Emergency Teacher (18 page)

Ever since the first day when he shook my hand and introduced himself it had been clear that Big Bird was different. His grades were average and his speech impediment made it difficult to understand him. Nonetheless, he showed up everyday and said the same thing, “I am going to college, Miss. I want to be a lawyer.”

Big Bird was eccentric. Big Bird's massive frame and meaty arms meant he didn't look the part of a smart kid. Physically, he reminded me of Lenny in
Of Mice and Men
. His hands could crush a small animal, yet he was a gentle soul. He always asked, “Why?” For whatever I said, he'd gargle, “But why, Miss?”

Big Bird loved the library and begged me to take him whenever I could. He would read the strangest books and then try to incorporate what he'd read into the conversation. For example, I once saw him reading a book about the Wild West. After that, he started calling himself a lady's man and opening doors for me. Sometimes, as we filed out of the classroom for lunch he would jump the line and smack his plump hand against the chest of whichever boy was rushing out.

“Ladies first,” he'd say, and usher me out the door.

“What's gotten into you?” I'd ask.

“Miss, I'm like a man from the old century. They knew how to treat ladies.”

Big Bird had recently started reading poetry. He would wander for hours looking at different books of poems, and would cradle the frayed books, slowly mouthing the words. Later on in the school year, I found he was secretly writing poems to Juanita, a twelve-year-old girl in our class. (She rejected him.)

One Saturday I offered to take Big Bird to the library so he could read books while I corrected assignments. Big Bird lived in the commercial center of The Badlands, close to dozens of other students. I parked outside his house and walked up a few steps. Outside on the porch, which was littered with old furniture, Big Bird's two little sisters huddled in the corner, whispering. When they saw me their faces lit up, and they ran inside. “His teacher here.” Of the twelve row houses on either side of his block, only one was boarded up. The block was loud and transient, and it bustled with activity around the clock. The police department was four or five blocks down, but in between was a fairly well-known drug corner, marked by dangling sneakers. Big Bird said he sometimes saw some of my students out there dealing drugs.

Both of Big Bird's parents worked. His dad worked the day shift as a maintenance worker in one of Center City's fancy high-rise apartments. His mom cut and curled ribbons in a factory near Wilmington. She worked the graveyard shift, from 11:00 PM until 7:00 AM, so she could be home during the day. Aside from Big Bird, she had three younger children and an eighteen-year-old daughter to cook and clean for. On this Saturday, everyone was at home.

As the porch door shut with a thwack, my eyes adjusted from the bright sun to the dark living room, and I came upon Big Bird lying on the couch with a sheet of paper over his face. The row house has a common layout—the living room in front, the kitchen in back, and stairs placed directly at the entrance leading up to four bedrooms. The house was worn, but clean and nicely decorated. Two couches and a few chairs sat in a circle. Plants dangled in front of lace-curtained windows, and a photo of Pope John Paul and other religious icons were placed carefully about. Two Caribbean blue parakeets chirped from a foot-wide cage.

“What are you doing inside? It's such a gorgeous day,” I said.

“No, no, no,” his mother shook her head and spoke in Spanish. “The problem with Philadelphia is the kids can't go outside. It's too dangerous. They come up to you and ask, ‘You want to make some money? Take this package.'”

His dad was reading a magazine next to him.
“Sientate,”
his mom told him, but he shook his head. He wore an aqua blue button-down shirt with a Japanese animation character on it, open at the neck enough to show a white under-tank.

“My brother is a unique person,” said his older sister Jocelyn. She had recently graduated from Edison, the local high school. She was going to attend Temple University. She'd be the first person in her family to attend college. “He's himself. He doesn't follow the crowd. He doesn't like black music. He's a romantic. But that gets him in trouble. Other people don't like that.”

“Do you want your son to graduate high school?” I asked his parents.

His dad shrugged. “Oh, it's too soon to say.”

“Oh, I want him to go to a good school,” his mother said. “A school near the house.”

“Mammy!” Joceyln protested. “There aren't any good schools near here. You gotta go out of this neighborhood.”

The mother looked lovingly at Juan. “No, no,
mi hijo
. You stay close to your family. You go to a school near here. There are good schools.”

Jocelyn rose and sauntered towards her bedroom. “No, there ain't, mammy,” she said, and shut the door.

Juan didn't say anything. Finally, we left for the library. In the car Big Bird grew pensive. “I hate this neighborhood,” he said.

“Why do you think so many kids drop out?” I asked him.

“Look around you, Miss,” he said, waving at the abandoned storefronts and the guys on the corner. “Monkey see, monkey do.”

“I have a math question. On a scale of one to ten—one being you drop out and ten being you graduate—what number would you be?”

“Twelve, Miss. I am going to graduate.”

As we drove, I could see Big Bird had something on his mind. He started to say things like “I want to be a writer, too. I'm gonna write a book about my life. It'd be a sad, sad story.”

My months of teaching trained me to pick up on big hints like this. I started asking questions that gave Big Bird an excuse to open up. This finally happened when I lied and said, “Your dad seems nice.”

He shook his head. “Miss, my dad got two faces.” Long pause. “You saw one.”

I remembered Big Bird said the first thing he would do when he got a job and money would be to buy his mom a house so she could get out. I thought about how Big Bird just took the bullying from smaller kids and never hit back, and how he hated violence. Big Bird hated his father. That was his motivation: to save his mother.

“I'm so proud of you,” I said. “Tanks, Miss,” he said, as we headed up the steps into the library. A few moments later, Big Bird was absorbed in his books.

A week later a posse of eighth-graders jumped Big Bird in the hallway and beat him up badly. He stumbled in from the vice principal's office with a black eye and didn't say anything all morning.

The vice principal told me that she had been worried about Big Bird for months. He had stopped taking the bus home. He hung around the classrooms after school. He even complained once to the vice principal that eighth-grade bullies were after him. I'd suspected he'd already been jumped once because he came into class with a giant, dusty footprint on his back. Big Bird completely denied that he'd been fighting, saying only, “Ayy, Miss,
tranquilo
.” Later, I heard he had written one too many love poems—he sent one to the girlfriend of an eighth-grade thug. Some students in my class accused him of acting like he was “better than everyone else.”

After he was jumped, I had him stay after school with me every day. Pedro caught on and swaggered up to my desk one afternoon claiming that eighth-graders were targeting him. He, too, wanted extra time with the teacher.

At my desk they were helping me grade papers when we heard the principal's heels clicking down the hall. She was speaking with the vice principal.

“Big Bird,” I leaned over conspiratorially. “Go ask them to look at our census projects and vote for the best one,” I told him.

“Why, Miss?” he asked.

“'Cause we worked hard. Just do it,” I said, pushing him out the door.

That week
Time for Kids
magazine was about the U.S. Census, so I came up with a project in which each kid would create a four-part package: an essay on why the census was important, a story about the first man to be counted in the census, a persuasive essay convincing people to take part in the census, and a graph showing population growth. I was so proud of this project—our first one—I'd laminated their work and hung it outside the room, along with a sign saying, “Vote for the Best One!” The principal never checked in on my classroom—no one did—but my class had done something right, and I wanted them to feel proud. Our census project was the best thing we'd done all year. No one had noticed except Mr. Rougeux.

Big Bird bounded out of the room. Pedro and I huddled behind the wall near the door and grinned at each other as we heard the principal's heels clicking toward our doorway.

We leaned in to try to overhear her muffled voice. “What'd she say, Miss?” Pedro asked.

“Shhhhhh,” I whispered, shaking my head. I felt so proud standing in the classroom knowing that she was reading our projects. Two minutes passed. She called my name.

“Ms. Asquith?” I stood up straight and moved away from the door. This was the first time the principal had ever addressed me directly.

“Uh, Ms. Asquith. Why are there posters up here with mistakes on them?”

We raced out of the classroom. The principal had a pen poised in the air and had circled the word censes on Pedro's project.

“Why is there a spelling mistake on this one?” she admonished.

“Oh.” My face burned, and I leaned in to double-check. Pedro's project had a graph, and—even though he hates to write—several essays. On the tenth line of his profile, on the first man to be counted for the census, he had scrawled, in small, messy, semiscript letters, censes.

I looked up at her and said, “Well, I'm sorry that got by me.”

Ignoring me, she leaned in with a felt-tipped marker poised in the air and pressed it against the poster, making a big, indelible circle. Then she applied an eagle eye to the rest of the students' work. She would be here all day. Some of my students didn't know basic English yet, I wanted to say. She circled another word. I cringed. Vanessa had spent days on hers.

Instead, I turned to Big Bird and said, “We should only have perfect papers out here, don't you think?”

“Oh yeah, Miss. What do you think of mine, Miss?” Big Bird pointed to number four, one of the best. The principal studied it for about ten seconds, then said, “Your graph is statistically incorrect because you show means on a curved latitude, and you fail to make up for the discrepancy in measurement in the north-south bar.”

He looked at me confused.

“I don't understand,” he stuttered. She repeated something similar, but with equally pedantic phrasing. She used a bored singsong voice. Both of us stood there, wondering how to reply when she blithely announced, “Well, I'm voting for two different ones because I'm the principal.” With a smirk, she scribbled down “Vanessa” and “Big Bird,” then rushed off.

T
he principal was growing more unpopular. She abruptly canceled Ms. Vinitzsky's after-school program for at-risk kids. She brushed aside the class schedules Mrs. G. and the Bilingual Team had spent the summer organizing. She didn't speak Spanish. She was never in the halls. She was arrogant. She was filled with bad ideas. Worst of all, she forced them on the teachers sporadically and unexpectedly.

Little good comes without controversy, particularly in the face of changeresistant, routine-oriented groups like teachers. So at first I rooted for the principal, as did Mr. Whitehorne. While she had no visible natural leadership qualities, she was willing to work hard—so much so she always looked haggard—and she clearly had ambition. “Let's give her a chance,” Mr. Whitehorne said one Friday at the Pedagogical Society. I trusted his judgment.

As November approached, all we had were platitudes like “Failure is not an option” and “We will be the number-one school in Philadelphia.” As teachers jumped ship, students grew bolder, and the veteran teachers snubbed their noses at her reform efforts, since the principal never gave us any concrete tools or advice as to how, exactly, we could become the best city in the school. Under these circumstances, failure seemed the only option.

They say the great thing about teaching is that with each new year a school gets a fresh start. Educator Harry Wong has a theory that it's the first days of school that matter the most. This is the time when kids are sussing out how much they can get away with—feeling out the teachers for what's acceptable and what isn't. These are the critical times. If you don't get them then, you lose them for the whole year. Early on, our principal became a victim of her own inexperience. Similar to how I lost control of my class those first few weeks, the principal lost control of the entire school, and she'd never get it back.

One late autumn afternoon, shortly after seventh period, the principal came over the loudspeaker announcing an all-school assembly. I rolled my eyes. Every week we had a different, unannounced assembly.

Veterans later grumbled that she should have consulted with them. They would have suggested she specifically not bring the entire school together. Break it down by grades. She didn't have the clout or authority to control eight hundred kids. The principal thought this was the opportunity to demonstrate that she did.

Our auditorium was the school's original, built in 1905. The floor sat about one thousand people and faced a raised stage, cloaked with heavy velvet curtains. A second ring of wooden seats encircled above, and the kids liked to sneak up there. Behind the auditorium was a condemned wing of the original building. Over the years it became a dumping ground for bent desks, broken windows, and trash. It was off-limits to all of us. The ceiling leaked and plaster crumbled onto the floor.

The “assembly” never stood a chance. Before the principal could begin, the special education kids arrived. They kicked open the heavy auditorium doors and barreled in, shouting, whooping, and pushing one another. They sat where they chose, kicking up their feet and leaving empty seats and empty rows between them. Onstage, color drained from the principal's face. My students sunk down and covered their ears with their hands.

“Sit down, everyone!” the principal shouted. She watched a boy lean over his row and smack another boy across the head. “Stop that! On the count of three, we'll have total quiet. One, two, three!”

The students, many of whom were already on their fifth substitute teacher in as many weeks of school, had stopped listening. One group filed in behind T62. A frumpy-looking teacher with round spectacles motioned at them. More students poured in. Paper balls flew. Small fights brewed and fizzled and then flared up again. We waited and waited. The principal gestured wildly into the microphone. I could barely hear her.

“This is not how the number-one school in Philadelphia should behave!” she shouted. “Let's show how our school can come to an assembly.”

A boy wearing a bright yellow jacket showed her his middle finger. She pointed at him. “Detention! You will spend one hour after school with me in my office.” He turned to talk to his friend. The principal turned her attention elsewhere.

So many were talking and shouting that it was impossible to blame any one student. As momentum grew, I prayed a fight wouldn't break out, which could've turned into a brawl, then a riot. The principal's poor planning was jeopardizing the safety of the entire school and staff. She was also sending out a message that would reverberate for the rest of the year: the principal does not have control. This was clear. Any initial shot she had at earning the respect of students evaporated. Then she implicated the rest of the teachers in her powerlessness. Unable to make herself heard above the din, the principal raised her splayed hand, with her palm facing out, and motioned for the teachers to copy her visual plea for silence. Mrs. Tooley, the science teacher, reluctantly placed her hand in the air and pursed her lips tensely. Ms. Soleimanzadeh, the other new sixth-grade teacher, was making her way down a row, trying to reach some rowdy boys. Mr. Rougeux had his hand in the air; his students looked into their laps quietly.

The situation was too far gone to rein back in now. Our open palms just exposed our failure, and all my students were watching. The longer I held it up, the more we felt ignored. I let it slide down, and shortly after so did everyone else. The principal, on the podium, was angrily gesturing to Mrs. Jimenez.

In the row behind us, seventh-graders began to fight. Two huge girls were threatening the skinny boys behind them. They held up their notebooks as if they were going to smash them in the boys' faces. Toward the end of the aisle, some boys were flicking the butterfly hair clips in Marianna and Sayara's hair. I had to protect them.

I leaned forward and swatted their hands back.

“Where is your teacher?” I asked.

“She gone, Miss,” said one of the students.

“What do you mean?” I asked. I had seen her earlier.

“She left,” said another girl. I scanned the auditorium, and sure enough she was nowhere to be seen.

“What's her name?” I demanded, thinking I was going to report her to the principal. I wrote down “Mrs. Humver.”

At least fifty minutes passed before the noise finally lulled. The principal squeezed in some words. “I called this assembly to congratulate the three hundred students who had perfect attendance in September,” she announced breathlessly. “I'm going to call each student's name by section. Please come to the stage to receive your certificate. Anthony Rodriguez.”

A gawky boy, whose baggy pants barely hung on his hips, stood up and looked around uncertainly. His middle seat meant he was forced to push past eight students, giving the audience ample time to train their eyes on his every step. A low whistle spread. He broke free from his aisle and loped forward. By the time he reached the foot of the stage, several students catcalled and booed. Perfect attendance didn't exactly make a student popular.

The principal plodded ahead, undeterred, with more names. This was what she pulled us out of instruction for? She listed five more students, when noise drowned her out. She lost control again, and this time permanently. This mass of hormones was not going to sit still for three hundred names. For the next forty-five minutes, the idea spiraled to a painful death. Angry, the principal began dismissing classes that were misbehaving, and soon half the audience was gone.

We stayed, along with a handful of other classes, and watched in disbelief as the principal suddenly beamed upon us and continued handing out awards as though nothing had happened. My class cheered as I got my award for perfect teacher attendance. At 3:05 we left.

The last message of the day was an angry one from the principal over the loudspeaker. She told all the team leaders to “Report to my office immediately.” From the tone of her voice, she planned to place blame elsewhere. The failed assembly was her bad idea. I dug the scrap of paper out of my pocket that read “Mrs. Humver” and tossed it in the trash.

After the assembly, whatever shred of fear the students might have experienced had been washed away, and the illusion of teacher authority went with it. Whenever a fight broke out in the hallway, and it always did, teachers thought twice about intervening. Into this power vacuum stepped the teacherless special ed students. They rowdily proclaimed victory over the hallways, freely running through them.

The principal decided to crack down further. She tightened the rules about using lockers and wearing jackets so that students could no longer access their lockers during the day or wear jackets anywhere inside the school. Anyone who disobeyed was suspended. Then she started hall sweeps.

One morning I was getting my students seated when over the loudspeaker the principal barked, “We will be having a hall sweep in one minute. Anyone caught in the hallway will have an automatic detention.” The hallway filled with sounds of shuffling as kids ran past and school police gave chase. As a show of solidarity with the new school policy, I harangued a late student, demanded his name, and gave it to Vice Principal Jimenez, who raced from class door to class door jotting down dozens of names.

As the boy raced off, I returned to class feeling more stupid than emboldened. Mrs. Jimenez couldn't give all those students detention. She'd have to fill out detention slips for every caught kid and track them down to give them the slips to take home for signature. They'd then have to bring back the slips and return them to Mrs. Jimenez, who would fill out more paperwork, assigning the kids to detention. The paperwork alone would take hours, and if students didn't show for detention, and Mrs. Jimenez checked to see, then theoretically, the next step was to start filling out the paperwork for in-school suspensions. There was barely room in Ms. Vinitzsky's suspension room anymore. It was filled with the special education students who had nowhere else to go.

The school's disciplinary strategy was antiquated and ineffective. The students saw this and manipulated it. After a few weeks of her “cracking down,” the result was not order, but apathy. Soon, students were given so many suspensions that they became meaningless. From many students' perspective, in-school suspension was a day with Ms. Vinitzsky, who had a tender toughness that wild kids craved—and at least they would have a teacher.

In many ways, principals are set up for failure in Philadelphia, and our principal was the perfect example. After twenty years working in the Philadelphia school system, this was her first chance to fulfill her career dream to be a school leader. Unfortunately for her, rather than train and cultivate its leaders, the school district treated new principals as it treated new teachers, with a sinkor-swim attitude. She was hired by the school superintendent in August—giving her only a few weeks to prepare. Then she was abandoned by the school district and threatened with dismissal if she didn't do a good job.

What's more, she was white and in charge of a bilingual school that was 90 percent Puerto Rican and entirely poisoned by Hispanic politics. Our principal reported to one of the twenty-two clusters of administrators running the schools. All of the administrators in our cluster were Puerto Rican. To the principal's credit, she took Spanish lessons, but to the teachers, Puerto Rican children had to have Puerto Rican principals. To them, the position of school principal was booty too valuable to be given to someone from outside their political network. Being Hispanic was more important than being able to lead a school.