The Great Expectations School (7 page)

SEPTEMBER 9

10:00 during
Simon Says,
Fausto punched Hamisi and Hamisi cried but did not fight back. Fausto did not apologize.

10:45 Lakiya will not stop talking no matter what! She makes mocking gibberish sounds when Deloris speaks.

11:30 Destiny says Joseph and Fausto told her they were going to beat her up at recess.

2:00 Unprovoked, Lakiya tells Tiffany, “I'm going to follow you home.” Tiffany is terrified.

2:10 Randazzo tells the class “Mr. Brown is nice and you're taking advantage.” I don't like that he says that.

SEPTEMBER 10

10:20 Destiny hyperventilating and can't stop. I send her to get water.

11:00 Had to scream at class. Lakiya completely rude and indignant. Laughing and yelling, “Preach!” Randazzo comes in, hearing the shouting, and lectures them. They're silent for him.

LUNCH (I'm not there) Fausto chokes Eric till Eric throws up. Gets in big trouble with Mr. Daly. Daly calls home and Fausto sobs. He says he will get beaten.

1:15 I have long conversation with crying Fausto about being a leader while I eat my lunch. Good man-to-man. He says he will step off confrontations. I believe him.

2:10 Fausto causes disruption in gym class immediately upon returning to group. Entire class game has to stop and wait.

2:35 Fausto pushes Destiny, she cries.
Lakiya
helps Destiny, very surprising.

2:45 Fausto picks up and drops Verdad in an awkward body slam. Verdad cries and becomes unresponsive.

I called all fifteen parent contact numbers I had. To the six I reached, I rambled praises and yammered about how I wanted us all to be working together. I encouraged the parents to read with their kids and to keep an eye on the nightly homework. I told Lakiya's mom about how Lakiya helped Destiny Rivera when Destiny was hurt and neglected to mention Lakiya's rampant disrespect during lessons. I wanted to win the parents onto my team now in the event that I would have to bring down the disciplinary hammer later.

Except for a few brief encounters in the parking lot at dismissal, this was my first contact with parents in the Bronx. As an outsider, my vague notion, fostered by Mercy College summer seminars, was that adults in the Bronx were either overworked, undereducated (hailing from P.S. 85 and the like), estranged from a spouse, tangled up with drugs, burnt out, or a combination of several. I did not know what to expect.

My initial impressions were that the parents wanted to hear what I had to say. Cwasey's mom volunteered to be a room parent on class trips. Lakiya's mother told me, “I appreciate your call.” Tiffany's dad said, “I know Tiffany can get distracted, but she does good work when she's focused.”

My two first-generation American kids from African families, Hamisi Umar and Maimouna Lugaru, had parents who spoke very little English. I knew Julissa and blue-cardless Gladys Ferraro's caretakers only spoke Spanish. I thought about ways to communicate with them. Then I passed out.

The following day was the anniversary of September 11, 2001. Some classes held discussion forums and responded to writing prompts about 9/11. Other teachers avoided the issue altogether because of the students' immaturity. Since many of my kids could not tell me their addresses, I opted against spending a chunk of class time on the tragedy. The self-censoring and expectation-lowering had begun.

At 8:30, Mrs. Boyd came on the loudspeaker and gave a speech about memorializing this day in history. Boyd got on the PA two or three times a day in September, taking her time on the microphone, incurring many frowns from momentum-losing teachers and spiteful comments from bored students. Instead of, “Mr. Randazzo, please call the office,” we would hear, “I beg your pardon, teachers and students, and I apologize for this announcement in the midst of your literacy block, which I'm sure is making brilliant readers and writers out of you all [pause for guffaw], but Mr. Randazzo, would you please find a way to contact me, Mrs. Boyd, in the principal's office at your absolute soonest convenience. Once again, Mr. R., please contact the principal. Thank you and please return to your academic rigor and accountable talk.”

Mrs. Boyd's 9/11 memorial message culminated with a prolonged moment of silence. I scanned the room, foreboding trouble in the pregnant quiet, but I was not ready for what happened next.

“SEPTEMBER 11TH IS WACK!”

Fausto leapt on top of the group three desks and jumped up and down, screaming incoherently. “FUCK SEPTEMBER 11TH!” he managed as I got my hands on him.

I grabbed him by the arms and yanked him down into a bear hug, blocking his path from any kind of crazed belly flop. Anything was possible. My face burned.

“I DON'T CARE, YO! GET THE FUCK OFF ME! SEPTEMBER 11TH IS BOOTLEG!”

I led him by the arm to Randazzo's office, telling Mr. R., “This one needs a time out.” My physicality with Fausto surprised me, but the class cheered when I dragged him away.

With my biggest headache out of the room, I got reenergized to teach, as if I was on a hockey power play. My hopes got thrown in the gutter, though, when in the middle of our biography lesson, Eric suddenly lunged at Lakiya's face, awkwardly missing, and the two fell on the floor, wrestling viciously. I ripped them apart and angrily asked what it was about. Lakiya blurted, “He a faggot!”

At this exact moment I watched Lito Ruiz, the boy whose blue card identified him as “extremely susceptible to negative influences,” heave a fistful of crayons at Verdad, my sullen, likable mathematician, who sat in the opposite corner of the classroom. “LIII-TO!” I shouted in what felt like comic slow motion. Verdad immediately retaliated by gunning his oversized eraser at Lito. He missed and hit Athena, who started crying. Several boys laughed maniacally, mocking Athena. Mr. Randazzo heard the noise and came in, shushing the class. The room went silent except for Bernard, who loudly sucked his teeth in an insolent snicker. Randazzo shook his head at me and blasted the class for being the most disrespectful group in the school. Sonandia covered her eyes.

Was this chaos my fault? I thought I had done everything I could to prepare to teach. My classroom was a print-rich environment. I modeled good character. I was organized and articulate in kid-friendly language.

I thought of a French movie that opens with a story about a man falling from the roof of a tall building. As he passes each floor he thinks to himself, “So far, so good, so far, so good.” As his spirit looks down at his splattered corpse on the asphalt, he realizes it's not how you fall that matters. It's how you land. It's the mess that catches attention.

That night I decided two things: #1: Fausto was dead to me. His presence was cancerous. #2: I would aim high with content and ideas in class discussions (get back to those great expectations!), and if this amounted to blank stares all around, I would chalk it up. Jennifer and Sonandia would probably be able to follow me.

Decision #1 was rash and ridiculous. I could despise the kid, but I would still have to deal with his destructive actions. Also, he was a sad case. He said his mother beat the tar out of him. I felt sick for thinking so bitterly of an abused child. Decision #2 was built of virtuous intentions and horrendous logic. If I specifically geared activities toward the higher-achieving kids, I would alienate and lose the lower-achieving ones, who were already more likely to be discipline problems.

What was I supposed to teach to a room that held both Sonandia and Lakiya? Sonandia could read young adult books and analyze them critically with the right kind of guidance. She was capable of the higher-order skills in Bloom's taxonomy, a reference structure for teachers to analyze levels of abstraction in learning. Lakiya could not read a sentence fluently and refused even to write her name. The range of abilities in 4-217 was as wide as a Great Lake.

Upon arriving to P.S. 85 the next day, I got word that Fausto Mason had been permanently transferred out of my class. He was moving next door to Pat Cartwright, a tough black woman who had been in the army. This was Pat's second year as a teacher and first with a homeroom, and the administration felt she was better equipped to deal with Fausto than I was. I agreed. Pat explained, “He's just a rock-head. I'll whip him into shape.”

With Fausto gone, I had my smoothest day yet. We began a
James and the Giant Peach
read-aloud. We reviewed the Martin Luther King, Jr. biography and wrote outlines on graphic organizers for our autobiographies. We made bar graphs from data in the
Math Trailblazers
textbook. We paraphrased stories that I had modeled aloud and some that I had typed on a homemade worksheet. We made a chart of components for “Good Listening” in our
Getting Along Together
lesson. We reviewed the parts of the scientific method introduced in a previous lesson by Mrs. Hafner. We read “A Spaghetti Tale” in
Highlights
magazine and talked about fiction and nonfiction. We looked at a map of New York City and reviewed the names of the five boroughs until each kid (except Eric) could recite them. We cleaned the classroom and copied our homework.

I felt familiar pangs of exhaustion in my knees and throat as I shepherded the kids down the steps for the fifth time, but something unexpected happened when I released them into the parking lot. Jennifer turned around and walked back. “Thank you, Mr. Brown,” she said, putting her arms awkwardly around my neck.

I hugged her back, feeling my stomach drop in surprise and joy. “You're welcome, Jennifer. Have a great weekend.”

“You too. See you Monday!” Jennifer ran off to meet her friends. The quick handful of words we exchanged were among the most cursory and common in our language, but unknown to Jennifer, those ten seconds at the very end changed the first week of my new profession and my new life. The knocks and bruises of the screaming and conflict in 4-217 vanished and I smiled on the subway home, a first.

LIST OF INTERESTING DISCOVERIES AFTER WEEK ONE

1. Kids crave classroom responsibility. They compete for who gets to sweep and hold the dustpan. I need to use class jobs as rewards and withholding of jobs as punishment. However, sometimes the worst-behaved kids are the ones that benefit most from the tasks. I need to sort out a system with a publicly posted job board.

2. They love gym. Threatening “no gym” is a good threat to achieve temporary order. If I do cancel gym, though, I'm responsible for them, and I'll die if I don't get that afternoon prep after the 8:00–12:30 morning haul.

3. Many kids seem simply uninterested in academic achievement. For example, Eric, Deloris, and Lakiya do not do
any
work. They barely pick up their pencils. When I give an assignment, I need everyone working on it.

4. The kids are constantly touching each other and each other's belongings. At Mercy, this was mentioned as a by-product of poverty culture; they have no personal space and very few personal possessions, so there is no sense of respect for those ideas. Should I lock up my stuff?

5. The administration is stretched very thin and has been undermined by the city with the region's “no detention, no suspension” policies. No one seems to know why we can't have detention or suspension; we just can't. I might be on my own to discipline them, but I don't know what I can hold over them. Bluffing a punishment would be a fatal mistake; I have to follow through on every threat I make. I hope Mr. Randazzo can help me.

6. Other teachers have the same problems I do. I need to look closely at what the successful teachers are doing and emulate that.

As I ushered the children into the classroom for the first day of week two, the assault commenced. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Go immediately to your groups. Take everything you need for the whole day out of your bags. First group to show me they're ready gets four points. Take your homework out so I can see it. Yes, Gladys, you can sharpen your pencil. Destiny, wait till Gladys finishes and goes back to her seat. Verdad, you're after Destiny. And ‘mines' is not a word. No, Lito, you can't sharpen your pencil. Yes, it is fair, the line is too long. Bernard, separate your desk from Hamisi. Because I've already given you too many chances. No,
separate the desks
! Here, I'll do
it. Yes, Hamisi, because you're going to talk to each other at inappropriate times. Take out your homework, everyone! Which group is going to be first to show me they're ready and get stars and get to use the closet? Joseph, get back in your seat! I have called no groups over to the closet yet! Sonandia, you're setting a wonderful example. Why is group two the only group following directions? Tiffany, why are you staring at the ceiling? Group two is about to earn a star, and it looks like group one is going to get a strike. One star for group two! Let's make it two stars, I'm feeling generous. Yes, Lito, now you can sharpen your pencil. Well, it's overheated again because Verdad sharpened ten pencils. You'll have to wait. Lakiya, take your hat off, take your homework out, sit down, and close your mouth. That is not the way to enter our classroom. It's ‘May I drink water?' not ‘I can drink water?' Gladys, raise your hand if you have something to say to me, and please speak in a nice voice and not like you're trying to destroy someone.”

Some people say, “Even when sex is bad, it's good.” I found that even when my days at P.S. 85 were good, they were bad.

On Monday I got through all of my lessons successfully, but that didn't stop Lito Ruiz from punching chatty Julissa hard in the face during math. Barely suppressing my rage at the violence, I told the class, “It is never ever okay for a boy to hit a girl or a man to hit a woman. Never. A good man would absolutely never hit a girl. No boys in this room will
ever
hit a girl.”

“Why?” Cwasey piped up. He wasn't being rude this time. He really didn't understand why this issue got me so fired up.

“Because it's cowardly, and no man I respect would ever raise his hand to a woman. It hurts everyone involved and it's not right and it's not okay and on top of that this is my room and that's my rule,” I steamed.