Emergency Teacher (17 page)

“Wow! That's great, Miguel,” I said.

He smiled, reminding me of the first day when he lost his front tooth. I smiled back, and patted the special spot on my desk for Miguel's homework.

In the beginning, I had to call a lot, but soon the expectation was there, and they assumed they had to meet it. My energy gained momentum. I really wanted a good class. I invested myself physically and emotionally. I started to believe I had something important to teach and felt indignant when they didn't pay attention. I kept attendance on the board, and when students were absent, I complained. One day Valerie was absent. She lived across the street from the school, so I pulled out my cell phone and called her, in front of the whole class. “Valerie, we're counting on you being here.” Five minutes later she bounded in the door, explaining that she had been helping her mom with errands. On the board I changed our attendance to 100 percent, and everyone cheered. That month we won a pizza party for best attendance. I felt proud of their accomplishments—and I told them so all the time. I felt my class coming together, albeit slowly. This was teaching, and as long as I had them nothing else mattered.

Even Rodolfo came around. He began to act out only once or twice a morning, instead of the entire time. Once, he didn't do any of my punctuation exercises, so I kept him in class for lunch. “C'mon,” I said, dragging a desk up next to his and opening his notebook. “Let's do these together.” He glared at me unwaveringly until I dropped the act and spoke from the heart.

“Rodolfo, if I were just trying to punish you, I'd have you copying the dictionary. Okay? I want you to learn. I have you in here practicing these because it's important to both of us that you can read.”

He didn't say much, but when I pointed to the page he scrawled down the number one. And we began. That was when I understood Rodolfo's resistance: He didn't want me to know he could barely spell. I noticed him checking my reaction, and I breezed along. As we finished the exercises I told him how proud I was of him. The next time he acted out in class, I shot him my new teacher look, and it carried enough of a connection to settle him. The personal contact had been established, and now my opinion of him mattered. By giving him attention, I gave him an interest in behaving well. A few weeks later the entire class wrote letters to the
Daily News
about the city mayoral race. The paper chose Rodolfo's to print.

“If I were mayor, I would build a new school and buy food in the lunchroom, new teachers, a schoolyard, new buses, new classrooms with heaters and air conditioners, a store in the school, new desks, a big library. I'd stop the fighting and put the good students in a good school, with new computers for every student and big lockers. It will help this school a lot and the world. Rodolfo, 6th grade, Julia de Burgos.”

I dropped a dozen copies on his desk, and his face lit up when he saw his name in the newspaper. His friends surrounded his desk where the paper was opened in a V. He couldn't stop smiling at me. This was what Rodolfo wanted—a taste of victory. I knew I'd won him over, at least for now.

As classroom management slowly improved, I turned my attention to improving the content of my lessons. I had tossed away the social studies textbook; it was useless, boring, and difficult. Mr. Rougeux didn't use it. Only the lame teachers did. I was spending a lot of time observing Mr. Rougeux's classroom. He was so talented and so kind to me. He subscribed to a weekly periodical run by
Time
magazine called
Time for Kids
. It cost less than $100, which Mrs. G. approved. Each week, twenty-five copies showed up in my mailbox with cover stories from the Pokémon phenomenon to the U.S. elections to school violence. On the back were lesson plans and project ideas. I invented many of my own.
Time for Kids
was my textbook. Forget about the Egyptians, the Incas, and the Native Americans, all of humankind's history that sixth-graders across the country were learning. I didn't have that luxury. My textbook authors weren't professors; they were the reporters and editors of
Time
magazine.

Still, that wasn't enough to fill three hours. I browsed the children's section of Barnes & Noble and found a flurry of social studies workbooks for fifth- and sixth-graders. They cost $20 each, and I bought three. I mentioned this cost to Mrs. G., hinting that I'd like to order some for my whole class.

“You, you always want books,” she said to me disapprovingly.

Then she waved me away, saying the school had no money, and she had just bought me
Time for Kids
, and what would we do next year? So instead, each morning, once she'd finished her class work, I sent Vanessa to Mrs. G.'s office for fifteen minutes of photocopying and stapling pages together. Sometimes I made forty copies of five different pages and stapled them together. Mrs. G. saw this but never said anything. Pretty quickly, I had copied the whole book for every student. I imagined the photocopying costs to be far greater than the cost of actually buying the books. For some reason, this point was lost on Mrs. G.

My night class at Temple University, which the school district required of new teachers, also helped. I no longer covered material mindlessly, but learned to decide beforehand what my goal of the day was. Then I'd teach to that. So instead of writing on the board “Today we will do pages 30—33 in the workbook,” I would write, “Today's Goal—To answer the question ‘Why Do We Use Map Scales?'”

I also learned to start class with something snappy that grabbed their attention. In September, my lessons always began with the same, dull “Open up to page ...” That turned off students. Teaching was like writing a newspaper story. You had to have a jazzy lede that grabs the reader's attention.

One late afternoon I reached pedagogical nirvana. The class was social studies; the lesson was mapping skills. I began with “Tell me about a time you were lost.” I took a few answers.

“Now, what would have helped you find your way home faster?” Hands shot up.

“A compass,” said Josh.

“A cell phone,” said Vanessa.

“A helicopter,” said Luis.

Gee, those were pretty good answers. “Ummm, what else?” I asked hopefully.

Finally, Pedro called out “A map!”

From that, I segued into an explanation of what a map is and how we use them. I explained what a map scale is and why people use them. Everyone was paying attention and interested, so when I asked them to open up their social studies books no one groaned. They each took turns reading aloud a short passage from the textbook that dealt with map scales.

Then I handed out a worksheet from the workbook I'd bought. The worksheet was titled “Winter Wonderland,” and students were to measure distances between winter-related activities in a park. One question it posed was “How far is it from the sleigh to the ski poles?”

Every child was working, in fact, a mini competition brewed to see who could figure out the solutions first. Finally, the class reached a rare and perfect mix of challenging but doable work. Those who finished early tutored other students. Daniel helped Nilsa, who didn't understand the English. I asked Vanessa to peer-tutor Yomari. As I moved among desks, checking work, I felt a rush of exhilaration. I was teaching! They were learning, and I had got them there. There was only one slight hitch.

“Miss, what's a sledding hill?” and “Miss, what's an igloo?” No one in my class had been skiing or sledding before, so I stopped class, and we reviewed the new vocabulary.

The lesson lasted for an hour. I gave them four review questions for homework, and we moved on to reading class. I felt so proud of T61. Some of my most challenging students were soaring. They all did their work because everyone else did. When they acted up, I said things like “Do you see anyone else acting like that?” For once, the answer was no.

I kept my lesson plan on my desk:

After class Josh approached my desk and asked, “Hey, Miss, remember when you used to keep us for lunch detention?” I stopped. No, I didn't. I had a flashback from the days of lunch detention of seven students, and I realized how far we'd come in only a few weeks. This was it—I was teaching.

Teaching most of the class, that is. The challenge had become the smart kids. What did they get out of my lessons? Vanessa's dream was to attend CAPA, Creative and Performing Arts school, the city's top performing arts high school. CAPA was one of a handful of highly selective public high schools that only 2 or 3 percent of students were accepted into. I had pushed her constantly to keep believing she could do it, but by the middle of the year I needed more convincing than she did.

G
rassy banks. Student unions. The dark oak of dining halls. Villanova University. Leaping out of the bus, Vanessa threw her arm around me. “Miss, this place be bangin'.”

“If you work hard, you can make it to Villanova,” I told her.

Several cries went up. “I want to come here, Miss!” said Mariely, one of the Hello Kitty girls.

Excellent. This was exactly the reaction I wanted. Mr. Rougeux, a Villanova alumnus, had planned a class trip to Villanova University and had said there was extra room on the bus if I wanted to invite a dozen of my students along as well. The timing couldn't have been better. I specifically invited the one group of students in my class that wasn't benefiting from my new teaching strategy: the advanced kids, such as Vanessa.

Each day, Vanessa finished her work in a few minutes, and then she waited. And waited. Attentive at first, she would then begin to tire, and her head slowly would begin to fall, followed by drooping eyelids. By 9:30 AM, as the other students struggled along, she would drift off to sleep on her perfect worksheet. I would have to maneuver around her forehead to press a “100 % !” sticker on her paper.

The longer she stayed in class, the more obvious it was she wasn't learning anything. Sometimes she tutored other girls. Other times she wrote love letters to a boy she and her friends referred to as Bebe. He was a ninth-grader at the nearby high school. She and Yahaira had met him at the arcade earlier that month. She spent a lot of time reading books I brought in for her or making up her own assignments.

“Miss, this work is baby work,” she'd say. “We already done that work in third, fourth, and fifth grade.”

She wasn't alone. About a dozen students, mostly girls, read and wrote at sixth-grade level, yet I had stopped giving out sixth-grade-level work because the slower kids couldn't do it. I tried to invent separate assignments for them, but that wasn't really teaching; it was keeping them busy.

This was happening throughout the school. The tough-to-teach kids absorbed all the teaching time. The bright kids worked independently or not at all. I estimated the smart, well-behaved students received less than half as much face time with teachers as the disruptive, disrespectful ones. Fair? No way. Yet the smart, obedient children would endure their boredom in silent deference to the teacher as the less-skilled kids went berserk. So who does the teacher have to cater to? While I was aware of this, I hadn't thought of a way to do much about it. In the meantime the only challenge Vanessa was receiving tested her ability to wait, endlessly—an untold number of hours each week—for the rest of the class to catch up. Perhaps a trip to college would help keep their interest alive. Only two students in my class had someone in their family who had attended college. Vanessa had an aunt who went to community college, and Big Bird had an older sister who went to Temple University. A place like Villanova would be a completely foreign concept to them.

I was secretly pleased that Mr. Rougeux would invite me instead of any other teacher, and although I tried to act professional and distant from him, my students immediately picked up on the day's subplot. Every time Mr. Rougeux and I were within more than a few feet of each other, a murmur would spread that swelled into “Oooohhhh Mmiiissss, you and Mr. Rougeux!” I shushed them and tried not to turn beet red.

Mr. Rougeux had an activity planned for his class at the computer labs. I had organized a tour and then a meeting with a Villanova student who would tell them about college life. Once we arrived they ran up and down the hills, under trees, into the dormitories, and through the chemistry labs. I explained how students lived with their friends on campus, how they chose their classes, majors, careers. I even explained the cavernous dining halls and meal plans.

After lunch, we were going to meet with a student. Villanova University's nickname was Vanillova, because the student body was predominantly white and from suburbia, like me. In the 1990s they had made an effort to integrate the campus, and I had imagined we would be able to find at least one minority student with whom my kids would identify. I had suggested the week before that we call the head of the Latino student group. Mr. Rougeux balked.

When I met the head of the Latino student group, I understood Mr. Rougeux's lack of enthusiasm. The Latino president was Puerto Rican, but that's where his similarity with the Julia de Burgos students ended. He wore a collared, pressed shirt and preppy slacks, and he shook my hand when he introduced himself. He spoke English perfectly as he told me all about how much he “enjoyed his experience at Villanova.” He had an upper-class air about him. His parents may have been from Puerto Rico, but he was not going to relate to my students. As nice as he was, I doubted he would see how Villanova might connect to a kid from The Badlands. I wiggled out of inviting him to speak.

Instead, Mr. Rougeux's contact spoke to admissions about finding a student. After lunch I saw a girl walking across campus toward us. She was an eighteen-year-old freshman from New York's Spanish Harlem. When I laid eyes on her the first thing I noticed was how out of place she looked at Villanova. She wore huge gold hoop earrings, a gold chain, and a puffy silver jacket. Her hair was slicked back into a bun. Her name was Vicki and her parents were from the Dominican Republic.

“She look like the people we know,” my girls said.

We settled in a conference room in one of the science buildings. She took a seat at the head of the table and looked out at my twelve students. I had assumed she would make a small presentation, but she looked like a nervous eighteen-year-old who didn't know what to say. An awkward silence settled over us.

“So, um, what questions do you have?” she asked.

My students looked at her blankly, so I jumped in.

“Can you tell them why you wanted to come here?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah. I want to be a lawyer,” she said.

“So, how do you like Villanova?” I asked.

“It's awright,” she shrugged.

Vanessa raised her hand. “Um, how'd you get in here?”

Vicki leaned back in her seat. She didn't seem very comfortable playing a role model. “I worked really hard back in my old school. Nobody in my family's ever been to college.”

Silence again.

“You see,” she said suddenly. “I wanted to make something out of my life. My friends aren't doing anything back home, and I didn't want to be like that. They hanging on the streets all day wasting their lives.”

My students nodded and the room relaxed a little. Other kids asked questions about the dormitories.

“So what do you all want to do?” she asked them.

Vanessa raised her hand again. “I want to be a journalist.”

She smiled at me, and it dawned on me that maybe I was having more of an influence on them than I had realized. I knew only a little bit about Vanessa's home life. Her father was in jail on drug charges and her mother worked in a bottling factory. Her mother was only a few years older than me, about sixteen years or so older than Vanessa. They looked like sisters, and they would link arms and speak together in low, conspiratorial voices. I knew Vanessa's mom wanted her to go to CAPA. She had once told me: “I want her to go to college and do better than I did.”

Listening to Vanessa, I realized how badly I wanted her to succeed and live up to her potential. Other students were asking their questions, and the conversation began to flow. Some were shy, and they whispered “Miss, can you ask her this ...” I persuaded them to raise their hands. Lost-tooth Miguel asked in Spanish if Villanova was different from her neighborhood. She nodded, answering in English.

“You know, they don't serve
arroz con habichuelas
here,” she said, and then paused. “It's real different. It's like, not so easy to make friends. The students here, they party a lot and I don't really drink, so I don't go. And the classes are really tough.”

Vicki's face fell as she spoke and for a brief moment revealed how lonely she was. She talked about struggling to fit in with well-to-do suburban students who had grown up in huge houses and had parents who were well-paid professionals. These people would never dream of visiting North Philly. The twenty miles from Philadelphia to Villanova masked a cultural chasm. In the same way I didn't fit in at the Puerto Rican Day celebration in my kids' neighborhood, Vicki wasn't comfortable at Villanova. However, while I could avoid North Philadelphia forever and do fine, she had less of a choice. Villanova was her ticket to a career in law—her ticket to a better life. For most students at Villanova, college was an extension of their suburban life—a continuum of food, music, and people that they had grown up with. Vicki had to give up her identity to fit in here. And of course the classes were hard. If she had come from a school system that was anything like Philadelphia's, she would have been completely unprepared to compete against kids from suburban schools. A student from Julia de Burgos would have to be ready to master a culture built on a lifetime in suburbia within a few months. Vicki hadn't done that yet.

“It's not easy here,” she said. “I take the bus back to Harlem every weekend.”

She looked up at me, and I felt awkward. I appreciated her honesty, but I was crestfallen. I had wanted her to be positive and to encourage my kids to strive to get here. I had worked to set up this rosy day in which they would be wooed by free pizza, football, and a bucolic landscape. I thought, “This will surely motivate them to come here.” As if motivation would be enough. What would happen when it came time for a hardworking student like Vanessa to take the SATs? She was being held back as it was in my classroom. What about the following year when Mr. Jackson would be her English teacher? She'd never be prepared for college. Vicki painted an accurate picture.

“It's expensive here, too,” she added. Just as the tenor of the discussion was taking on a somber tone, a Villanova University professor who had joined us jumped in. He downplayed Vicki's negativity.

“Villanova is conscientiously trying to boost the number of minority students,” he said. “Finances should not be considered an obstacle. We are willing to bend over backward to accommodate and help you to get in.”

The students looked a little confused, and shortly thereafter we wrapped up the discussion. My girls circled Vicki, asking her questions, and I could see they looked up to her. She was laughing and talking back.

Then we met with Mr. Rougeux's class. The football game was next. I sat up in the bleachers and let the girls braid my hair. I had brought a friend to help chaperone. He'd watched us throughout the day. “They love you,” he said. I felt an elated rush.

“Yeah, I love them, too,” I said. The sun's reflection off the stands shone on us as football players zigzagged around the field. The girls had gone down to the track. They laughed as they practiced a cheer.

Later Rodolfo asked if he could join a football game on a patch of grass nearby where some neighborhood boys were playing. “Sure,” I said. I watched him run up to a group of white boys who had recently arrived.

“You down to play?” he bellowed at them. I watched as they stared at him in his droopy jeans, oversized football shirt, and buzz cut, bewildered.

“Yo!” Rodolfo bellowed. “Y'all down to play?”

The boys looked at him and then glanced at each other uncertainly. Rodolfo saw that they didn't understand him. He thought this was funny. He started again, speaking in a mockingly slow and clear voice.

“Do ... you ... want ... to ... play?” he said with a smirk.

The kids shook their heads and ran off, taking their football with them.

Rodolfo returned back to Ernesto and his other friends. “Stupid asses,” he muttered to himself. “They not ghetto.”

Quietly, in my own mind, I started to distinguish between the students who I believed would “make it” and those who wouldn't. I wanted to believe all my students would succeed, but there was definitely something etched into the character of some that separated some from the others. It was intangible—like a drive and an ambition. It was an inner resilience that protected them like a force field from obstacles that knocked the others off course. I wanted Vanessa to have it, and to carry her toward CAPA high school. Yet I wasn't convinced she could do it on her own. There was, however, one student who I knew was going to make it. He had more resilience by far than all the rest: Big Bird.