All Day

by Liza Jessie Peterson

  “I am not having this nonsense today! All of y’all! I’m sick and tired of repeating myself, tired of the disrespectful behavior, tired of the foolishness.” I start calling names: “Tyquan, Raheim, Marquis, Shahteik, Malik—” Shahteik tries in vain to protest, but I cut him off. “Everybody!”

  Malik tries to butt in. “Ms. P, you going crazy, yo!”

  I whip my head in his direction. “That’s right, know that… you better know that!” Then I continue wielding my belt made of words and tone. “I am not the one! Some of y’all got it twisted!” I see some of the rug rats getting annoyed, taking it personally, rolling their eyes and shifting in their seat. I change gears and throw a little honey on my blade. My voice is still loud and stern. “This is a smart class, nobody in here is stupid; ya might be lazy, but you damn sure are not stupid! Y’all’ve been doing good work lately and it’s my job to make sure you continue… but not in chaos! Not like this! Not with disrespect! No sir, no siree. I respect each and every one of you and expect the same in return! I’m here to teach and y’all are here to learn and that’s what we’re gonna do today!” I pump the brakes and bring my volume down to a sane level, speaking as if nothing ever happened in my Ms. Crabtree voice, showcasing my vocal range, from ’round-the-way banshee to little red schoolhouse teacher. “Now, let’s start with the vocabulary. Someone choose a word, give the definition, and then use it in a sentence.”

  The guys look perplexed. Some are shaking their heads. The officers chuckle and walk off. Malik raises his hand. I nod and he says, “Belligerent, means to be rude and to speak angry-like, with a nasty attitude. My sentence is: ‘Ms. P was very belligerent today in class, yelling and catching an attitude, making it hot.’ Belligerent.”

  This makes the class laugh and loosen up. It was funny but I can’t laugh lest I break character. I keep a stern face and clinical tone. “Excellent. And your sentence let me understand the meaning of the word. Very good. Someone else. Yes, Raheim.”

  “Excruciating means painful or extreme pain. ‘I have an excruciating headache after Ms. P screamed with tremendous volume.’ Tremendous, mean a lot or huge. I just did two words in one sentence ’cause I’m nice like that.”

  I smile and nod. “I’m impressed. That’s what I’m talking about, fellas; let’s get this work in. Who’s next?”

  Peanut raises his hand. I’m shocked he’s participating to do work. “Peanut? All right now, let’s have it.”

  “Can you play the radio?” he innocently asks with a sincere straight face.

  I furrow my brow with indignation. “No, I most certainly will not. I’m not playing anything. You all made me very angry today and I’m not feeling anybody right about now. Maybe tomorrow—a new day, a new attitude. Now, pick a word, Peanut.” Peanut shrugs his shoulders. “Pick a word, just try, even if you get it wrong. That’s how you learn. And you might just get it right. Just try.”

  Peanut picks plethora. He can’t pronounce it. I help him with the pronunciation and ask him what it means. He shrugs his shoulders, again.

  “Somebody help brother Peanut out. What does plethora mean?” I ask the class.

  Tyquan has his hand up. “Don’t it mean ‘a lot,’ like to have a lot of something?”

  “Very, very close, Tyquan. It means to have an excess in quantity, a superabundance of something.”

  Tyquan gives it some thought, rubbing his chin, and then he says, “Oh. Yeah, like I have plethora of hoes on the track. I got an excess in quantity, ya heard?”

  The class cracks up, and I smirk, slightly breaking character. I want to laugh but refuse to give them total surrender. Within one period the class went from being in an unhinged whirling-devil maniac state of turbulence, to normal, mildly chatty students. Tyrone slips back into class and slides into his seat. He volunteers to help me pass out the African-American history books, which is his subtle, nonverbal way of apologizing. The guys are working independently on the Black Panthers handout with questions based on the chapter they just read. I sit at my desk to do what I rarely do. Just sit. I am exhausted, feeling postperformance fatigue as the adrenaline wanes. Malik comes to sit next to me in the teacher-student conference seat.

  “Yes, Malik?”

  “Ms. P, no disrespect but when you get belligerent with us, you look cute. I’m mean you get real crazy belligerent-like, then you get real calm and talk like nothing happened… that’s kinda cute.”

  Belligerent is now Malik’s favorite word. At least he learned something today. Since he’s in my seat, I take the opportunity to talk with him about his academic strengths and weaknesses. I point out his progress in social studies, particularly Black history, but his need for more focus with English, a subject he always resists since he’s most challenged by grammar. Malik likes to get special attention and enjoys one-on-one time with me. As I’m talking with him, I’m ear-hustling some of the students talking about me, recapping my theatrical routine.

  “Yo, son, she probably be yelling like that at her man, going crazy, calling the police and shit.”

  Mission accomplished. It’s been a while since I’ve had to summon her and they were in need of a tune-up. I think they get a kick out of seeing thug mama anyway. Probably reminds them of that woman in their life who doesn’t play and keeps her foot up their ass… because she cares. Usually when they pluck my nerves, instead of yelling I play the exact opposite and give them “icy-clinical,” or sometimes I serve up the silent treatment or whip ’em with sarcastic wit to embarrass them into shutting the fuck up. I relish in foiling them, not giving them the reaction they wanted since they love trying to get me riled up and seeing my feathers ruffled. I have to parcel thug mama out sparingly so she won’t lose her potent effect. If I don’t ration her, I’ll wind up screaming all day, sounding like static on dead radio stations—useless. Even though components of volume, tone, and theatrical range are important when I explode, the most effective element is “surprise-fool,” not knowing when she’s gonna show up. Timing is everything.

  Today’s lunchtime movie matinee in the teacher’s lounge is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. Oooh, classic blood, guts, and gore, and yelling at the TV screen. Fun. I have officially watched more horror movies at Rikers Island than I have in my entire life, including when I used to do dumb shit like watch The Devil’s Rain, Carrie, and The Omen in one sitting with my cousin Terri.

  Every afternoon we gather in the teachers’ lounge to participate in this gruesome screamfest, with me leading the charge, being the main spectator yelling at the stupid lady walking into obvious danger. “Why!? Stupid dumb bitch! Why you gonna walk your silly ass into the dark barn, alone, with just a flashlight ’cause you heard some fucking noise? Hope your ass gets chopped the fuck up for being a goddamn investigative dingbat and if you run I know you gonna fall, watch.” Seeing this always manages to piss me off and conjures colorful words I hurl at the actress, making the other teachers laugh. A big-mouth punk, I watch the entire movie peeking through my fingers covering my face, steady talking shit. I hate that I enjoy the barbarity of it all. But what I hate most is having my bloodcurdling horror-joy cut short because of an idiotic staff development meeting, which is mandatory for all teachers.

  I meet up with Ms. G in the hallway and walk with her to the dumb meeting. I ask about the dead child. “Girl, I know you heard about that adolescent that was murdered here. He died in his cell.” The word murder feels heavy in my mouth.

  Ms. G looks back at an officer sitting at his post and speaks in a hushed tone. “Yeah, girl, keep your voice down and don’t talk about it in front of the officers or the kids. The higher-ups at the Board of Ed don’t like us talking about anything involving DOC issues, especially something as serious as this. The less we know the better. Since it didn’t happen on our watch on the school floor then we won’t be investigated. No questions, no drama. That’s DOC’s mess. BOE wants no parts of it.”

  I’m confused and clearly haven’t been in the trenches long enough t
o understand the bureaucratic politics. “What drama could it possibly cause the Board of Ed?”

  Ms. G pulls me inside her classroom, which is next door to the meeting. She’s still speaking in a hushed tone. It’s clearly some secretive and sensitive information she’s about to drop on me.

  “Girl, when something major, like a murder, happens it’s now a criminal investigation. This building is going to be swarming with investigators. Once you start talking about what you heard then you’re leaving yourself open to be questioned by investigators and could be called in to make an official statement to be used in a court of law. And since no one truly knows anything, because it happened after school hours and off the school floor, why bring potential unnecessary attention to yourself? Besides, even though we’re with the Board of Ed, we’re still in DOC’s house. We’re visitors, not the host.”

  “But who was the boy? Did you know him and what happened? The news clipping didn’t say hardly anything.”

  Ms. G is so patient with me, entertaining my naïveté and barrage of questions.

  “A kid named Christopher. He was rarely on the school floor because he was in the bing all the time, you know, one of the bing babies. He was registered in the school out in the sprungs but because he moved around from house to house so much he wound up here on the main school floor a few times. He was never in my class, but I remember him.”

  Ms. G goes on to tell me that she heard the kid was giving the officers in his housing area a lot of problems being really disrespectful and unruly, so as punishment they packed him up and moved him to a house where a rival gang lived to put him in a hot situation and teach him a lesson. They thought he’d just get beat up a little bit and humbled. They never thought he’d be beat to death and murdered. Even the goon squad who beat him up never intended to intentionally kill him. He died hours later in the hospital and several adolescents from that house are going down for murder; some COs are going down too. All the kids, like the teachers, want nothing to do with being investigated so everybody’s mute.

  “Why would the officers go down? Fights happen all the time. They didn’t know he would be beat to death. They didn’t beat him, did they?”

  “Girl, I know you heard about ‘the Program’?” Ms. G asks me as if I should know the obvious, making my freshman green status evident.

  “The Program? No, what’s that?’

  “The Program has been around long before I even started working here, girl. It’s a system some COs have set up to keep their house in line. Makes their job easier.”

  I look so perplexed.

  “Some COs look at it, like, instead of getting into battle all the time with the strong leaders of the house, making their shift hell every day, they make a pact with them. The leaders make sure the house is run a certain way keeping their ‘team’ in line and in return the COs turn a blind eye when the new jacks get extorted for their commissary and phone calls and other stuff. Kids that aren’t with it get beat up while the CO isn’t looking.”

  “That’s crazy. I hear the kids in here talking about being with it all the time, ‘oh, he’s with it, or he better be with it,’ but I had no idea ‘with it’ was a real operation going on.” I shake my head in disbelief. I am getting schooled.

  Ms. G continues, “Girl, I know. It’s real trip. And this is what I’ve heard from the kids themselves. The officers work the leader’s power in their favor and in exchange they give the leaders certain privileges like letting them lock in late, smoke cigarettes, which is contraband, and they let the ‘team’ run their little extortion ring, taking the weak kids’ PIN numbers for phone calls and commissary. I feel bad for some of the kids. That’s why I bring in snacks from time to time because I know a lot of their commissary is being extorted.”

  Ms. G grabs a notebook from her desk. “Girl, come on, we gotta go to this lady’s meeting.”

  I follow out after Ms. G. I am stunned to learn about a dark underworld that goes on in the housing area. Being on the school floor affords me, and other teachers, the opportunity to see kids in a positive learning environment, albeit jail. But seeing them in their jailhouse living room, in their housing area where they eat, sleep, shit, shower, talk on the phone, watch TV, commune, and play, is clearly a wildly different setting I hadn’t given much thought about until now. I wonder if my buddy King ran a house like that.

  As we walk out of Ms. G’s room I whisper, “Do you think King ran the Program in his house?”

  “King had seniority so he didn’t work in the housing areas; he was just on the school floor. But I heard he could be pretty brutal when he wanted to be. I never saw it but one of the other teachers told me he was known to smack kids in their face in the hallway.”

  Ouch. No, not King. I didn’t like hearing that. My perception of my buddy was being smudged. I immediately wondered if the two kids who jumped him were adolescent vigilantes seizing an opportunity for revenge that was lying dormant until that fateful day. No, not King, I kept thinking. But then again, I really don’t know.

  “Whatever happened to him? Do you think he’s coming back?” I ask, pausing in the doorway.

  “I heard he got bruised up pretty bad and he’s not coming back to the school. He’ll probably get transferred to another post or he just might retire. I think he had enough years in to get his full pension. I’m not sure.”

  Ms. G just gave me a speed course education and glimpse into the dungeon where my rug rats are housed, giving me a deeper understanding of what they’re navigating when they leave my class. She also made real the duality and flaws of my friend.

  As we walk to the next class my mind keeps picturing King slapping a kid in the hallway. Once you know, you can’t unknow no matter how much you try to push it out your mind. Damn.

  I’m all for staff development to learn something new and brainstorm better ways to improve lesson plans but I can’t stand these meetings, with this assistant principal, which are centered on some new stupid system of lesson planning we’ve been suddenly mandated to implement. I find them to be a waste of time, totally irrelevant, unnecessary, and draining. I. Don’t. Give. A. Fuck. About. These. Meetings. Ever.

  These staff development meetings feel like I’m sitting in an episode of Charlie Brown when the grown-ups talk. All I hear coming out of the mouth of the assistant principal is “whah whah whah whah, whah whah.” I don’t like this woman. It’s not even personal, but I loathe what she represents and defends like a dutiful mechanical puppet. I find her to be cold. She doesn’t smile and isn’t the most cheerful cyborg on the plantation. She should have taken the officer’s test and been a CO. She and I have never clashed, but it’s her military-like adherence to procedure and rules, rules, rules that grates at the independent thinker, artist-rebel spirit in me. We don’t mix. Clone drone versus rogue artist woman. Even Phil, who’s the principal and her boss, has more creative flexibility than this brownnosing, ridiculous zombie. Even he understands the necessity of using the arts to enhance literacy and will bend the rules from time to time, giving teachers some semblance of freedom in the classroom. But with her, hmph. Hardly. I think maybe she’s gunning to be principal or maybe she has her sights set on an upper, upper administrative position, because how else could this woman be standing in front of us, in this yawning-for-the-gods stupid meeting, telling us with such stern, unwavering, absolute authority some horse-dog-cow bullshit that makes no fucking sense. She’s a classic case study in humans who are obedient, digitally programmed robots, loyal to the Matrix. Just like in the movie, she’s a blue pill broad.

  A new set of unrealistic lesson plans and laughable teaching mandates has come down from the superintendent’s office and this ’droid is arguing the case for it despite loud, valid protests from all the teachers in the room. We’re the ones on the front line, in the actual classroom, and she should have our back. At least hear us out and let us know you identify with our concerns. Show some compassion, let us know that you know what the superintendent is asking of us i
s supremely dumb and makes no sense. Help us to push back and get around this nonsense. Administrate. Problem solve. Discuss ways to accommodate some sort of middle ground; give us some leeway to get us out of this new straitjacket the superintendent is telling us we have to wear in the classroom. Let us know you are on our side. But no, this remote-controlled Stepford bobblehead keeps repeating the program, saying, “This is what the superintendent is saying you have to do, so that’s what is expected of you. I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them.” This bitch is whack. And the superintendent, Cami Anderson, is even worse; she’s an out-of-touch numbskull with no insight into the real needs of urban public education.

  To add insult to injury, our teacher evaluations will be based on how well we adhere to this asinine, restrictive, loony lesson-plan farce. What they expect of us is a joke. Based on this new lesson-plan initiative, straight from the bowels of the superintendent’s orifice, I mean office, a typical forty-five-minute class period is now supposed to look like this: The first ten minutes are for preassessment. Given that the students have all arrived on time and are settled down in their seats and focused, we have to assess in ten minutes what the students know or don’t know about the lesson we are about to teach. Well, you might ask, how will we know what they know or don’t know about the lesson they have not yet learned? Oh, that’s easy. We simply pass out a preassessment questionnaire on the subject that asks: What do you know about this subject? Is this your first time learning this material? If so, what do you think it’s about? We have to get the students to fill out this assessment form, collect it, and then start the lesson. The next ten minutes we’re supposed to talk about the lesson and give instructions. And then, for the next fifteen minutes, students are expected to work independently. With the last ten minutes left in the period, we should use five minutes for sharing and five minutes for postassessment to determine if they learned anything.