The Great Expectations School (28 page)

Each group got a schedule listing four K–1 classes. The kids put on their hats and I selected eleven lucky bow tie wearers. I persuaded Mr. Randazzo to clear Cat Samuels's morning so she could cochaperone the festivities, and we went to work pinning on the red felt ties. For my final trick, I slipped into the Cat in the Hat outfit—surprise!—and lined up my delighted children. Ms. Rawson greeted us excitedly in the minischool lobby. “Oh my God, you have to get a picture in that costume with Kendra [Boyd]!” she bubbled.

With a vote of faith, I sent my groups on their routes. Cat and I darted around the school, checking in and occasionally commandeering the readings. I put on some frenzied performances of
The Foot Book
and the aptly titled
Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?,
modeling for my 4-217 performers as much as entertaining the little ones.

The whole thing felt good. When I appeared in a room, I felt a proud “Yeah, I'm with him” vibe radiating from my students. And after one or two goes, they really got into it. Soon the slated itineraries were exhausted, but everyone wanted to keep the activity going. The Lakiya-Hamisi-Eric
Foot Book
contingent worked fast and hit every kindergarten and first-grade class. The minischool corridor echoed with shouts of “I need a
Green Eggs and Ham
in 1M9!” or “KM1 needs
The Cat in the Hat Comes Back
!” I exhausted a disposable camera, and, with the exception of Cwasey knocking Athena's green eggs to the floor, the event was a love fest.

Mrs. Boyd and I smiled at a camera, and she gave me a vague nod, putting her hand on my forearm. “Come to my office during the break. Ms. Guiterrez and I need to speak to you.”

Students were dismissed at 11:30 from the lunchroom. On a
high from the Seussian success, I made an in-costume star turn in the packed cafeteria. Children flocked to the five-foot-nine Cat in the Hat. “Yo, Mr. Cat in da Hat man, wassup!” offered Tyree, the most famously recalcitrant of Mr. Krieg's overgrown fifth-graders.

With a ninety-minute break before conferences kicked off at one o'clock, the Fellows lunched at the Splendid Deli on Fordham Road, but I stayed behind, standing outside Mrs. Boyd's closed office door. When it opened, Mrs. Boyd directed me to sit in an awkward position between herself and Ms. Guiterrez at the meeting table.

“First of all, good work on the Dr. Seuss event. That was beautiful,” Mrs. Boyd began.

“Thank you.”

“Unfortunately, we have a pretty big problem.” I noticed my class stack of report cards under Ms. Guiterrez's palm, to my right. All teachers had submitted their student report cards on the previous Friday for a perfunctory check-over. I had spent probably twice as long calibrating and commenting on this set than I had in the first marking period back in November. Now that I had more of a grip on what I was doing, I felt my assessments were more thorough and accurate.

Guiterrez cut the silence. “Why are your children not improving, Mr. Brown?”

“They are improving.”

“No. They are not.” She took the top report card from the stack and opened it. “Manolo Ruiz. All twos. No improvement.”

My heart pounded. Out spilled words, not sufficiently composed for a cogent rejoinder. “Lito's one of my most improved students. He's really come a long way.”

Ms. Guiterrez and Mrs. Boyd looked at me like I was an imbecile. “Apparently not,” Mrs. Boyd said with a laugh-snort. “His grades indicate no change. Mr. Brown, you
begged
me for a classroom in the summer, and I gave you what you wanted. I took a chance on you. But I have to tell you, the proof is in the pudding.”

Lito Ruiz came to 4-217 in September as a low “one,” to view
him in terms of the scholastic achievement rubric. He was an orphan who smashed his classmate's glasses. But by December, he was working hard. He scored much higher on my division assessment than he had on the previous unit's multiplication test, which indicated that he finally did get a grasp on multiplication concepts, since you can't divide without them; it just took him longer. In February, after I read a book to the class about colonial-era religious-tolerance seeker Roger Williams, Lito asked if he could write a story in which he got to meet Roger Williams. His penmanship and mechanics were terrible, but his ideas had teeth. I wish I could reproduce the story, but when it was nearly complete at two pages (by far his longest ever composition), the work vanished from his desk and was never found.

For this second round of report cards, teachers received explicit instructions that the students' grades should be accurate projections of their scores on the Test. Lito Ruiz was a poor taker of standardized tests. My twos for him in the second marking period were hugely optimistic. As for the first marking period, I elected against giving him the “ones” that his academic-rubric-based output reflected because I knew that seeing a full slate of the lowest possible grades would crush him.

I didn't say any of this because I was frozen, off guard, and Ms. Guiterrez was on Mrs. Boyd's heels with the next victim.

“Gladys Ferraro. This student has actually
decreased
in the ‘personal and social growth' categories. Hamisi Umar, same marks as the first period. No improvement.”

I cringed, realizing I was in for a full audit of all twenty-five of my kids. Mrs. Boyd took several from the pile. “Lakiya Ray. We can skip her; she's an idiot. Okay, Marvin Winslow. He actually has a little improvement in math. A few twos. Will he get a two on the Math Test?”

“Probably not,” I said. My principal had just called my student an
idiot.
Ms. Guiterrez shook her head at me.

“So we have two problems,” Mrs. Boyd announced. “Number one, we need to see some improvement, and number two, we need
that improvement to be real. Mr. Brown, everybody teaches. The school day is a long day for everyone. But whether we get tired from being here is not the measure of being a good teacher. Your classroom is often a mess, and your bulletin boards just don't illustrate real caring. I don't want this to be a lost year for those children. I have to consider giving you a U rating unless you can really show us something. Do you have anything to say?”

After being called an incompetent, loafing liar, there were many things I wanted to say. I swallowed them all. “The students are learning and I apologize for not reflecting it better in the report card data. I will do everything I can to improve my methods and my management. I would really like to ask, though, to officially start the Visual Arts Club. It will energize me and the kids, and, at the worst, it will be an interesting no-loss experiment.” I could feel myself veering out of coherence with the last sentence and abruptly stopped speaking.

Mrs. Boyd's demeanor changed so completely that it seemed the past five minutes had not happened. “I've told you we have money in the budget to pay you overtime for after-school work, right?”

I nodded cautiously.

“Okay then, it's a go,” she said.

I gave another solemn nod, my blood still up.

Ms. Guiterrez snapped back to business. “Sonandia Azcona, we know about her. Joseph Castanon, no improvement. Tiffany Sanchez, no improvement except in ‘shows evidence of understanding text,' but she went down in ‘builds on the ideas of others in conversation.' Eric Ruiz, oh boy…”

No parents showed up to conference with me, so I brooded over the U threat. At the year's end, teachers are rated with either an S (satisfactory) or U (unsatisfactory), the latter spelling the end of your teaching career if you get zapped with it before gaining tenure. Considering New York City's severe teacher shortage, U's were reserved for dire, intolerable circumstances.
Am I unsatisfactory?

Two parents came just before the three o'clock break: Sonandia's
and Jennifer's mothers. Some teachers still had none. I had better traffic at the 5:00–7:00 session, although Lakiya's and Cwasey's mothers did not make the return trip, probably smelling trouble.

I told Christian Salerno's mother that he was in deep danger of repeating fourth grade, because he did not take his work seriously. She responded that Christian told her the work at P.S. 85 was too easy for him after transferring in from a tougher parochial school. I stifled my shock at the enormity of Christian's sustained lie and bluntly told her—and Christian, who was sitting there—that Christian was struggling with fundamental math concepts and writing basics. “He needs to cut the laziness and lying and get
serious
about school,” I asserted.

Mrs. Salerno sighed. “All he does is close the door to his room and dance. He listens to disco jungle all day.
Disco jungle.
Can you believe it? He's always moonwalking.” Christian tried unsuccessfully to suppress a sheepish smile. I had a sudden, bizarre desire to see Christian Salerno do the moonwalk. He vigorously agreed to an impromptu performance between groups one and six. What kind of teacher was I?

Tiffany Sanchez's chiseled father wrote “Tiffeny” on my sign-in sheet. Smelling strongly of cologne, he was exceedingly affable and nodded understandingly when I brought up last month's in-class breakdown. When I recommended talking to Tiffany about alternate ways to express her anger, he closed off. “That's how she is,” he said flatly. “She'll be fine.” He scared the hell out of me.

Both of Bernard's parents came, lugging him in tow. This was the meeting I was waiting for. I thought Bernard had the greatest swing potential, that this conference might actually impact his behavior and his life. I opened by praising his creativity and enthusiasm to participate. Everyone was smiling.

“But there is something holding Bernard back from being the best student he can be, which would be one of the top students in the class,” I said. A sharp, anticipatory silence hung in the air. I
fumbled for my first lower-the-boom words, prolonging the expectant pause. “Bernard explodes when he gets angry. I know we've talked about this before, and I'm grateful that you came to me back in September to talk about it, but it's getting worse, and as Bernard gets bigger and stronger, it's getting more dangerous for him and his peers. I can't tolerate fighting in the classroom, so when it does happen and when Bernard's involved, I have to call him on it and punish him. I think this has led to Bernard resenting me. I need him to understand that I want to help him. I am not the enemy. Bernard has shut down during lessons and is constantly talking and moving around, which causes disruptions, and isn't fair to the other kids. He
needs
to check himself when he feels himself starting to get upset. He can ask to leave the classroom, and I will always let him if it's to cool down. And he
needs
to be respectful in the classroom. He should be one of my leaders, but lately he's been causing problems.”

Bernard's parents were stunned that this speech could follow my glowing introduction. Anticipating what was to come at home, Bernard started quietly to cry.

Students with at least one parent who worked academically with them at home could read well. Students with no help at home could not. The difference was never more starkly apparent than after meeting with a succession of parents at the conferences.

Allie Bowers reported the same findings with her kindergartners. “It starts when they're born,” she said. “Once they get to school, that gap widens so fast, because the kids who know the alphabet excel, and the kids with deadbeat parents just get discouraged.”

I came up with an idea for City Hall: free literacy-based parenting classes with attendance incentives, like Huggies and books. If your kid is anywhere from in the womb to five years old, you can come to a weekly meeting to learn ways to raise a literate, empowered child. The evening classes would be moderated by community
members, which would create jobs and foster a neighborhood culture of learning.

At home, I pitched the idea to Greg. “I don't know,” he said, grimacing. “You'd need a lot of money to start that up, and I don't think people would come. The parents who would need the literacy training the most are probably illiterate themselves and don't want to get exposed and look the fool. People are also touchy about being told how to raise their kids. Maybe they'd show up once, take the Huggies, and never come back.”

My idea died. I had enough mountains to climb without writing probably doomed proposals for social programs. The next week, Greg got accepted to the University of Chicago school for public policy.

Pat Cartwright came back. I hugged her at first sight in the cafeteria during lineup. Most of the faculty treated her with distant politeness, eyeing her with the masked but acute awareness of a celebrity in the room. The administration said nothing to her beyond Mr. Randazzo's “Good to have you back, Pat,” and in fifteen minutes everyone was sequestered in their classrooms as if she had never left.

The P.S. 85 Visual Arts Club launched on Wednesday, March 24. The regular school day ended on a frenzied note, with Athena's desk toppling right before dismissal. Carol Slocumb, the second-year Fellow who ran her third-grade class with boot camp intensity, agreed to help me out by leading 4-217 down the steps to the parking lot, so I could remain upstairs to greet the after-school participants. I had nine girls and two boys, ranging from third to fifth grade. Olga Tavarez agreed to let Sonandia come, even though it meant that Olga had to wait in the auditorium until 4:30 to drive Sony home. (This was when I learned that Sonandia actually lived outside the P.S. 85 neighborhood, but her mother kept her enrolled there to avoid disrupting her school experience.)

Cat Samuels and I made a circle of chairs in the back of the room. When the apprehensive, well-behaved lot settled into their seats, Cat and I congratulated them for being handpicked to pioneer this groundbreaking new club. I wrote the words “image” and “frame” on the board and invited the students to think of pictures outside the context of family photos or book illustrations. I showed them a selection of photographs I had taken over the years, spanning from a Fourth of July backyard barbecue to sunrise at the Joshua Tree National Park. Cat's photos were more unconventional than mine, experimenting with extreme close-ups of subjects like her pet rabbit's eye or a single blade of grass. She also had some great rock-and-roll concert shots. We discussed controlling the frame and picking out just the right moment to shoot the picture.