I went to him for a boost of confidence. I always enjoyed our meetings my first year because Franklin was encouraging even when things were ugly, “Mr. Slaughter, I know it seems like things are going downhill, but those kids have come a long way.”
This year I considered myself a complete failure. But maybe it was in my head. I was working hard, it was only my second year and maybe with a few changes, things would get back on track. When I met with him, I told him how some of my kids were still out of control, but I tried to stay positive. “It’s amazing that my class is so much better than last year, but I’m still stressed because I know they can do better.”
My class was a lot better than last year. Instead of daily fighting, there might have been one fight per week. Instead of no time on task, I had the kids working hard around half the time. I knew it was still bad, but I was moving in the right direction. I was trying to feed him the script, “Mr. Slaughter, I know your class is filled with quite a few challenging students, and I know we can turn them around. I want to observe you teaching this Friday and we’ll start meeting more often to get everything back on track.”
When I saw him on Monday after lunch, it didn’t go like that. It actually went like this, “Mr. Slaughter, you’ve been a disappointment. Your behavior management sucks. Your class is nothing different from any other class, and the chaos has been your own doing. You need to shape the class up, or we won’t be needing you next year.” The skin on my face sunk--wasn’t it only November? I thought I was the one who wanted out, but now he wanted it too? My thoughts raced, attempting to understand what he was saying.
It’s funny he doesn’t know I how much I want to quit.
He ended with, “I’m sure we can count on you giving your best for the rest of the year.” I said, “Of course you can,” but my plastic smile said, “good luck without me, a--hole.” Now, I had to find a job, because after that meeting, a large part of me had already left. I was the dead man walking.
------------------------
I walked myself right over to the art because I need to pick up my class, and I was late. I looked into the art room, I saw half my class out of their seats. Ryden had a bottle of red paint, and it looked like he was trying to spray anyone who got close. He had already torn up Austin’s painting because Austin wouldn’t give him the red.
Ryden always acted up in the afternoon. I knew Ryden was a strong reader and he was quick in math, but he always seemed angry, and he just got angrier and angrier as the day progressed. I thought it was school that was making him angry, but it took me way too long to figure out he just did not want to go home.
Towards the end of the school year, Ryden was playing football with his little brother in front of his house. He threw it over his head and his little brother went to chase the ball into the street. The four year old was struck by a car, and he died, right in front of Ryden. Ryden sprinted back to his house, screaming at his grandma, “my brother is dead!” His mom wasn’t at the house; no one knew where she was. I was told later that she might have been at a crackhouse.
When the funeral was announced, I was planning on attending. Grandmother James said she wasn’t going to go. She had recently lost her own son to a rare blood disorder, and she had had enough of death; she said, “have you ever been to a black funeral?” “No.” She raised her eyebrows and smiled.
I was one of 5 teachers who attended. I rode in the car with the other second grade teacher Price, her best friend Ms. Vaughn, and two other teachers. They spent the whole car ride talking about how much they didn’t like Price’s student teacher. I liked her student teacher, and I knew she liked Price, she even wanted to be Price’s co-teacher the next year at Daley.
When we walked through doors of the small overflowing church, I could see the open casket from a distance; it was small. Right in front of it was Ryden and his family, and I walked up to see him. Ryden and I had a horrible relationship, but even if it was one of my better behaved kids, I’d still have trouble saying something. I only said, “Hi, Ryden,” he smiled and gave me a hug. It’s the first time he ever hugged me. I gave the mom a hug, and I stood there for a little, with my back to the four year old, not knowing what else to do, so I bent down, and I asked Ryden to come a little closer so we could at least talk for a little. But when I motioned for him to come nearer, he turned away, and I walked back to my seat.
I was surprised to see how many preachers were there; I think there were five, and they all were given an opportunity to speak. They kept on saying his brother was so young, but it was God’s plan, and now the little boy was happy because he was with God. It was hard to believe it was God’s plan for a 4 year old to get hit by a car, but I was in no mind to decipher God’s plan; there was a time when I thought it was God’s plan for me to teach in Candler Park. Ryden’s 9 year old sister got up in front of everyone and sang “I Got Shoes,” a joyous song about walking around in heaven. Ryden’s aunt came up to speak; she couldn’t have been older than 20. “I know I’m not supposed to cry because he is in a better place, but I don’t care. He’s my baby nephew, and he’s dead.” She made the most sense to me. Ryden’s mom and her two daughters sat up in the front, right next to the preacher. Ryden sat by himself, left behind.
Ryden was already diagnosed with attachment disorder, he already had a bad home life, and now this. I don’t know why but his brother’s death didn’t seem to affect his behavior at school. It seemed like things were same as they ever were, but the reality was it was drastically different at home. After the accident, all three children were sent to live in a foster home. After a court case a few weeks later, it was the two daughters that came back to live with mom, and it was Ryden who stayed at the foster home. His mom never had a good thing to say about Ryden, and after what I saw at the funeral, it must have been as clear to Ryden as it was to me; his mom had left him, this time for good.
To be honest, I tried not to think about Ryden’s home life because, well, it didn't seem to help; he was still running circles around me. At the end of the day, whenever he started to get out of his seat and jump around his table, I chased him in a way that herded him out the door. Once he left his seat, there was no bargaining to get him back in it. I even kept an eye on where he placed his backpack and jacket, and when he ran out the door into the halls, I put his backpack, jacket, and math homework just outside the door for him to get later; I called it an early dismissal. But there was nowhere he wanted to go. It wasn’t long before he discovered what I had been doing.
So on this Monday, after the principal told me I really was a failure, and after watching red paint splatter all over Austin’s white T shirt, I walked my kids up from art class to the room, and I found Ryden’s backpack and jacket. I gave him our afternoon math work, and he went right to his work. Sloppy and quick, he tore through the pages, one after another, and I kept on checking and waiting. “Mr. Slaughter! I’m done!”
“Great, Ryden, let’s look at your work.” Each page looked good until I got to page three. Instead of subtracting, he was adding. “Ooooh, it looks like you’re adding when you should be subtracting, see?”
“I’m still done.”
“No, you need to go back and fix these.”
“F--- this.”
That’s when it started. “Well, with language like that, you need to go to time-out.” My words were just a formality; he, I, and the rest of the class knew he wasn’t walking to time out. “Ryden, if you’re not walking to time out, then you’ll have to go to the CHOICE room.” Also a formality; he wasn’t going to CHOICE unless security got up to our room before the bell rung, and that almost never happened. As I walked towards him, he got up out of his seat, and I angled myself in such a way as to direct him out the door, just like before. When he thought he had successfully outmaneuvered me out the door, he turned back, and he must have noticed that I didn't care. As I went to lock the door behind him, he tried to squeeze himself back in the door, but I stood at the doorway blocking his entry. Now it was clear that he wasn’t escaping, but I was kicking him out. It changed the game completely. I locked the door, checked the time (it was 5 minutes before the bell), and I brought his things to the door. He wasn’t running the halls, he was just waiting. “Here are your things, Ryden. You can’t act like that in class, we’ll try again tomorrow. You can go home now.”
It’s never good to tell a kid to go home at Daley, especially Ryden. He reached his arm way back, and he punched me in the stomach as hard as he could. It definitely wasn’t the first time I had been hit, but this one was different from all the rest. When kids hit me, it was usually an accident while in a fit of rage, but Ryden’s punch was intentional. I told Franklin about it after school, but he seemed nonchalant, “Okay, I’ll talk to the discipline administrator about it.”
--------------------
After Monday was done, I pushed most of my students out the door for dismissal, and the hallways echoed with laughing and yelling. Ms. Jannsen just looked down, Ms. Price smiled and waved, and Ms. Johnson came knocking on the door.
Ms. Johnson may have been one of the young white women teachers, but she wasn't a Teach for America cadet. Maybe that's why I liked her. She was across the hall from me with the first graders. She was bitter about the ubiquitous chaos at Daley, but more importantly, she didn’t pretend like she didn’t see it. She wasn’t particularly nice to me, but I didn't mind.
Some teachers attempted a smile when they saw me, but I imagined they said mean things behind my back. Fake smiles hide secret betrayals.
There were three teachers with classrooms near mine: Ms. Johnson, Ms. Price, and Ms. Jannsen. Ms. Price always put up a façade of kindness, and Ms. Jannsen, the other 1st grade teacher, was new to the school. She was a veteran teacher, and she had taught at Franklin’s previous school, the successful, mostly white, and west of the park one. She was the new kid unsure of which kids she should befriend, and I was a loner. She kept her distance.
“What happened to your class? They are off the walls!” Ms. Johnson told me. I told her it wasn’t the laughing and yelling ones that I was worried about, at least they were walking in the right direction. It was the five kids who were still in my room, refusing to come out, that troubled me. They were the ones tearing posters off the wall, turning over the tables and scaling the lockers to rip open my bags of snacks. I told her I could walk the majority of my class to the front of the building for dismissal and leave the five to tear apart my room, or I could stay in the room, try to push the five out, and let the majority of my class do whatever they wanted in the halls.
I decided from now on, I would stay with the majority, and then it would be less humiliating. I thought, everyone notices a class of students shouting and laughing through the halls, but only the janitors notice the remnants of destruction caused by the five I left behind. Ms. Johnson told me to send kids to her room if; she had quite a few of them last year. It was in the middle of November when she had her baby and took 3 months of maternity leave. I was sad to see her leave even though the occasion was a happy one. The one teacher who told it to me straight had now left the building.
No comments:
Post a Comment