by Donna Foote
Ironically, Rachelle was experiencing as a teacher some of the issues her parents had faced. She was trying to build a relationship with the kids while commanding their respect. It was hard, especially as a female. She had to be careful. She was conscious of how she dressed. (Even so, some at Locke took issue with the holes in her jeans and the tank tops she occasionally wore on student-free days.) Once when she used the Spanish word “ese,” meaning homey or buddy, to address one of her favorite students, the kid frowned and corrected her. “It doesn’t sound right, you saying ‘ese,’” he said. And sometimes, when one of the boys would give her a hug, she would think, Is this too close to the line?
So far, at least, they had never challenged her sexually. In fact, the only snide comments or crass sexual innuendos she had heard came from her colleagues, not her charges. She easily fended off the occasional unwanted advance or inappropriate remark at Locke. She hadn’t expected it to be an issue at Teach For America. But over the summer, when she effused over how cute one of her students was, a corps member trilled: “How cute, Rachelle?” There was no mistaking the insinuation. Rachelle was insulted.
Because TFAers were not much older than some of their students, physical contact was a tricky issue for all of them. On the last day of summer school during institute, one of Hrag’s female students kissed him on the cheek. Without thinking, he kissed her back, and was horrified. Oh my God! What just happened?
Rachelle sometimes wished that she were a school counselor instead of a special ed teacher. She didn’t feel comfortable in the role of enforcer. But she soon understood that moms had the power in most families, particularly the black households, so she didn’t hesitate to take advantage of that with a phone call home. The boys begged her not to; they did not want to cross their mothers. But often it was the only thing that worked. So when Dante threw a nasty temper tantrum one day, Rachelle picked up the phone and called his mom. He was going crazy, screaming and throwing his backpack around. The security guard outside Rachelle’s door had tried to help, but it somehow became a race thing: “Dante, I know she’s white, and you don’t trust her because of that, but you have to trust the people who have your best interests in mind,” he said, trying to get Dante to respond to Rachelle. It was another jolting reminder to Rachelle of how many things at Locke got filtered through a colored lens—even issues that had nothing to do with race.
When Dante finally calmed down, Rachelle drove him home. At first his mother was apprehensive because she figured Dante had done something wrong. But Rachelle didn’t talk about his bad behavior. She marveled at his little sister’s perfect attendance certificate and gave Dante a special project to do at home. After that, Dante turned a corner. He still had anger-management issues; kids teased him because he talked funny, and he had trouble reading, which bothered him. But he wanted to please Miss Snyder, so his outbursts became much less frequent.
Rachelle broke through to Deangelo the same way. Deangelo was a sweet kid with a short fuse. He and his cousin Martel were inseparable. They made an impression on her the very first week of school when they were afraid to walk home because they had been threatened by a bunch of gangbangers. But they were tough to handle. Martel was especially difficult, and Deangelo fed off his negative energy. They fought like cubs at play, poking and taunting each other with expletives and racial slurs. Rachelle would be trying to teach, and the two of them would be going at it.
Deangelo: You ugly, nigga. You gay. You a faggot. You a slut.
Martel: Shut up, bitch. Fuck you.
Deangelo: Fat black jerk.
Martel: Fuck you, bitch. Don’t get mad, get glad, motherfucker.
As tiresome as they were, Rachelle knew that Deangelo wanted to succeed. But he had a hard time remembering assignments. She decided to help by calling him at home to remind him of his homework. She ended up talking to his mother, who had just finished a course of radiation for cancer and was undergoing chemo. She had spent the day in bed and told Rachelle that she wasn’t doing very well. When Rachelle responded with the obligatory “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help,” Deangelo’s mom jumped on the offer. She wanted fruit. Could Rachelle bring her some fruit? So Rachelle and Deangelo went grocery shopping. They drove to a nearby food warehouse and picked up pears, pineapples, bananas, and tortillas. When they delivered the food, Rachelle made Deangelo show her the science report he had completed in middle school. Her interest made a difference. Deangelo started really trying. He even urged Martel to stop the cussing and do some work.
In the days leading up to the December break, even the most difficult kids got into the Christmas spirit. One of the highlights of the last week was the guest appearance of Mr. H. Rachelle enjoyed Hrag. They’d been hanging out together ever since Palm Springs. Hrag had put her in charge of getting Mackey to relax. She would call him up periodically and tease, “Mackey, are you working?” It was great to have Hrag in her room teaching her fourth-period class. He presented a mini-lesson on the breakdown of proteins in the digestive system. There were only four kids there that day, but they were all on their best behavior, and when Hrag left, Rachelle thanked them.
“Oh, we weren’t good, Miss Snyder, we just didn’t want to embarrass ourselves!” explained Martel. Then, noting the Christmas present Hrag had left on Rachelle’s desk, he added: “Is that another boyfriend?”
The next day, Rachelle gave the boys a little quiz and promised to double their scores as a Christmas gift. Then she handed out photocopies of an outline of a human body and asked the kids to label the parts. The boys talked and laughed as they worked. It always surprised Rachelle: they liked being busy; they loved filling out work sheets! When she asked if everyone in the room celebrated Christmas, Martel bristled: “What you think? We black. We sit home doin’ nothin’?” But the moment of tension passed, and soon they were all clapping and singing—and even dancing—to the hit hip-hop single “Laffy Taffy” by D4L and “Yo Quiero Saber” by Ivy Queen, the reggaeton diva.
Rachelle had been counting the days until the Christmas break. Her plan had been to do absolutely nothing. Things didn’t work out that way. Locke was hopelessly out of compliance with its IEPs: unless they were completed by January 28, the school could face a possible takeover. So special ed teachers were asked to come in over the break to work on them. Rachelle had fifteen to complete. Not only did the IEPs require input from general ed teachers, but they couldn’t be closed without a parent’s signature. Though she had scheduled multiple meetings with parents and guardians, many had been no-shows. So, before heading down to San Diego for the Christmas holiday, she spent the first week of her break working on IEPs. When she wasn’t filling out paperwork, she was knocking on doors in Watts making house calls.
Still, on the last day of school before the three-week vacation, she was almost giddy. The staff Christmas party was in Hobbs Hall that afternoon. Faculty meetings at Locke often erupted into shouting matches—who knew what would happen at a Christmas party? She had heard that Dave Buehrle was leaving, and it was a safe bet that most of the TFAers would be there to say good-bye.
As it turned out, she never made it to the Christmas party. A fifteen-year-old girl she had never met before came into her room and asked to borrow her phone. Her name was Sharita, and she lived in a foster home. Rachelle asked her what was up.
Sharita needed to find somewhere to go. For the past year she had been living with a single mother who had one biological daughter. Sharita had just found out that she was pregnant with her middle school boyfriend’s baby, and when her foster mom heard the good news, she kicked her out of the house. Sharita could sleep on the porch if she wanted, but she was no longer welcome inside. So Sharita collected her things, stuffed them into two garbage bags, and came to school to try to find someone to take her in. She had some numbers of long-lost relatives, but either the numbers were wrong or the people answering the calls had no interest in being reacquainted with a pregnant fifteen-year-old with no resources.
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Sharita had never gotten to touch or even see her own mother, a drug addict who died of an overdose when Sharita was ten. As far as she knew, her father lived in Palmdale, but she was not allowed to see him. For most of her young life, she had lived with an aunt who was a prostitute. By age ten, Sharita was working off the books at a liquor store to help buy food and diapers for the babies her aunt kept having. Sharita ran away after being raped repeatedly by an older cousin.
She was happy to be pregnant.
“But what are you going to do with a baby?” asked Rachelle.
“If I’m old enough to open my legs, I’m old enough to take responsibility for what I’ve done,” reasoned Sharita.
Rachelle stood by as the child dialed number after number. She didn’t know what to do. Eventually, she took her downstairs to see Carla German, Locke’s psychiatric social worker. German tried to contact Sharita’s social worker, but because of the Christmas holiday, the woman was on an extended three-to-four-hour lunch break and couldn’t be reached.
Sharita begged Rachelle to take her home with her. She wanted Rachelle to adopt her. And Rachelle actually entertained the possibility. I can adopt her. What the hell? No! I can’t. I’m almost as irresponsible as she is.
“You’ll get eight hundred dollars a month,” Sharita assured her. “I’ll be really good, I promise!”
Rachelle knew she couldn’t take the girl home with her, but she didn’t know what else to do. She found Dr. Wells at the Christmas party and asked him to intervene. He told her to call school security, but they were gone. Finally, there was no other option; they called the police. Rachelle remained at school with Sharita until five-thirty. Carla German stayed until the cops came and took the girl away.
As Rachelle left, she pressed her phone number into the child’s hand. She felt sure Sharita would call, but she never did. In fact, no one ever heard from Sharita again. The earth may just as well have opened up and swallowed her whole.
Rachelle drove home crying. When she told her father Sharita’s saga, he reassured her. If she didn’t cry over something like that, he said, she couldn’t possibly have a soul.
In mathematics, there was clarity, a right answer and a wrong answer. Phillip had the quintessential math personality. English or history teachers might approach their disciplines with an “Okay, let’s think this thing through.” Phillip’s style was “Let’s call it what it is. Break this rule, there are consequences.” Crying over a failing grade didn’t work with him. Emotion simply didn’t enter into the equation. “Sorry,” he would say. “You missed the boat.” People said he was hard on his kids. And they were right. He didn’t expect talking when he was talking, and when it happened, he got angry. Some things were just not subject to compromise.
One day he ordered a particularly vexing girl to Saturday school for her bad attitude. The child ran out of the room crying hysterically. She was on probation, and one more offense could send her to jail. “I hate this class!” she screamed. “He’s so mean. I’m gonna go to jail because of him!” Phillip reckoned he should have felt bad for the girl. But he didn’t. He didn’t feel anything. He was simply doing what he had said he would do. He asked his colleagues how they would have handled the situation, and they all agreed that they would not have written the referral. Maybe not, but Phillip could see the effect that attitude had in their classrooms. In Phillip’s classes, the kids watched one another’s behavior and called out anyone who was not following classroom procedures.
Relatively speaking, he thought he had more of a standing with the kids than did most teachers. He could feel it when he walked down the hall that was the home to his small school, SE. He didn’t know all the students at Locke, but they seemed to know him. One day he interrupted an argument between two girls by ordering the one he knew, Rakesha, to class. Her friend started mocking Phillip, repeating what he had said, exaggerating each word. Rakesha turned to her and snapped: “Cool it! That’s Mr. Gedeon!”
Phillip believed that when you’re strict about the small stuff, you eliminate a lot of the bigger problems. He tried to nip things in the bud. Tardiness, talking, cussing, not doing homework—all were tantamount to disrupting his class. In Phillip’s book, even saying “Shut up” was prohibited; he lumped that expression in with all the other profanities that had made their way into the everyday speech pattern of the Locke student body.
He had not had a student directly disrespect him: no objects thrown, no “Mr. G, you are this,” or “Mr. G, you are that.” Kids had said stuff, but never to his face. Because if he did hear something, he would demand that the student look him in the eye and repeat it, and the kid would suddenly be at a loss for words. Once the moment passed, Phillip never pushed the point; he always moved on. He would just say: “This is the end of the discussion. There is no need to argue. If you want to discuss it, you can come back on your own time.”
There had never been a fight in room 301 because Phillip had never let anything rise to that level. To be sure, he had had students walk out, but that didn’t bother him. “Walk out,” he’d say. “You’re not offending me. I want you to walk out so I can write you up.”
His kids knew the limits. And he felt that his students, particularly the black males, saw something in him. One day, at the end of the first semester, a black kid named Carnell said, in front of the whole class: “Mr. G, you are the best teacher I ever had.” Phillip thought he was just playing around, but soon other kids jumped in and agreed. It was strange to hear kids saying that about a math teacher, since most hated the subject. Maybe it was because Phillip was a black male. Maybe they found in him a kindred spirit, or maybe they wanted to impress him.
He was not a demonstrative person. And he didn’t date. Relationships take time, and he didn’t have any to spare. If something came along, that would be one thing. But he certainly wasn’t going to seek it out or put any effort into it. He did have a social life, though. TFA didn’t have many official social events—a welcoming picnic and a one-hundred-day celebration—but he went to both. The L.A. region recruits often got together, and teachers at Locke partied, too. He enjoyed eating and drinking and swapping stories about school and college. Most nights he ate with his roommates, but he and Dan Ehrenfeld and Dave Buehrle tried to get together once a week for a meal, and he sometimes saw Taylor outside of school, too. He became great friends with a UCLA alum who taught math at Locke named Amber Hardy. They met once a week and watched American Idol together. And he and Heather Fieldsteel had a running competition to see who could visit the other more during their breaks. He enjoyed the collegiality at Locke, especially among the TFA folks. In fact, he didn’t know how a teacher could make it at a place like Locke without the support of colleagues.
But the focus of his life remained his work and his students. He made no apologies for that. He considered all the other stuff—posting TFA mastery charts, submitting proof of lesson planning to the front office—unimportant. He wasn’t going to run around decorating his classroom or writing down lesson plans when he needed to be grading. Fine him, fire him—they could do what they had to do. He would do what he had to do.
The fact was, there were plenty of rules at Locke; there just weren’t any consequences. Phillip knew they weren’t going to fire him. They weren’t even going to write him up. Nobody got written up! Even TFA had no real power over him—or any of the other recruits. Corps members were paid by the districts that employed them, not by the organization that had recruited them. Phillip ignored all the time-wasting directives. If he appeared arrogant or insubordinate, so what? He didn’t worry about what people thought of him.
What mattered was his teaching, and that spoke for itself. After a poor first showing, his students’ scores on the monthly assessments were up. He was buoyed by the results. Some of his kids got B’s for the first time in their lives. Homework had become a priority, Saturday school an empty threat. Phillip put kids’ names on the board for Saturday school when they didn’t do their homework, b
ut they never had to go—they all made up the missing work.
He was blackmailing them, and it was working. They were beginning to see the connection between homework and achievement. When they corrected their homework together in class, Phillip insisted that they ask him questions. He wanted to get them talking about math, comfortable with asking questions. They were not only learning geometry, Phillip was teaching them language skills, conversational skills, and if-I-don’t-know-the-answer-I-can-ask skills. The kids weren’t even close to TFA goals of 80 percent mastery. Maybe 50 percent were making a B or better (and that’s if you didn’t count the ones who were chronic ditchers or had other big impediments to achievement). As far as Phillip was concerned, though, this turnaround was major.
Phillip had asked his mother to choose which holiday she wanted to share with him: Thanksgiving or Christmas. She chose Christmas. So for the Thanksgiving holiday, he got a cheap $220 JetBlue ticket and flew to New York to spend time with a teacher friend who worked for the Peace Games Program, a nonprofit organization that promotes tolerance and conflict resolution to schoolchildren. In New York, Phillip felt totally disconnected from his real life. He didn’t have to worry about Locke or TFA. He walked the streets all day long, slept in late, saw Ground Zero, and did Times Square. He sat in on a class that his friend taught. One thing he didn’t do was see his father. His father had left his wife and was living with his girlfriend in New York. He had a new life. Phillip refused to be a part of it.
As it turned out, Phillip didn’t go home for Christmas after all. He hadn’t really been looking forward to it in the first place. The Massachusetts winter was cold and dreary, and the snowstorms had already begun. His mother worried about his traveling in bad weather, and she didn’t have any extra vacation time to spend with him anyway.