Cohesion

What’s been happening lately? I am very poor. I have come to a point in my life when I can no longer replace broken things. If it breaks, I adjust my life to live without it. When kids talk about Ipods and other gadgets I can barely keep up.

The kids were talking about Myspace.com one day as they surfed the net. I remember reading about it online. Some teachers were complaining about it at edweek.org so I asked the kids why the teachers didn’t like it. They told me it was a blog and kids get accounts there and talk to one another. This takes away from the time they should be doing research or other scholarly pursuits online.

I remember when the web first came into existence. It was thought to be unreliable as a research tool because anyone can post anything anytime!

So the kids told me the school had blocked access to Myspace.com but they knew how to crack it. I asked them how that was done, but they wouldn’t tell me. It was their own private conspiracy. I was secretly proud of them for being smart and having their own cohesion.

I liked watching them argue and come to a conclusion among themselves. Points for group dynamics! They interacted well.

Supplemental

I didn’t know what a supplemental position was when I accepted the call. Sometimes it is called student advisor or campus supervisor. Warning: avoid these positions! Even the men who have worked this job complain of sore feet. You have to walk around the campus all day with a radio and encourage stragglers to go back to class.

I saw a couple of students walking around holding hands, like they were going for a stroll in the park. By this time – it was the end of the day – I was too exhausted to do anything. I was literally sitting in the rain feeling the cold in my bones. I just smiled and nodded at them as they paraded past.My objective at this point was avoiding the principal myself!

When I accepted the job, I thought I would be relieving teachers who had to go to meetings or attend IEP conferences. I was not dressed for outdoor work. It was cold and rainy. I walked all day. My fingers felt cold inside my gloves. I was not given the keys to the campus supervisor’s office. I imagined on cold days she would have ducked inside occasionally to sip some warm coffee.

The principal and vice-principal would go out at breaks and lunch and walk around smiling and greeting the students. But I was the only one who stayed out in the rain and cold for the entire day. I wondered if anyone really grasped the significance of what was happening to me.

Table High

The entire Table High School is crammed into three 30 foot by 40 foot modular structures, appearing abandoned in the corner of a huge, four block city lot on which sits another, larger high school and a junior college. When I arrived at 7:45 a.m. the office had not yet been opened. No one was around. I sat on a wet bench between the two buildings. It was a dewy morning. The computer system that called me for the job described it as “general ed.”

I waited alone, listening to passing cars. Soon, a worn out Mercedes pulled up and an old guy with long gray hair and a great build hopped out. “Hi! I’m Eli,” he said, holding out his hand. He opened the door to the classroom and quickly explained the premise of Table High. “Students can come and go as they please. If they are later than 7 minutes they only get half credit for that period.”

Next, the secretary arrived and told me the students had low self-esteem and must not be criticized. The high school was all about positive strokes and good performance. The students were on their own to perform or not, as they chose.

Posters of various famous topographies of the world lined the walls. A savanna, a taiga and a desert were displayed in living color. Periodic table of elements could be seen. Science and math textbooks sat on dusty shelves. There were video cassette players, TVs, computers, bookshelves, tables and a printer. World maps, white board, copy machine, keyboard. A small lab center with vials and sink – a scale – a selection of rocks.

And the pictures of Gandhi and Einstein along side Caesar Chavez. Many charts of insects. Science kits lined the top of bookcases. One was a kit about plastics and environmental concerns (remember “Better Living Through Chemistry,” the Dupont Chemical Company slogan of the 1950s?)

First period was half over before any students arrived. They chatted and read the newspaper. The same group of kids was in every class. There were only about 10 of them. During morning break a young man walked toward the keyboard, one arm slightly withered and hanging at an odd angle from his body. As he rested his fingers on the keyboard and began to play I felt a magic pianist was serenading me alone. I felt privileged to hear the wonderful, most amazing music. Beautiful and mysterious like its player, the music was a collage of pieces taken from his memory and blended seamlessly together.

The music came from another sphere – it was so gentle. Are these students above average in sensitivity? Is that the secret of this school? They seemed way too kind for the American macho scenery that surrounds us today.

The music sounded like classical by such composers as Debussy and Pachelbel along with ragtime and a dash of funeral dirge played in a high octave range. It was only a slight twinkling, barely discernable above the chatter of the students. The students were not talking loudly either, perhaps in deference to his music. They were friendly to him, but he sat apart from them and didn’t join in their conversations during class time.

Later I asked the pianist about the music and he said it was from Final Fantasy. “Oh, I haven’t seen that movie,” I told him and learned Final Fantasy is a video game and the Japanese composer is Eumatsu.

There was 15 minutes of total silence in which the students worked diligently at their assignments. Then one of the boys started talking about what his girlfriend liked to do with showerheads. Normally I would tell them to stop, but this was a special group, needing pampering, according to my brief instructions upon arrival. They had low self-esteem.

So I allowed them to continue on with the showerhead inference. The discussion centered on who did and did not understand. Some kids were more naive than others. Eventually everyone got it, or said they did. The burly Mexican who had brought up the subject was male and dressed in black denim from head to toe. The denim had been torn in creative scallop designs. He said, “It’s something everybody does.” But still, I don’t think I would have got it at their age. I was very pure in high school. Didn’t have a boyfriend until I was almost 18.

Next they moved on to fecal material on toothbrushes. This was a scientific fact, said one student. “There’s nothing you can do about it. Even if you keep the toothbrush in an enclosed case. It will still have fecal material on it. And when you brush your teeth…well, it doesn’t matter. It’s o.k. Cause everybody has fecal material in their bathroom.”

I can’t get the image out of my mind. It is torture to think of. No wonder the teachers want the kids to be quiet. For some reason, I am always privileged to hear disgusting things from kids. It’s because I allow it, of course. I don’t usually tell them to stop. As a grandmother I am a kindler, gentler person, willing to listen. I have more time. Or whatever the reason is, I am the bearer of untold disgusting tales.

Every day I go to a new place, new faces, new expectations. But I get no instruction about what the expectations are. I never see the teacher whom I am replacing. Still I get up and prepare for work everyday, often not knowing if I will have work that day. The constant bombardment of worry wears at my strength. As a substitute teacher I know there will be no work for me in the summer.

You must be open to all that you see around you. You must lack discernment if it involves your own ego. In order to truly see what is unfolding before you, don’t take anything personally. Not taking things personally is a journey of the self. To travel it you must be able to see into the soul of another and understand his motivations.

This is not always easy. The ego wants recognition. To be childlike and perceive beauty in everything, to love everyone (“peace man,” says the dying hippy generation), is my goal. What have we developed by marching rigid children to their workbenches and thwarting their creativity? Maybe Table High School, by seeking alternatives, will show the world that it is not too late!!!

Listening Skills

I taught three periods of English Literature at C** Middle School. We read aloud “A Retrieved Reformation,” by O’Henry. I asked students what O’Henry meant in the first paragraph when he wrote, “When a man with as many friends on the outside as Jimmy Valentine had is received in the ‘stir’ it is hardly worth while to cut his hair.”

I asked the class what the passage about having friends on the outside meant in regards to not expecting to stay long in jail. Since no one was able to infer anything, I read the sentence before: “He had served nearly ten months of a four year sentence. He had expected to stay only about three months, at the longest.” No one got it except this black kid who couldn’t read.

Most of the class could read quite well. But they could not infer meaning from the text. The black kid said he could not read but he could listen. It was a very interesting experience because he was one of about three students who got the clues and irony of O’Henry’s work.

Some kids thought it meant their friends had deserted them or their friends had bailed them out, two opposing ideas. Some thought Jimmy Valentine was going to commit suicide so why bother to cut his hair. Boy, they were just not paying attention to this piece of writing.

Even thought they had just read "Why, I never cracked a safe in my
life," they still laughed hysterically at the term “cracksman,” thinking that it was about somebody who sold crack. They could not break out of their giddiness. When I explained that a cracksman was a person who broke into safes, there was genuine astonishment and a kind of awakening.

But it didn’t last. Their brains closed off again, rapidly retreating to the safe place of disdain for each other and the outer world. Later, in the halls, I overheard them calling each other crack whores. The flat screen (television) is the flat affect of their lives. Insulting one another but afraid to break out of the entrapment of sameness that is the life of the adolescent. I wish I could get you to see what I see…get you excited about other places, other worlds.

I wanted so badly to fill their minds up with the joy I was experiencing. I read the passages with emphasis. I got bright expressions on my face. One student asked me what “that look” was for!

English Language Learners

This kid came in to special class midway through semester and was put at fourth grade level. He could not read and was very frustrated. He was given some spelling words to memorize. He could do that. But he didn’t know what the words meant and could not use them in a sentence. He could not read!

His parents were probably itinerant workers because he talked about various states he had been in – Oregon, New Mexico, Texas as well as the country of Mexico.

ELL students don’t understand nouns like quart or lap and verbs like pat. They understand what a quarter is, but a quarter to ten? The concepts are too advanced.

I found out that the math teacher was reading the word problems to students. She was gone one day and I was in charge of her group. It nearly drove me crazy. They raised their hands and said, “I need help!” I would go over and they would point at the words and expect me to read to them.

Even though they were second language learners, they understood English. They just could not read it. Or they could read it but not know what it said. They could say the words on the page and make it sound like they were reading. You could probably do the same thing with a Spanish book. Try it sometime.

Even spelling workbooks where student had to fill in missing words were too hard for them because they couldn’t read any of the other words in the sentence.

Empty Classroom

Passed a group of boys standing by some lockers on the way to my class and my sense of smell was accosted by an overpowering wave of men’s cologne. Over the next few days I subbed for the AP Biology class of a high school. AP stands for Advanced Placement and these kids were on the fast track to success. The only pressure they applied was to themselves. I did notice, however, that after test in last period, they all wanted to go to the library and work on their projects, which were due at the end of the week. At one point, I looked up to see only two students playing a game on the computer set up on the back counter.

A runner came in with a message for one of the students. “Wha--?” she said. “Where is everyone?” And I looked up from my novel to the empty classroom. “They’re in the library,” I said, knowing full well, they had all gone home.

Ticking Eye

You get sick a lot, doing this job. Because you fill in for people who are sick, and the students pass it on to you. I have had some kind of coughing, sinus thing three times in the last four months.

Sixth grade again. I subbed at a school that has the same name as an insane asylum in New York. The class held twenty-four students and only six of them were quiet. The rest shouted out constantly, refused to raise their hands, talked among themselves, did not hear what the teacher said. I sent some to room eleven, the detention hall. One girl started kicking her desk before she left. At one point I was lecturing them about how they would all end up in jail!

Pretty soon even the good kids were sucked in to the chaotic mess, pulled down by their constituents. The P.E. teacher brought this class back inside because they would not obey her. Then the poetry teacher threatened to leave.

The poetry teacher did all the right disciplinary things according to school protocol. If a student talked without raising his hand, the poetry teacher wrote the student’s name on the board. Then if the student did it again, he was to get a check by his name. But so many were talking it was hard to keep up and the teacher was getting behind in his lessons.

During lunch, the keeper of room eleven (the detention room) tried to give me support. Another teacher laughed and inferred subs should expect trouble with sixth graders. Then she reminisced about her days as a sixth grader and how many subs her class got rid of one year. This wasn’t very supportive and when the principal came in I asked him to pay a visit to the class. The principal, poor man, had a severe, uncontrollable eye twitch. His eye was pulsing, bulging from its socket. I imagined I could almost see the veins around the backside of his protruding eye.

At the end of the day the students were to line up for the bus. Most of them just lollygagged on the benches. One frantic, impatient boy got very upset because I wanted everyone to line up (those were my instructions). He was afraid he would miss the bus and began shouting while pointing to the kids still sitting on the benches, “They don’t go home. They’re Cool School! They’re Cool School!” I thought he might explode on me so I moved the ragged-edged line along to the bus, fearing the perusal of the mighty principal, lying in wait.

Cool School is an after school program and about two-thirds of the class are in it. These after school groups grow close, often fondling one another like monkeys looking for fleas. They don’t get enough parental supervision and are very defensive.

The principal was out by the bus stop. I lied when he asked me how the rest of the day went. I told him, “Fine.” But during P.E. I could only get half the group to play kickball. I gave up and sat on a bench among the slackers. Some were lying under the picnic tables grabbing the others’ ankles and a few students who were trying to study complained about this discretion. “Don’t you care?” they asked me. “Don’t you care?” I just lifted my eyes toward heaven, to watch the birds.

As I drove home that night I passed plenty of hard luck parents waiting outside beat-up ranch style rentals, sitting on old tires scattered among oily car parts in front yards, smoking and holding beer cans for ashtrays.

Annoying Gnat

My maddening whirlwind of activity continues. I taught high school English for two days. I had freshman first period. They grouped together, too many at one table. There was no seating chart, but I was sure they weren’t sitting where they were supposed to be. There was a teaching assistant – no I think she was another teacher who shared the room. She came in and removed my things from her desk. I was to have a podium only.

I have to step into a brand-new world everyday. And yet people think I should know their world! So this other teacher breezed by me and whispered some bit of advice in my ear. “I’d break that group up,” she said. She was like an annoying gnat buzzing in my ear.

Something snapped inside me. I was very angry. It was the disrespect from this teacher. I prefer it when the teacher just steps in and talks directly to the students. They are more likely to listen to someone they know. So when I experienced this frustration of being put on the spot by this teacher I lost control and walked over to the table. I encircled my hand around the arm of one of the students and told her to get up and move to another table. She started screaming, “This is where I sit,” but she did move. At her new table she kept yelling, “She touched me! She touched me!” while pointing at me.

I got a letter from that school asking me not to sub there anymore. The letter mentioned something about being unable to control the class. If I get two more letters I will be banned from the inner city district.

Secretary of Education

Middle School gym class. It was very hot and the girls started going into the gym early. But it was a pretty easy gig. The coaches were there and we just had free activities. But some of the girls would sit in the shade near the entrance to the locker rooms and even the coaches couldn’t make them do anything. I relaxed though, cause I figured the coaches were in charge and they couldn’t even get the girls to cooperate.

When the girls snuck in the locker room early, I tried to get them to go back outside but they crowded around the office wanting to buy water. I started yelling at them but then I realized I was getting angry and stopped and just let them flow all over me like spawning salmon looking for a mate, screaming, half-naked girls on a mission.

Where do the birds go when it rains? Oh there’s a dove, her head tucked in, sitting on the pool house roof. It’s pleasant to stare out the window at the pool boiling and bubbling as the raindrops hit the surface. There’s a blackbird, wings flapping, struggling against the wind, going nowhere. I choose to be like the dove, head tucked under my wing – not the blackbird, flapping against the current.

If Ben Lauden nuked Washington, D. C., eradicating a few pinstripes, how would the country go on? In the sequential presidential succession rule, the last person to take over as president would be the Secretary of Education. Imagine that! The Secretary of Education in charge of the country.

Sixth is the Worst

I notice I do get called back a lot so I guess I must be doing something right. The schools that let the students get away with disrupting class have difficulty getting subs, I’d bet. There is one-sixth grade that is really tough. I have been called back three times. There is a classroom assitant who works one-on-one with a developmentally delayed student. The class is full of back-talkers. Whenever I say something, one of the students will yell out a response that is contrary. “That’s not how Mrs. J does it!” Others will pipe up. Much arguing.

This seems to be a pattern with sixth graders. There were only about five students who stayed in their seats and worked. The assistant chimed in her observations about the students being out of control, which made me look bad. I got a note with a heart on it from one student, apologizing for the whole class.

Entering Adulthood

The difference in character between seventh grade and eight grade students is startling. Seventh grade is the last vestige of childhood. They are noisy, restless and uncontrollable. They are eager to talk to me and to each other. They roam about the room constantly as if they all have ants in their pants. But the eighth grade students have lost all that itchiness and sit quietly, barely acknowledging my presence.

Since the seventh and eighth grade classes came to the same teacher, I was able to observe this dichotomy of behavior. One of the teachers came and talked to me at lunch. We discussed the feelings of eighth graders. They are afraid because they are entering adulthood and heading off to high school. They have to make choices about what classes to take and what they plan to do with their lives. They are preoccupied with this.

What’s that quote? “When I was a child, I played with childish things. When I was an adult, I put away childish…” whatever.

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe (or on a shoestring).
She had so many children; she didn’t know what to do.
They came at her day after day.
They had different faces and she didn’t know their names.

The Sign

In one elementary class I found a letter to President Bush printed on large sheets of butcher paper stuck to the wall. It asked him to protect more forests. Students copied it and sent it to him.

Once, during the day I had to yell, “Be quiet!” Later the principal came in to explain how to behave toward a substitute and reminded them of the sign for silence.

So now I know the sign. You hold up your hand with two fingers extended in a V shape and magically, students become quiet. They don’t stay quiet for long, however, and pretty soon your arm starts to go numb from holding it up in that position. If you do that in high school though, some student will say, with a sneering look, “This is high school!”

Sometimes I have a good day. All the students are studious. On those occasions, I feel like I felt when I was a student. I always loved school. I was studious, not disruptive. The disruptive ones were taken away and put in continuation classes. At the time I didn’t wonder where they had gone. Sometimes we would drive by the continuation school and the kids would tell stories about what happened to the lawbreakers inside.

I never dreamed that I would be working with them someday.

Privileged White Kids

Quote from middle school student: “Why are some people rejected by the accepted?” This middle school was in a privileged area were the children’s parents were psychologists and speech therapists, among other well-paid professions. These kids don’t have the disruptive energy and I think it must be because their parents expect the best from them.

At another upscale rural high school I subbed a class in chemistry. I thought the students would be pretty smart and there wouldn’t be any behavior problems because they were in a chemistry class. But there were about 60 kids in one class! The desks were all two-seaters and the students were jammed together. Some of them wandered around and talked and were extremely rude to me if I said anything.

When I asked that papers be turned in, a girl who was standing near the basket screamed, “I did turn it in!” Then she whirled away from me and walked toward her seat. How could she be so angry with me for asking that papers be submitted? Later, she wandered about and flung her scarf around her neck, said she couldn’t stop talking. The rest of the class seemed used to her behavior and kept on about their business.

Summing up these two experiences I would have to say that it may not be that privileged kids act better. It may be that disruptions are the result of overcrowding.

Princess

Another chaotic episode involved a fifth grade student whom I called “Princess.” She was really put off by all the noise that began when I showed up. Many times students will tell me how disturbed they are about the conduct of their peers whenever a substitute is present. It is true; students think it is free-for-all time. I have seen kids who were well behaved at the beginning of class give up and join the squall within a couple of hours. The group rapidly turns into a mob. There are a few students who continue to work independently and never mix into the fray. They must have nerves of steel.

Anyway, Princess was a budding ten-year old who experienced anxiety at the disruption of her class and wanted to call her mother! I said no and she sobbed, head on her arm, at her desk. I told her to come up to my desk where I tried to explain to her that her crying was just as upsetting as the other activities that were taking place in the classroom at that moment. I tried to get her to relax and not expect everything to go as usual today. As I talked with her I notice her T-shirt said “Princess.”

Later that same day, someone spilled Princess’ science project, which consisted of a cup filled with vinegar, syrup and a raw egg, all over the inside of her cubby hole where she had lined her books up in a neat row. I moaned internally at the thought of how this would set her off on another crying jag. And indeed, when she discovered this mess, she began to wail. But other students came to her aid and by the end of the day she was quite happy and content.

Quest for Power

In a bilingual sixth grade, I noticed three white boys among seventeen brown-skinned Spanish kids. The white kids all had blond hair in bangs and wore glasses. They all looked like Harry Potter. Maybe it was intentional.

It was very noisy in that classroom, but they were working. They were working in groups. The school’s goals were all about integration and cooperation among races. Two languages were spoken. The assignment was written in Spanish, but everyone spoke English. They seemed to be able to understand the written word in both languages.

Soon the noise level became intolerable and the cooperation and work ethic that started out on the plus side, gradually declined. Kids began wandering around, horse playing – the old slap and tackle game prevails among sixth graders. The students told me they had completed their assignments and had nothing to do. This is a typical experience for me and forces me to be the disciplinarian.

“Why are you out of your seat?” I query.

“I had to get a pencil.”

The excuses pour forth from many students at the same time. I notice a lot of students just interrupt you if you are talking to another student.

“He took my pencil. Can I go to the bathroom? Can I go to the library to work on my project?”

They bombard you with questions. It is particularly difficult in sixth grade. This is the time when they want to be free but don’t know how to get there. By high school they have learned to play the game. They know how to get what they want without annoying the adults. But it’s a long process and a learning journey, discovering independence.

I guess that my role, as a substitute, is to allow them some freedom to explore the outside world. How is it out there? How will adults react? They are all so different from my teacher. What can I get away with?

Contentment

In a third grade class I found a book on the teacher’s desk called hugs for Teachers. One of the passages read, “But really, you want it this way. It’s the way it was for you. You yourself are a ring from someone else’s splashing rock. Like branches of shade, your effort doesn’t stop here. It goes on to cool other souls. Like you, it will reach out, comfort, shelter, and accept.” It’s little sentiments like this that must keep teachers going on. In fact, in spite of all my complaining here in these chronicles, I have never enjoyed anything so much.

Cell phones

The students constantly game you and it gets tiresome. I have to repeat how I am in charge and I don’t want to hear how their teacher does things, what their teacher allows. While in a fifth grade setting, one student said, “You’re not supposed to do that,” and I blew up. “Who do you think you are? You don’t tell me what to do!”

I hate to be driven to shouting. It creates this negative energy, which drains me. I am sick a lot more than I ever was before I started this job. I have these issues now about people telling me what to do. My anger has pushed people away and I feel pretty alone now.

Another High School Special Ed class – which is the lexicon used to describe malcontents who want to break out of the school system. Students were talking a lot and not buckling down to work. Their teacher left word they could watch a movie, so we did. A teacher from next door popped her head in to complain it was too loud and she doubted that the absent teacher would have permitted such a plan as watching a movie. So now I’m getting hell from the other teachers. I didn’t feel like popping back over to defend myself. She could just work it out when the absent teacher returned.

Word travels fast that there is a sub for a class. The second period students learn from first period. I swear they have mental telepathy. So when the second block of students came in, they also wanted to watch a movie but I insisted they do an hour of math. Many of them were larger than me and were labeled as Learning Handicapped. I had two aides who sat with individuals. I tried to explain the lesson on the board, but again, wasn’t getting their attention. The lesson was adding up expenses on the phone bill, figuring discounts and averaging numbers.

These were 14-year-old boys and the energy was high. They had trouble remaining in their seats. One of the teaching assistants talked to me about her confusion as to the attitudes. She was from New Orleans and seemed to think it was the California attitude that was at fault. But, of course, these are the students who have been weeded out from the good classes.

I finally figured out how the news travels. Cell phones! Even in the classes where kids are doing badly academically they all seem to have money for cell phones.