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10/15/2005 09:17:00 PM
Teaching for fun and profit
Kristen sits in the corner of her dining room, curled up in an armchair, with a
teenage pout painted on her face. It's the expression she usually wears in my classroom,
where she sits in the third row against the left wall. But out of the context of my fourth-
period American Lit class, she's suddenly a real human child and not just a mouthy
sophomore. This afternoon I'd asked her to raise her hand before answering a question,
and she spat back some smart comments that escalated into shouting. Now I see her with
her bangs clipped on top of her head (as though she'd been mid-hairdo when I arrived)
and in her pajamas, and she reminds me of my little sister at her age.
We are on the South Side in the kind of neighborhood that's either eerily empty or eerily
busy, where entire blocks are abandoned or full of crowds roaming after dark with
nothing to do. "You are better than this, Kristen," her mother repeats over and over as we
discuss why I'm there. "But she be gettin' on my nerves!" Kristen replies. "All my
teachers be gettin' on my nerves." Three of Kristen's teachers called today to report bad
behavior. "I know I have an attitude problem," she says, like it's a disease, like if she
admits she's an alcoholic it makes it okay to drink. Her expression keeps switching
between innocent-looking puppy-dog eyes and a raised-eyebrow, head-bobbing teenage
rant.
We spend the following hour and a half discussing her potential, how she doesn't need to
respond with anger when she's annoyed. At some point, she softens dramatically. Her
English teacher is sitting at the dining room table in her house, flat-out saying that she
needs to shape up. She has been told repeatedly of her tremendous intelligence and
potential. The three of us action plan. Then we review.
"So what are you going to do tomorrow?" her mother asks, in a leading tone of voice.
"I'm going to come in, with my ID on, get my folder, look up on the board for the Bell
Ringer like I always do, and sit there and do my work."
"And what are you going to do if you get bored?"
"I'm going to ask for more work. Or read a book. Or just sit there quietly."
Inside I am doing a Eureka-dance of joy, and when I leave at 8:30pm, Kristen is still
sitting there in her white tank top with the clip in her hair curled up in a chair. But she
could, for all intents and purposes, be an entirely different girl. She is looking me in the
eye now. Her voice is calm and soft. Her eyes are in puppy-dog mode. "Be careful." she
says as I stand to go. She knows I shouldn't be in that neighborhood alone after dark.
Because even she shouldn’t be there.
The next morning, I am perplexed to find no "program changes" in my mailbox. Teachers
had been told to watch out for a flood of new students getting classes shuffled around due to "staff
reductions." Strange, I thought, maybe my roster changes are on their way. I knew our
school's programmer was very busy with all the changes. So I continued on with my morning,
until I ran into another English teacher and told her I hadn’t yet received my new list of
students. "I hate knowing things." the other teacher said. "Before you do a lick of work
today, go talk to Dr. Parker."
Saying "go talk to Dr. Parker" was actually like saying "Go talk to the Wizard of Oz." No
one just talked to Dr. Parker, the principal. But I went down there anyway, valiantly, and
asked to see her. I was denied my request and told to see her in the social room during
Division, a 15-minute "homeroom" period used for attendance-taking, paper work, etc.
I had a stack of my division students' yearbook photo proofs, fresh from the
photographer, in my hand. I'd leafed through them earlier and marveled at how they
looked when frozen in posed photos. Like sleeping babies, they were much more
loveable when not in motion. When I arrived at the classroom where my Division was
held, another teacher was already there, and he seemed confused. "Do I have your
division now?" he said. "I guess so," I replied, "Yeah, you must've gotten a program
change," he said. I handed him the yearbook proofs and hurried downstairs.
Down in the social room, three other teachers and I milled around in utter disbelief. "Do
you think.. we're fired...?" one of them asked incredulously. "Oh we're DEFINTELY
fired," another replied venemously. One had a mortgage, another was about to close on a
house... we whispered furiously about what was happening until Dr. Parker came in on
crutches, a ring sparkling on her finger, pathetic and ostentatious mingling. I couldn't tell
anymore what was real. Did she really need crutches? Was that a real diamond? Are we
really sitting here hearing her tell us this? She was letting us go. Letting us go. Letting us
go. There was no money for us in the budget. 100 students hadn't shown up for school.
She had to cut four positions, because the district was holding the school to a strict formula of attendance vs. dollars. We could go home now.
"What about all of the work that I haven't graded?" I immediately thought of their essays,
which I hadn't formally graded yet but which had surprised me with their depth and clarity. I'd
asked students to write about good and evil in the world, and whether they thought they
were equally balanced or whether one outweighed the other. The vast majority thought
evil was winning.
"Be selfish here for a minute," Dr. Parker said. "Don't worry about it."
When our meeting ended, winded and shocked, I rushed up to the second floor
where I knew three of my closest colleagues would be sitting during their third period,
which we all usually had free. I burst into tears as soon as I saw them. They hugged me,
fed me peanut butter M&Ms (our standard nosh preference) and handed me tissue after
tissue. Suddenly third period was almost over. Students would be arriving in the
classroom. I would have to go.
I rushed out of the room down to the office, handed in my keys and headed for the front door instinctively as the
closest way to exit the building and see the fewest students. Once I got outside though, I
heard my name from above. "Ms. Muscato!!!" they hung from the windows and shouted.
How did they even know to look out the windows? One of them yelled "Your ass got
FIRED!" I'd failed many of them on their first progress reports, so some of them had been calling for my resignation anyway.
Now they thought they'd gotten their way.
I waved, and their new teacher came to the window and reprimanded them. Then I
walked straight ahead with as much dignity as I could manage to the parking lot. When I
got to my car, an orange envelope awaited me, a $10 parking ticket. I'd forgotten to register
my car with the main office at the beginning of the year, and this was the one day they decided to do a ticketing of the
lot. Brilliant. I plucked the orange envelope from my windshield, got in the car, and
drove away.