The Great Expectations School (37 page)

The day began with a ninety-minute humanities class, devoted entirely to test prep. Ms. Jones, the student teacher running the class, actually opened by saying, “Okay guys, today we're doing more test prep. I know it's boring, but the Test is in January, so we gotta get through it.” The kids, some of whom can frequently act rambunctious and oppositional, seemed terrified of the Test and did exactly as they were told for the full hour and a half.

Each kid got a copy of last year's English Language Arts (ELA) test. It seemed that the school photocopier was in need of new toner, as I had to strain to read the light grey print on the pages. I sat in the back of the room with Hector and some other children and could not read a single word of the transparency Ms. Jones was annotating on the overhead projector. There was no room for student participation; Ms.Jones
told the students—in a genial tone, at least—which sentences were important and should be underlined. Then she looked at the questions, gave the kids a minute to come up with their answers, and told them which answers were correct. On two of the questions, they were allowed to conference in pairs.

“Now you guys do the rest,” she said, prompting fifty minutes of quiet while the kids worked over the problems.

I did the test too, and after an interminable silence, Ms. Jones asked for the students' answers. Other students cheered when they agreed with an answer announced to be correct.

The hallway transition from the test prep period to Spanish was predictably raucous. For my part, I felt like freaking out too, after the boring, pressure-laden ninety minutes we had all just tolerated.

Spanish class didn't provide much of a reprieve. The kids started with fifteen minutes of copying words and definitions. The teacher announced he had a personal situation going on, and took a cell phone call in the hall. When the actual lesson started, the kids participated eagerly and the teacher praised them for their answers.

After Spanish, the students returned to their homeroom for a one-hour formal “diagnostic” standardized math test. The hour was silent and awful. I was so bored that I left. What I missed was an afternoon math class where the teacher reviewed the answers to the standardized diagnostic test.

I came away feeling sorry for the kids. They were silent, bored, and scared. Also, they didn't get to walk away as I did, since they had been trained not to question what was demanded of them involving the scary Test. Their trusted principal and teachers—with varying amounts of zeal—shoved it down their throats. I'd like to see advocates of high-stakes testing actually try to sit through a day in the life of this assessment regime.

I'd planned to observe Hector specifically, but his experience was no different than the other kids'. At least I had a little more context for why they blew up in Theatre Arts class.

When my time was about to expire at Francis Bacon, I asked the students the fill out a “Report Card for Mr. Brown.” The sheet prompted: How much do you feel you learned in Mr. Brown's class? What did Mr. Brown do well as a teacher? What do you think Mr. Brown could do better? Please explain your answers. Almost all of the seventh- and eighth-graders appeared to take time and give thought to their responses. Here's a representative sample:

He could do better I think if he could controle his temper.

You didn't yell that's why everyone liked so he really didn't have a reason. He doesn't need teachers like ms. s to help him because all she does is scream.

Mr. Brown explained a lot and he also gave chances. I think Mr. Brown should not yell a lot.

Mr. Brown can do better when the class is misbehaving yell as much as I know he Dont like yelling.

I learned a lot because he didn't screamed a us and he took it step by step.

Sometimes it boarding and sometimes it fun. Have patantion with kids. Don't tell alot. unless they are bad. Give exaple more often. I like you teaching.

Mr. Brown could screm or be louder to the class when they don't pay attention because he has to wait for the class and
we miss some of the lesson. His a fun teacher to learn from and gives us an apportunity to say what we have to say on question he asks on the lesson he teach even though we're wrong.

He screamed and made kids raise there hands and made the lessons fun.

The kids were fixated on yelling and not yelling. My first year in the Bronx was fraught with shouting and in the time since, I'd cultivated a teaching persona that—I thought—never yelled out in anger or frustration.

Yelling in the classroom under any circumstances is counterproductive and emotionally exhausting from a teacher's perspective, and evidenced by the report card comments, for the kids it's downright scarring. Even so, a number of my Francis Bacon students still perceived me as a yeller. In a classroom full of human beings, you never know what comes across.

My second student-teaching placement lasted from January to June as the main teacher of two eleventh-grade Honors English classes at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. I'd long awaited this return to the borough that had knocked me out. Four and a half years had passed since my first day as a teacher, and here was my opportunity to get it right.

Since classes at Clinton are semester-based, I got to be the lead teacher from the first day of the course. My juniors didn't know I was a student-teacher and I never told them. My mentor, Jim Garrity, sat in the back and offered incisive lesson dissections and planning ideas.

Working with Jim at DeWitt Clinton was a desirable placement that I had angled for. The school, one of the last large comprehensive high schools in New York, served close to 5,000 students and boasted an august hit parade of alumni including legendary writers James Baldwin and Countee Cullen, composers Richard Rodgers and Bernard
Hermann, the creators of Batman (Bob Kane)
and
Spider-Man (Stan Lee)… Within the building, “small learning communities” (SLC) operated on their own schedules. My classes were part of the “Macy Honors” SLC, a prestigious college-prep program that was the pride of the principal. Landing in the Macy program was a relief because—indicated by an unsettling dropout rate and the main entrance metal detectors—not all of Clinton's classrooms were conducive to focused, high-level inquiry.

My first day ever as a teacher, back in the P.S. 85 days, had devolved into a fracas partly because of my transparently benign, help-me-help-you stance. One would think that now, over four years later, when I stepped in at Clinton to face my Bronx teenagers, I'd take a harder edge.

However, by this time, I'd learned that you do not need to fashion yourself into some kind of drill sergeant to teach in a tough neighborhood. By presenting yourself as organized and interesting, you can actually win over the students who might disrupt; they'll
want
to be part of the community if you make it enticing enough. A majority of behavior management issues can be defused by a teacher's organization and students' engagement. Juggling that solid teacher persona and student buy-in with substantive academic activities is the great challenge. Being new—lacking experience and institutional knowledge—compounds this challenge and can tip the scales towards chaos.