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Monday, October 31, 2011

No Use in Putting On a Mask

My favorite bookstore, Square Books
Over the weekend I finished The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Good book. I succeeded in my goal of finishing it before the movie comes out, but unfortunately my current schedule is not one that allows me to spend an entire day in a coffee shop just reading. I did it anyway... and I'm now behind in everything, including my goal of blogging every night. To make matters worse, I put off grading again tonight so I could go to the legendary Square Books in Oxford to buy the next installment in the trilogy. We'll just call it the latest step in my endless and fruitless pursuit of momentary happiness. At this point, these pursuits are probably causing more than relieving stress because I'm becoming an epic procrastinator in the name of happiness... but that is not my topic tonight.

My friend dropped me off at the door because there was no parking to be found and, as is consistent with most things I do, I was in and out of Square Books in a matter of seconds. I knew exactly where I needed to go and I'm a regular at the store so I read off my frequent reader number and was back out the door in no time.

The middle school version of myself would have been ashamed that I had forgotten tonight was Halloween. Standing outside the book store I noticed for the first time the scene around me. On the lawn of the church, the sea of pumpkins that had been there a week ago had given way to throngs of 3-foot skeletons, Power Rangers, and witches. Pumpkin-shaped buckets seemingly bobbed unattached in the dark as parents eyed nervously the oncoming cars of college kids, I guess like me, who clearly had better things to do than stay at home and pass out candy. A sentry in the middle of the square, the courthouse stood poised, illuminated for the occasion. I've admired this building for five years now. Its antebellum facade with beautiful white columns, long, single-pane windows, and pristine lawn guarded by a black wrought iron fence provide the perfect picture of a time long past.

Getting back in the car, my friend was the first to say it. 

"There are a lot of black families out here tonight."

Sitting next to her, in the passenger seat of my own car, I visibly cringed. "Huh?"

"I know... that sounds bad. I didn't mean it like that. It's just that......"

"Oxford is usually more segregated than this... I noticed it too," I finished.

"Yeah. Is it bad that I noticed?"

"It's bad that we have to," I said.

The courthouse in the center of the Oxford Square
As we crept around the courthouse on the inner track of the square, trying to avoid midget zombies and Harry Potters, I stared out my window at white families, black families, white kids, and black kids trick-or-treating, sharing laughs, and generally enjoying the night. It was a gorgeous, clear fall evening - about 60 degrees. The moon hung over us like a picture in a post card. There were a few tables for cider and face painting set up on the courthouse lawn. I noticed food being served by a black family. Next to them was the face painting station run by a white family. In that moment I caught myself in awe of how far the South had come. Right there, on the lawn of a building that stood and watched as racism threatened to destroy this country 150 years ago, white and black families were one, allowing their kids to play together, roam the square together, grow up together.

My pride was gone in an instant.

It didn't take me long to begin thinking about my students and how foreign this scene would have been for them. They are, after all, the reason I noticed it in the first place. Over the last year and half, my eyes have been opened to the fact that racism is still very alive in this part of the country... maybe everywhere. I used to grimace when I'd hear students say things like "that white girl" or "that black girl" as if they had no other identity. I was naive to think that my race wouldn't matter as much because I was a teacher and the title alone demanded respect... not in a community where few trust the other race and fewer trust the adults in their lives. By the end of October I had been called an ugly white bitch by one girl and others had made their distaste apparent in more subtle ways.

Since last year it has gotten better. Once they saw that I wasn't going to leave after one year I gained a little more trust. Once they realized I actually cared about them more than my paycheck (and yes they can tell) I gained a little respect. I can't help but feel like none of it means anything though. I can't help but feel like it's a battle too great for one teacher to wage. 


What's it matter if white and black families can celebrate one Halloween together on the Oxford square? That's a tiny microcosm of the real spectrum. This is a college town, perhaps the most liberal part of the state. Just 45 minutes north there are 130 seventh graders whose teacher will leave at the end of this year.  She'll be gone, confirming their original suspicions, completing the pattern their lives already reflect, solidifying mantras they've learned to live by. Don't trust adults. Don't trust the other guy.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

The Dark Side

I have never written a single blog that was not mandatory. I can even go a little further and admit that until yesterday, I had approached every single blog with contempt for its compulsory and unnatural nature. Usually the prompts are dry and unimaginative, so unless I choose to put forth serious effort (the kind of effort for which I never have time) my writing is also dry and unimaginative.

That fact never bothered me until yesterday. I have certainly had plenty to worry about besides blogging, but as I sat down to write about my favorite student - another potentially cliche and awful prompt - I realized that I have so many memories, so many stories that have shaped who I am as a teacher, as a person, over the last year. These stories deserve to be told. So with a little guilt trip from myself, a little inspiration from a fellow blogger, and a lot of need for an emotional outlet, I've decided to do my best to record some of my experiences... at the very least so I have something to look back on when this crazy ride is over.

It hasn't been all sunshine and butterflies. Here goes.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about a student I had last year. He was two years behind so he should have been in the ninth grade. Physically he looked like he should have been a senior. He was tall, he shaved, his voice had changed, he wore size 12 shoes. At the beginning of the year, among his 7th grade classmates, John stood out.

As is my habit, I immediately found myself drifting towards John. I tend to have a soft spot for the "troubled" kids. I tend to see good in them that my fellow teachers don't. I am fully aware that this tendency often lends itself to frustration, disappointment, and even guilt... this case is no exception.

From the jump John was a behavior problem. He usually walked into my room laughing, joking around, kicking someone's heels. It became a daily occurrence for me to send him back out of the room and have him "Come in the right way." He carried a black and gold faux Gucci backpack that literally had not one binder, pen, pencil, or unused sheet of notebook paper inside it. Eventually I got so fed up that I made him a classwork folder that was never allowed to leave my room. He was to put his classwork in that folder every day... even if it wasn't finished. Homework was a losing battle. 

As the first couple months of school dragged by, John began getting in trouble more and more. He was never involved in fights. There was nothing malicious about him... he just joked around a lot and, because of his mature appearance and previous record, teachers automatically assumed the worst. He steadily began to accumulate referrals for things like doing backflips on the way back from lunch or flicking mashed potatoes. He was crying for attention.

As a naive and completely inexperienced teacher, I was at a loss for how to help him. He wasn't a dumb kid. In fact he was quite the opposite. He wrote with fluency and perspective equal to some of my honors kids. None of his friends knew he was smart and he did everything he could to keep it that way. I did everything I could to force him out from behind that facade. I knew I could cold call on him in class and, amid snickers of anticipated humiliation from his classmates, he always mumbled the correct answer... as if he was ashamed to betray his reputation. I would grin and move on, delighting in the shocked expressions on his classmates' faces.

When I began offering after-school tutoring I always made sure he stayed. No one was ever willing to come pick him up, so another teacher and I would drive him home or he would just walk. As I got to know him better, I found out that his mom was never home. She usually stayed at her boyfriend's house. His dad was in jail. His older sister dropped out of school after ninth grade, pregnant. He had a younger sister and it was usually his job to make her dinner in the evenings. To say the cards were stacked against him would be a gross understatement and to steal a phrase I used last night, John was devastatingly aware of his own reality. He didn't complain about it, he was more than willing to talk about it openly - in fact he did so with such unabashed candor that it sometimes made me feel uncomfortable.

By the time January rolled around, he had compiled so many referrals that the principal was at his wit's end. The 7th grade teachers received several emails about interventions we were supposed to make, strategies for curbing his behavior, and ultimatums John had been offered. Honestly, I began ignoring most of these suggestions.

One morning as I was standing on hallway duty before homeroom, I glanced into my classroom just in time to see a black and gold backpack fly full speed across my room. It smacked the wall with such force that a couple of girls screamed, including the one at whom it was aimed. My eyes locked with John's. He showed no remorse. He was laughing. I was livid.

Employing my best teacher voice, I demanded that he see me in the hall. Still smirking, he sauntered across the front of the room. Without even pausing for conversation, I motioned for him to follow me to the office. When we got there I pointed at a chair indicating the place for him sit and I began furiously scribbling the situation down on a referral. I left him and the referral with the secretary and went back to my room.

During my planning period I finally had time to read my email. As per usual, there was one from the principal. Subject: John. It was sent the previous afternoon.

Teachers,
John has officially been warned that he has one more strike. There are no spaces left in the alternative school, so the next time he is sent to the office, it will result in automatic expulsion for one calendar year. This has already been board approved.

I cannot adequately articulate the emotions I felt at that moment. To say I felt guilty doesn't even scratch the surface. I was instantly nauseated. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream... then I calmed myself. I knew I could undo this.

I half walked, half jogged to the office. The only person I could find was the assistant principal.

"I already know what you're going to say, Buccilla. And no... there's nothing you can do about it."

"But I didn't know he was on his last strike! It wasn't even that bad, he just threw a backpack... that's not grounds for expulsion... this will ruin his life."

The words sank between us. Silence.

"He had plenty of chances. It's not your fault. This was bound to happen."

I tried to plead my case for another couple of minutes. I was getting nowhere. Dejected, I walked back to my classroom, racking my brain for options. I could see none. I had ruined this kid's life.

I haven't seen John since that day. I have his younger sister in class this year. She is bright. She's above grade level. She wants to be different and we've talked about that. After a couple weeks of school I finally worked up the courage to ask what her brother had been up to.

"Nothing," she said.

"Well what does he do during the day? He didn't try to get into another school?"

"Nope. He just walks the streets."

All I could muster was, "Will you ask him to come see me after school one day?"

I don't know what I would say to him. The most I can offer is to tutor him so that he can stay caught up. If we look at the statistics, kids like him rarely graduate. I still can't help but to feel guilty but I also know that harping on it will do no good. For now all I can do is learn from that mistake. That huge mistake that changed his life forever. I can make sure I don't repeat it. I can make sure I give his little sister every opportunity she deserves. It's on days like that one that I question whether I can do this job forever.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Reminding Myself Why I Do This Job

Describe your favorite student:

Sam is not my smartest student. In fact, he struggles more than most. He tries to hide the fact that he really can't read. When I conference with him individually or require him to write while I'm standing at his desk, he nervously hovers his pencil over his paper before he scribbles even the simplest of words in such illegible handwriting that he thinks I won't be able to notice the misspelling. He doesn't have poor handwriting. He writes his name very well. He writes the words basketball and Kobe Bryant very well.

Sam was one of my pee-wee basketball players last year. A sixth grader at the time, he had such heart and wide-eyed eagerness to learn that I constantly found myself gravitating towards him, making sure he was doing everything perfectly... because I knew he wanted that. I wasn't his teacher, so I really had no idea how far behind he was academically. All I knew of Sam was that he always did as he was told, most of his teammates seemed to like him, he knew when to joke, and he knew when to "give me his eyes." 

This year I've gotten to know him a little better. About three weeks ago, I got tired of him losing everything he ever did in my class, so I pulled a binder off my shelf and emptied from it the miscellaneous paper work it was storing.

"Come here," I said with a stern tone and a wry smirk on my face.

He looked at me, chin lowered, his eyes unsure as to whether I was mad or joking.

"Come here, Sam," I repeated, showing a little more of my smile.

At this he completely dropped his head, and as he dragged his feet towards my desk, snickers rippled throughout the room. In most situations I would nip this immediately. In most situations I'm pretty sure my students would know better than to laugh at all. But Sam was doing this intentionally. He knew he wasn't in trouble and he knows how to be a ham.

As he sat by my desk, emptying the crumpled papers and busted pens out of his frayed and faded backpack, I patiently explained to him how I was dividing each section of his new binder. 

"This section is for your Do Nows. I'm putting plenty of blank paper in here so you don't have to walk around the room anymore asking people for paper. This one's for your notes... again... blank paper, why?"

"So I don't have to walk around your room mooching off my classmates," he smirked.

"Very good."

Surprisingly we managed to pull most of his missing assignments out of that tiny backpack. I made him put each one in its proper section. My next step was to make something to go on the front of his binder, inside the clear sheet protector. I pulled out a blank sheet of printer paper and opened my drawer to find a marker... only highlighters. Yellow wouldn't have shown up, so I placed my hand on the hot pink one and looked at him. His eyes got wide and his jaw dropped.

"Don't do that to me, Miss B!"

"Oh yes... this is happening," I said.

In big, hot pink capital letters I wrote Sam's VERY Organized Language Arts Binder and then slid the sheet into the front of his binder. Perfect.

My last step was to take a pen out of my drawer, tie a long piece of yarn around the top, and duct tape it into the center of his binder.

"What's this for, Sam?"

"So I don't have to walk around your room mooching off my classmates," he repeated.

Sam brings that binder to class every day now. He never forgets it. Every day he walks in, turns to his Do Now section, stretches his pen out as far as the yarn will let it reach, and playfully plucks at it like a guitar string. He may not get the Do Now questions correct most days and he may still misspell elementary words... but we're working on it. He wants to work on it.

When approaching this blog assignment I wrestled with how I was going to do it justice. There are so many kids who make my job worth it, who provide motivation to roll out of bed every day. It's easy to get excited about helping the "smart kids." It's easy to lean towards the kids who understand what I'm saying the first time around and only talk when they're supposed to. Sam probably talks too much, he's disorganized, and often times I have to repeat directions several times before he begins his work... but at the end of every day, when I reflect upon what I've accomplished, it's the things like making that binder for Sam that remind me why I do this job. I've met so many kids with poor backgrounds and rich personalities. Often times they don't realize how limited their opportunities really are... often times I'm glad for that. Kids like Sam, however, seem to be well aware of their own realities... devastatingly aware of their own realities. They know they're below reading level, that their parents can't afford binders, or that they're not the best athletes. They still show up everyday willing to make me laugh, willing to try in my class, and willing to humor me by letting me think they LOVE things like organized binders and subject-verb agreement. While Sam is indeed my favorite student, I am lucky to be able to say that I have several like him.