Educating Esmé (13 page)

While I was talking to the grant women, a third
grader came up to me and said, “I want to be a storyteller, and I want to see more stories. Can we do this again tomorrow?” It was so gratifying. I don't know if everyone enjoyed it, but I know it was nice for a few kids, and Ismene used to tell me that if you can do that in a real way, that's the most you can ever hope for as a teacher.

I don't mean to show off, but I can't tell anyone else the compliments I got or it would seem too stuck up. Still, I want to write them because I really do feel proud of myself. I feel good, like I did something I wanted to do and it turned out like I imagined, and in life that doesn't happen too often.

Hauled my ass out of bed to teach today. I'm having to teach sex ed, which is more uncomfortable than I thought it would be. The board mandates “Family Life Education,” and insists that we show this video that's really old and corny-feeling, like a filmstrip. Mrs. Jones wanted both of our fifth-grade rooms to watch it together, since she was really nervous and
wanted moral support. So we watched in her room. It showed a cartoon of a goldfish pooping out eggs and another fish pissing out sperm. “A fish has eggs,” the video droned, “and a dog has eggs. A sheep has eggs. A giraffe has eggs. And a woman has eggs.” I'm not usually compared to a dog, sheep, and giraffe in such a brief span of time. My girls looked perplexed, too, as though they were destined to someday poop out eggs for their boyfriends to piss on. Indeed, as we filed out of the room, JoEllen whispered urgently, “Madame, am I going to lay an egg?”

Back in our own room, I did my best to eradicate the damage the video had done and fielded other questions. They asked about birth control, abortion, homosexuality, all the stuff I was told at in-services not to teach about. I still answered them but prefaced everything with “Well, from my point of view . . .” and ended with “. . . But be sure to talk about it with your family, because everyone's values are different.”

“What if I don't agree with my family?” asked Ruben.

“Then try to wait until you grow up to express it.”

It's hard for me to teach this because I won't say homosexuality
is wrong or unnatural, and I won't say wait until marriage to have sex. The only thing I didn't really answer is how an abortion works, because I thought it was too creepy and unnecessary for fifth graders to know about. I have to keep reminding myself to stay scientific and not to talk about how to have a cheerful sex life when you grow up. I know I'm teaching it all wrong, I'm too pleasant about it, even though I feel very tense and wonder if a parent is going to respond. I don't even want to write about it anymore. It's just another example of how I'm supposed to teach what they should get at home: teacher as unwilling extended family.

Like clockwork, B. B. was being a dick after lunch, hurling obscenities at everyone. I moved him off a bit while I read
King Matt
, but he was still being a dick, mumbling and talking. I gave a second warning. He kept jabbering rude things under his breath, like those crazy people on the bus. I felt as exasperated as I've been all year.

“Would you please stop acting like a jerk?”

“Fuck you! I'm not a jerk! You're a jerk!”

Immediately, I knew I had made a mistake. No similes are allowed in kid-speak.

“Did I call you a jerk?”

“Yes!”

“No, she didn't,” Selena called out. “She said you're
acting
like a jerk, which you
are
.”

“Regardless, I apologize. I shouldn't have said that,” I offered.

B. B. continued his stupid mumbling.

I caught him in the hall on his way to his mandatory after-school tutoring program. I told him I was really tired of him taking out his anger on me and the class, that it hurt me and made me feel worried about him, and that he'd better tell me what was going on if he didn't want to get suspended again. I plopped down on the stairs and told him to do the same.

“Want to talk about your dad being shot?”

Silence.

“How do you feel? Happy? Sad? Like you want to get those guys? What?”

“I don't want to talk about it.”

“Do you want to talk about your dad before he got shot? Was he nice? Cruel? What?”

Silence.

“Want to talk about your little sister and the fact that you're the one taking care of her?”

“No.”

“Want to talk about your mom?”

“No.”

“Want to talk about school? Your friends? Me? How much you hate me for asking?”

“I don't have to answer any of your dumb questions.” He smiled, his eyes narrowing.

“You're absolutely right. I don't even have any right to ask them. Kind of like you don't have any right to act so abusive toward me and the class. You think you're not telling me about your problems, but you're showing me, every day and in every way. The problems aren't going to leave until you start talking about them.”

He got up, burst out crying, and started stomping away.

“You'll have to walk a lot faster than that to leave your problems behind,” I called after him, but I didn't follow him.

I sat on the stairs and got more and more aggravated, thinking about recent things that have happened concerning B. B., like how his mom asked me for money so he could go to the carnival. How his mom told me B. B. said, “Mama, you don't love me because you keep trying to send me away.” How I arranged for a mentor to come spend time with B. B., a professional, upstanding black man, to counter his father's influence, and he didn't show up. He didn't come through. Everyone—just not coming through for B. B.

I had him called out of tutoring to the counselor's office. “It's crisis proportion, for me and for him,” I explained, in front of him. “B. B., you're so angry, it makes me feel unsafe, it interrupts the learning of your classmates.” I turned to the counselor. “I've documented unsuccessful interventions since November. What are you going to do?”

She sent B. B. out of the room and said, “I don't know.”

In the end she called him back in and said she was going to send a note home. He started bawling.

“Why are you crying like that? Your mom will beat you when she sees that note, won't she?” I asked.

“I'll make a deal,” said the counselor. “I won't send the note home tonight. But if you act up tomorrow, I hand-deliver it to your house. Is that a deal? What do you think, Madame Esmé?”

Frankly, I don't like making deals with kids. “I don't know . . . What do you think, B. B.?” He was pouting. The tears hadn't gotten him where he had expected. “Whoops! Can't make a deal with a rock. If you can't look at me and talk like a person, no deal. Sorry.”

He started bawling again. The counselor escorted him down the stairs to leave. He collapsed into an hysterical heap on the way down, weeping uncontrollably, and told how he is beaten at home.

It's not news. I'm not surprised. The counselor isn't going to really do anything except feel sorry for him, and there's not much I can do aside from call the Department of Children and Family Services and make it all turn into a bigger nightmare.

It's just that I wanted him to say it, name it, so he can see it, taste it, know the enemy of his sorrow, and learn that he can be bigger than it, not let it rule him. Too tired to write more. I've stopped making sense.

Melanie is so busted!

She was already in trouble for stealing Ms. Coil's checkbook with Vanessa. They managed to get sixty dollars out. Now they are on juvenile probation and were supposed to help the janitor every day after school for the rest of the year, cleaning toilets and stuff. Melanie confided in her journal that she kind of liked doing it, it felt like she had a job. But then she was cleaning in a teacher's room, and the janitor was called away. She went into the teacher's desk and found some change. She had her hands in the desk when a teacher from another class walked in. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Ummm, looking for a puppet play script?”

The teacher told me when she gave such a creative answer, she knew she must be from my room, so she came to tell me Melanie was in the office.

When I went down, Melanie was sitting alone in Ms. Coil's office. Melanie burst out crying and trembling and threw her arms around my shoulders. I held her and whispered, “Melanie, I know I told you practice
makes perfect, but I really don't think you're ever going to be a good thief.”

She broke into laughter.

I continued, in my most doctorlike voice, “Now, where did you start to feel it?”

“Feel what?”

“The feeling. You know, Melanie. Didn't you get a weird tickly feeling when it occured to you to take something that wasn't yours?”

She looked shocked. “Yes.”

“Well, where did it start? In your toes? On the back of your neck? In your knees?”

“No,” she said, very definitely, “it was in my stomach. My stomach.” She burst into tears again.

“Did you feel it there the time you were about to steal Ms. Coil's checks?”

She was bawling so hard she couldn't speak, but she nodded.

“Why are you crying, then?” I asked. “That's wonderful. You're very lucky. You know the signal of when you're about to steal. So you can stop it. Whenever you get that feeling, you can run and find me and say, ‘Madame, my stomach hurts in that special way,' and
I'll give you something else to do. Just one more thing, though, Melanie. Did you get that feeling when you took my stickers?”

“Yes,” she squeaked and threw herself into my arms, crying. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry . . .”

I pulled her away and looked into her face. “This is very bad, all this stealing. If you get caught again, I won't help you. Ms. Coil will want to send you to the audi-home, and I won't help you. Believe me when I say I love you, but believe me just as much when I say I'll let you go to the live-in reform school, the
audi-home
, if you pull this again!
Audi-home
, where you'll meet some girls who will teach you the meaning of the word
sorry
! I know you are smart and can stop it if you try, so if you do it again, it's just because you disrespected me by not listening, so I won't help. Do you understand?”

Ms. Coil came in with a policeman and Melanie's mother. Melanie clenched my hand like a woman in labor when she saw the cop, but I freed it. “We had a good talk,” I said. “A lot is worked out.”

Melanie's journal entry after returning from three days' suspension:

“I shamed oh god my life. Madam was right it in my stummuck but then I git home it all over my body, this bad filling. It so boring at home I fill sick bad. Now I back and everybody think I bad. Why Vanessa tell me to do that oh no oh no, and the worse part when momma come in the offis Madam look at me like Im not even there”

No, you know what I think the worse part is? I think Melanie's going to have to repeat the fifth grade.

Little thoughts:

Billy hasn't given me any real problems since he taught.

Kyle performs better in math if I let him stand on his head whenever he wants.

Ashworth could be a children's author and illustrator someday, his drawings are so bold, his writing so direct.

Ruben draws muscle men in his journal but hides from the gangs after school in the public library.

Selena is shrewd, a poor sport, and walks with an
affected palsy in her wrists and a hunch in her shoulder. She is a little old lady in disguise.

Samantha is a genius, strange and alone, a girl lost in a forest with nothing but a pen, searching for a friend to write to. I helped her start a sticker collection. It's her big hobby now. I want her for my little sister.

Asha complains noisily at the start of read-aloud time, and at the end, too. She has serious eyes, sensitive. She deserves love.

Letter from Maurissa: “I really think that you are helpful when it comes to dressing up.”

Ozzie has been complaining of stomachache after lunch almost every day for the past week and a half. I thought he might just be tired, or maybe a little food poisoning, but the other children don't complain. Today we were walking to gym and he started to vomit. I held his head over the toilet in the teachers' bathroom. The rest of the class stood in the hall and waited. Nobody said anything and nobody acted up. I was glad.

The counselor showed me the kids' Iowa reading and math scores. Best in the school, she said. At least one-year jump for almost everyone, and several kids jumped two and three years.

I feel like we did a lot of interesting things this year. Some of my favorites: When learning about electricity, we made light-up quiz games. When learning about light, we put on shadow-puppet shows. When learning medieval history, we built an accurate castle, then decorated it with colored marshmallows and put it in our fairy tale book display. When we learned about air, we had a bubble festival. When learning about Asia, we made sushi. We made video commercials to promote our favorite books. We had a book character masquerade party. We went to an outdoor Beethoven concert and visited Buckingham Fountain downtown. The kids had checking accounts in a classroom economy. We had a cereal box supermarket, and the kids learned to make change. We had formal debates on T.T.W.E. topics. We made a book of fables. My kids write the best descriptive compositions. They
have international pen pals. They illustrated poetry anthologies. They read and wrote treasure maps. They know all the dances from the 1960s.

Ismene said, “When you have a classroom of your own, you just can't
do
every idea that you think of.” I feel I came pretty close. I am fried as an egg. My personal relationships have suffered. I see now why so many of the older teachers are divorced. I am tired and lonely, but the children have enjoyed a measure of success. It can go on their permanent records. For what it's worth.