The Great Expectations School

by Dan Brown

  When I sent them back to their groups to write a story retell, or regurgitation of the plot, I felt like I had scaled a mountain in simply getting through the short book. Sonandia and several of her pals seemed to enjoy the story. In fifteen minutes, though, I was back to the beginning of another new lesson and new fight. I calculated that I would teach at least seven hundred lessons this year; they could not all be like this stop-and-start scrape job.

  Our opening math lesson regarding bar graphs yielded slightly better results. I made a model graph, polling the kids and charting their favorite TV shows in a data table and spelling out my procedure on the board. They copied everything in their math notebooks or blank loose-leaf sheets I provided.

  P.S. 85 draws its students from one of the poorest neighborhoods in the Bronx, but almost all of the kids had cable television to watch their favorite shows: That's So Raven, Spongebob Squarepants, Kim Possible. I soon learned that most of my students also owned state-of-the-art video-game systems. One teacher explained, “It's an investment in a twenty-four-hour babysitter.”

  Fausto got out of his seat eleven times during the twenty-minute math lesson. I tried to keep him at bay by calling on him when his hand was not raised. To my surprise, he had the correct answer every time.

  After the kids answered the worksheet questions from the Math Trailblazers textbook and we had discussed them (although only ten of the twenty-one present completed the work), it was time for the Baseline Writing Sample. This would be a “before” example to compare with June work. The prompt was, “What would make a good teacher for me?”

  Despite my coaxing, Lakiya, Deloris, and “weird” Eric again wrote nothing. Maimouna, my prolific student whose blue card warned about her tendency to “get lost by writing pages and pages,” dutifully filled four pieces of loose-leaf with neon-purple ink.

  One more lesson to go before the now direly needed lunch respite. Using a template devised during my summer training at Mercy College, I had created a “biography/autobiography” unit as an introductory meet-each-other literacy endeavor. For a model, I had a great kid-friendly biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. I decided on the spot that rather than read the whole book (an invitation for disruption), we would crawl one page at a time, charting the important elements of a biography.

  PAGE 1: Birth date and place. Family background.

  PAGE 2: Life before age 5.

  PAGE 3: Life in elementary school. Friends, interests.

  PAGE 4: An important experience or adventure as a young person. This may be a hint for something important the person does as an adult!

  I stopped in the middle because after four and a half hours in the room together, we had made it to lunchtime. The kids jumped and pushed en route to the cafeteria. The mood was frantic and hungry and bore no resemblance to the beginning of the morning.

  A phenomenon that lives only in our military, prisons, and elementary schools is the crucially serious transit line. I hated walking in line as a kid. I thought that if I could show I trusted my students to walk calmly and decently together, they would respect my trust and respect each other. Trust begets good teamwork.

  When I reflected on the first hour of my first day, I realized everything I had done in that brief honeymoon period would come back to haunt me. My “team” spiel and my desire to offer everyone an evenhanded shake and social contract of respect were disasters of nuclear proportions. With my good-faith gesture, I had put myself in a position to be defied by one charismatic rebel, which of course happened immediately, opening the floodgates. Before I had won the respect and command of the class, I had allowed myself to be drawn into a graceless power struggle with the attention-seeking subverter. From the Floor to the Moon felt miles away.

  Counter to my hopes, my lack of stern watchfulness during the first lineup enabled them to loudly screw off during future hall-walking time, since I had sent an initial impression that I was not fatally serious about our line. This resulted in a constant public fracas of shouting and shepherding the noncompliers during those formative first weeks. The disorder in the hall spilled wildly into the classroom, turning each morning, each return from lunch, gym, and computers, and each dismissal into an unwieldy and dangerous mess. I had been too nice.

  The first day finished with forty minutes of doling out jobs—sweeper, dustpan holder, boys’ line leader, girls’ line leader, botanist, three librarians, two popularly demanded assistant librarians—and cleaning the floor, which had somehow become a cyclone scene of shredded papers, tissues, and pencil shavings. I handed out an exuberant welcome letter and supply list to parents that I had revised endlessly over the previous week.

  I dismissed the kids out onto the subbasement-level blacktop as a gallery of legal guardians watched and waited behind the chain-link fence above. Seeing the adults waiting for us, my mood changed on a dime. I suddenly felt proud to be a leader in this procession of children, the first nip of excitement since my stairwell descent before the day even started.

  The kids scattered immediately, and I headed back into school for the weekly eighty-minute Professional Development session. As soon as I hit the steps, I felt a shot of dull fatigue in my knees, as if they were about to give out. My heart throbbed and I felt a steely pounding in my wrists and forearms.

  Barbara Chatton, my in-school mentor, advised me, “It's never as good as you think it is, and it's never as bad as you think it is. The day's over. Think of it as one door closing and another door opening.”

  That night I recounted the fiasco to everyone I knew. My roommate, Greg, and my neighbor Kadi wanted to rip Fausto apart. Their rage was contagious, and I started to feel worse. I called Jess.

  I had only known Jess for nine days, but they were memorable ones. We had met while cavorting like fiends to Billy Idol's “Dancing with Myself “at a mutual friend's rooftop party in Brooklyn and had been more or less inseparable since. Meshing the stomach-tickling excitement of new romance with the annual end-of-summer dash for kicks, my feelings about Jess had quickly planted her very near to the center of my universe.

  During the school day I thought I radiated failure, but Jess told me it's impossible to juggle so many flaming bowling pins of responsibility at once. I psyched myself up that this was a battle that I had asked for, and one that I was going to win. Now I knew their faces.

  I decided two things. First, the kids would be disinclined to act out if there was a consistent reward system in place. This was something I had underestimated and thus had not implemented immediately on day one. Second, pleading with the collective for silence was exhausting and ineffective. I needed signals that could work efficiently and save my voice.

  I made a “TEAM EFFORT” poster and divided it into halves for stars and strikes. If I counted to three, my newly hatched silent signal, and the room was still noisy, strike city! If they achieved quiet, star stickers all around. When the class accrued forty more stars than strikes (circa Halloween, I planned), we would have a 4-217 party.

  I did not feel like smiling on my way downstairs for the second day.

  Outside the 4-217 door, I sternly announced our new system to the line, translating their blank, tired looks as understanding. In the middle of my speech, a secretary tapped me on the shoulder and handed me three orange paper strips from the office, meaning I should expect three new students to arrive in my room in the next sixty seconds. Jennifer Taylor, Joseph Castanon, and Evley Castro dutifully appeared. Tall, mature-looking Jennifer shook my hand and said, “Nice to meet you, Mr. Brown.” Evley had a sensitive face and shyly stared at his sneakers when I shook his limp hand. Joseph had a bowl haircut and an empty look in his eyes.

  When chatter materialized during our bar graph lesson activity, I shook my head with slow intensity and boomed, “One…two… I still hear talking… THREE! That's a strike!” I felt like a jerk.

  The kids reacted with spasms of disappointment, as if their final lotto number had failed to come up. They called out names of the offenders with twa
ngy irritation. “Ber-NARD!” “Cwa-SEY!” “De-LOR-is!”

  We had five strikes and one star when I realized I needed to doctor this whole operation. I started giving out spontaneous stars for strong individual efforts until we got the board even. Once the class received several stars, the kids started to like it.

  Teachers are supposed to keep anecdotal records of misbehavior for documentation's sake. Mine quickly piled up.

  SEPTEMBER 9

  10:00 during Simon Says, Fausto punched Hamisi and Hamisi cried but did not fight back. Fausto did not apologize.

  10:45 Lakiya will not stop talking no matter what! She makes mocking gibberish sounds when Deloris speaks.

  11:30 Destiny says Joseph and Fausto told her they were going to beat her up at recess.

  2:00 Unprovoked, Lakiya tells Tiffany, “I'm going to follow you home.” Tiffany is terrified.

  2:10 Randazzo tells the class “Mr. Brown is nice and you're taking advantage.” I don't like that he says that.

  SEPTEMBER 10

  10:20 Destiny hyperventilating and can't stop. I send her to get water.

  11:00 Had to scream at class. Lakiya completely rude and indignant. Laughing and yelling, “Preach!” Randazzo comes in, hearing the shouting, and lectures them. They're silent for him.

  LUNCH (I'm not there) Fausto chokes Eric till Eric throws up. Gets in big trouble with Mr. Daly. Daly calls home and Fausto sobs. He says he will get beaten.

  1:15 I have long conversation with crying Fausto about being a leader while I eat my lunch. Good man-to-man. He says he will step off confrontations. I believe him.

  2:10 Fausto causes disruption in gym class immediately upon returning to group. Entire class game has to stop and wait.

  2:35 Fausto pushes Destiny, she cries. Lakiya helps Destiny, very surprising.

  2:45 Fausto picks up and drops Verdad in an awkward body slam. Verdad cries and becomes unresponsive.

  I called all fifteen parent contact numbers I had. To the six I reached, I rambled praises and yammered about how I wanted us all to be working together. I encouraged the parents to read with their kids and to keep an eye on the nightly homework. I told Lakiya's mom about how Lakiya helped Destiny Rivera when Destiny was hurt and neglected to mention Lakiya's rampant disrespect during lessons. I wanted to win the parents onto my team now in the event that I would have to bring down the disciplinary hammer later.

  Except for a few brief encounters in the parking lot at dismissal, this was my first contact with parents in the Bronx. As an outsider, my vague notion, fostered by Mercy College summer seminars, was that adults in the Bronx were either overworked, undereducated (hailing from P.S. 85 and the like), estranged from a spouse, tangled up with drugs, burnt out, or a combination of several. I did not know what to expect.

  My initial impressions were that the parents wanted to hear what I had to say. Cwasey's mom volunteered to be a room parent on class trips. Lakiya's mother told me, “I appreciate your call.” Tiffany's dad said, “I know Tiffany can get distracted, but she does good work when she's focused.”

  My two first-generation American kids from African families, Hamisi Umar and Maimouna Lugaru, had parents who spoke very little English. I knew Julissa and blue-cardless Gladys Ferraro's caretakers only spoke Spanish. I thought about ways to communicate with them. Then I passed out.

  The following day was the anniversary of September 11, 2001. Some classes held discussion forums and responded to writing prompts about 9/11. Other teachers avoided the issue altogether because of the students’ immaturity. Since many of my kids could not tell me their addresses, I opted against spending a chunk of class time on the tragedy. The self-censoring and expectation-lowering had begun.

  At 8:30, Mrs. Boyd came on the loudspeaker and gave a speech about memorializing this day in history. Boyd got on the PA two or three times a day in September, taking her time on the microphone, incurring many frowns from momentum-losing teachers and spiteful comments from bored students. Instead of, “Mr. Randazzo, please call the office,” we would hear, “I beg your pardon, teachers and students, and I apologize for this announcement in the midst of your literacy block, which I'm sure is making brilliant readers and writers out of you all [pause for guffaw], but Mr. Randazzo, would you please find a way to contact me, Mrs. Boyd, in the principal's office at your absolute soonest convenience. Once again, Mr. R., please contact the principal. Thank you and please return to your academic rigor and accountable talk.”

  Mrs. Boyd's 9/11 memorial message culminated with a prolonged moment of silence. I scanned the room, foreboding trouble in the pregnant quiet, but I was not ready for what happened next.

  “SEPTEMBER 11TH IS WACK!”

  Fausto leapt on top of the group three desks and jumped up and down, screaming incoherently. “FUCK SEPTEMBER 11TH!” he managed as I got my hands on him.

  I grabbed him by the arms and yanked him down into a bear hug, blocking his path from any kind of crazed belly flop. Anything was possible. My face burned.

  “I DON'T CARE, YO! GET THE FUCK OFF ME! SEPTEMBER 11TH IS BOOTLEG!”

  I led him by the arm to Randazzo's office, telling Mr. R., “This one needs a time out.” My physicality with Fausto surprised me, but the class cheered when I dragged him away.

  With my biggest headache out of the room, I got reenergized to teach, as if I was on a hockey power play. My hopes got thrown in the gutter, though, when in the middle of our biography lesson, Eric suddenly lunged at Lakiya's face, awkwardly missing, and the two fell on the floor, wrestling viciously. I ripped them apart and angrily asked what it was about. Lakiya blurted, “He a faggot!”

  At this exact moment I watched Lito Ruiz, the boy whose blue card identified him as “extremely susceptible to negative influences,” heave a fistful of crayons at Verdad, my sullen, likable mathematician, who sat in the opposite corner of the classroom. “LIII-TO!” I shouted in what felt like comic slow motion. Verdad immediately retaliated by gunning his oversized eraser at Lito. He missed and hit Athena, who started crying. Several boys laughed maniacally, mocking Athena. Mr. Randazzo heard the noise and came in, shushing the class. The room went silent except for Bernard, who loudly sucked his teeth in an insolent snicker. Randazzo shook his head at me and blasted the class for being the most disrespectful group in the school. Sonandia covered her eyes.

  Was this chaos my fault? I thought I had done everything I could to prepare to teach. My classroom was a print-rich environment. I modeled good character. I was organized and articulate in kid-friendly language.

  I thought of a French movie that opens with a story about a man falling from the roof of a tall building. As he passes each floor he thinks to himself, “So far, so good, so far, so good.” As his spirit looks down at his splattered corpse on the asphalt, he realizes it's not how you fall that matters. It's how you land. It's the mess that catches attention.

  That night I decided two things: #1: Fausto was dead to me. His presence was cancerous. #2: I would aim high with content and ideas in class discussions (get back to those great expectations!), and if this amounted to blank stares all around, I would chalk it up. Jennifer and Sonandia would probably be able to follow me.

  Decision #1 was rash and ridiculous. I could despise the kid, but I would still have to deal with his destructive actions. Also, he was a sad case. He said his mother beat the tar out of him. I felt sick for thinking so bitterly of an abused child. Decision #2 was built of virtuous intentions and horrendous logic. If I specifically geared activities toward the higher-achieving kids, I would alienate and lose the lower-achieving ones, who were already more likely to be discipline problems.

  What was I supposed to teach to a room that held both Sonandia and Lakiya? Sonandia could read young adult books and analyze them critically with the right kind of guidance. She was capable of the higher-order skills in Bloom's taxonomy, a reference structure for teachers to analyze levels of abstraction in learning. Lakiya could not read a sentence fluently and refused even t
o write her name. The range of abilities in 4-217 was as wide as a Great Lake.

  Upon arriving to P.S. 85 the next day, I got word that Fausto Mason had been permanently transferred out of my class. He was moving next door to Pat Cartwright, a tough black woman who had been in the army. This was Pat's second year as a teacher and first with a homeroom, and the administration felt she was better equipped to deal with Fausto than I was. I agreed. Pat explained, “He's just a rock-head. I'll whip him into shape.”

  With Fausto gone, I had my smoothest day yet. We began a James and the Giant Peach read-aloud. We reviewed the Martin Luther King, Jr. biography and wrote outlines on graphic organizers for our autobiographies. We made bar graphs from data in the Math Trailblazers textbook. We paraphrased stories that I had modeled aloud and some that I had typed on a homemade worksheet. We made a chart of components for “Good Listening” in our Getting Along Together lesson. We reviewed the parts of the scientific method introduced in a previous lesson by Mrs. Hafner. We read “A Spaghetti Tale” in Highlights magazine and talked about fiction and nonfiction. We looked at a map of New York City and reviewed the names of the five boroughs until each kid (except Eric) could recite them. We cleaned the classroom and copied our homework.

  I felt familiar pangs of exhaustion in my knees and throat as I shepherded the kids down the steps for the fifth time, but something unexpected happened when I released them into the parking lot. Jennifer turned around and walked back. “Thank you, Mr. Brown,” she said, putting her arms awkwardly around my neck.

  I hugged her back, feeling my stomach drop in surprise and joy. “You're welcome, Jennifer. Have a great weekend.”

  “You too. See you Monday!” Jennifer ran off to meet her friends. The quick handful of words we exchanged were among the most cursory and common in our language, but unknown to Jennifer, those ten seconds at the very end changed the first week of my new profession and my new life. The knocks and bruises of the screaming and conflict in 4-217 vanished and I smiled on the subway home, a first.