My Management System

When I started my second year, I set my rules, I set my consequences for breaking the rules, and it was working. It was so simple, and it was working, so I stuck to it. But then there were so many infractions, I became overwhelmed with all the consequences. Students were asked to apologize, shake hands, hug, make apology cards, and clean up messes, but the consequences weren’t affecting the behaviors. In fact, things were only getting more out of control.

So after four weeks, I switched up. I brought in the elaborate system of stickers, rewards, and phone calls. Everyone’s name was on a board, and I wrote a letter for each time students did something great. If they earned five letters by the end of the day, it would spell GREAT, and they would get a sticker on a chart. If the students received three stickers in the week, then on Friday, they got to pick something from the magic grab bag. If they got twelve stickers in a month, then they received a ticket to a class party. When they were bad, I erased letters. When all their letters were erased, then they got an X, and after three Xs, it was a phone call. I tried to run this system as perfectly as I could because I believed it was the system that would save me. I let the system dictate how I managed the class because I couldn’t trust my own instincts; I had failed too many times. It worked for some, but it really didn’t work for most.

Ryden was a student who was smart enough to use GREAT to play me. When I took away one of his letters, he typically slammed both hands on his desk, gripping the corners tightly as if he was steadying his launch to charge me and stuff the dry erase marker down my throat. He grunted, “Put back the letter.” Any normal teacher would say, “You don’t demand anything from me, you sit down and do your work or it’s another letter!”

The problem was that I had already done that many times. I had called Ryden’s family again and again, but they stopped picking up. There were was one day I left three messages for three different instances of extreme behavior. One time, when I called his mom, in front of him and the whole class, I left the message, and then, he smiled, “She doesn’t give a s--- about your phone calls.” I called her right back and left another message, “Ms. Valrie, I just thought you should know Ryden just told me and the whole class you don’t give a s-h-i-t about my phone calls.” Ryden had reduced me to a twenty-seven-year old tattle tale.

Plus, losing letters only caused Ryden to get more enraged. Imagine that.  The assumption behind the system was that misbehaving students wanted to earn their letter back. When the teacher erased a letter, then the student would get right to work to earn it back as quickly as possible. For most of my students, losing a letter was a public slap in the face, and the only response they knew was to retaliate. I was trapped in the logic of the system so I tried to negotiate a truce, “Alright, Ryden, just sit back down, get back to your work and you’ll get your letter back…” He would sit down, slowly, with his eyes still on the board, making sure I honored the promise. And just as his pencil touched the paper and I rewrote his letter, he crept back out of his seat, and the game began again.

Monday (part 2)

With half of my class off-task already, I was indebted to afternoon PE . But PE only lasted until 2:30; 45 minutes remained until the dismissal bell. By this time Ryden and Adam had had their fun; now it was Laila’s turn. She had her scope set on Tybee, both the smartest and the smallest girl in the class. Tybee sat towards the back of the room and quietly did her work in the midst of a carnival. She rarely asked any questions because she almost always knew how to do it, and she never complained. She finished whatever work I gave her, then she spent the remainder of the lesson making cards for her mom, or brother, or what seemed like a different person every week. For the past week, Tybee had been talking a lot with Quint, and Quint was a popular type, played quarterback on the local team. Most of my kids just accepted that they were a couple now that Tybee was sitting next to Quint at lunch. Laila couldn’t stop noticing. 

Laila was one of my most difficult kids. She was very quick to fight, but she didn't lose control like the others--she was more calculated. In the beginning of the year, teachers had told me that she wasn’t coming back to Daley so I didn’t need to worry about her. But by the second week, she was there. I talked to Laila’s mom too many times about her tendency to fight, and each time she let out a small sigh, “I don’t know what to do with that child.”

During PE, Laila had told Tybee she was ugly, and that Quint didn't like her. Now they were both in class and Laila stared at Tybee from across the room, Tybee looked close to tears. Tybee finally yelled, “What?” Laila responded, “How about you shut up before I make you shut up.” There was a quiet “ooh” that flowed from one side of the class to the other. I hoped it would end there because Tybee would never take on Laila. Tybee had never risen her voice, let alone her fists. Laila had no trouble taking on boys. But then Tybee muttered, “You can’t tell me to shut-up, you’re not my mom.” All of a sudden, everything slowed down. Everyone’s look said the same thing, “did she really just say that?” All eyes turned to Laila now, and now she had the spotlight.  There was only one thing to do. She shot up out of her seat towards Tybee. I frantically pushed through chairs and tables to reach Laila before she got to Tybee. I was too late. Tybee turned her chair away and lowered her face into her arms to avoid a direct punch, but Laila just pulled her braids down so hard that she pulled her down to the floor backwards. Then she jumped on her stomach and started choking her. Laila wasn't actually choking her. She had her hands around Tybee’s neck. But she wasn’t squeezing. You see, Laila was only doing it for the show. She showed Tybee that she could hurt her, and she showed the whole class that no one talks back to her. But she was in complete control.  

That evening at the grocery store I decided to check my blood pressure. My reading was at 160/80, meaning I had stage 2 hypertension. I shouldn't have been so surprised. Grandma Lewis had been telling me I was on my a stroke.

The Full Week- Monday

Sunday Night

Thanksgiving break was great, but also quick. The first day of a long and full week was approaching like a battering ram. I had planned out the week, still trying to believe that the better the plans were, the better my class might behave. It was a belief that was drilled into my head every day of grad school, “you won’t have to worry about behavior management when your lessons are engaging; trust us, we know.” After a few weeks of trusting them, I learned that engaging lessons failed just like boring ones, but with a bigger mess to clean up. When I read over my plans a second time, it was like I was right back to where I started, my first day as a teacher. If I wanted things to improve, then screw the plan. I had to ratchet up the anger, maybe that would work. I would be the Hulk if it meant people would shut up and do their math.

I mentioned to my wife that maybe the anxiety was passing, and there was no need to see a psychiatrist. She had her doubts. She knew how bad off I had been and said it would only take one bad day to send me right back into the same hole. I had to stop the the kids from controlling my life, but I didn’t know how. If I wanted to be happy, then they needed to be good, and if I wanted them to be good, then I guess I needed to be mean.

Monday

Unfortunately, my wife proved prophetic and that Monday turned out to be the bad day she was talking about. I started the morning by talking about the huge Christmas Party that we would have in the middle of December. I told them they had to earn 3 stickers per week to go to this party of all parties, but by this time of the year, they knew better: do whatever you want, just don’t piss off Mr. Slaughter on party day. For most of my troublemakers, stickers meant nothing, but it meant just a little something to Adam because his mom sometimes asked him about it.  I always reminded him about his mom picking him up to keep him motivated, but this Monday he was not going to earn a sticker. In my class, if you were going to fail, you might as well fail big.

Adam started his trouble because of Ryden. Ryden was smart, but when he came upon something he didn’t know how to do, he didn't ask me, he just copied someone else’s work. Amelia was quietly doing her math when Ryden looked over her shoulder, but she pulled out a folder to block him. So, as any reasonable second grader would do, he started running from table to table, trying to find the answers from other people in the class. Adam thought this looked like a fun game so he got up also and started bothering other tables. “Boys, if you don’t take a seat, then you will receive a 0 on your work.” Bad move, don’t threaten something you don’t want to do. They ignored me - all eyes were on me now. “Alright, you are both getting 0s, and that means I’ll have to talk to your parents about your grades in math.” Well, there goes that consequence. Nothing left to threaten.

Adam turned to me, “I don’t care.” And he ripped up his math packet. Sheets of paper were strewn all over the floor. Anna huffed and rolled her eyes at him, so he picked up her packet, and started running around the room with it. He and Ryden played monkey in the middle with Anna and her math packet, and Evan yelled out, “Ha Anna, you too slow!”

Now Evan liked Anna, and like most 2nd graders, he thought that teasing her was the best way to show her he cared about her. I had the same problem when I was in 2nd grade.  Anna glared at Evan, “You shut up!”

This was a serious declaration in Daley. Evan had to step out of his chair or he couldn't show up to school the next day. “No, you shut up.” Evan moved towards Anna. It’s obvious he didn’t want to fight with the girl he liked, but her public insult had left him no choice. Anna went charging at Evan because she was already on the edge. With fists in the air, I had to jet between them before something horrible happened. Evan was a solid fighter, but it was Anna who just might have clawed his eyes out. If it's strength versus crazy, always bet on crazy. So I ended up putting Anna in time out, while Ryden and Adam jumped up and down because now they had taken Anna’s paper. And she was in time out as result of it. They effectively controlled the classroom.  And I called security, but security never came.

By now, no one cared about their math work anymore, so with a hoarse voice and vein popping out, I yelled .that all their parents were coming next Monday for Parent Teacher day. "I will show them the behavior chart so they'll find out."

I had a behavior chart that marked their daily progress. Five kids got stars every day. 15 kids got stars every once in a while. Five kids never got them. Unfortunately, we all knew their parents weren’t planning on showing up on Monday. I had shown all my cards, and it was only 2:00.

Ms. Price

Thanksgiving break gave me some perspective. I stepped back and noticed there were something that just didn’t seem right. By now I knew the administration had given up on me, but why did I go to the principal when I should have been talking with the other second grade teacher, Ms. Price?  After meeting her, you would think, “what a wonderful teacher!” She acted older than her age and she never told anyone hold she was. I'm sure she had dreams of being a principal. She was probably 28, but she wanted to be 35. She started out as a Teach For America teacher at another school, and she had been recruited by Franklin to come to Daley.

My first year of teaching I knew Ms. Price was a great teacher because whenever there were visitors to the school, they were directed to her classroom. She also seemed great with her kids. She was so close with one of her tough kids that he came to school during the teacher work days just to spend time with her. At the end of the year, he came into school to help her pack away all the teacher materials for the new school. That was when Franklin told me that both Ms. Price and Ms. Johnson wanted to teach 2nd grade with me, and he asked me who I would prefer.

They both seemed fine, but I did tell him there was one teacher I really admired, Ms. Lee. My first year she was a frequent visitor at my door to see how I was doing. She let me vent about the day, and then she offered one or two things to try out. She was a mid-30s, well-rounded, black woman, and she had a grace about her.  Ms. Lee was staying with her grade, but I told Franklin I wanted whichever teacher he thought was more like her. Ms. Price and Ms. Lee both taught 4th grade. He picked Ms. Price.

As soon as we both found out, we sat down and scribbled down dates when we could meet over the summer to plan out units. I barely did any planning with my first co-teacher because we were both drowning, so this was new for me. I knew Price was a solid teacher, but she had never taught second grade, so I figured our planning sessions would be a nice back and forth discussion about what was best for second graders. It wasn’t; she talked, and I wrote down notes as fast as I could. Whenever there was something that I wanted to add, she’d usually say, “Well, you can do that if you want.” Still, we were determined to make the second grade the best grade in the school.

But by October, our two classes combined made us the worst. She had a class full of troublemakers much worse than my own; hers had been in so much trouble that they already had reputations and labels before they stepped in the door. One day, I could see through the door window that her class was quietly reading on bean bags, and then I heard a book fall and a loud scream, and then her front door slammed. It was one of her tiny boys, Nico, who must have been teased about something. Tears were streaming down his cheeks, and he was screaming, a high-pitched scream that should have caused teachers from every room in the hall to come running out, but no one did. By now, they knew Nico and his piercing scream. Then, I saw Price look through the door window with her cell phone pressed upon her ear. Her door was already locked, and she purposely made the phone call right by the door window so he could see. Then Nico picked up the abandoned security chair and threw it at her door. She just pointed at the security cameras with a smile on her face. It was like my class, but I couldn't smile about it.

She had her own problems, and I had mine, and she kept her distance. Whenever the crap hit the fan last year, Ms. Ward, my old co-teacher, ran over to my room during her lunch break, “Did you hear Daniel screaming this morning?! That boy is driving me insane! I can’t sleep, Jeremy. Even my family is wondering why I’m wasting my time here.”

But Price never opened up about how horrible things were going in her class. It was strange because she wasn’t hiding anything; we all knew it was bad. She overemphasized how much her kids were learning. In the midst of a  shit storm, how could she talk about how wonderful it all was?

So I started to blame her. Franklin picked her as a mentor for me because I was the struggling newbie who had a waste of a first year. Why was she smiling as I was drowning? I didn’t find out until spring, but there were something she wasn’t telling me.

THANKSGIVING BREAK

I spent the Thanksgiving Break with my wife’s family, and I finally experienced a pause in the constant flow of school thoughts. I watched football while my wife went shopping with the girls, and instead of thinking about Ryden, I was thinking about Detroit, who were bound to lose because they always lost on Thanksgiving.

As dismal as last week was, it was still a improvement. But for anyone who might walk into my class, it was chaos.

On the last day before break I had a cupcake party for all the kids who had earned enough stickers over the month. The party was virtually for the whole clas even thought most did not deserve it.  I even let the bad kids come if they acted nice to me the day of the party. It was one of the many teacher sins that I committed just to keep a semblance of sanity.  My kids were smart, they knew the tricks, but Gracyn pushed me too far. Gracyn had spent most of the day in the CHOICE room, and he was excused to my room right at the end of the day. Because he broke the cardinal sin of being mean to the teacher on my party day, I refused to give him the coveted cupcake, and tears trickled down as he left the classroom.

I was impressed; I drew a line, and he backed down. When I told him no, I expected Gracyn to push past me, pick up the tray of leftover cupcakes, and then run away from me around the room, simultaneously stuffing crumbs in his mouth. Then, half a dozen kids would shout to Gracyn for cupcakes as he would gleefully throw the cupcake chunks, over my head, to their outstretched hands as I, now the enraged teacher, would try to corner him, just like always. I would give up because the bell would ring and then I would dismiss the kids in a frenzy because, not only had they received extra cupcakes, but they also saw a great show. Then I would spend the rest of the afternoon cleaning up the smeared icing and cupcake bits crushed into the rug, too embarrassed to leave any of it for the custodians.

But this time, there was no mess, at least not one that was visibly smeared on the floor.

By now, my wife was very pregnant, and my life was going to change once again. I was counting on my newest daughter’s arrival to make me happy again. If family concerns took the forefront, then I would have to push school anxiety to the side. I fantasized about staying at home with them instead of working. I also worried that my school problems would make me a bad dad. Instead of rocking her to sleep, maybe I would have to stare at laptop screen, trying to perfect a lesson plan that was bound to fail anyway.  Maybe with a new daughter, I would reclaim my role as the provider, thinking “who cares that work sucks, that’s life. I have a family to feed.” It was pleasant thinking about how my life would change. But no matter what perspective I constructed, Monday was still coming; nothing could ever stop that.

Counting Down To Thanksgiving- Wednesday

My first year of teaching I loved sleeping. I loved laying in bed, drifting into sleep, effortlessly. It was my favorite 7 hours of the day. Which was still depressing. Sometimes after dinner, I let my face sink into the plush carpet and I passed out while my daughter crawled up and over me again and again.

This year, I feared my bed. I knew that another day was coming, and I couldn’t stop hearing the tick-tock of the damn clock telling me that each second, I was getting closer, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I’d scream in my head, “Stop thinking of those damn kids, go to sleep!” Now it was Wednesday night, I had made it through to Thanksgiving Break, and I still couldn’t sleep so I got up, left the bed, and I wrote it down, everything that was eating away at me. It was a mental detox, and there was a stench that exited my head and left itself on the paper. Journaling was my addiction, but it could also be my therapy.

I wrote about how two of my crazies, Gabe and Ryden, were absent and it had made the day so much more bearable. Absences were one of the few things that made me hopeful during a workday. There were quite a few students who didn’t show up on time, but my crazies usually showed up early, every day, even with nausea and high fevers. Typically, when I didn’t see one of my crazies at the cafeteria, I just pretended like I didn’t notice. It was a game I played by letting my happiness slowly seep in, like an IV drip. It was a slow and cautious happiness because deep down I knew they would just show up late. But on this Wednesday, two of them didn’t show up at all, and the day almost felt normal.

That afternoon, I got my results from my first observation of the year. This was the first year for Michelle Rhee’s new evaluation system which, by the end of the year, would tell me if I got fired, suspended pay, a standard raise, or a bonus. I figured that I would either get fired or have my pay suspended. This one was the first of two announced observations so I had the opportunity to carefully plan out the lesson. I even brought in a carrot to visually show how reading can be like eating; when you come to a big word or a big piece of food, you can break it down into parts. I thought it went well because everyone was seated perfectly, with their eyes on me, except for Gabe who was rolling the edge of the carpet around his body to make a human burrito.

By this time in the year, everyone had learned to ignore Gabe because it was obvious something was wrong with him. The lesson ended with Ms. Coen, the observer, physically restraining Gabe by bear hugging him, so that she might continue observing me. I received a 2.44 out of 4, which meant that I was on track to get my pay suspended. It was hard to be relieved to get one out of the way because it was one of my two announced observations; there were three unannounced ones that were sure to sink me.

By this time of the year, I had already been given feedback from the other announced observation, and this one was conducted by an “independent” evaluator from downtown. For this observation, I at least knew that I had tanked it because I spent half the lesson in a corner begging Gabe to take a few deep breaths so that he could stop trying to hit Evan and just do his work.

I didn’t realize until the spring that teachers in my hall had an elaborate plan to trick the evaluators into thinking they had well behaved children. If a teacher saw an evaluator in the building then she would text her other teacher friends. When it was clear whose class would be evaluated, the teacher sent her trouble kids to another teacher ready to watch them during the observation. I was kept out of the loop, leaving me with all my crazies. The independent evaluator gave me a 2.0, and now I had an average of a 2.2. It was embarrassing, and I didn’t tell anyone. If I was quitting, it didn’t matter anyway.

Counting the days until Thanksgiving - Tuesday

This Monday afternoon included two punches: one from Ryden and another from Franklin. Each time I put the journal down the surge of failure rose again. It wasn’t helping that Tuesday was coming. I needed Franklin to suspend Ryden for punching me. It would send a message, a message I could post above my door: you can run around the class and not listen to me, but if you wind up and punch me in the gut, then you’ve gone too far. That might not fit though, maybe just: Don’t Punch Me. Ryden was there bright and early the next morning…so much for the suspension and so much for the message.

At school Tuesday morning, I passed by Franklin in the office, and I asked him if Ryden would be suspended. He replied, “Well, you told me yesterday, right, and I haven’t seen the discipline administrator since then, so…” Right, I thought. Thanks a lot. I rarely pushed for kids to get suspended. In fact, I never did. Kids would spit in my face, and Franklin would come and ask if I wanted them to get suspended. I always said no. He didn’t like suspending kids, and I assumed he was right because it was less time at school and more time at home, a place that was rarely a positive experience. Since then, I had learned something from Grandma James: every consequence or lack of consequence was a message to every kid in my class. If Ryden didn’t get suspended, it meant that kids could do anything they wanted in my class and not get punished. I'm sure Ryden spent all of last afternoon detailing how he punced the teacher in the gut.  I might as well have been begging Franklin for a suspension, but he didn’t seem to care, and I started to hate him.

Relative to Monday, Tuesday actually was a good day, good because even though I was losing my mind, no one punched me.  I added Franklin to the list of staff that I thought was supporting me, but now wanted nothing to do with me. My kids were acting marginally better, partly because they didn’t know what to expect from me. I was always on the verge of full tilt rage. In circle time, I had the kids greet each other by saying good morning and then shake hands with their neighbor. Quint was next to Amelia, and after he shook her hand, he wiped his hand on the floor to show everyone that Amelia had germs.  Amelia didn’t see it, and I was willing to let the thing pass unnoticed, until Evan said, “Quint wiped his hand on the floor; he needs to apologize.” Dammit. I also knew there was no way Quint would apologize on the spot, in front of the whole class. He was volatile, especially first thing in the morning. “Alright Quint, go ahead and apologize to Armoni.”
“No!”
“Then, walk back to your seat.”
“I don’t have to.”
“Fine! If you don’t move, then I’ll move you.” By this time, my eyes were glaring and my muscles were tight. I grabbed his wrist and dragged him across the carpet, onto the floor, and out the door.
“I’m telling my mom!”
“Tell her.”
I slowly walked back to the carpet, sat criss-cross, and attemted singing a song about friends.
“What was that about?” murmured Grandma James.
“I have no idea, Quint is always like that.”
“No, I meant about you.”

Counting down the days to Thanksgiving- Monday

The previous Friday afternoon, I saw the principal, Franklin, chatting with a few students, and I asked if could meet. Things were getting worse and I figured it was best he knew it. Our last meeting hadn’t gone so well, but I needed to give it another shot. I was wondering why he hadn’t sought me out earlier. I mean, it was obvious I needed help.

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.

Counting Down the Days to Thanksgiving

Weekends meant I could write everything down, a needed mental release. But no matter how much I put down on paper, Monday always approached, relentlessly. This Monday morning I felt ill, but there was no fever. There was never a fever. I had seen the nurse enough times to know every time I thought I had a fever, I didn't. If there was a pill that could have given me a fever, I would have taken it. Better to be sick and get the days off, then never to have been sick at all.

It was a three day week until Thanksgiving Break, and I told myself three days were nothing. I had gone through months and months of this crap; three days would be over before I knew it. Or so I thought.

Journaling was now less soothing and more addictive; if I felt the anxiety building, I sat down and wrote. This Monday, when I sat down with my cereal and morning coffee, I wrote. When I walked into the classroom at 7 in the morning, I wrote. When I walked down the halls to pick up the kids, I pulled out my pen and a torn hall pass and wrote.

This Monday morning, I lined the kids up without word, but there was an unmistakable grimace on my face. Gabe was my youngest second grader, and it was difficult for him to sit still. This morning he rushed to line up first,with his hands behind his back and his chest puffed out. He was one of my most difficult kids, and he was trying very hard to impress his teacher. It was a new day for Gabe, and things could have been different. I just glared at him, thinking, “Now you are acting like an angel after you have driven me crazy. Now you stand up straight because the other teachers are here. As soon as you walk in my door, you will go right back to acting up!” Ms. Vaughn, a cloying, young Teach For America cadet, looked at me with shock in her eyes and motioned to Gabe, “Wow! Gabe, you are doing such a great job lining up!” It was like a caption in the handbook, “Don’t focus on the negatives, give specific praise to build them up.”

But I had been specifically praising all year, “You are doing a great job sitting still, Gabe! Wow Gabe, you are raising your hand so patiently, I appreciate that. Gabe, I’m glad to see you started right away on your work.” It wasn’t working. He was still struggling to be the best line leader he could be. But in my fog, I couldn’t see it.

The Choice Room

I decided to personally “escort” misbehaving students out of the classroom to the bad kids’ room. We called it the CHOICE room. Because kids don't misbehave, they make bad choices.

The CHOICE room was where kids could go when they couldn’t be in the classroom. It was one of Franklin’s best ideas; he called it a release valve for when classroom pressure reached dangerous levels. I already had a reputation for using the valve the most because the pressure was unbearable. I was such a frequent caller that I tried not to call until there was something really serious, like Gracyn throwing a chair across the room. So after each time he slung one across the floor up unto a wall, I walked across the room and called, and then he ran from one side to another as I tried to corner him by sliding empty tables in a way that he might get trapped. If I did catch him, then I had to hold him by the wrist until security got there. By this time of the year most students were used to Gracyn, so I simply dragged him to the front of the carpet and continued the lesson where I left off, while he hung near the floor, yanking my wrist as hard as he could, yelling, “Get off of me, white b----!!” It was just like Sean from first year, but Gracyn must have weighed another 50 pounds.

If Gracyn happened to have escaped out the door, then I had about 5 minutes to get my class back on task before he would run back in the room, yell, “f--- you!” and then slam the door to thunderous applause from my class. I could only call security again, “It’s Mr. Slaughter, Gracyn is in the halls again.” By this time, my voice was breaking up and roars of laughter were in the background. That was a typical day.

I actually preferred when students made it out the door before I could get to them. By mid-September I was so frustrated with some of my students that I just let them go out the door, like a matador using the door as a red cape, and I locked the door behind them, hoping not to see them again for the day. Other teachers hated it because my kids would go into their classes and yell obscenities at them. I felt bad, but I didn’t know what else to do, so I mentioned to the other teachers that they should just lock their doors too so the kids would have nowhere to go. Then, the kids ran the halls and became the administrators’ problem. Eventually, I realized how an administrator’s problem would eventually turn into my problem. Sensing the inevitable, I went to Franklin, told him that locking kids out was no solution to the problem, and I wondered if he some a good ideas. I was apologizing, but I also genuinely wanted to get better. He told me my actions were unacceptable and then saw me out the door. He wasn't the same principal from the year before, something was beginning to smell rotten.

My decision to stop calling security several times per day and personally take kids to the CHOICE room was a smart move. I was no calling on security to save me because I could just do it myself. Kids could stop worrying about security and start worrying about me. With my increased anger and exasperation, the class was behaving better, and unfortunately, I believed there were causal links between my anger and my class’ improved behavior. Some of them were acting better. But nothing was improving for me—I still hated it.

Grandma James

By November, teachers pretended like they didn’t see me. My forehead was furrowed, and there were deep rings around my eyes. My shirts puffed out around my waist, and my belt didn't have enough notches to hold my pants up anymore. If my face wasn't bright red, it was lurid.   Teachers knew my class was the worst in the school, and when they glanced at face, they knew it was only a matter of days before I quit.

 There was only one person in the school who talked with me and that was Grandma James. In our school, there were grandmothers from the local neighborhoods who came in and volunteered. Almost every teacher in the lower grades had an assigned helper. The classroom grandma I had last year spent most of the year sitting and falling asleep in a corner, so when Ms. Coan asked if I wanted another grandma in the class, I said no. By mid-October, Ms. Coan approached me again, "Are you sure you don't want some extra help?" This time, I agreed. At least there could be a witness to the chaos so when I write incident reports I ask her who hit who. I first saw her as I walked my class into the library; she walked into the library with a slow limp and asked me, “Could we discuss a few things first?” She was an older lady, maybe in her late 70s. I noticed her shaky hands, and she told me that she had recently suffered a stroke, and her memory was fading. She might have trouble remembering kids' names.  Considering her condition, it was unconscionable to put her directly in the line of fire; she came to tutor kids, not restrain them. I told her she could meet with individual kids in the halls and read books with them. Each kid had a baggy of books that were picked based on the student’s reading level. She told me she taught her 5 year old granddaughter to read just by using flash cards with sight words on them. Grad school told me that flash cards were not best practice so I asked her to stick to the books. She slightly raised her eyebrows, "Okay, Mr. Slaughter. You're the teacher."  "You can call me Jeremy." "No, I'll call you Mr. Slaughter."

With a new person in the room, I wondered if the kids would behave a little better. Maybe a grandmother would garner some respect, but nothing changed. Gracyn slid a chair across the room, and it almost hit Grandma James in the leg. It was just like when my first classroom grandma was hit in the face by an errant pencil; it was one of the few times she got out of her seat. After the chair incident, I wondered if this would be Grandma James first and last day.

She did come back the next day. And it wasn't until the end of the year that I asked her why. She told me when she took the bus home that day, she was praying, “Please, Lord, I don't want to be in that class.” But then she knew she had come to that school because too many had given up on those kids, and one chair would not stop her. I didn't tell her this at the time, but I used to tell myself the same thing—"I will not allow them to beat me. No matter what."

After two weeks, Grandma was telling it to me straight, “Mr. Slaughter, you have a pregnant wife and a little girl at home. There is no sense putting yourself through this. Every morning you come in with bloodshot eyes, and by mid-day your face is red and your voice is hoarse. Your hair is falling out and your belt doesn’t keep your pants up anymore -, you losin’ weight? Mr. Slaughter, you need to get out before you have a stroke.”

At home I wondered what my wife was thinking about me. Did she think I was a failure? Did she think I was pathetic? Did she think I had no future? If I didn't teach, then what could I do? I had a master's in elementary education. It doesn't open many doors for you.

Journaling was helping me, but I was making unprofessional decisions, like taking personal sick days when I couldn't bear going in. There was no hope of another job when the economy was this bad; there weren’t even other teacher openings. We decided to add up all our savings and calculate how much money we needed to get by until my wife found a job. Our second daughter was due in December, and she would stay at home with the baby for at least the first 6 months. Without my salary, we could have lasted 3 months. I never looked at a position at Target, but I would easily have swallowed my pride and taken it if we had enough savings. She kept on saying, “It’s just one year. You can make it to June." "I can barely make it to Friday, I have no chance of making to June."

Creating Space

Job queries slowed,  and my anxiety seeped into my home life. If I wasn’t talking about school, then I wasn't talking. My wife noticed the changes and told me I should see a psychiatrist. I always believed the psychiatrists were not for me. I could solve my own problems. But I was approaching a place I had never been. I had no space in my day when I wasn’t thinking about why Ryden was screaming or why Laila couldn’t read or why Ms. Price had stopped talking to me (she was the other 2nd grade teacher). Each night I slumped at the dining table with my babbling daughter and supportive wife, and I put my head in my hands, wishing that everything could go back to the way it was. I wanted to enjoy the dinner. I wanted to ask my wife about her day. I wanted to tickle my daughter in the neck and laugh at her when she pursed her lips to avoid eating her vegetables.  I couldn't think about work anymore; it was eating away at me. I started to fantasize about escape; if I couldn’t find another job, what else could I do?

Riding your bike in DC is always nerve wracking. On this particular morning, I wondered what would happen if I was hit by car. It would obviously hurt a lot, but only temporarily. If it was really bad, I might be in the hospital for the rest of the year, eat microwaveable dinners, and watch soap operas all day. It was the small slice of heaven I needed. But then, there are also the other risks of getting hit by a car. I could become paralyzed or I might live my  life in a coma. What if I died? As soon as I had the thought, I tried to silence it because I knew where it would go. I could fantasize about microwaveable dinners, but I could not let myself fantasize about death.

But it didn't work. The next night, I put my head in my hands again —instead of imagining a new life free from Daley, I started wishing for an end. I needed to see a psychiatrist. I tried to make an appointment, but all the local clinics were booked so I made an appointment that was two months away in a clinic requiring a 40 minute commute. Options were running out, and I needed a solution, today. My wife mentioned journaling.

I had already written what elementary grad students called teacher reflections about what was and wasn’t working in the classroom, but it had been years since I wrote about how I was feeling. Once I started, I didn’t want to stop writing. Everything that had been filling my head, I started to put on paper. After writing an entry, it seemed I had created a little space, just enough space to breathe again.

The job search begins

I guess it didn't matter anymore.  There was no time to reflect, only time to plot my escape.  First, I applied to any job I could find that required a background in education.  I didn't get any responses; I guess I wasn't the only teacher looking for a way out.  It was a friend of mine who gave me the most promising lead.  She had been a teacher before, and she took pity on  me. She worked at an adult school that taught English to immigrants. Adult education seemed perfect: students who paid attention, who didn't yell at you, who even wanted to learn. Each day my friend mentioned another supervisor she had talked to about me, and each day, I fantasized just a little more about how my last day at Daley would feel.  Would I give the principal two weeks, would I send him an email, or even better, would I just walk out in the middle of a particularly bad afternoon.  All great ideas.  I was still praying by the way.  But I was no longer praying to be a better teacher, I was praying to get out.

The adult ed school called and I scheduled the interview for 4:30 on a Tuesday.  This meant I had to leave Daley right after school to arrive on time. On this day, I had colorful marker stains all over my fingers—I spent the day erasing a marked up whiteboard over and over again without an eraser.  The erasers never last more than a week.  Sometimes I would find a broken one under my desk with bite barks on it.

It took forever to get that dry erase marker off my fingers, and I arrived late to the most important interview of my life. The first of two interviews was just about my resume, and I felt great discussing all the nice volunteer jobs I had before Daley. She asked why I was leaving behind my second graders, and I kept myself from disclosing the real reason, that it was a struggle to show up each day at work because I was starting to hate it. I just told her second graders weren’t motivated to learn, and she smiled, “I know the feeling. I started as a high school teacher, but teaching adults is much more fulfilling.” The interview was going just fine. To help students speak English and find a job seemed like just what I needed. I could still teach, I could make enough money, and I could start sleeping at night, and maybe even enjoy my weekends again. Grandma James would understand, she probably would give me a big hug; she had been telling me to get out for weeks. Well, I had given Daley my best shot, but I was beaten. It was time to walk on.

But by my second interview I realized something was wrong. She told me I had to be bilingual.  I actually spoke Spanish, but I was intermediate at best.  My second interview was conducted completely in Spanish, and it was going decently until she started asking me about the attendance programming system we used at Daley. I didn’t even know the answer in English. Then she switched to English and started explaining what the job was. It wasn’t a teaching job at all; it was registering new students.  I would be on the phone all day, speaking Spanish with people who wanted to learn English.  There would be no English speaking at all.  She also asked if I had a high school diploma or a GED. As an intermediate Spanish speaker with a masters degree, I was both under-qualified and over-qualified. It also paid an hourly wage right around that of Target; I withdrew my name from the list just to avoid the embarrassment of getting rejected by a job that I couldn’t afford to take anyway. It was back to the whiteboard for me.

“I want to quit teaching”

Six weeks were done and my class was not magically ready to be taught; in fact, it seemed like each week they were getting worse. They did start their mornings quietly coloring in a rainbow with addition problems that told them which color to use, but by the end of they day, balled up papers and broken crayons were all that remained.

Sadly, it was better than my first year. The majority of the students did their work, and they did it well, but most afternoons things got out of control. In fact,  each day was getting worse. My birthday was in late September, and my wife planned something especially nice because she knew my class’ behavior was slowly gnawing away at my sanity. She asked me to take off half the day after my actual birthday, keeping the reason as a surprise.  With a two-year old at home, staying out past 10pm was a rarity, and sleeping in was a never. She secretly called my mom to drive up and babysit, and as we walked down the sidewalk to our car, my mom mistakenly yelled out, “Have fun at the concert!” My wife slowly lowered her head, and I could only smile, “So a concert, huh?” “U2.” “U2!” It was our favorite band--"Sunday, Bloody Sunday" is one of the best songs ever, in my humble opinion.

We never did things like this.  We were so cheap that we had a rule we couldn’t spend more than $30 on a gift. But somehow, as we pulled away, smiling and waving at my mom, my eyes went blank, and my forehead creased. “Can I tell you what happened during the day at school?  I know it's my birthday, and I want everything to be happy because, you know, this is an awesome surprise, and I'm really excited about it, but if I just say all the bad things right now then I won't think about them anymore.”  I had no idea how to relieve stress because I had never really been so stressed.  I imagined it was like drinking so much that you get dizzy--the only solution is throwing up.  Now, instead of liquor, I had to unload my thoughts.  Throwing up might be ugly and depressing, but once it's done, it's done.  Or so I thought.

When we arrived at the stadium, I had just finished the list of all the terrible things the kids had done.  It wasn't just what they had done, but all my theories on why they did it, and how I should change my teaching.  "Maybe I should just take his recess, right?  Yeah, but I did that to him last week, and he flipped out and threw the chair across the room..."

When the concert started, I repeatedly and secretly glanced at my watch.  I had asked for a day off like she had asked, but I asked for the second half of the day off instead of the first half because the afternoons were that bad.  This also meant that I wouldn't stay up late because I had to wake up early to go to school, exactly why she had asked me to take the half day off in the first place.  Any rational teacher would have taken off the whole day, but for some reason, I felt bad even taking half.

Bono was screaming Sunday Bloody Sunday, and I screamed right along with him, but my mind kept on: “What are we going to do tomorrow? I should have called Ryden’s mom, he did get in a fight… Adam should have lost his recess… He’ll probably do the same thing tomorrow… I don’t want to go in tomorrow… I feel sick.” It should have been an incredible concert, the best concert of my life: the crowd was singing along, pounding their fists in the air, and I was with my best friend. But as I continually chanted, "have fun, smile, have fun, smile," I couldn’t. For every "woooohooo!", there was a glance at my watch and a muffled yawn, and I thought, “It’s getting late. Would it be horrible to leave before the encore?” She turned to me, "you look tired... we can go home if you want."
     "No way!  Are you kidding!  This is the greatest concert ever!  What an incredible birthday!  I'll remember this forever."  At least, that's what I should have said.  Instead, I just said, "Yeah.  Okay."

The next day I typed, “I want to quit teaching” in Google just to see what would come up, and I smiled--there were plenty of results. There was a pleasure in reading about all the teachers who hated their jobs. I wasn’t surprised by all the first year teachers who hated it, but it was the others that made me feel like I had company. I read about a fourteen-year veteran who regretted he didn’t get quit earlier. I read about a teacher who had already quit and was so happy even though he was barely getting by on unemployment checks. Then I found a website designed for frustrated teachers that listed all the reasons why I should stick with it.  At the bottom of the list it said if you really didn’t like the kids, you should get out. Come to think of it, I thought, there aren’t many kids I like. It seemed the answer was clear. It was finally time. Time to get out.

My first year I always kept the hope that things could only get better; there was still a good chance I would pull through, turn the class around, and become a good teacher in the process. I imagined stations of collaborative groups, I imagined facilitating conversations in book groups, I imagined students joyfully filling egg cartons with beads. I knew it wouldn’t come easy, but I assumed it was only a matter of hard work and time. So I wasn’t teacher of the year after my disastrous first year, maybe it would take five years. But I would get there, just had to keep on trying.

Something changed my second year. Just trying hard wasn’t working, it seemed like I was making it worse and the same questions came back—why did I come here, what was I thinking?