Lære å lære: Silent Treatment

Have you ever tried to command the attention of 30 teenagers without having the ability to vocalize, at all? I’m in that awful stage of a cold when my voice has completely vanished, and I was reduced to snapping energetically at a student who announced, “it’s like they want us to fuckin fail this year, with no recovery.” But she got the message, and proceeded to complain without vulgarity.

Another enterprising student decided he was my voice for the day. Shenanigans ensued. His impression of “Ms. W hype on psychology” was uncanny. His rendition of the scribbled message I wrote to him about different kinds of intelligence, I applauded. His unilateral decision to administer the class a pop quiz, well, I rolled with it. Tomorrow, we do station work.

New idea, after a series of game nights with teacher friends: let’s replace TFA professional development with rounds of Cards Against Humanity. I think it approaches identity, race, privilege, and sex with a great deal more sensitivity than TFA. Who’s with me?

Coming back from the Media Center during my planning last week, I noticed that pairs of my IB students were scattered across the quad, recording something for science class. I plopped down beside two of them and started an acorn fight. Two more approached, and got fussy at the girl beside me for throwing acorns at them. They simply could not believe that their teacher was doing it. Then one of my favorite kids, a cocky-yet-sweet, smart guy with the biggest sense of humor, ever-so-tentatively threw one back, and it was on. Halfway through I realized two of the girls had their phones up. I might just be featuring on WorldStarHipHop this weekend.

The acorn battle was benign beside the others raging on campus the past fortnight. One of my more gentlemanly students was suspended for a fight in which he, his sister, mom, and grandma (!) all participated. To be fair, he was chivalrously protecting his sister’s honor. In the trailer two down from me, seniors held a full-on brawl, in which they managed to not only destroy desks, books, and shelves, but also kicked out some ceiling tiles. Luckily, the teacher in that room was a veteran of five days, much better equipped to handle student misbehavior than the teacher who today, her first day on the job, ran sobbing down the hall from her class of freshmen. And yet I still kind of judge their predecessors for quitting: oh, you didn’t know teaching was hard?

I’ve been blissfully oblivious to the atmosphere outside of my classroom, and only recently heard about the threats to teachers, the rumors of a student who used the cafeteria as a bathroom, the fights too numerous to control. Things are flowing in my classroom, to the point where even without a commanding voice, students do good work (my deputy announcing that Ms. W would wipe her runny nose on the shirt of any slackers might have had something to do with that). There’s an upside to teaching in the far back of beyond: my trailer may be isolated, but it’s also far away from anything the freshmen decide to get up to. Still, today, I felt the repercussions of the student environment when a student came in to say goodbye.

After school, as I sat grading in my trailer, I was roused by a strong knock at the door. One of my best students entered, a scholarly, serious, studious gentleman who has unfazedly knocked every assignment I give him out of the ballpark. He sits quietly in the center of the room, occasionally helping other students but mostly just focused on his work. He wears a hoodie, tall socks and flipflops, in the cool way kids here do, and never really attracts too much attention, but in his essays and creative assignments he shares his drive to achieve everything he can.

After him ran a knee-high sprout, who made himself comfortable clambering on the desks I’d set up in stations for tomorrow. And then the wonderful mother who raised the child. She came to meet me because they’re transferring him to a better school, and so today was his last day. I said everything I was supposed to say, about him being at the top of all my classes, and an excellent role model for his little brother, and how good it will be for him at the new school, and to keep being him, but I doubt he knows how strongly I meant it. Sometimes there aren’t words for how impressed you are by a student, how much you hope they make it to the top, wherever that is. He’s one who, years from now, I could come across running for senator, and I’ll say, I knew him when.

It makes me very sad that he couldn’t stay at our school, that inequality of education is such that it drives the most promising students out, leaving the most difficult schools desolate. Someday… well, I won’t quote the TFA logo of #Oneday at you. It’s tattooed on enough flabby biceps not to need my stamp of approval. And I won’t tell you #Nochildleftbehind, either. But I’ll pull from that same poem to share the mantra that got me through today, through every sniffle and sneeze: I care, and I’m willing to serve. For whatever it’s worth. Because hey, if I don’t dramatize my job a little, what’s going to wake me up at 5:30 am and send me to school with a hacking cough and dripping nose and jackhammer headache?

"I Care and I Am Willing to Serve"

by Marian Wright Edelman

Lord I cannot preach like Martin Lurther King, Jr.

or turn a poetic phrase like Maya Angelou