J U N E 0 3
Much like a fine wine, the June 2003 entries taste better with age, as well as displaying a robust texture and delicate shape. This was the one-year anniversary of dave2n.com, so Dave and Jeff gave their retrospectives. We had three huge TFA Chronicle chapters: the first, second, and third quarters. Jeff and Dave both threw huge parties, one for Jeff's new house and one for new TFA corps members. Dave remembered filming Good Morning Robinson and was happy that school was almost over. Akshay151 was relased to the insatiable masses and Don thought it rocked his world while starting the gears for the world-famouso Okay Samurai reunion in July.
Dave's Teach For America Chronicles / Chapter Six: Third Quarter
As an uncertified teacher instructing in Baltimore City Public Schools, the agreement the city makes with an organization like TFA is that we have to be working towards our certification. Because of this, I had to take education courses at Johns Hopkins University. When you think of Johns Hopkins, you think prestige, right? Johns Hopkins Hospital is known nationwide for being incredible. My second semester JHU class, however, was the most worthless and poorly instructed class I have ever taken in my life (including Mrs. Branch's 3rd grade class, where God only knows how I learned multiplication). It was a class on reading, taught by a woman who had been a reading specialist in the Baltimore City system for many years. She had a knack for showing up late or not showing up at all. The two times that she didn't show up at all were unannounced, so we waited around until the famous college "15 minute rule" went into effect. Even worse, she never gave any explanation for her absences in the following weeks.
No one had any idea what grade we were getting in the class - some papers got number grades, some got checks, and barely any had comments written on them. Nick was so sure that the professor didn't read our papers that he turned in one assignment twice, simply changing the names in the first paragraph to reflect the new article we were critiquing. Some of her classes were "e-classes" where she met with us for five minutes and vaguely told us to find "20 reading strategies" on the internet by the next week. Then, after one of her unexplained absences, she lectured us about how unprofessional our work was. When she couldn't pronounce "Saddam Hussein" and called the teaching practice of differentiation "differation," our standards for this so-called graduate level "reading" class were lowered. The Tuesday night class mainly consisted of our TFA friends, and all of my roommates were enrolled with me, so their sense of humor was the only thing that kept me smiling. Well, that and the time we drank during class (which apparently caused some ripples in the TFA office, but trust me, it helped alleviate the pain).
The little optimism that I had from working with Daryl at the end of the second quarter seemed to domino into more good things. The school's problems were at a fever pitch, with the administration as unresponsive as ever, but I was almost getting used to the things being thrown in my class or the names I was called by students roaming the hallways. I started to take things a little less seriously, because all I felt that I could do sometimes was laugh. I remember one time when I was reading a story aloud to my students and a crowd of about 10 hall wanderers decided to hang out and be as loud as humanly possible in the sixth grade hallway. Then the fire alarm went off, then more kids ran in, and then the lightswitches starting flicking on and off - you know, the usual. I stood up on my desk and never stopped reading. Two of my students positioned themselves with their textbooks by the lightswitches in my room and matter-of-factly turned the lights back on whenever they went out, without even being asked. They were also used to this insanity, but their willingness to keep reading and learn was admirable to me.
A student from 705 gave me my first present of the year, for no particular reason - a miniature statue of a wizard that looked similar to Dumbledore from the Harry Potter books (sometimes I would talk to my classes with a British accent, which always got their attention and sometimes quieted them down). Scribbled on the box was "To the best teacher ever!" I thanked him and kept the statue on my desk in the sixth grade planning room, a reminder that there was good amidst all the bad. The depression I was feeling over the second quarter was slowly crumbling. I started giving rides to work to my coworkers and neighbors Matt and Randy, whose company in the mornings was especially nice to have. Visits from my college and high school friends helped keep me in good spirits over the weekends, especially a particularly wild weekend with my old bandmates Don and Jeff. Things were gradually getting better, which of course meant that something bad was bound to happen soon.
A first-year writing teacher that I had immense respect for, Ms. Zimmer, quit her job at Northeast in a flurry of tears. When the "state" guys in suits came around one day, she handed them a huge stack of papers documenting how the administration had responded questionably to certain incidents. Those papers may have been the catalyst for something that eventually happened during the fourth quarter, but we'll get to that later. Two more teachers quit and they sent in two replacements; the replacements quit too. One teacher was asked to leave after supposedly hitting a student. Even the librarian left. The 6th grade assistant principal left temporarily for bereavement. Our staff numbers were dropping fast and several teachers that were sticking around had poor attendance. So what happens when you don't have enough teachers and the substitutes don't want to come to your school? The administration or the few office aids we had left would cover the classes, or certain brave teachers combined their classes with the teacher-less classes. But sometimes the classes didn't even have a teacher at all. The open space in the eighth grade wing, now vacated by Mrs. Zimmer and an older teacher that left after her husband passed away, seemed at times like an unsupervised war zone. I saw paint splashed onto dividers. I saw a trashcan thrown at someone and trash covering the entire floor. I saw kids wrestling in the empty rooms and substitutes looking helplessly at me. I heard the frustrated janitors cursing under their breath, or sometimes out loud.
An "emergency meeting" was announced after school one day. We had elective classes at our schools, classes like art, music, health, and Spanish, but the students hadn't been switched over to their new electives at the end of the first semester like they should have. These schedule changes were the supposed reasons for the meeting. I came to the meeting a little late because of some after school students, and sat down in a familiar plastic orange cafeteria chair. Mrs. Jones, the Prinicipal, was just finishing saying how we should congratulate Mr. Coury on being so flexible. Mr. Coury, Matt, was one of the people I drove to work every morning. I later found out the he would now be teaching all new classes in a new subject, Language Arts, instead of Social Studies to fill a vacancy in the eighth grade. She followed this announcement with a comment about thanking me on being flexible too. Wait a second...what was going on here...why was I flexible too? And just like the end of the first quarter, a new xeroxed schedule was placed in front of me. As of the following week, I would be losing my seventh grade classes and teaching all sixth grade classes.
I called Camika, my TFA Program Director, and just said that I needed someone to talk to. She listened as I told her how my classes were completely changed again, and the frustration that I was feeling with never being able to hold on to my students. No more Daryl. I was losing 704 - my homeroom, my favorite class, the one with Sierra in it. How was I expected to make significant progress with my students when the school took them away from me every three months? She helped me cool my mind, and I ended the conversation feeling a little better about the situation - maybe it was a blessing in disguise. It solved the problem of being the only 7th grade teacher in the sixth grade wing. I had taught one class, 608, during the first quarter, so at least there would be some familiar faces. I would get to talk to the other 6th grade teachers during lunch instead of locking myself up in the planning room alone. Luckily, this change turned out to be the best thing that happened to me all year.
I said goodbye to my 7th grade classes at the end of the week and welcomed 611, 607 and 608 at the start of the next. My new classes were smaller in size and the students seemed better behaved. 611, my new homeroom, was the class that we had to create because of the saturation of kids during the first quarter. Although they were my smallest class, they were the most difficult to control. Several personalities clashed and there were a good amount of consistent talkers. But they were more manageable than Daryl's 706 class, and 607 and 608 were angels when compared to my seventh graders. I was a little more motivated to be creative with these classes and try some techniques that they would actually listen to. To help teach cause and effect, I secretly told a student in each class to come up and tap me on the shoulder when I started teaching. When they did, I unexpectedly drew a plastic lightsaber out of my pocket and swung it out, stopping inches in front of the student's face. Yeah, THAT got their attention. I copied off an interview from Vibe magazine with the popular rapper 50 Cent and we talked about his use of metaphors and whether dissing Ja Rule on his records was personal or just part of the culture. Teaching became a little more enjoyable, dare I even say fun on some days.
My students were doing classwork in 607 one day when a group of three hall-wandering boys started yelling things into my class. I asked them politely to leave, and suprisingly, they did. Ten minutes later, one of the boys came back and began talking through my flimsy divider walls to a female student in my class. He proceeded to walk into my class, walk in the back of the room, and start pushing her. I sighed as the lights began to flicker on and off and I walked to the back of the class. "I'm gonna fight you," he kept on repeating as he grabbed her arms and pushed her around. Now out of her seat and cornered against the wall, I asked my student to please sit down and asked this student whom I had never seen before to please leave. Both ignored me, and the boy's behavior was becoming increasingly more physical, shaking her back and forth. In an attempt to distract him, I noticed that he was wearing a hat indoors - which was against school rules. I took his hat and told him once again to leave. Like a moth to the flame, he stopped pushing my student and pushed me as I swung his hat behind my back. "Give me my hat back," he muttered, continually pushing me until my back was against the wall. 607 started to get out of their seats and stand up. Very patiently, I continually repeated that he needed to please leave my classroom. He backed off and started to swear at me, calling me every racial slur and word imaginable. This caused one of the teachers in a nearby classroom to open her door and see that there was a problem. She called down to the office for help via the intercom system in her room. The unknown male student went to a nearby stack of textbooks and my reading club books and threw them to the ground in anger, still swearing at the top of his lungs. He snatched one book and motioned once, twice, and three times like he was going to smash me in the face with it. I stood my ground, continuing to ask him to please leave my classroom. He then threw the book down as hard as he could at the ground and attempted to grab his hat again, this time even more enraged than before. My back to the wall, I sandwiched the hat and continued my repeated message quietly.
He backed up a step, yelled something, and punched me with a closed fist in the left side of my head, directly behind and above my ear. The other side of my head slammed into the wall right behind me, and a burning sting seemed to echo through my skull.
I stared at the faded blue carpet for a second and then looked back at the unknown student. Everything inside of me was screaming to punch him back. Instead, I held the hat tighter than before and quietly said, "Please leave my classroom." The boy walked away, swearing and stomping down the hall. He threw open the sixth grade doors and left the wing. "I'm fine, I'm fine," I said to break the awkward silence of 607. "Please just sit down." A minute passed, and the boy came back through the doors, now yelling about how he was going to shoot and kill me. Help finally arrived in the form of a male social studies teacher from the opposite side of the wing, who grabbed the kid and dragged him into the sixth grade planning room. It was close to the end of the period, so I lined my class up and walked them down to lunch.
As soon as I dropped my class off, Mrs. Jones asked me to come to her office. I talked to a school police officer on the phone - he was busy with a high school, so he wasn't able to come down to Northeast. He took my incident report and information verbally and informed me what I needed to do if I wanted to press charges against the student. One of our assistant principals rushed in and said that the student had left the building after she handed him his suspension papers. He was an eighth grade student. I filled out some official school forms and listened as Mrs. Jones called in six students from 607. They individually gave their testimonies as to what happened, and then filled out some forms too. One of the students was the girl who he had been trying to fight in the first place - and she revealed that she didn't even know him; the first time she had seen him was when he was yelling from the hallway. After about an hour and a half in the office, I left and slowly walked up to join the sixth grade teachers for lunch. As I walked back, I began to second-guess myself. I should have just given him his hat back. I should have called down to the office when the three boys were first yelling things into my room. I walked into the planning room, sat down with the unusually quiet sixth grade teachers, and gave an abbreviated version of the story I had written down several times downstairs. They offered their support, which was comforting. When everyone left to prepare for their last period classes, I sat at the table alone and stared at the cabinet door I used to swing open to hide behind during the second quarter. I heard the familiar yells of students roaming in the halls. I ran my fingers through my hair, feeling the bump that was forming underneath it. I remember continually looking at my fingers, thinking that I would see blood after I felt the unnatural sticking of my hair. I stopped my second-guessing but forced myself not to process everything that had happened yet as I walked out to teach 608.
I started class with the story of what had happened, since they had all heard someone had punched me but I hadn't punched him back. They were full of questions, and everyone wondered why I hadn't hit back. I wasn't sure, I said. I told them that I didn't know what consequences would have been brought up against me for hitting a student, whether I acted in self-defense or not, but that I didn't want to risk losing my kids. They class went on normally, with one boy asking for the student's name so he could go beat him up with his friends after school. I didn't, but thanked him just the same. After school, several teachers, especially the TFA teachers, gathered in my room as one of the assistant principals held another "emergency meeting" about the events of the day. Suggestions, comments, and opinions swirled around me, but I didn't say anything, absorbing the urgent voices. When someone commented on how slow and non-existent security help had been even after being called down to the office, the assistant principal suggested using a code word for calling to the office with extreme cases - "Code Word Buffalo."
A mental avalanche of the lack of administrative support I had been experiencing for the entire year drifted through my head. They were quick to help me immediately after the incident occurred, but why was there an eighth grader in the first place skipping class in the sixth grade wing when it was the third quarter of the school year? They knew that this was a problem and nothing was ever taken care of. Now their solution was "Code Word Buffalo?" Where was I teaching? Why was I here, continuing to feel depressed and being tossed around to different classes every quarter? Why was I staying and listening to this painfully clear lack of leadership? Three TFA teachers took me out to a bar afterwards and we thankfully didn't talk about school - mostly about their past boyfriends actually, if I remember correctly. I drove back home to my family in Burke, Virginia that weekend. While being stuck in rush hour traffic, I began to look back on my year and think about how honestly unhappy I was. My loyalty to Teach For America's two year commitment was mixed with my realization of how mentally and emotionally drained I was, whether that was due to my inexperience or my environment (but probably both). I thought about an information session that I had gone to at UVA about a graduate school in Atlanta called Portfolio Center, and how I had left the meeting enthusiastic, motivated, and happy. It was always in the back of my mind, a place that I thought I would look into after my two years in Baltimore. But its appeal rocketed to the front of my mind during that car trip home, and I decided fairly concretely to leave teaching when the school year ended.
Why didn't I quit right then and there? So many other teachers at our school had, veteran and new alike. Most people were surprised that I even stuck around to teach 608 after being punched in the head, thinking that it was perfectly acceptable to leave school and take a few days off. The truth was, I hadn't missed a day of school, only really because of something the TFA Summer Institute had said about the importance of being there every day for your kids. At the same time, the TFA corps member inside of me said to be stronger and that, no matter what happened, the fight for equal education was more important. I was never someone to give up, and something inside me told me that I wasn't trying hard enough or that I shouldn't take any excuses. Because the kids didn't have a choice. This was their education, like it or not, and they couldn't just walk out and quit. Some may call this TFA cult brainwashing, but to this day I feel that it's at the very heart of their mission and a cause worth fighting for. But for me, mentally, physically, and emotionally, I was exhausted and turning into someone who I didn't want to become. Two years was TFA's number; one was mine.
I made plans that weekend to visit Portfolio Center over my spring break. I talked to Camika for the first time since the incident when I got back to Baltimore and told her my plans. She said that she supported me in whatever decision I would make, but to give it some time until I was 100% sure. She sent me a card later on, just letting me know that she was thinking about me. I returned to school with a strange new interest, knowing that this year of teaching was my first and now my last. I remember talking to a veteran seventh grade math teacher during a planning period and having her tell me very candidly about her troubles separating the professional from the personal. It made me very emotional to see this older woman tell me that she didn't really like who she had become after teaching for so long at this school, especially after she said that this had been the worst year that she had ever seen. "You're lucky you're still young - you can run," she said.
I never taught Greg, one of the few Caucasian students at our school. I saw him in the hallways sometimes, cutting class, hanging out with a few of my seventh grade girls. I heard rumors about drug dealing and abuse, but never above a whisper. On a Monday morning when a student told me Greg had been murdered over the weekend, I was in disbelief. When the student proceeded to tell me how he had been killed, I was even more shocked that my 12-year old student was describing what she knew and saw to me. With respect to Greg's memory, I won't write about how or why he was killed. I went to the viewing with two other teachers and a student during our planning period. Greg was wearing his favorite sweatshirt in the casket, a toy red bike propped up against the hinges. One of my students once told me that my blue eyes were "pretty just like Greg's." Now I was staring at his eyes, closed forever. It was difficult to watch this single student we had brought with us, a friend of Greg's, coping with death for the first time. The sixth grader buried his head in Ms. Jacob's arms and we left after 15 minutes when he told us he was ready to leave. The school had a difficult time responding to the tragedy as well - "RIP WBG" was written all over our school - Rest In Peace White Boy Greg. Students seemed almost justifiably wilder than ever, and Mrs. Jones made several announcements about respecting Greg by behaving and not vandalizing school property. Mrs. Jones was interviewed on our weekly television announcements and said something about Greg looking down from above on students roaming the halls saying "No, go to class, don't misbehave like I used to." I stood silent in my classroom while my kids watched, eyes transfixed on the television screen. Was she really using Greg in an attempt to cut down on her problems with the hallways?
But the story of Mrs. Jones doesn't end there. At a faculty meeting shortly thereafter, she referred to the students as "diamonds" that the teachers were not helping to "shine." She was blaming the teachers for the state of our school, admitting to no responsibility herself. During the meeting, a younger teacher snapped at an older teacher about how she couldn't control her classroom and was sick of her telling him what to do, storming out the door. The diamond metaphor was stretched as far as it could possibly go as I sat silent through a two-hour argument. "You can't make diamonds without pressure," one teacher quipped. As usual, we left the meeting no better off, with no solid solutions to improve our school. Morale was at an all-time low, no matter who you were or what your age was.
A former Northeast TFA teacher named Tim e-mailed me and said that he would be in the area soon, and wondered if he could stop by and informally observe me and just talk. My first paranoid reaction was that TFA was sending him in to save me from leaving, but common sense told me that this was not the case. He immediately reminded me of John White, my role model from the New York Summer Institute. He was very good with the kids, and had an infectious positive attitude that brought my school morale back up several notches. We talked for most of the planning period after my 607 class. He asked what my plans were for next year, and I told him. Instead of trying to convince me otherwise, he simply asked how he could make my last three months better. We talked about different concrete strategies and ideas to help me become a better teacher and enjoy the last quarter more. He encouraged me to sit down over Spring Break and think about everything that I ever wanted to do as a teacher, and what I wanted to get out of that last quarter. When he left, I felt extremely motivated to do something BIG. Something that would truly teach these kids Language Arts skills applicable to their real lives.
Third quarter was my turning point. It was the time that I decided that I needed to leave while also being the time that set me up for my most successful and happiest quarter of teaching yet. I never pressed charges against the student who punched me. After a little research, I found out that both of his parents had died and he was on medication - medication that he had not received on the fateful day (but also for quite a while, it seemed). They weren't excuses, but they were enough to extinguish my anger. The student had been expelled and moved to another school, and I figured that was enough and put it behind me. Whatever compensation I would have received or whatever mark went on his record seemed irrelevant. I began sketching an idea during my lunch breaks, an island with the 6th grade teachers' names as various cities, mountains and rivers. I scribbled down a brief outline of a grading and teaching system that I wanted to implement. One idea led to another, and pretty soon I had two pages of scrambled notes all about what I wanted to do fourth quarter. If I'm going out, I thought, I'm going out with a bang.
(Dave's TFA Chronicles are eight short stories about Dave's job as a Language Arts teacher in Baltimore City Public Schools from 2002 to 2003. Read the other chapters: one two three four five six seven eight)
Monday, June 30 at 6:47 PM
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