by Dan Brown
“Lakiya,” I finished for her.
“Yes! Lakiya. Terrible attitude. And we had a problem in the front with—”
“Deloris.”
“Exactly right. She is mean. And the boys don't care about their work one bit. No respect for school or themselves. Quite a class you've got. This is your first year? Unbelievable.”
The focus of our Professional Development day was encouraging nonfiction reading and writing. Almost immediately, a heated grievance-venting session ignited, centered on the question of how teachers are expected to squeeze in extra time for literacy skills, when we do not even teach our own homeroom students during the ninety-minute SFA block. Everyone seemed to agree that achievement plateaus out in the second half of the teacher-proof Success for All program, but we were handcuffed to this time-eating literacy curriculum.
The faculty's points were strong but I stayed out of the discussion, not because I was a rookie but because I secretly and selfishly relished Success for All. For those ninety minutes every day, my regular twenty-six left, and only fifteen plus Fran Baker entered. The new personalities were cut from a similar cloth as my homeroom kids, but the smaller number made life exponentially easier. I could deal with a momentary distraction from sneaky Dequan or talkative Victoria without losing the whole group. Also, I got to meet perpetually sunny Kelsie, Maria, and David, and they were joys.
I got excited when literacy coach Marge Foley talked about walking field trips to the neighborhood public library on Bainbridge Avenue. I also hatched an idea to take the class to nearby St. Barnabas Hospital to learn about health and nursing. Gladys Ferraro and Tiffany wanted to work in medicine, something I learned from their autobiographies. Lakiya did not write an autobiography, but I had her specifically in mind for the hospital trip. She showed surprising compassion for sick or injured classmates. When Fausto strangled Eric back in the first week of school, I entered the lunchroom to find Lakiya's arm protectively around Eric while he retched. I also remembered her rubbing Dennis's back and keeping gapers away when Dennis got upset over an insult Cwasey cracked about his old-looking clothes. Lakiya Ray might hate elementary school, but maybe she could be happier if she had some educational experiences outside the iron-barred windows of P.S. 85.
Later, Marge Foley politely told me to put the field trip ideas out of my head. “I wouldn't risk it with your group,” she said. “It's just not safe.” She was right.
In the search for ways to break the cycle of misbehavior through more stimulating in-class activities, my hands were not tied but lopped off. No trips. No games, because all of my boys, except timid Evley, were incredibly sore losers. No hands-on work, because of inevitable throwing or destroying. If I cut independent work time short, kids would not finish and would get discouraged. If I gave extra independent time, the lag produced shiftlessness and loss of interest. I could not be humorous or affable because a light moment was license to make noise and, unfailingly, the class subverters leapt on it. My rewards seemed ineffective, and my punishments were so limited and so often undermined that I looked like a chump dealing out empty threats.
Hope existed only if I could get them to behave themselves. My bathroom mirror was getting an earful these days. “It's a long year. Something gets across!”
I thought Cat Samuels could use a bit of Karen Adler's verbal medicine. Cat taught a prep lesson in Karen's room on Mondays, but they had never had a conversation about anything outside schoolwork. I suggested the three of us go out for a drink. We rode the Manhattan-bound D train south, traveling from the country's poorest congressional district to one of the wealthiest in just twenty minutes.
We walked into Kennedy's, an Irish old-timer haunt on West 57th Street, with big mahogany tables and a record player more likely to turn the Chieftains than U2. Karen and Cat hit it off, and Morris, the white-haired barkeep, put several rounds on the house. We cursed our jobs and laughed, munching on the complimentary onion-and-potato pancakes.
I got a call from a friend who was with some girls at a bar on Rivington Street in the Lower East Side. They were talking about me, and he encouraged me to get down there despite it being a school night. Of course I'll be there! I was twenty-two and tired of feeling dead.
Soon I was guzzling Jack Daniel's and emphatically recounting the inflammatory exploits of Fausto Mason to a rapt audience when the room started to bend. For some reason, the ancient antiseptic smell of the P.S. 85 second-floor faculty bathroom floated into my head and stuck there. After a second round of kamikaze shots, I stood up, intoxication rushing against my eyeballs with unanticipated pressure. I abruptly excused myself and rushed out of the bar, peeling the corner onto Essex Street to revisit my onion latkes.
Reeling on the sidewalk, I remembered that it was election day, and damned if I wasn't going to cast my ballot! I stumbled three avenue blocks to my polling place at the corner of Allen and Stanton streets.
Inside at the table, I gave my name and address and was directed to a booth. Behind the privacy curtain, I felt sudden tranquility. Just for a moment, I allowed my eyes to relax. I don't know if ten seconds or ten minutes passed, but, from outside, an impatient slap to the metal wall of the booth jolted me back into the world. “Buddy!”
I flipped a few switches, then walked straight out of the building, staring at my shoes. I leaned against a parking meter, spit, and wiped my watering eyes. At 8 a.m., I would have twenty-six children expecting me to teach them, and I had gotten smashed the night before to forget about it all. I fell into bed. This was dangerous.
I hit the snooze bar four times before rolling out of bed at 5:36. I couldn't discern whether my nausea was a hangover or just the usual dread, exacerbated by returning after a four-day break from the students.
My kids cheered when I appeared for lineup, but this time I barely heard them.
“Mr. Brown's here. Yay!”
“We had a mean African lady!”
“I hate subs!”
“Mr. Brown, how are you?” Jennifer asked.
I rubbed my eyes with my palm. “Sick, and I'm still sick.”
When everyone lined up to leave for Success for All at 8:45, Sonandia pranced over to me. “Mr. Brown, are you sad?”
“I don't know, Sony.”
“I see. Is your birthday more than two days away?”
I nodded. “Yes. It's February ninth.”
“I know it's February ninth. That's why this is for you!” She handed me a piece of notebook paper, crudely fashioned into a bulging envelope.
I unfolded the paper and read her note, written in childish looping cursive. “Dear Mr. Brown: I am giving you this for good luck. I see that this can change things for you. Thank you! Love, Sonandia.” She had drawn bunches of stars and hearts near each corner of the page, with a caption reading “center of the heart and feelings.” Enclosed in the paper was a funky beaded necklace with a scraggy shark-tooth pendant.
The darkness lifted. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Sonandia! What a cool necklace! That's so thoughtful and generous!” Sonandia helped hook the thing on me. I had never worn a necklace in my life, and this was a fine first one. The kids loved it. Even Tayshaun and Lakiya seemed impressed with the shark tooth, which I knew had Blazing Hippie written all over it. I wore the necklace all day, drawing sideways glances from Mr. Randazzo and Ms. Guiterrez.
Riding the surf of good feelings after receiving Sonandia's gift, I changed my lesson plan on the fly and brought out the “manipulative” blocks for some hands-on multiplication work. “Manipulative” is teacher lingo for a material intended to enrich understanding of math concepts. It seemed a rather sophisticated word to serve as the catchall for the dusty closet inventory of tangrams, rubber-band geoboards, spinners, and number grids.
Miraculously, no one brutalized anybody else. (Perhaps I got some traction with my improvised analogy, “Throwing manipulatives is like touching poison.”) Little lightbulbs popped on all over the room. Lito Ruiz's moments of epiphany were fantastic to w
atch; he would stare at his desk surface, look up, look back at the desk, and nod progressively faster until he had a smile that would eat his face. Jennifer gave me our daily hug in the parking lot and I sent them home for the first time without thinking I was verging on collapse. Maybe it's not the elaborate behavior systems that determine our flow, I thought. Maybe it's the way I carry myself. When a teacher is happy, the kids are happy.
I stopped at Crif Dogs, a much-beloved East Village hot-dog joint, on my way home and grabbed two Philly Tube Steaks as a present for this renewed school spirit. And I kept the toothy necklace on.
On Thursday, November 6, 4-217 scored its first perfect “4” in Mr. Randazzo's daily lineup inspection.
At 8:55, I was perched on the edge of my rocking chair by the reading rug, making crazy faces at a troop of children entranced by an enthusiastically requested encore performance of “The Ghost with Bloody Fingers,” a particularly delicious selection from Mom's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.
“Mr. Brown, I need to speak to you now.”
Mrs. Boyd stood by the blackboard, her face clenched in seriousness. I hesitated, ripped suddenly out of the delicately constructed climax of the lamenting, oozing ghost. “Now, Mr. Brown.”
I handed the book to Fran Baker. A collective sigh of disappointment exhaled from the group. Mrs. Baker was a wonderfully generous and intelligent teacher, but she was a self-admitted novice when it came to leading an exciting read-aloud.
I assumed Mrs. Boyd wanted to talk to me in the hall, so I headed for the door. Her hand reached out and caught my forearm, not letting go for an uncomfortable interval. “We can speak here. What can you tell me about”—Mrs. Boyd looked down, referring to her paper—“Sonandia Azcona?” She pronounced Sonandia's name very slowly, as if she had never said it before.
My anxiety lifted. I thought this meeting was finally going to put words to her murderous glare from the Halloween party disaster. Calmed, I instinctively reached for my right pocket where the shark-tooth necklace now resided as a lucky charm. “Sonandia is my best student. She's the best behaved and the most academically advanced. She's mature and a good leader; she's always my line leader. She grasps concepts quickly and is able to apply them to solve problems. She always volunteers to—”
“Show me her portfolio,” Mrs. Boyd commanded.
A flow-tide of queasiness rose up in me. The portfolios. I had fallen desperately behind in keeping them current with multiple-draft pieces of completed work. Piles of student papers covered my desk, but I was remiss in getting them organized into the important red folders. Major paperwork surgery was penciled in my planbook for Tuesday night, but I had gotten wrecked instead.
I led Mrs. Boyd to my desk and began madly riffling through compositions titled “Why We Write” as she fingered my crate of virtually empty portfolios.
“Forget it,” Mrs. Boyd said. “Sonandia's mother is a paraprofessional here in our cafeteria.”
“Yes. Ms. Tavarez.”
“Right. Ms. Tavarez approached me with concerns that this class might be a little too out of control to be the best environment for her daughter. She asked me to transfer her to Ms. Adler's class, and I'm going to do it, effective after report cards next week.”
Mrs. Boyd looked at me to respond. I had nothing to say. “Oh,” I fumfered.
“Okay, good. And Mr. Brown”—Mrs. Boyd tapped twice on the anemic red folders and made a laugh-snort—“we have a lot of work to do, babe.”
My first thought was simply, Ms. Tavarez's idea makes sense. I would not want my kid in my class either.
I stood dumbly and alone by my desk. I realized I needed to resume the reins of the SFA group. I moderated Meaningful Sentences practice, Treasure Hunt review, and Adventures in Writing first drafts, all the while feeling a growing lump in my throat.
I spent my prep in a long line for the downstairs copy machine, listening to a small cluster of veteran teachers discuss their jobs.
“Ungrateful, disgusting little fuckers. Don't they know by now that I don't give a damn if they cry? Cry all you want, Tyrell. I don't see an extra ten dollars in my paycheck for being your friend.”
“Seriously.”
“I don't play. They know I don't play. I've had it with these brats.”
“Forty-seven more till winter break. Then twelve whole days out of here.”
“Jesus Christ, give it to me now.”
During our math lesson, Sonandia raised her hand for every question with her usual exuberance. I realized: She doesn't know.
Karen was absent, so I ate lunch alone. Sitting in the silent classroom, mechanically shoveling tasteless things into my mouth, my numb melancholy hardened into anger. I would be dead without Sonandia. Not only was she a funny and lovable kid to have around, but she was the crucial litmus test of my ability to teach. She was now proficient in graphing, place value, and basic multiplication, concepts to which she had only been vaguely exposed before September. Her writing showed the seedlings of a unique voice that I was eager to cultivate. Apparently unobstructed in her progress by the other issues in the room, Sonandia was the best proof that I wasn't a tailspinning hack, as Bob “I-don't-want-to-give-up-on-you” Randazzo seemed to think, though he had never come into 217 to watch me teach. I needed her!
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I had a morning prep to go with our Extended Day schedule, which meant I carried the entirety of the dreaded after-lunch teaching periods. Across the school, Extended Day afternoons were the most stir-crazy, misbehavior-prone times of the week, and Thursdays were always the worst.
I had planned to combine a social studies and writing lesson to introduce our unit-culminating Iroquois-perspective journal pieces, but when I showed up in the cafeteria to pick up the class, I could tell it was going to be dicey. Jennifer and Athena ran over to me immediately.
“Everyone hates Deloris because she's saying nasty things!”
Deloris suddenly appeared behind me, evidently from wandering outside the cafeteria. “Shut up, you slut.”
“You a slut!”
“Hey!” I shouted. “Get in line!”
Another wave of complainants barraged me. “Bernard and Daniel got into a fight!” I looked at the table and saw Bernard sitting cold-eyed, cheeks puffed, hyperventilating. Daniel faced the corner, crying. Tayshaun Jackson was dancing around the middle of the cafeteria with the industrial broom.
“Tayshaun!” I called. He heard me, looked up, and leaned all of his weight on the broom handle. The wood snapped in two. The lunchroom supervisor, Len Daly, was nowhere to be seen.
After three minutes of yelling, only twelve of my twenty-six kids were in line. Daniel was still crying, Destiny was now crying too for some reason, and Marvin Winslow was plain missing.
“Where's Marvin?” I shouted frantically at Dennis. Dennis shrugged. “He left.”
“He left? On his own? Which way did he go? Did someone give him permission? Was he alone?” My eyes darted around, as if Marvin might be lurking just beyond my periphery.
Dennis was clearly rattled by my interrogative onslaught and held his palms up. “He left.”
The kids tramped into 217 seventeen minutes late and without Marvin Winslow. I called security and a building-wide search began. Marvin did not turn up. Meanwhile, still-fuming Bernard, labeled on his blue card as an “extremely temperamental child,” took out his anger by toppling Hamisi's desk while I was on the phone with security. Hamisi went nuts, attacking Bernard like a clumsy mongoose. I ripped them apart, tossing Bernard into Mr. Randazzo's office. I continued to battle the tide via rhythm-clapping, shouting, moving seats, and subtracting points. After fifteen minutes of this, the class settled, like a shaken soda can after its pressure-induced eruption. I picked up a marker to make a chart-poster and asked my first introductory review question, calling on Ms. Guiterrez's recommendation of employing the five senses in prewriting. “If I were living four hundred years ago in an Iroquois longhouse, what is one thing that I would see when
I woke up in the morning?”
“Marvin!” Dennis cried.
With total nonchalance, Marvin Winslow swaggered through the 217 door and took his seat like someone returning to a dark movie theater from the restroom.
“MARVIN! Where have you been? I called security! I thought you were dead. I was worried sick!” I became an official grown-up when I said that.
He did not look at me. He always tuned out when people yelled at him. I was incensed, though, and later wished I had controlled myself.
“Answer me! Where did you go! Talk!”
He folded his arms on the desk and buried his face. “Leave me alone,” he mumbled into his shirt.
Suddenly, Deloris was having a crisis. “My skin! Mr. Brown, my skin!” She rushed over to me (breaking the out-of-seat law), clutching her inner elbow. I saw nothing wrong with her arm and told her to sit down.
“Oh my God, mah skin! I got bumps on my skin! Send me to the nurse, please!”
I wanted her gone. I scribbled a nurse's pass on a torn-off corner of a scrap of paper that had missed the wastebasket. “Go!”
She left, and I restarted the stillborn lesson. Eight minutes later, Deloris reappeared, escorted by the frowning nurse. “This girl has nothing wrong with her,” Nurse Tina said tersely. “Please don't send me frivolous things again. It's a waste of my time.” I nodded, a little miffed at her tone. I turned back to the group, asking the class again about hypothetical olfactory stimuli for Native American farmers and artisans when an unmistakable voice shrilled out.
“My eye! Oh my God, Mr. Brown! My eye!”
The class erupted in a mix of disdainful yells and laughter. Lakiya and Eric fell off their chairs. When Joseph and Lito saw, they fell off their chairs too.
I looked at Sonandia and her half page of notes about Iroquois ways of life. A string snapped inside me, and I lost it.
I lifted cackling Tayshaun Jackson's desk above my head and wham! smashed it to the floor. “SHUT YOUR MOUTHS!” My voice shook with convulsive intensity. The room went dead silent and motionless at my paroxysm, like a record scratching to a halt in some terrible game of Freezedance.