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.