Emergency Teacher (16 page)

One Monday afternoon I felt flushed in class. As the students in T62 ran around, I held my head in my hands. My throat burned. The doctor diagnosed laryngitis. For the next three days, I lay in bed.

Shortly before I had gotten sick, my relationship with Pete could no longer stand up to the demands of my job and his busy schedule. Neither of us had any energy left to talk about our problems. We decided to “take a break,” which was a nice way of saying break up.

Pete had pushed me to teach and had been my main support. Now he was gone. Strangely, after we ended it—we were in his car—I crossed the street and looked up at the moon, feeling a pressure lift: one less emotion to deal with. My classroom was an emotional nightmare every day. The prospect of another week in the classroom without a solid lesson plan filled me with anxiety. Yet the troubles with Pete ran deeper than our busy lives. I was shutting him out intentionally because I was changing, and I wasn't sure I liked the person that I was becoming.

I'd set out wholly single-minded to learn to teach, and suddenly my failure became a real possibility. I'd personally staked everything on succeeding. I'd given up my career, my
Inquirer
friends. I'd rebuked my parents and taken on the trust of and responsibility for fifty children. If I was failing and wasn't making a shred of difference, what was the point? How could I answer the question: How was your day? “Well, I saw a group of special education students locked in a classroom with no teacher and I didn't do anything about it.”

I called a lawyer friend of mine and told him what happened. We'd sue the school, I said. Could you do that? Sure, he said, but most special education lawsuits came from parents, not teachers. Then Mr. Whitehorne told me a lawyer was already investigating our school on behalf of a special ed parent. In the 1980s the entire city had been sued for lacking a bilingual program, which was why we had so many bilingual education mandates that required so much paperwork. What good could a lawyer do?

Next I considered calling a reporter I knew at the
Inquirer
. What would a big story on the failures of special education solve, though? Hadn't I left journalism because I wanted to have a more direct impact? Education had seemed so black and white from the newsroom. We had only to figure out what the problem was and who was to blame. Fixing it was someone else's job. Now that someone else was me—I was the teacher who was supposed to solve the problem.

I thought about calling the school district for help, but then remembered the last time I called the bureaucrats. What would I say to them? “I'm a teacher, and I'm calling to tell you that some classes in our school don't have teachers. And these classes are violent and dangerous.” They knew what was happening.

What a fool I was ever to have thought that I was the only one who cared, as though a lack of caring was the missing ingredient to improving the schools. Mrs. G. was probably like this in the beginning. Every new teacher probably went through it—a time when they believed they could solve the school's problems; a time when they thought all it takes is courage to stand up to the problem. Now I had courage enough only to push me to show up every day. Solving the problems required ... well, what did they require? More teachers? Less corruption? Better parents?

A few weeks later, Rogia's teacher left. Replacements were cycled in—all untrained babysitters who would spend a few days screaming at the students and then march out in the middle of the day, perhaps giving up for good their dreams of making a difference, too, and leaving a classroom of thirteen-year-old special education students in their wake. I don't know what happened to Rogia in there, but I hate to imagine the worst. Later in the school year, when I was almost numb to these things, I saw an eighth-grade boy try to fondle a female student in a class I was subbing. I stopped him and sent him out for the remainder of the period. Who's to say what happened the next day? In the spring, a thirteen-year-old special education student at a school a few miles away was raped in the stairwell, and the newspapers displayed it on the front page. The principal expressed relief that it “hadn't happened at our school,” but I wasn't so sure. Rogia was the only girl in her classroom on some days. By spring, the pool of substitutes ran out, leaving Rogia with no teacher at all. That's when special ed students started roaming the hallways and the fires began.

How could I show up at a school each day in which girls as young as thirteen were being routinely abused and possibly raped while we all looked the other way? Yet faced with the reality that we each as individuals could not solve the problem, should I quit in protest or continue to show up each day and do my best, even if it meant teaching under conditions I deeply objected to?

How could I be part of a school that allowed such wrongs? But how could I walk away and condemn another classroom of students to the same fate?

T
he day I returned from my laryngitis sick leave, I made a decision not to abandon my class. I'd do the best job humanly possible each and every day. My first Monday morning back in the classroom, I knew this was the right choice. It was wonderful to be back. I had missed my students. Ms. Rohan had passed around a card for the students to sign. “Why we missed Ms. Asquith”:

I hung it up behind my desk. After a week of reflection and rest, I felt invigorated and prepared, as I'd spent days on the computer creating lesson plans. Even though I was more alone than ever, I felt surrounded by love and affection, and that would be more than enough.

Seeing as I was keeping Jovani and Jose R., I'd devised a strategy to take control of my class. It would unfold on two fronts: classroom management and improved content. My first challenge was to truly take control of my classroom. I was being too easy on them, and letting too many minor infractions slide. They were running all over me. On the way to school I had chanted my new mantras “You must sit them down before you can teach them,” and “I am in charge. They must do exactly what I say.” Content would stop temporarily as I focused on teaching them classroom management. I created sample lessons with the point being to enforce order. One of the first orders of the day was to stop the spitballs.

Indeed, on my first day back, Rosalia was hit with a fat, dripping wad, right in front of me. Rosalia was one of about ten girls I called the Hello Kitty girls because they always carried colored pens and neon erasers in Hello Kitty carrying cases. The spitball made Rosalia look petrified and instead of ignoring them like I usually did, I had to defend her. The disrespect had gone on long enough. I put down my chalk and walked to the center of the room. This was my opportunity.

“Everyone stop what you're doing,” I said.

It was time to step back and teach them to be my students. And they didn't need to be coddled. They needed a teacher with the backbone to get them in line. They needed high expectations, not low ones, from someone who believed in them. In Ms. Ortiz's words, I needed to “toughen the fuck up.”

As students exchanged cavalier smirks with Rodolfo, these lessons gurgled together in my head. I wouldn't ignore the problem anymore.

“Somebody in this class just threw a spitball,” I said forcefully. I waited five seconds, using their surprised silence as a tool. “Somebody obviously thinks spitballs are funny.” Another ten seconds. “Someone obviously thinks spitballs are important enough to interrupt this whole lesson. Well, I spent a long time planning this lesson, and I don't think it's funny at all.”

I walked slowly up and down the aisles, glaring at each and every student. This was not acting. I had devoted hours the night before to preparing my own lesson. I had dropped $50 at Barnes & Noble for grammar books and spent an hour typing up Spanish-English worksheets and inventing activities. I had invested a lot of my time and energy because I cared that they learn something.

As I paraded through the room I realized why I hadn't stood up to them before. I was afraid they wouldn't listen to me. My confidence wavered. What about Pete's advice? “Never enter a showdown you can't win.” Rodolfo might ignore me like the boys in the hallway always did. Then what would I do? What if a student told me to fuck off? Why would they listen to me? I didn't know. This could be humiliating.

Then, I heard a student murmur, “tell her, Rodolfo,” and I felt emboldened. I walked over to the back of the room, looking as strict as I could.

“Now you want to talk too, is that it?” I asked, raising my voice a little. “In what classroom is a student allowed to talk while the teacher is talking? Not in mine. I'm not going to teach in a classroom where there are spitballs. You all have too much at stake to waste our little time together. Now, I want to know: WHO THREW IT!?”

I remained in front of them all, hand on my hip. I didn't blink. Don't be scared. Children need boundaries. Nothing is personal. I waited. Who would imagine living in fear of sixth-graders, but what could I do if they ganged up against me?

Thankfully, the taller I stood the further they backed down. Most of them stared into their necks. They didn't look very rebellious anymore. They looked chastened. Still, no one came clean. I upped the stakes. “We will all have lunch up here,” I said.

Students swiveled around to check Rodolfo's reaction, but he stared at his desk. Seconds passed. Finally, when I moved to sit down at my desk, his voice rose up.

“Yeah, whatever,” he blurted out, his face as pink as the tip of his eraser.

That was good enough for me. I hid my relief. We finished the lesson, and just for good measure, everyone stayed five minutes in lunch detention to show I meant business.

When the class left, I sat in the desk next to Rodolfo's. Despite his problems, I liked him. He reminded me of my older brother Jon, who, for dealing fireworks or bullying teachers, was a regular in the principal's office of our private school. Both Jon and Rodolfo were weak readers and hated school. They would have been best friends. The primary difference was that my parents hired an expensive SAT tutor for my brother while Rodolfo would most likely drop out. Now one was a Wall Street stockbroker, the other undoubtedly heading toward much less attractive options.

I reminded myself that my end goal wasn't to punish Rodolfo or to get even, but to teach him. Classroom showdowns weren't about winning, they were about getting the student to learn. Again I thought of Pete's advice: It's their job to act up. It's not personal.

The personal battle became instantly defused when I readjusted my view: it was the students' role to act up, and mine to manage them. Rodolfo slumped in his chair, arms dangling to the floor, feet propped up on the back of the desk in front of him. He stared straight ahead at the midday sunlight reflecting off the windowsill. He came directly out of central casting for the part of juvenile delinquent. When I met his eyes, though, he looked away. He was not angry; he was nervous.

“Rodolfo, I kept you after because I can't teach when you throw spitballs in class.”

Silence. “Rodolfo, look at me.” He glanced at me. “Do you understand what I mean?” He looked down. “I know spitballs are funny,” I said. “Rodolfo, look at me. I don't think you're a bad student. But I'm the teacher, and it disrupts our class, and obviously I can't ignore it.”

A student knocked on the door with our lunch. We ate in silence together. I didn't need to say anything else. I wanted to sit there, the two of us together, for fifteen minutes, so he would see I cared. I didn't know if this was the right way to discipline or not, but I followed my instincts. I knew little about Rodolfo, but it helped to think of him as simply a boy trying to hide the fact he couldn't read. He was looking for some attention, or being a spirited kid. Anyhow, yelling would have no effect on Rodolfo. Giving him a bad grade was not going to matter much to him, either. The punishments had to take time, be personal, come directly from me, and have a positive side that he wanted to work for. All children sought approval and attention from someone they respect.

A few minutes before lunch ended, I had them clear their desks, and I reinforced my message. I was careful to adhere to another teacher adage: Treat each kid with respect. Understand where they are, and see why they did what they did. Acknowledge.

“Rodolfo, I know it's fun to throw spitballs. I used to do it, too. But now I'm the teacher, and so it's my job to get you to stop. It disrupts the class and all we're going to learn. I don't want to see any more spitballs, Okay, hon? Anytime you want to spend lunch up here with me, you just ask, and we can have a nice lunch together. But if you choose to throw spitballs again, we're going to have some problems.”

“Okay, Miss,” he said.

I checked my grade book. “I'm going to get your home phone number so I can let your parents know if anything like this happens again.”

He gave it to me.

“Is that your mom's or your dad's, or both?”

“My ma's.”

“Do you know your dad's?”

“My dad's dead. He got shot gambling.”

For a week I continued to devote all my energies to classroom management. Each morning we reviewed the class rules, and did exercises on them. We practiced lining up to leave for lunch. We practiced throwing away garbage. We ran drills on pencil sharpening and what to do if you had a question. One morning I devoted an hour to practicing passing back papers. My class didn't turn around all of a sudden and completely, as in that movie
Dangerous Minds
when Michelle Pfeiffer teaches her students a karate kick and then suddenly they're her angels. Nor was there one big meaningful moment when my students and I finally “got it,” as in
Lean on Me
. The spitballs returned the following day, in fact. Once I was consistent with the lectures and detentions, though, the Rodolfos and the Ronnys left the dark side and joined my team. It was more like working on a painting—if you come back every day and keep at it, the image you desire starts to take form on the canvas. You have to keep at it, and if something isn't working, you have to make corrections and then come back and try again. You can't ever give up, no matter how desperately you want to start teaching actual content. After a few weeks, the spitballs stopped for good. Confronting the problem had worked and lessened my fear of confrontation. I realized there was no point in plowing through a lesson when no one was listening. Before I could teach them the difference between j and g, I had to train them to be students. My students.

I began calling them at night, visiting their homes after school to meet their parents. One visit helped create a well of trust that I could draw from when trouble started. I also realized that each time I lifted my demands, they rose to meet them—so I really started to get picky. At the slightest interruption, teaching stopped and we addressed the problem. One day I had a record twelve students in lunch detention. When half my class didn't show up in the cafeteria, Mrs. G. scolded me with a note: “You cannot keep students during lunch.” I scribbled back, “Okay, next time I'll send them to your office,” but then tossed it in the garbage.

For so long I had been focused on getting my students into college and cramming as much teaching in as possible, but it was the little micromanagement flare-ups that caused the big problems in class. Usually a disaster day didn't happen suddenly, but began with one student acting up and the momentum building. I learned to stop that from happening by addressing the problem immediately instead of looking the other way and letting it smolder. Soon, I was stopping the class for small infractions, like passing back papers incorrectly. Everything I taught them I reviewed three times. I used up a lot of days in the beginning, but I believed that I would be saving myself months in the end. One day I was walking down the aisles collecting homework. I balanced homework in one hand and tried to check off my grade book with another.

“I don't have my homework,” Pedro called out. Neither did the next three students. Only half the class had been turning in homework regularly, and I wondered if I should stop giving it. It crossed my mind that the students here weren't used to doing homework.

That night I conducted an experiment. I called every student. At Pedro's house, his little sister picked up. When I said it was the teacher, there was a long silence. “Ooohhh, Papi, it's your teacher.” Pedro arrived at the phone breathless and wary.

“Hi Pedro, this is Ms. Asquith. I'm calling to remind you to do your homework,” I said. “No excuses. I want you to have it in tomorrow.”

“Okay, Miss.”

The next day, Pedro turned in his homework before the Pledge of Allegiance. So did everyone I called. Jovani pulled a piece of paper out of his back pocket and gave it to me. He had written his name on it. Miguel burst in panting, as if he had run straight from the bus. In his hand he clutched a piece of white paper with ten sentences written on it.