September 12

Here is my first journal entry of the year.

“Things that worked: It's hard to think of things that worked because everything was all over the place... let's see, the morning meeting, spelling test, writer's workshop, math, Read Aloud, none of it worked... I really can't think of a thing... we cleaned up okay (because the security guard made them clean up). Oh, I know, they liked my story of when Abby (my daughter) almost set the apartment on fire. Oh, and the behavior management system was all over the place...”

Grad school had told me engaged kids couldn’t act up. I told a fantastic story of how my daughter put a towel in the broiler part of the oven without my wife and I knowing, and when I turned on the oven for pizza, the whole oven lit up. It was a story that made almost every student silent, and I tragically figured that if only I could make every lesson as fantastic as a real life apartment fire, then they would behave. I followed my journal with a bit on what didn’t work.

“Things that did not work: morning meeting- students were unable to sit quietly at the circle; writer's workshop- students never started writing; incentives- unclear as to how they earn tickets; math- they were only half attentive because they thought they could go to a dance assembly: holding things above their heads, and then not giving it to them only makes them angry...”

It had only been a few weeks of school, and it was apparent that I had the worst class. It turned out half my students had a 1st grade teacher that quit in October, and the other half had a teacher that was on her last year of teaching before retirement. I guess she had a bunch of vacation days saved over the years, and she used them for most of the second half of the school year. The PE teacher told me it was common for him to sit in on the first graders because it was rare for subs to show up. Last year's first graders were known to spend most of the day running the halls, and they even considered themselves a gang, the "baby 12."

This Friday there was a dance assembly scheduled for the afternoon, and the assistant principal, Ms. Coan, told me I should only bring my class if I thought they deserved it. I told the kids if they behaved the whole day they could go to the assembly. They didn’t seem to care, well not until it was 30 minutes before the assembly. It seemed like every 3 minutes I reminded them, “You have to work quietly if you want to go… not everyone will be going you know.” I figured they had done alright, relative to the standard chaos, so I lined them up; I needed the break anyway. Ms. Coan stopped by my room right as I was lining them up and said, “Mr. Slaughter, I think it is best if you don’t bring your class.” So after I held the carrot above the kids' heads all day, Ms. Coan snatched it away. That afternoon I learned a few lessons about behavioral psychology. In my journal, I continued searching for answers:

“What can be changed: when they come back from lunch they need a quiet time activity on their desk so we can get bathroom breaks out of the way; they need labels on their lockers; labels on their tables; clean tables; permanent schedules; more hopes and dreams; a better system for students in time out (they shouldn’t throw things at each other while in time out); more engaging activities; I need spots where I put things; the desk needs to be HANDS OFF. Parents need to be called, GET NUMBERS FOR ALL THE PARENTS, fill out SST/counseling forms for Sean, Wayne, Randy, Lauren, Marlin, and Noah.”

I had never failed anything in my life. In my first year of college when most of the students in my Chemistry class received Cs, or worse, on the first exam I overheard them say they were just not cut out for it. Before the exam, I was studying four hours a night, and a C on the exam only meant one thing: I needed to study more. I made it a goal to stay in the library longer than anybody in my class, and sometimes it meant I had the pleasure of being the first in the cafeteria the next morning for fresh, scrambled eggs and steaming hot apple crisps. I got an A- on the next exam. I didn't care if I wasn't the smartest; I knew I could outwork anybody.

At Daley, I came in to school at 7am every morning, an hour early, and if the custodian had opened the school any earlier, I would have made it earlier. There was no way a class of seven year olds were going to beat me; I just had to outwork them.

Preparing for Day 1

Before school started, the whole staff met together in the library, seated in a large circle, I wondered if we would break out in song. Most of last year’s teachers had been fired; the school had been failing for too many years and heads had to roll. At the summer meeting I saw the new staff that included a few of the previous teachers, but also a new group—young, white women. Franklin read us an essay he had written about the various homicides that happened over the summer, he said this was the moment when our school and our neighborhood would turn around.  Our school, our neighborhood. Right.

He brought out a detached car seat that had an extra seat belt attached on the opposite side; he had found it in one of the storage closets, and it looked like straight jacket. If someone had made this, then someone must have used it. No wonder they had in the storage closet, the screams must have been loud. It was clear the kids had years of baggage coming from a homicidal neighborhood and a criminal staff. A young teacher asked me why I had come to Daley. I said, “Well, I guess I’m a little crazy.” She smiled, “I think we are all a little crazy.”

I finally walked into my very own classroom—there were scrapes, scars, and graffiti everywhere. Along with the f-words scribbled on the chairs and the table veneers peeling off, most of the whiteboard was marked up. The whiteboard took up most of the front wall, and knowing of all things, the whiteboard needed to sparkle, I started there.  Everything had to be shining when the students came in for the first day.  I was the new teacher, and students needed to know that everything had changed.  A clean slate.

 I bet most of my predecessors before me had the same thoughts. They scrubbed and scrubbed with thoughts of a new year swirling in their mind. I'm sure they never imagined themselves losing their grip of sanity, screaming at children who no longer care. I thought I was different—where they failed, I would succeed. I would scrub harder, prepare better, and do whatever it took.  The cleaning and rearranging took much longer than I had anticipated. I spent more time cleaning, I ran out of time to decorate.  While other teachers where hanging up pictures, I was scrubbing at gum.  By the end of the week, things looked slightly better and barren.  No one except me really noticed much of an improvement.  No matter how hard I scrubbed the white board, it never shined; most of the old marks still remained.

I spent most of grad school worrying about my first day. Every day I studied the sacred behavior management handbook that told me it was wrong to be too authoritarian and right to create a safe environment where kids could solve their own problems.  Instead of telling kids they needed to respect me, I needed to teach them to respect me. They would follow rules because it was right, not because they might lose their recess if they broke them. I read that students who were engaged in exciting activities would never act up.   Their first activity would be writing their names and coloring their name tags. It was simple and easy, everybody could do it, everybody likes coloring; it couldn't fail.