Ms. W Broke Her Butt Bone

This morning, I got to school so early I got to enter through the exit lane of the parking lot. It’s my favorite infraction, but I can only do it when I’m there before all the other cars (modeling myself off the White Queen, I try to break six rules before breakfast).

As I trudged through the pre-dawn dark towards my trailer, my thoughts were on my upcoming lesson. I was all psyched to power forward with a class Wikipedia project on the Enlightenment (get it? Because of Diderot). Suddenly, my feet flew out from under me. My car keys skidded out of my hand and off the edge of the walkway. I had landed hard on my tush, only twenty paces from my trailer, and as I struggled to stand up, I felt a piercing pain in my backside.

“Oh my G-d, I broke my butt,” I thought to myself. Then I slid over to the ice-covered railing and gingerly inched myself up. Nope, not broken, just bruised. I hope.

Where was my sign? And roly poly polar bear?

I spent the day limping around the class, wincing every time I bent over. Students were pretty good about staying seated or bringing their work up to me. They only cracked a few friendly jokes about my old-lady limp. One wrote, on the last page of his presentation slides, “I love Ms. W’s class and hope her but gets better.” Thanks, kiddo, and I hope your spelling gets better.

As I walked past the boardroom on my way out of school, determined to get myself to a hot bubble bath and skip all the rest of my meetings today, I saw five students inside. Three are mine from this semester, and one from last semester. The fifth I knew because he’s bounced into my classroom from other teachers.

So I paused. “You guys all in here because you’re getting an award?” They cracked up. They were in after-school detention. Quickly, I zipped to the photocopier and sat down with two of them who have missing work. It was like a game of keep-away, bouncing from one to the next, trying to center their attention on their work instead of whatever was flying around the room (paper, m&ms, lewd stories, etc). But much easier than with a class-ful of students. We worked until their detention was over, and I limped to my car proud that a student who has constantly asked, “can’t I just get an F instead of work?” and will not work unless I’m standing over him, had finally completed an assignment.

Where I'm headed

As I walked out, I thought to myself: “If four out of five of the students who have to stay for after-school suspension today are my students, that must mean my classes are disproportionately weighted with mischief-makers.” It’s something I’ve noticed in the discipline lists they send out of suspensions, too. But I got to challenge one person’s perception of a trouble-maker today.

As my class trooped (and I hobbled) to the computer lab, a security guard addressed one of my notorious students. “I’m watching you.” He laughed at her, sheepishly. She followed us all the way into the building, saying, “I’m going to write you up soon.” Finally, I beckoned to her. “You talking about him? He won the class writing prize last week.” She looked at him with new respect. Then: “It’s always the smart ones who get in trouble.” Waaaait! Stoooop! You’re rolling from one stereotype and nasty expectation to another! I got her out of there and he sat and did his work without any fulfillments of her prophecy at all—in fact, it was the top of the class student who called, “squad!” and had the whole class screaming a response in some cute but loud call-and-response move that brought an administrator from her office next door to check on us.

In a student’s recent essay on oppression: “Racism that why our race got to graduate and stay out of troble and provide the other race wrong.”

My response: Do it for yourself. And forget the racists.