga” by David Amram reminds me of girls skipping rope double Dutch and cheers me up.

When I fall short, it's time for “On How to Be Lovely” performed by Audrey Hepburn and Kay Thompson in
Funny Face
, “Control Yourself” performed by Jackie and Roy Kral, and “Every Day I Write the Book” by Elvis Costello.

Always, “Stoney End” by Laura Nyro.

Always, “Cabaret” performed by Jill Haworth.

Always, “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” by B. J. Thomas.

Always, “La Vie en Rose.”

Always, lovely, spinning scratchy 33-rpm records, informing my teaching. I watch Billy pout and hear “Softly, William, Softly” by Dave Brubeck. I can hear Prokofiev's “Cinderella's Departure for the Ball” every time I have recess duty. Smetana's “The Moldau” is movement through the halls. Remembering these songs through the day overwhelms all of my senses. My imagination returns to the borderless fronts of my own childhood. The way the children run and leap, the fast and slow of adults intercepting them, it looks like a dance. I believe Mrs. Jones is about to
arabesque
as she passes out lunch tickets, or that Zykrecia is a dying swan in the throes of Kyle. The hairs on my arms and neck stand up. My back feels like ice. Then real sounds return to me, swelling, like the urgent, metallic ringing of an alarm clock rousing me from my dreams. It concerns me that I could be so engulfed in a fantasy that I am seeing and hearing things that
others do not see or hear, however beautiful. At my age! I suppose an active imagination can be a form of madness. Or it can be the thing that keeps you from going mad.

I'm glad I didn't yell at Latoya today.

I almost yelled, “This is the fourth day in a row you're a half-hour late! You're missing important math instruction, and I don't appreciate repeating myself!” But then I remembered I promised myself to try not to single children out for public humiliation, which has been my
modus operandi
of late, but to talk—and listen—privately instead.

“Is there a reason you have been late four days in a row?” I asked her, alone in the hall.

“We are in a shelter this week, and I have to drop my little sister off and take the train over. It takes longer than I thought. I'm sorry, I'll be with my aunt next week and then I can walk over.”

“Don't apologize. I'm proud of you for coming each day. It wouldn't be the same here without you,
don't forget that. And even though we can't wait for you, if you miss an explanation in math, just ask me or a classmate . . .”

For the rest of the day I was glad I listened instead of yelled, but I still burned with shame at the thought of what I almost said and at all the occasions I have spoken harshly.

Akila gave me a sari, blue and pink and gold, really beautiful. I put it on immediately and wore it for the rest of the day. Grown-ups kept asking me, “What character are you today?”

When I called Akila's mom to thank her, she thanked me and said I helped Akila feel less self-conscious about her culture. She said that as we spoke, Akila was playing dress-up. She had put on sari number eleven.

“Pretending to be you,” I said.

“I haven't been able to get her to wear a sari since we came to this country,” said Akila's mother. “I think she's pretending to be
you
.”

To further encourage Akila, I wore a
salwar kameez
I had. Monique, Asha, Latoya, and Akila all met me at the door this morning dressed in beautiful saris. Akila lent them out. Mr. Turner thinks we are having some sort of cultural festival. “Good. That's what democracy is all about,” he says.

B. B. has been wild, threatening other kids and being rude to grown-ups. He even ran out of gym class. He came to my room, which surprised me. He just looked sad. We sat in the dark, eating chocolate chip cookies. I told him that I knew he loved his mother and that he could be a big help to her right now by making good behavioral choices so she wouldn't have to come to school. I told him I was angry because I knew he would grow up and forget me and not send me a free ticket when he works in an orchestra, playing the recorder. He smiled and giggled. He relaxed.

Still, he can't stop. He starts freaking out around 1:20. I can practically set my watch to it. Something clicks in him. It occurs to him that he doesn't want to
go home or something. His dad is there in a wheelchair because he was critically shot in gang cross-fire.

So he gets in this big pounding fight on the playground at recess. When I broke them up, he called me a bitch. That was the last straw.

I had a private conference with Mr. Turner. “I'm sick of what kids get away with at this school. The kids are maniacs!”

“Don't let the parents hear you say that.” Mr. Turner looked from left to right, ever the public relations vigilante.

“I don't come to work to be called a bitch or a cunt or a white whore,” I informed him. “Isn't it part of your job to see that teachers aren't subjected to such behavior? Is it my job to spend all day disciplining so the children who want to learn can have a fighting chance?”

“You don't understand. They're black.”

I blinked. “So, I shouldn't expect them to learn?”

“It's just the way black people are. The black child is different. They deal with so much. Drugs, gangs . . .”

“I grew up with black people. They didn't all act like this.”

“That was a long time ago.” He shook his head.

What, eight, ten years ago? “It's not about being black,” I argued. “It's about being poor, and from people expecting nothing from you, and from nothing happening when you say ‘Fuck you' to your teacher. Children rise to meet our expectations, good or bad.” I felt myself talking a lot, mostly to block out what he was saying. I don't want to think the way he thinks. He can't be right. If he's right, it's not even worth trying. But I couldn't believe that he, a black man, was saying it. If I said that kind of trash, I'd expect to be strung up by my thumbs by members of my own ethnicity. I thought,
You wouldn't dare talk this way to me if I were black. You're telling me the ugliest part of you because you think because I'm white, I'll buy it. Fuck you
, I thought.
Fuck you!