by Ilana Garon
“So, yeah . . . my first question is: What is the rate of HIV transmission in high schools—” I froze. Crystal was learning toward me over the desks. It took me a few seconds before I realized that she was puckering her lips and heading towards mine. I turned at the last second. Her kiss landed wetly on my cheek.
“Crystal! You can’t make out with me! I’m your teacher!”
The class, silent only a moment before, was now in hysterics.
“But I love you, Miss!” she announced brightly, much to the amusement of her friends.
“And I’m very glad you’re in my class, Crystal,” I said to her. “But you can’t kiss teachers. It’s not appropriate.”
“But I like girls!”
“Okay, and I fully support that decision. But I’m still your teacher, and you just can’t do that to me. Okay?”
“Okay,” she sighed.
Just then the bell rang. Crystal’s dejection abated instantly, and she ran, cackling, out into the hall to join her friends.
______
Part IV: The Writing
The thing was, after all that effort, very few of the kids ever turned in their papers. I spent hours in class working with them one-on-one, helping them come up with introductions, with interview questions, with surveys to give to their classmates, with library research . . . and still, when the day came, the results were pitiful.
“Natasha,” I said, when one girl turned in an essay that had obviously been plagiarized, “I know you didn’t write this.”
“Oh yeah? Prove it,” she said.
“Sure thing. Tell me why your essay still has hyperlinks in it, and a link to Wikipedia at the bottom of the page.”
Several students, who had been watching, yelled “Ohhhh, snap!” and started laughing.
I called Natasha’s mother. “Your daughter can’t turn in assignments like this,” I said. “It’s unacceptable to plagiarize.”
“Well, what did you want her to do? You said it was due today,” her mother said.
Another kid, Tyrell, who was on some other planet and would later be expelled for setting another kid’s hair on fire “to find out what would happen,” gave me a disk. “My printer’s not working,” he said.
I opened his disk on the library computer later that day, and all I could find on it were photos of basketball players.
“Tyrell, what is this?” I asked him.
“That’s my research.”
“So where’s the rest of your paper?”
“That’s it.”
I implored them to turn in their papers. “Turn them in late,” I said. “It’s still better than nothing. Please guys . . . for me.” But few kids turned in anything at all, and most of the stuff they did turn in was taken directly off the Internet. I ended up counting the paper for one-eighth of their grade, instead of one-fourth, as I’d planned. Frustrated nearly to the point of tears, I took out my disappointment on the kids, telling them that if they didn’t get their act together, they’d never graduate. Then, after they left, I sat at my desk with my head in my hands.
There was a small knock on the door. I looked up and saw Crystal grinning crazily at the window.
“Hey, you,” I said, opening the door. And then, thinking better of closing it with just the two of us in the classroom, I said, “No funny business now, okay?
“I just want to turn in my paper!”
I looked it over while she stood there. Considering most of the other ones I’d received, this one was actually decent. It was handwritten in pencil, with smears everywhere—but it was all her work. She’d written about the foster-care system and interviewed her foster mother.
“Crystal,” I said. “This is really good.”
I turned to her and saw that brightness in her eyes again.
“Crystal, don’t even think about it! Go to your next class,” I said, shooing her out.
______
Part V: Sources Cited
Shortly thereafter, Crystal had an incident involving sexual abuse at the hands of her foster father. She would be transferred to a new foster family, she told me one day at lunch. I was disappointed to see her go and confused about how—upon reporting sexual abuse—she hadn’t been removed more promptly. She left the school at the end of the year.
Mr. Porteno turned out not to be an expert on drugs—at least, not by his own account. Actually, he had been a foot soldier in the Vietnam War, which seemed more interesting. I never did find out how Ranfi came up with that other idea.
And Kenya did a research paper on Roswell, New Mexico, which—although largely cribbed from dubious Internet sources—was admittedly rather entertaining. Although, in the course of her paper, she never did explain why it is that aliens only ever abduct white people.
That part remained for me to find out.
Here are some interesting things that have happened this week:
1) Sex bracelets. This is a disgusting new fad with the kids. Basically, they wear these multi-colored rubber bracelets—there are about twelve to fifteen different ones—and each color represents a certain sexual act. If someone comes and snaps your bracelet, you are supposed to perform the sexual act in question with that person. I find this incredibly disturbing, especially since one of the students gave me a color-key so now I know the specifics of what each bracelet means, and there are some things you just don’t want to know about your students’ lives. I gave each class a lecture about how just because someone snaps your bracelet, you are in no way obligated to do anything you wouldn’t want to with them. I stressed this. The boys said, “Miss! Don’t tell the girls that!” The girls said, “But why would you wear the bracelet if you didn’t want to?” I feel like very few of them really have any feelings of self-worth or ownership over their bodies, and this is the root problem . . . this new fad is just symptomatic.
2) This one kid comes in with a bloody nose. “Miss, I need to go to the men’s room,” he says. “Yikes,” I say and write him a pass to go out. Twenty minutes later I notice a vial of red food coloring on the desk of one of his peers. When I make the connection, they all crack up laughing. The kid with the “bloody nose,” meanwhile, doesn’t return all period. I kind of have to give him credit: I would never have gone to that much effort to cut class when I was in high school.
3) Several of my ninth-grade students have taken to calling me “Mommy.” They come in and say “Hi Mommy” and throw their arms around my waist. It’s a little odd. I pointed out to one girl that since I’m not even twenty-three, I would have had to be seven or eight years old when I gave birth to her. “But you’re kind of like a Mommy,” she said. When I asked how, she said it’s because I give the kids candy, quarters to use the phone when I can spare them, and I let them hang out with me while I prepare for my classes. The fact that these things qualify you to be a parent, in their eyes, is a little off-putting . . . especially since today, when I met some of them on the subway, they asked me completely earnestly if the reason I don’t own a car is that I’m not old enough to have a driver’s license.
4) One of my favorite students, who had an abortion last term, is pregnant again. This will be her second abortion in three months, and her third in her life. (She had her first at thirteen.) I am torn between feeling really annoyed at this girl (who is smart enough to know better!), and just depressed by the whole situation.
I’m tired. Must sleep now.
One of my students has gone missing. This happened last semester, as well, and the sixteen-year-old girl in question turned out just to have run off to a friend’s house. Thus, I suppose I’m more blasé about it than I might be if this were the first time one of my students had ever gone MIA. Anyway, this kid (a fifteen-year-old girl named Emily) has been missing for three days. There are posters up all over our area of the Bronx with her picture, which is a little disconcerting to see—every time I pass one I think “Hey, that’s Emily,” and then I remember.
Cops—not just NYPD school safety officers—were in today to t
alk to my students, to see if they knew anything. The students aren’t good at discerning what kind of information will be helpful, so the discussion with the cops largely turned into a gossip session about Emily’s sexual proclivities, which I shortly put an end to. I also had to give the cops her folder, because it had some journal entries that someone hoped might be informative. So, what little privacy the kid had left has now been violated.
Rumors are that she may be hiding out with her twenty-two-year-old boyfriend, who lives up in Washington Heights, in an area that is reputed to be the “Mecca of crack dealership”; others say that she had a fight with her mom (who is allegedly too strict) and ran upstate. Nothing is very certain.
The police seem more concerned about this disappearance than they did about the previous one. I believe a lot of this has to do with the fact that this other girl’s parents were fairly certain she had just run off, whereas Emily’s mother doesn’t have any idea. However, there is an added dimension: a twenty-one-year-old Julliard student disappeared in Inwood—one neighborhood north of where Emily may be hiding—on May 19th, and her body was found five days later. So now everything seems all the more serious as a result.
Follow-up: The missing fifteen-year-old, Emily, was found safe and sound, apparently due to some tip that came from a member of my class. The anonymous kid went to security after the police officers came in and spoke to us and told them that he knew something, but hadn’t wanted to say it aloud. Good to know people were paying attention. (Yes, Emily had in fact run away with the boyfriend to Washington Heights. She should be back in class any day now.)
The school year technically ended a few days ago. However, I have not had a moment to breathe yet, as Regents exams—state tests in all different subjects that the students have to take at prescribed times, in order to graduate high school—have been in full swing. Boy, do I hate proctoring. I sit around trying to think of exciting and creative ways to slip out unnoticed, because it is just so tedious! You’re not allowed to read a book or anything while you’re administering these tests, because you’re supposed to watch the kids the entire time so that they won’t cheat. And these tests are three hours long.
Then you have to grade them. That takes several days because in our school there are over one thousand students taking the English test, each test has four different essays, and each essay has to be read and graded by two people, three if there is a disagreement, and that doesn’t even begin to address the multiple choice.
I got into an argument with two senior teachers who felt that I was grading their students too harshly.
“These are honor students; you can’t give them a 2 [out of 6!],” they said.
“I’d be happy to look over any tests you feel I graded unfairly,” I told them. “But that I am pretty sure I’ve been careful.”
They proceeded to berate me about one particular kid’s essay, which they insisted was “Four pages! And written by an honor student!” and thus should be given a higher grade.
I maintained that despite the length I didn’t think it was a very good essay, and that there were other students whose essays I felt had been much better. “This essay is incomprehensible,” I said.
“You can’t grade down because of penmanship!” they retorted.
“I don’t give a crap about penmanship! I’m downgrading because it contains incoherent sentences that could barely be construed as English!” I told them.
“You know what the kid means!” was their response.
This continued until Bill, the head of the English department, came over, took the essay, and read it.
“Well, I wouldn’t have given this more than a three,” Bill said.
“What???” the other teachers said, and proceeded to yell at him.
Bill put up his hand. “Just look at this sentence,” he said. He read from the essay, “‘Pollution is a factor in cumulus clouds. This is bad for humans. They.’ See? This makes no sense! Come on,” he said, putting the essay down. The senior teachers argued with him for a couple of minutes, but saw that they weren’t getting anywhere. I was sweating and feeling vindicated. Then they turned on me and started making nice. (“We weren’t trying to upset you, we just know you’ve never taught Regents, and we want to make sure you know how to grade. . . .”)
For some reason, though I can argue with the best of them, I can never stand that feeling of being diminished. I burst into tears. It embarrassed me. I ran to the bathroom and washed my face.
Oh shit. I have to go back to grading, because the teachers I had a fight with just came into the teacher’s lounge where I am writing this missive. More later.
I wonder if we do the students favors by giving them passing grades, as we often do, for work that is so far below grade level. I really don’t know what to make of it.
I had the students write research reports that they turned in the last day of term. One of the reports went like this: “I read a book about abortions. It had lots of information about abortions. If you ever get in trouble and need an abortion, you should read this book, because it will tell you what to do.”
This went on for a paragraph (which was the entire first page of his paper, since he only had one paragraph per page), and I never managed to learn what the book was called, who the author was, or what allegedly good information the book disseminates.
And the crazy thing is, I passed this kid for the term (although I don’t think he got more than a 55 on his report). He does the work, he comes to class, and he doesn’t try to act like a badass. That counts for a fair amount here.
But then I wonder if I’m doing him a disservice by allowing him to slip by with this kind of work. But as I’ve probably said many times before, by the time the students get to me, they’re so behind that this report on abortions was not the worst of the lot.
I was demoralized a while ago by a meeting with one of my mentors. She suggested that I haven’t actually learned a darn thing about teaching, and am continuing to work in a failing school where all I do is discipline, because I’m terrified that if I’m actually expected to teach, someone will bust me on my ignorance. And the entire time she said this, I kept thinking, “Damn, she’s on to me!” That is my secret fear. Everyone tells you all this corny stuff about how you’re saving students’ lives or whatever else, and you’d like to believe them, but the circumstances are so out of control that you eventually begin to feel that this whole business of “having an impact” is an illusion.
So why am I sticking it out? Well, for one thing, the vindication is sweet! On the last day of school, I busted my arch-nemesis student, Kayron, in a cheating scam. He was selling answers to his science final using a stolen exam. And the ridiculous thing is that he failed the test anyway! I know I shouldn’t find this so humorous, but I haven’t forgiven him for stealing my post-its, my tape, my scissors, all the blue markers, and two different staplers, all of which he was clever enough to pass off before I had any tangible proof of his involvement. Plus he was a pest the entire year and kept trying to put photos of me on the internet.
Anyway, it’s summer break. There goes Year 1.
YEAR 2
The best story so far:
This ninth-grader named Romaine (like the lettuce) is trying to ask out this other girl, named Christine, who sits next to him in class. She’s having none of it. He begs, pleads, tells her she’ll have the time of her life, that all he’s asking for is one date. Christine says no. He appeals to me. (I might point out here that this kid is seventeen and has already done two years upstate for possession with intent to distribute—and here, he’s trying to get me to facilitate his puppy love.)
“Miss, can’t you convince her to go out with me?” he asks, right in front of her.
I shrug. “That’s up to Christine, not me,” I say. I look up and notice that he is wearing a necklace that says “Dominique” in ghetto-stylized lettering. “I have to say, though,” I add, “If I were Christine, I’d probably wonder who Dominique is.”
He looks defeated. “My daughter,” he mumbles.
Yikes. “And how old is Dominique?” I ask, trying to recover smoothly.
“Two.”
“So who takes care of her?”
He looks proud. “Me!”
“Um . . . okay, what about when you’re at school?”
“Huh?”
“You know, you’re obviously not leaving her in the locker. . . .”
“Oh, her mom.”
“And how old is the mom?”
“I don’t know . . . mid-twenties?”
There are so many things wrong with this picture. Christine comes up to me after class. “I don’t really have to go out with him, do I?”
My ninth-grade group is the class from hell; so far, they’ve threatened the life of their math teacher, and the deans keep coming in (sometimes accompanied by police officers) to pull out this kid who is quite large and wears a chill-pack on his back to keep him cool. The kids call this young man “Kool-aid,” affectionately, and apparently he likes this name because he asked me to call him Kool-aid, as well, though I can’t really bring myself to do so. (This other girl wants to be called “Beaver”—I’m not so keen on that one either.)
Seven classes currently take place there during a given period, which is even worse than the five last year. Periodically, the room erupts in cheers, and that’s when we know a fight has started. Most recently, a student threw a paper ball at a teacher. When the teacher told him to get out, the student didn’t budge, so in a moment of poor judgment, the teacher swatted at him. The kid thought the teacher was taking a punch at him, so he did what his “flight or fight” instincts dictated—he slugged back! The teacher’s been absent since. I shouldn’t find this amusing, but I do, because the teacher in question wrote me inappropriately sexual letters at the beginning of last year, and the student who hit him is one of my former repeaters.