The Bosses' Boss

In an unprecedented stroke of well-timed bad weather, New York City Public Schools saw their second snow day of the winter - and on a Friday!! When I heard my phone "bling" at 5:30 in the morning, I knew it would be from Rosie, and I knew there was only one thing that text could say...

I feel at least partially responsible for our bonus three-day weekend because I made a bargain with the snow gods as I was leaving my thesis class Thursday night that if we received another snow day I promised to actually do some work on my Thesis. (And I know those snow gods want me to succeed.)

I did technically keep up my end of the bargain, though the deal was sweetened by the fact that I did it while simultaneously eating baked goods and homemade soup and spiked apple cider at Jafa and King's house... (Buuut not before I spent several hours in bed watching episodes of The Office on Hulu... I figured that was what Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein intended when they gave us the snow day, and who am I to go against their wishes?)

Also, the unanticipated day off was a nice reminder that, as invincible and all-powerful and unstoppable as the Great Bureaucracy sometimes seems, Mother Nature can still force everything to grind to a halt long enough for everyone to remember that she's still the boss.

Paper-shufflin', pencil-pushin' and book-cookin'

It's funny, the variety of statements from the kids that I must sift through and sort each day. A winner for the week, pursuant of nothing: "Ms. D, I have a scab on the outside of my ear and another one on the inside!"
That one defies categorization.

***

I administered reading tests this week, which I generally have mixed feelings about. Sometimes it is a relief to set up shop in the hallway with my assessment binder and accordion folder and get a reprieve from the classroom grind.

Other times that feeling is overshadowed by a certain anxiety level, inversely proportionate to the substitute's ability to communicate in English and/or manage the captive hoard of pre-pubescent wildebeests that I've loaned her for the day. (It is hard to concentrate on Running Records when you fear that your room is being shredded to bits just an arm's reach away.)

Sometimes it is a mixture of frustration and anger, when the kids aren't showing enough "progress," or when I start thinking of the percentage of time out of this so-called noble profession that is devoted to paper-shuffling, book-cooking, and meaningless pencil-pushing.

But this time around it was immensely positive. I enjoyed having a few minutes to spend with the kids away from everybody else, one on one, there was a competent sub, and they seemed to make good progress! Again I was astounded by the fact that this "education" stuff actually works - my gosh! Something's happened! It's sinking in! You couldn't read this three months ago, and now you can... could that really have had something to do with me??? It seems weird to take credit for stuff that's going on inside somebody else's brain. But it is kinda cool to see evidence that, one way or another, learning has occurred.

Rain

I woke up sad yesterday. I blame it mostly on the rain. I was running to the bus stop and resented the fact that I was rehearsing my parent meeting in my head and trying to come up with the Spanish word for "test score" so early in the morning. I resented the weather for blowing needles of rain sideways into my face, and I resented the bus for being seven minutes late.

As I walked wetly to the subway from the bus stop I began thinking about the last really rainy day at school. My new boots had turned out to not be waterproof at all, so my feet were soaked, and there's nothing worse than squishy socks in wet shoes. So I took them off and told all the kids they could take their shoes off, too, and I was remembering the sheer joy and delight in their faces as they slid and shuffled around in their sock-feet. None more joyful or exuberant than N--. Thinking about N-- when he was in a good mood made me remember the first time he came up to me while wearing my coat and said, sincerely and matter-of-factly, "You know Ms. D, green really is your color. " And I also remembered the many times he said it to me subsequently, (also not shy about notifying me that my winter coat was an inferior shade of green that didn't suit me quite as well. )

And thinking about all that, and what he might be doing that day,and whether or not his feet were wet, made me even more sad. It's certainly quieter in class without him...

"I'm not in good shape today," I told Corky as we rode up, soggy, in the elevator, shuffling our attendance papers and sorting through mail. As I walked into my darkened classroom (it, too, was still asleep, with its jungle of chair legs pointed up at the sky) I felt some furtive tears escape without warning.

But my darling beloved co-teachers give such heartfelt hugs, it felt ok to be sad without giving a good reason. They understand about these things.

Knowing they are there makes it feel like there is more than just me up against this crazy world. The strength they bestowed, and knowledge that the kids would be waiting downstairs with penetrating eyes and always a tide of questions lying in wait was enough for me to pull it together. (You try to avoid showing them unnecessary cracks. It just creates more work for you.)

Predictably, the day went on as scheduled, as days have a tendency to do. Getting them started is almost always the hardest part.

I collected the kids and as we marched upstairs, I also saw my friend Vee with her troupe of tiny kindergarteners in tow, and she waved and smiled across the hallway. And I felt inspired just to see her, because I have never heard her speak an unkind word or say something that wasn't positive. And I remembered, ah yes, I must strive to be more like the people I love, the ones who bring light with them even on a rainy day.

the alien parade and the haunted house

At a certain point, you'd expect to know what to expect coming back to school after being away...
but I suppose it's like a haunted house.. you know that shoddily-made mummies and cardboard ghosts or painted actors are going to pop out at you as you turn the corner, but that doesn't actually stop you from screaming...

So I suppose a part of me anticipated tossing and turning all night and dreaming nonsensical half-lucid dreams about co-workers and forgotten cupcakes...the revelation was a familiar one: Ah yes, that's right. School tomorrow. No sleep. Half-cracked.

And then there's that moment after picking up the kids from the cafeteria in the morning and watching them trudge up the stairs, in the customary scattered parade of bulky coats and heavy backpacks and and spiky hair and sleepy eyes and illicitly traded Pokemon cards (even at 7:30 in the morning...). The procession happens every single day I go to work (I generally try to use it as an opportunity, however brief, to look into their faces and see what I can see) but time off makes it alien again.

Yes, half of me anticipated my slightly addled confusion... how did we all get here? Do I know you? Who are these kids and what am I going to do with them all day? And what has become of the comfort and leisure that was all mine only a very few short hours ago??

But, just as in the rickety roller-carts of the haunted house, the other half of me was blindsided yet again.

saavvee mmmeeesdfhsdjgfgjk

aauuggghhh it's haaappppeeeenniiiingggggg... If you're reading this, tell my family and friends that I love them and will miss them, and will speak to them again in June... I am Jekyll turning into Hyde, unless it's the other way around...

The clock has struck 9:30pm on the last Sunday of vacation and my stagecoach is, as we speak, turning into a pumpkin... I can feel my sweatpants and slipper-socks being torn metaphysically from my body and being exchanged for "slacks" and a sensible shoes... boarding pass has been cruelly shredded and lain to rest in the recycling bin, and my once-winged feet are slowly sinking into the ground, weighted down under a hideously multiplying stack of to-be-completed paperwork..(oh the humanity)... ugh, teaching points, writing goals ::shudder::, math assessment data, small group instruction planning sheets... THESIS papers in pathetic disarray...The closer I get to the witching hour (7:35am precisely) the heavier the stack becomes... Help me, friend... I am no longer able to defer my burden or ignore its bulk... It presses down on me and I stagger and bend Quasimodo-style, shouldering my anvil-shaped load of Very Important Papers... disgusting mass of administrative foulness...so...heavy...can't breathe... slipping away!

(wish me luck, dear friends. I will soon be lost completely... I shall hope to see you on the other side.)

Reflections (fueled by airplane travel)

There was a child went forth every day,

And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became,

And that object became a part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,

Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

-Walt Whitman

I found these words in the first pages of a book my sister gave me, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, a book I’m hoping will profoundly impact my life as an educator.

Old Walt’s words made me think of something I’ve often thought about, now that I’m a transmitter rather than a receiver, taking in the view from the other side of the desk.

When I think back to my memories of school, say first and fifth grades, I notice that they are patchy and incomplete. If you think about the total number of hours I logged behind desks and in front of chalkboards, I feel like the majority of that time is unaccounted for in the annals of my mind. Any concrete memories exist only as moments: brief flashes; random pictures; moving images like a film clip, repeating the same motions again and again in perpetuity. They exist also as pinpricks of feeling – shame, fascination, frustration or pride – blunted by time but still recognizable…

As a first grader at a public school in Brooklyn in 1990 or so, I remember being completely perplexed and befuddled by the big yellow clock Mrs. G--- was using to teach us to tell time (notably, the exact same model I used some two decades later to perplex and befuddle my first graders on the topic.)

I recall chasing classmates through the schoolyard in a never-ending game of tag, and finding little colorful plastic pieces that I later discovered were related in some vague and fearful way to “drugs.”

I can remember sitting in class, twisting and twisting a tenacious loose tooth that later became referred to by my family as “the snaggle-tooth;” being confounded by the effort of trying to distinguish my left from my right as I muddled through the Pledge of Allegiance; and the exact moment in kindergarten when I discovered I could tie my own shoe.

Fast-forwarding into my awkward adolescence, I can remember seeing my unusually tall fifth grade teacher climbing out of her tiny Volkswagen Rabbit, and her telling us about warm-fuzzies and Random Acts of Kindness (concepts which have, in diluted form, trickled down into my current classroom). I can remember building a model geyser out of crayon wax with my Best Friend and her mom for the science fair; pinching pinch pots and a racing to complete Cloze passages (I never could get ahead of that brainy Angela); staring at beige flecks in the green linoleum floor; being amazed by my math teacher’s rubber chicken. A moment of horror and shame and also mercy when I realized that the teacher knew that I was the one who had made that mess on the floor by picking the black rubber off my shoes, but had chosen to let it pass with a wink and a knowing smile.

I suppose there are lots more things tucked away in the folds of my brain that I could dredge up if I had a reason to, though separate times and places tend to blend themselves together in the swirl of memory. But my point is, when you are in school, it seems all-consuming and permanent. The current iteration of your life is the only one you could possibly conceive of.

And yet, in the fog of time, what really sticks? What do you really remember from these formative years?

Nothing of consequence it would seem… the color of the floor? Crayon-wax geysers and rubber chickens? Shoelaces and snaggle-teeth? Why are those the things I remember, and not something more, you know…important? (Or maybe, if I thought about it, I’d figure out reasons why those things were important after all.)

I don’t get to choose what my students will ultimately remember, and neither do they. I realize that my school memories don’t actually revolve around my teachers very much at all, though I know I must’ve learned a great deal from them. And if I were to tell any of my little memories to my former teachers, I doubt they’d have any recollection of them, as by now I’m sure they’ve been absorbed into the vast spongy recesses of time.

I suppose that, if you start out kind of as a lump of clay, the teachers you encounter all have a hand in subtly and slowly shaping whatever it is you eventually become. It may be hard to distinguish one teacher’s influence from another, and the process of molding and shaping happens so gradually that maybe you don’t even realize it’s happening at all. (Until you wake up one day a quarter-century later or more, and look down and say to yourself, hey! Will ya look at that – I have a shape! I’m something!)

The scary part as a teacher and molder of clay-lumps is knowing that every kid has these moments that will stick with them – the ones that will remain very, very clear forever, like flies in amber. I know there will be certain things they will always remember, but what’s unsettling is that I have no way of knowing what they will be!

When my students are writing the stories of their lives in years to come, if they have occasion to look back on their moments in 5-315, I can only hope that I will be remembered in my kinder and gentler and more forgiving moments. And always there is the possibility that the words of mine that the kids will ultimately remember will be ones spoken too quickly in anger or frustration; that a snide comment escaped from my lips and quickly forgotten by me will slide under their skin and stay there and fester.

I have to face up to the fact that there’s no guarantee that they will remember the placid and laid-back Ms. D of extended Read Alouds and joyous field trips… That Ms. D must contend with the bug-eyed, frantic, vein-popping, lobster-faced, sputtering, spitting werewolf-Medusa-monster that I hate to admit I sometimes become.

I have a grad school professor who has a remarkably deep respect for the power of words. He tells his students that he would never consider working with children for fear of the damage he could unwittingly inflict.

Although I’m careful and think before I speak, I speak an awful lot of words in a day, (and more than two dozen pairs of ears are meant to be listening to them at all times.) Despite my best efforts, I’m afraid ugly or wrong or misbegotten words are bound to slip out and make their way to my impressionable young charges’ ears, and possibly make a permanent impact on their psyches, becoming a dink in the perfect clay mold.

I suppose, since it’s too late to back out now, all I can do is hope the kids are smart enough not to listen to everything I say.

crime and privilege

The school across from D's house has several fields and a garden, basketball courts, soccer goals, jungle gyms with slides and monkey bars, picnic tables and other objects of innumerable imaginative possibilities for kids. (Walking by, I heard a girl instructing her playmates, “The red is hot lava!” I also spied two boys in a less-trafficked corner of the grassy schoolyard climbing into an empty garbage can, throwing furtive glances behind them to see if their activities were being monitored....Ah, the art of play..) I was thinking, wow, bet these kids don’t know how lucky they are to have recess. And most of all, they get to have grass and trees.

Growing up in tree-lined, white-picketed Pleasantville, those precious things always seemed a given for me. I think those things should be a given for every child. It never occurred to me to consider kids privileged for having access to those things, until I realized that childhood can, in fact, exist without them.

I think play is a human right for children, and I think that not having time for kids to play and be active is criminal. So, technically speaking, given the lack of recess, green spaces and playtime at PS 00, and the intractable, hard-nosed, “data-driven” curriculum that I do my best to adhere to every day, that makes me an accessory to the crime.

I’ve been thinking, given my ample down time at the moment, about what my ideal school would look like (and sound like and smell like and be like.) I can’t say I have a precise picture in my mind, but there are certain fundamental things I already know...

Cement-block walls in a concrete jungle: no. Grass and trees: yes.

Scantron sheets: no. Recess: yes.

Test-prep: no Music, art and dance: yes.

Dream a little dream

I know vacation is ending when the school dreams start surfacing. For me, they fall into three major categories:

#1: uncontrollable misbehaving children
#2 Somehow losing track of the class and frantically running and running to try and find them, usually up and down stairs
#3 physical danger to children (see this morning's thrilling 9-11 dream reenactment)

Last night I enjoyed a scintillating combination of all three types of 'mare, in addition to the worst nightmare of all, being asked to make a decorative bulletin board for the main entrance of the school NNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggghhhh!

On Guard

My sister lives across from an elementary school. The school makes me jealous.

I’m jealous of their vast green expanse of fields. I’m jealous of the kids enjoying their recess out in the fresh air, enjoying Tucson’s gentle February sunshine. I see kids chasing, running, climbing, swinging, playing – all of those things that kids were born to do. I hear the familiar shouts and squeals of kids at large. They’re the sounds of freedom. Yet they are, in a way, foreign, because I have never heard my kids make those sounds.

My school is quiet and secure, like an army base. Or a jail. School safety officers guard each entrance, and cameras expose all activities in stairwells and entrances and corners of hallways to their watchful eyes. The crackle of walkie-talkies is a constant, announcing the presence of the school aides who usher the students to and from the bathroom and up and down the stairs from the nurse’s office. Wherever the kids go, they go either in the lock-step of formation of the class en masse –the omnipresent “two straight quiet lines” -- or with the school aide’s hairy eyeballs on the backs of their necks.

I think it’s no coincidence that when I showed the kids a picture of a juvenile detention center (to show them where the character in our current Read Aloud, Holes might be living his days), the first thing J-- shouted out was, “It’s a school!” And you know, based on his prior experience with schools, he wasn’t wrong.

Now, my school has a reason, and a good one, for having such tight security. Something awful happened to some kids in one of those stairwells some ten years back, and we must take care that nothing like that ever happens again.

But I have to wonder what effect this level of suffocation, er, supervision has on the kids… because it seems security comes at the expense of freedom. And I’m not sure I’m willing to make the call on which is more important in the long run.

I also have wonder if the measures we take to make our school more safe actually make us feel less safe? Do the kids ever wonder why they can’t go anywhere on their own? Do they ever question what might be lurking in the stairwells and hallways, what is out to get them? Do they ask what it is that they need to be protected from? We tell them all the time that school is a safe place for them, but the cameras and walkie-talkies and security guards contradict that message. The message those things are delivering is that there is danger, that there is a reason to be afraid. Our security system is our silent admission to the kids that school (and by association, the world) is not as safe as we would like them to believe. Kids are no dummies. I’m sure they know that grown-ups haven’t been telling them the whole truth.

But still…

Is the world are we preparing them for really that scary? How scared should the kids be of it?

It probably depends on whom you ask. I guess it might be a question of whether you believe the world is mostly good, or mostly not. Perhaps it’s only as scary as we make it out to be.

Peace and Jackrabbits

I write to you today as a civilian: not as a person of any particular authority or significance, but as a traveler; a little sister; a tourist and a guest; a consumer of sushi dinners, sunglasses and hopefully hiking boots. Today the only person’s schedule and productivity and overall well-being I have to worry about are my own. (It feels awesome, by the way.)

I went for a run down by the riverbed by my sister’s house in Tucson (because you can do these types of things in the middle of the day on a Monday when you’re on vacation in Arizona!)

I had to stop and have myself a little moment because of how beautiful it was there. I took my i-pod out of my ears because it seemed wrong to be piping in cymbals and drum machines and cheesy synthesizer workout music and covering up the actual beautiful real life that was going on around me… I stood for a good ten minutes looking up at the saguaros standing guard on the south side of “A” mountain, soaking in the vitamin D that I’d been so desperately craving, and listening to the sounds all around me: breeze rustling branches, birdsong, jackrabbits and little rodent and lizard-type things scurrying through the brush. There was a sense of stillness there that I haven’t experienced in a long while. I took a deep breath and thought, “Aaaaahhh…. Peace.”

I couldn’t help but notice the contrast with my usual surroundings in central Queens. Standing a continent away, more or less, from that other reality, rivers of people are replaced in my field of vision by an actual river. Gone is the intermittent roar of the subway. As is the beeping and hissing of the buses kneeling, the tangle of cars and car horns. No sandwich board-wearing hawkers hand out cards on the corner chanting “dentista dentista” or “cortepelo,” or “compramos oro.” No flashing, flickering neon lights advertising psychics and lawyers and low low prices. No one leaning out of windows or shouting down the street. No bustle. No hurry.

Thinking about this made me wonder: do my kids ever have a chance to feel peace?

I think many would agree that vacations are just as much for the teachers as they are for the kids and their families (if not more so.) I’ve often joked that the three week-long breaks throughout the year are part of the homicide prevention program for teachers.

But in truth I think the vacations can sometimes be a burden on the families – having to find childcare and ways to keep the kids occupied all week. The norm in the neighborhood is small apartments and big families, and in the dark depths of winter, living spaces and patience for fellow occupants both seem to shrink.

Often the kids have seemed relieved to come back to school after break – when I ask how it was they often answer with a non-commital “ok” or even, “boring.” The kids’ parents don’t typically have the kinds of jobs that have flexible schedules or that are particularly generous with vacation days. So I get the feeling that a lot of my students are spending this week in the company of their television sets and video games, or taking care of their younger siblings.

Last Friday we had a pizza party at lunch for Pretzel Club, the mentoring after-school club that Corky started for fifth graders with low academic confidence. The teachers were eagerly discussing vacation plans: trips to Spain, Florida, Arizona, the Hamptons. J---, my mentee, chimed in a mock-excited tone, “I’m going to my house!” In his voice I thought I detected a note of jealousy, or maybe even bitterness.

It reminded me of a somewhat discomfiting fact that’s always there, but easier not to think about too long or too hard. Even on my starting teacher’s salary that I usually view as pretty modest, I had an extra 400 bucks lying around to fly myself out to Arizona. I have the means to seek out some heat and light (which New Yorkers so desperately desire this time of year) and go and find some peace when I need it. J— really doesn’t.

So the other part of my question about whether or not my kids get to have enough peaceful moments in their lives is this: If the answer is no, not really, what kind of effect does that have on a person?

Right now I am laid out barefoot on my sister’s front porch, sunning myself and deciding which restaurant I want to go to for dinner. I wonder what J—is doing?

snow day

The greatest gift, the best teaching miracle of them all? SNOW DAY! I think I was the happiest kid in the room when Principal Peeve's solemn and official voice came over the loudspeaker. We all stood up and did a happy dance, and shouts rang out across the school (teachers probably loudest of all)! The week is cut in half and now I have nothing left to do but ride the wave of Valentine-fever and cruise on into winter break! Hot-cha!

Baby Got Bounce

I was proud of myself for walking away today. I excused myself from my After School curriculum planning meeting so I could be on time for the Inner Resilience workshop for teachers that my Most Precious Colleagues encouraged me to sign up for. (Sometimes it's hard to act selfish when you feel that other people are counting on you. But it's an important skill to practice. )

I'd been thinking I was all tough and hard and impervious, fossilizing and petrifying from the inside out. But the minute the lights were dimmed and the voice on the mediation CD came on saying "Be still and listen," I was blubbering like a leaky roof on a rainy day. N--'s name was etched in my head and my heart. I hadn't yet let myself feel this loss. And I realized, on the inside, though perhaps I've grown a thin, egg-like shell, I'm still made mostly of marshmallow fluff.

Here's the reading from the workshop. Do with it what you will:

There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence...[and that is] activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence.

To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence.

The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fuitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes our work fuitful.

-Thomas Merton

"To surrender to too many demands..."

Makes me wonder why it's so much easier to listen to everyone else's demands than it is to hear your own.

When your job is to take care of others, it is easy to forget to take care of yourself.

The only part of that letter that isn't totally truthful is the part about knowing he will be all right. I don't know that about any of my students. That's what makes it scary to get involved in their lives and to start caring about them. I hope and believe, with every fiber of my being. But I don't know.

Dear N

Dear N--,

I feel terrible about everything that happened last week, especially the way things ended up. If I had more control over the situation it would have ended very differently. I know this must be very difficult for you, especially not having the chance to say good-bye to anyone properly.

But I also know that you are strong and smart and resilient, and I know you will be able to bounce back. Sometimes bad things happen, sometimes the world seems very cold and unfair and unforgiving. But the way we react to the bad things that happen to us defines the way our lives will be: will it be full of anger and pain, or will it be full of learning, growth, and forgiveness? Being able to forgive yourself and forgive others and move on from painful things is very hard, but it's really important for living a happy life. You didn't have a choice about being sent to another school, but you do have a choice about what you do with that opportunity.

N--, you are still a part of our family and you always will be. The whole class misses you, especially me. But I know wherever you go and whatever you do, you'll be all right. You have a good heart and a good head on your shoulders. With that combination you can achieve anything. Please don't let this setback stand in the way of the incredible person that you are on your way to becoming.

Love,

Ms D.

Continued

Admin's tactics also don't mesh with mine. To quote my AP, Principal Peeves "blasted" A-- when it was his turn in the hot seat, so much so that he was shaking. I'm not saying A-- isn't a ring leader, and I'm not saying he didn't need an attitude adjustment. But I've seen Peevey in action, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone, especially not one of my own.

I don't believe in lying to children to scare them -- telling them that N--'s new school is terrible, and the teachers there are mean, so they'd better straighten out. I don't believe in telling them there are cameras where there are not. I don't believe in calling children "bad," even if they aren't listening. I don't believe that "blasting" children helps them grow or turn into better human beings. But if anyone was wondering where the culture of fear and distrust in our school comes from, you don't have to look to hard to find an answer.

But what do you do? I don't feel I have any power over this situation. N-- was taken from me, I think unfairly. But to fight for N-- would be a losing battle, and would cost me and the rest of my students more than I stand to gain.

I stood by C-- when it was her turn to be persecuted because she was truly innocent, and her persecution was also brought about by my bookeeping errors. But I think it's already too late for N--. After stealing the cupcake from the bake sale and getting in the fight and being late to school 41 times, he didn't stand much of a chance. Not even his test scores could protect him.

In the jaded yet frank words of Ms. K, "You can't save them all."

And in the even more jaded and glib words of another colleague, "At least it lowers your head count, right?"

Backstage

I feel like, if all this had happened with N-- two years ago, or even last year, I'd have reacted differently. I think two years ago I would've been a quivering, quaking mass of guilt and sadness, sizzling with bitter rage and dripping with heartbreak; a crumpled heap of disillusionment collapsed under the weight of flagrant injustice and powerlessness.

But that's not how I feel, not how I felt this time around. I felt dry. I felt hard. I felt removed.

I don't mean that what happened doesn't make me angry and sad. I'm not saying it doesn't squeeze my soul and shake me to my core.

But one thing I've learned from teaching: when shit goes down, and bad things happen, you grab your shovel and start digging like mad, so you can bury it as fast as you can. Get it out of your head and do everything you can not to think about it until it is a safe distance away, where the Bad Thing can't get to you with its spikes and claws and tentacles. Eyes forward, full speed ahead so you can put it behind you as quickly as possible. File it away under "Those Fucking Bastards," but don't take the time to dwell on the details.

Your skin grows thick. I've seen things like this happen before in my school, with Corky's A-- expelled last year in May, with the attempt to throw C-- out of school earlier this year. The truth is, I've accepted that this is really the way they do things here. And each successive time I see it happen, it becomes a bit less shocking. (I think that type of thinking is how genocides gather steam, no?)

What bothers me the most about it all is not that they never consulted me (in a just world they would've). And it's not that they didn't give him a second chance, (which they easily could've). And it's not that I never got to meet with N--'s mom myself (I should've)... It's that the decision to expell N-- was made without regard to the best interests of the child. N--'s expulsion was a ruse, and not really meant to teach him any kind of lesson, or even send a message to the other fifth graders. He was discharged on grounds of excessive lateness and not being "zoned" for the school.

The truth is that the administration has a witch hunt, a pogrom going on for "unzoned" kids - kids whose addresses don't match the catchment area of the school. If you lay low and don't stir up trouble, they'll let you stay. But the minute you get sent to the principal's office, or you have too many absences, or your test scores are too low, you're out. The administration's agenda is not to further the well-being of each individual child. In fact, I believe their agenda is directly at odds with the well-being of the children.

The Administration is not beholden to the students or the parents or the staff of the school. Their bottom line is the maintenance of the Institution. The Institution is the master, and we are all the weary slaves, scuttling to feed the fiery furnace what it demands.

What the Institution demands, in order to perpetuate itself in this political climate, is numbers: data, percentage points, statistics, test scores, and student-teacher ratios.

And it is a fact that right now, our Institution is busting at the seems: classrooms full to brim, teaching in the hallways, closets converted into offices, offices converted into classrooms, basement converted into sorry, half-assed "gyms" with no room to run around, and not enough space for recess or an art room or a computer lab. The Institution is just too big. It has simply outgrown itself.

So it seems the administration, in service of the Institution, has taken the tack of tossing kids out whenever the opportunity presents itself. Too many kids? Get rid of some, whichever ones are easiest to pick off the herd. All predators know the tired and the weak are easy targets, and the ones with the lowest test-scores, and the ones that are wrecking the attendance record, and the ones whose parents don't speak much English.

Admin looks out for the Institution as a whole, at the expense of the individuals that make up that whole. They're trying to distort our huddled masses into a Lake Wobegone scenario, where all the kids are above average. They're polishing a turd. It's all a numbers game.

But N-- wasn't a number, not to me, and not to 5-315. He was a student, a classmate, a kid. He was a moody kid, and and angry kid with no impulse control, and he needed more attention than I was able to provide. But he was ours. He was also an actor and phenomenally smart and had a great sense of humor and a great vocabulary and a really good heart. He was the smallest but had the biggest mouth. He would give me his signature waist-high hugs even when he was being bad. He told me on two separate occassions that he felt happy because of the way the sun was shining in the window.

(It makes me sad that I already talk about him in the past tense.)

N--- wasn't theirs to take away. I never consented to giving him up to be a Sacrificial lamb to the Data Deity. I never consented to giving up on him at all.

I worry for him because he's too smart. He's too smart for his own good and too smart for school. Dangerous if your mind doesn't fit the mold of mediocrity. Too smart or not smart enough, you're S.O.L. School wasn't made for you.

The proscenium classroom

I don't really want to write this but I feel I must.

So, the world didn't quite spin off its axis while I was absent. But it did kind of fall off its hinges.

N-- was expelled yesterday. After being called into the Assistant Principal's office on Tuesday for fighting, on Wednesday he had Sh-- in a headlock, right there in the classroom, 10 feet away from me. (Arguing over some stupid book.) I sent them straight back to the AP.

An hour later, AP comes back into the room with N--, tells him in front of all the kids to pack his bag with all his things and say good-bye to his friends because he's going to another school. His face was red and puffy from crying. He mumbled an apology to me, prompted by the AP, as the class looked on in disbelief. And that's the last we saw of him.

After the whirlwind exited I was left with 10 minutes to go in Reader's Workshop, and 28 expectant kids with their eyes pinned on me, waiting for me to tell them what to do, silently asking me for an explanation, some interpretation of what had just transpired. I had nothing. I was blank. "I guess just read." I said, shaking my head. "Just read." I wandered emptily from one end of the room to the other. My eyes were open but I couldn't see, couldn't think, couldn't wrap my mind around what had just happened, couldn't figure out where to go from there. Finally I said, "I don't really know what to say, so I'm not going to say anything. Sometimes when things happen, you just have to keep going. There's nothing else to do." So we did our spelling words, read from Holes (though my heart wasn't in it, and few were probably paying much attention) and then packed up to go home.

That's such a weird part of being a teacher: there's really no room for you to react to anything in a personal way, no place to step away for a moment, go splash some water on your face and regain your composure. If you need a moment, you're gonna take it right there under the piercing gaze of two dozen impressionable children. If you're fighting back tears, it will be mere seconds before some town crier will announce "I think Ms. D's crying!"

***
That's like the morning when I pulled J-- aside because I could tell he was acting strangely, with his head down on his desk, and he told me he just found out his uncle had died in a motorcycle accident. How do you respond? How could I respond? "I'm very sorry to hear that, J..." (sideways shoulder-hug, hand him a tissue, grab one for myself) "All right class, let's do homophones!"

Or the time last year when one of my first graders came back to class, traumatized after having just been interrogated about possibly being abused by her bus driver (she hadn't been, thank goodness, but I didn't know so at the time). She sat at her desk, tears streaming down her face, and I sat in my teacher chair in front of the class, swallowing the lump in my throat so I could go on reading "What Lives in a Shell..." to the others. Kind of a disconnect.

All this is to say, while you're teaching, you can't have real emotions like a real person. You have to save them for later when it is safe to come out, when you're backstage and the audience can't see you. You can let them see a sliver of yourself, but more than that invites disaster. Best not to let them penetrate the mask.

***

Anyway, for lack of other options, the class returned to their regularly scheduled programming, though quieter than usual, and more subdued, with half of them in tears.

Final tally: one expulsion, one suspension, three pissed-off administrators, 27 solemn, expectant faces, one dumbfounded teacher. One example made, though I think the message might've gotten garbled in the delivery.

soapboxing

One of the exhausting things about teaching is the up and down of it all... the old proverbial roller coaster.

Last week one day on my ride to school, I was singing under cover of the clacking, clattering seven train, rather than shouting. Yesterday I felt confident about my ability to take a day off and for the world to keep spinning. All day I was comfortably ensconced in the conference room at my monthly planning meeting. But every time the phone rings there is a pause, a moment of suspense as the recipient of the call is announced, and the recipient's heart stops for juuust a second, and their brain flashes with a rapid replay of all the potential reasons for the phone call, who it might be and what they might want, and whether or not it will constitute an emergency. Today it was my turn to be the recipient. Boys fighting at lunch. Not an emergency, but also not a phone call I was thrilled to receive.

So I went upstairs and pulled them out of class and got their written statements and towed them into the assistant principal's office to try and sort out exactly what it was that had transpired in that great pit of chaos known as the cafeteria. As close as I can tell it sounded like an elementary school version of a really stupid and pointless bar-room brawl. The picture I have in my mind is a cartoon cloud of dust with arms and legs and teeth sticking out, and Sh--'s face with tongue sticking out and exes for eyes as he is strangled by a good friend of his, and old-school Batman placards of Pow! Biff! Sock! for emphasis.

I don't really think it was as bad as all that, after all, this my 5th graders in the lunchroom, not Michelle Pfeifer in Dangerous Minds. (But don't get me started on my Lord of the Flies of Lunchtime tangent, OR the criminal lack of recess tirade.)

Anyway, from what I can gather, the brouhaha started with throwing of balled-up napkins and progressed to name-calling and then a vague and convoluted chain of "but-he-saids" and "I didn'ts" and "first-he-dids" and "actually it was's." But the point is, hands were laid where hands didn't belong, lots of them.

At first I was just acting upset, kind of playing the part, as you so often have to do with these types of shenanigans. But then I realized, a part of me actually was kind of upset. First off, I'm annoyed that we couldn't make it through a single sub day without me having to roll out the lecture podium and do the whole song and dance. Also in a perverse way glad, that at least they don't act this way when I'm around. But upset too, and sad, because dammit I actually believe in the song and dance that I do.

[pulls out soapbox and climbs on]

Why do they think I read to them about Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez and Gandhi? How do they think wars get started? Someone does something, and then someone retaliates, and then someone defends someone else, and the big boys who start this shit have heavier and harder things to throw at each other than balled up napkins and careless curse words. Why do we talk about conflict resolution? Why did we talk about "tattling versus telling"?

I've been telling them all year that for these 10 months, we are family. But I think it's time for them to know that not everyone deserves to be their friend. Friends are the people who make you feel like your best self, who help you do things you are proud of, whose influence makes you feel like you are turning into a better person. Not the ones who call you a snitch. Not the ones who make you feel like doing things you wouldn't want your mom to know about. Not the ones who make you ashamed for liking what you like and and dressing how you dress and doing what you like to do and spending time with the people you spend time with. They need to recognize that there may be a real-live bully in our midst, sitting in our very class, that peer pressure exists, and they are experiencing it now, and they have a choice about what they're gonna do about it. I might need to play them the "Don't laugh at me" song, though I'd been hoping it wouldn't come to that.

I will tell them also, that if they saw the boys fighting and did nothing, they are guilty too. That they could have protected someone, several someones, who needed help. That in the adult world, people who know things and keep quiet about them can go to jail, too. That they need to choose whether they want to be a "snitch," or whether they want to witness, someday, something really really bad happen to one of their classmates.

And I will say, to the two girls who gave me a note this morning, letting me know that Kid A had been hitting Kid B when I wasn't there, and they thought I needed to get involved, that I am proud of them, that they are smart, and they showed courage.

And I will the kids that sometimes, when adults don't listen (and I know they don't, that I don't always listen the way I wish I could) they need to keep on trying until somebody does something.

It bothers me that kids were getting picked on in my class and I didn't know about it. It bothers me that Sh--- tried to tell me earlier and I probably didn't do enough to address the problem.

What I want to say to them tomorrow, what I'm hoping they will listen long enough to hear, is that they are what I care about the most. That I know sometimes I seem too busy to listen and that it seems all I care about is getting them to keep quiet or what reading level they will be on by June or how quickly they can accomplish the multitude of tasks I set before them. But they need to know that if they never learned another thing from me but they still grew up to be good people, that's all I really want, and all that really matters. (And that if I were really in charge, we'd spend a lot more time in school thinking about how people can manage to live happy lives together, and a lot less time cooped up in that skanky, smelly, windowless cafeteria)

Yeah, so that's the pretty much uncut version of the speech that will be waiting for them tomorrow morning. And the boys involved will have plenty of time to ponder it as they sit alone with the kindergarteners at lunch.

The Joy of Absence

I used to never be able to take a sick day. Partly because it took me far too long to figure out the SubCentral system (which, once you crack the code, is dangerously easy to use and abuse), but partly because of the guilt and anxiety over what would be happening to my kids while I was out.

This has changed. First and foremost, I found out my file number and pin. Also I adopted a helpful credo courtesy of a bizarrely profound (and profoundly bizarre) YouTube video... it goes like this (ahem hem)

"Not my chair, not my problem."

I interpret this as follows: I have plenty of things I must worry about, that I can't help worrying about, that I am paid to worry about, and that I feel it my duty and responsibility to worry about as a teacher. Really, there are almost too many worries to keep track of, the sources of potential worry are so bountiful, the branches of my worry tree so laden with fruit, the banks of anxiety river so ready to overflow at every turn, that some worries inevitably get lost in the shuffle.

So when the rare opportunity presents itself to let someone else do the worrying, I will gladly, most gratefuly and humbly accept it. Today, 5-315 is not my chair, not my problem.

On this day I am gratefully allowing a substitute to take over my worries for the day (so that I can focus on the more pressing need to not hack up a lung.) And I enjoyed my extra hours under the covers immensely.

I used to feel like my classroom would implode without me (turns out it doesn't). I used to feel like the world would stop spinning and time would stop marching if I were to take a day off. (Not so far.) Turns out, I was putting too much pressure on myself. I'm just not that important! My kids' educations haven't yet been derailed by my absence, and as a wise woman once told me, Ms. D can't be there for others if she's not there for herself first.

It used to bother me when I would hear teachers say stuff like, let someone else deal with it, that's not my problem, that's not my job, I'm not paid to do x y and z... it sounded callous and cold, a little "P.S. Pass-the-Buck," in my opinion.

But I have grown to understand these sentiments... certainly not to excuse apathy or laziness, which do exist. But the part I understand is the part about self-preservation. One of the most important lessons I have learned is learning how to shut off, close down, cordon off, pack away entire sections of my brain. Their voices, their faces, their plaintive needs, their sad stories... they will stay with you 24-7 if you let them. The waters of Rio Ansioso are wide and fast and deep, and it is easy to get pulled under and drown. And then you're no good to anyone.

So after a certain point, you eventually learn to just turn it off. Just stop thinking about it. Live the rest of your life to the best of your ability.

You forget, though, that the kids have other lives, too. Sometimes you get a glimpse of them, like the quarterly On Demand writing sample we have to collect and grade. Reading through them last Thursday night I was reminded of their lives outside school's fortress walls. Many of the writing samples were about the usual predictable subject matter: trips to six flags, the first day of fifth grade, a New Year's eve celebration, a broken laptop, a betrayed secret, a new friend. The normal, expected stuff of life of a ten year-old in 2010.

But there were others that were not so easy to swallow. F-- wrote about when her parents sat her and her siblings down to tell them there were too many bills and not enough money for Christmas presents this year. M--- wrote about coming to America for the first time. N--- wrote about watching a friend die after riding a bike into a hole, and having to tell the friend's father. That one I could hardly believe, but why would he make it up? No--- wrote about when her father never came home from work one day, and finding out he'd been arrested.

I think a year or two ago these stories would have been crushing to read. But you learn, I have learned, to accept the things I cannot change. You take comfort in hoping that maybe all those spelling words and fractions and Read Alouds will add up to make a difference in the end, that maybe something you do will have mattered in their lives. Maybe you can string together enough carefree moments in your classroom to tip the balance towards happy lives. (I've come to think of happiness as a bank account, and if you can just accumulate enough joyful moments, just 51 percent of your time on earth, then your life goes down in the books as a happy one, and it was all worth it.)

Teaching is a muscle. It used to be exhausting, emotionally and physically, evidenced by the fact that I spent most of 2008 outside of school curled up on my couch in the fetal position. But each day, each month, you become stronger - just like training for a triathlon. With practice and endurance and stubborn perseverance, you manage to accomplish with relative ease what used to be so mercilessly hard. Eventually you look up and find yourself at a point in the distance that once seemed impossibly far away.