End of the year… my last journal entry

“I just got my final observation by Ms. Coen, and Grandma James wasn’t there so that made it a little interesting. It starts with Ryden snickering because I went to the trouble of putting real student names in the word problems. Each time I read the word problem out loud, he’d laugh when I came to someone’s name. I hurried up the lesson knowing that my score would be docked but I refused to let Ryden get another student upset, and then sabotage the whole thing. I handed out the work. I rushed out with Ryden in hand, passed him to principal Franklin, who happened to be walking the hallway, he took him to CHOICE and then I’m was back on my game. They got started quietly because I think they knew it was a big deal with Ms. Coen in the room. Then, I started shuffling them into stations. I rarely did math stations, but I knew Coen loved them. While everyone was doing their work, I kept on glancing at the clock, hoping that nothing catastrophic was going to happen. Fifteen minutes left, ten minutes left, whew it’s been forty-five minutes! Why is she still here!? That’s how all my observations go. I just hold my breath… expecting the worst. Fortunately, nothing tragic happened and Coen was all smiles, “I’m so proud of you Mr. Slaughter. You have really turned it around. They are all on task! And doing multiplication! They are doing problems the third graders can’t handle. Great work!” Ms. Coen was the first one to interview me for Daley, and after two hellacious years, finally, she was smiling.”

Two years of almost complete devastation and just as I was walking down the halls through the front double doors, once again, I could hear the soft whisper, “See, you are special. It took you two years, but now you’ve got it. You can’t leave now!” But I had done the job, and now I had to walk away and leave it be. And I did.

Field Trip

In the beginning of the year, the 1st and 2nd grade team wanted to go on one field trip per month. Our first field trip of the year came in May. We were scheduled to see the play, Knufflebunny: A Cautionary Tale, and despite our progress, I still feared my kids would be a spectacle. I imagined them in and out of their seats, yelling obnoxious things to the actors, and then security would ask us to leave. That actually happened last year. I had taken my kids to see the monuments in downtown, and there was an incident at the World War II Monument. It was a really hot day, and I hadn’t brought any water. We walked from the Washington Monument to the World War II monument because I thought there might be a water fountain there; there wasn’t. They took off their shoes and put their bare feet in the water to cool off, and then Randy pushed one of my girls in the water. I knew they weren’t supposed to be in the water anyway, but it took a park ranger to yell at them, “Hey kids, get out of the water, have some respect for the monument!”

So this time I had been talking to my kids about the field trip for a month. I kept on telling them I was only inviting the kids that deserved it, and this time I meant it. I only took 15 kids, and I left 6 kids behind. My class was on the bus with Price’s 2nd grade, and I finally got to hear her in action as a teacher. She was fierce, “If you want to go back to school, keep talking! Ms. T will walk you back. If you think I’m playing, try me.” Ms. T was the student teacher, and she didn’t have to walk anybody back, thankfully. Then Price sat next to one of her more difficult kids and fed him grapes each minute that he behaved. She smiled, “He loves grapes, only way he’ll behave.” It appeared my kids weren’t the crazy ones everyone looked at all of a sudden; I mean it was the one and only field trip of the year so they were just happy to have been invited.

When the bus pulled into the front of the Kennedy Center, each teacher lined up their class and did the headcounts. There were several buses from different schools, and it was obvious we were all from the same school because everyone was black, except for the teachers. We walked up the spiraling steps to our seats in the balcony, and I moved my eyes up and down the rows. I started from one kid and worked myself down, “Kevin, feet off the chair, Evan, stop the rocking.” After only a few reprimands the class had settled, and they were seated chatting quietly, waiting patiently for the show. Just as my class settled, I looked at the other teachers in the building. Two of them were texting, not noticing the two boys out of their seats, yelling across to each other. Two of them were talking to one another, letting their teacher assistants do the dirty work, and there was another teacher seated right behind me, hopelessly trying to quiet down her kids. It looked like a 2nd grade class, and it happened that all the kids were white. They were rocking in their chairs, feet up on our rows’ chairs, and obviously not listening to their teacher, but after a few tries, she gave up and turned to her cell phone. When the play started, my kids were silent during the quiet parts of the play, they laughed during the funny parts, and they sang when the actors sung; it was a completely normal class on a completely normal field trip. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel great.

The last two months flew. All of a sudden, it was June. I could not stop saying it, letting it roll of the tongue, savoring it, like an expensive wine, June.

Walking Out

When spring came, I had my third of four observations, and this one was done by the principal, Franklin. It was unannounced, and I was doing a writing lesson at the time. As Grandma James circulated and handed out pencils, I sat down at the teacher table and had conferences with kids, one by one. I thought it went really well; I received 3.28 out of 4 points, which was a huge improvement from my twos in the beginning of the year. I had gone from Needs Improvement to Meets Expectations. When I went to meet with Franklin about it, I had some news to tell him. I talked it over with my wife, and we both agreed it was time to tell him I wasn’t returning to Daley. I was excited to do it because after such a horrible year, I could finally leave on a high note, walking out on my own terms.

I anticipated that Franklin would be generally kind, and express his regrets that I was leaving. We had some ups and downs, but I gave him everything I had those two years. You know, something like, “Wow, just as you are really turning the class around. That’s too bad.” At the very least, he could just fake it, “sorry to see you go.” But instead, when I told him the news, he said, “Yeah, I think that is a good move.” He asked me if it was alright to tell other teachers that I was leaving. “Sure, but why?”
“Ms. Smith has told me she won’t come back next year unless she gets a full-time teaching position, and she is really interested in partnering with Amber.”
Amber was Ms. Price. Really, I thought.

After our meeting was over, the wheels in my head started turning. Since my first year, Ms. Price was always great friends with Ms. Smith; they carpooled together, and they almost always spent their lunches together. I also knew that Ms. Price was friends with Franklin; Franklin had recruited her from another school, and I knew they jogged together on the weekends. The news that Ms. Smith wanted my job and had told Franklin tied these three together in an ugly way.

So I tried to piece the puzzle together. When things were really bad in September, Price kept her distance and never reached out to me; she never even attempted to plan with me even though we were expected to plan together. There were a few times I walked over to her classroom so we could plan the next unit together, but the result was usually the same, “I’ve already planned out that unit; if you want, I can make you a copy of the plans?” Even in the worst of times, when I must have looked on the verge of a breakdown, she never even asked me how I was doing. When I thought about Franklin, I remembered he started the year as his normal cheery and supportive self, telling me that I was doing great with the new set of kids. But when things went south, he was ugly towards me even when I reached out to him for any sort of help. So why weren’t they supportive of me? Why did they not seem to care if I succeeded?

I knew Price and Smith were always friends, even last year, and it made sense they wanted to be partner teachers. Last year, Price was a fourth grade teacher, and Smith was a first year special ed teacher. I had no reason to know she really wanted to be a classroom teacher. So last year when my partner teacher left and there was an opening in second grade, Price took it, and it meant there was no opening for Smith so she stayed in special ed. But when things got chaotic in my classroom, on one of their morning drives to school, Price and Smith must have seen the opportunity at hand. If my class drove me out of the school, which seemed likely, then Smith could take the vacancy, and they could work together as a teaching pair. Maybe even Price had mentioned the idea to Franklin during one of their weekend jogs. So through the fall, it was must have been a waiting game, Price would just keep her distance, and Franklin had decided I wasn’t the teacher he wanted anymore. But I kept on, and by spring, it didn’t look so good for them. So then Smith met with Franklin directly and told him she was going to another school, unless she got a classroom, and “oh by the way, I would prefer to be with Amber.” Franklin had no reason to fire me; I was doing better, my class was doing better, and maybe I was just crazy enough to stay. But when I informed him that I was packing my bags, he couldn’t even pretend that this was bad news. His mind went straight to Ms. Smith.

Now, maybe this was too much of a conspiracy theory. Price had a really rough classroom, and she had enough problems of her own, so I shouldn’t have blamed her because she didn’t find the time to reach out to me when her class was already so demanding. Plus, I didn’t think elementary school teachers could be that mean and secretive, maybe Price just had a stand-offish personality, and maybe she didn’t know what to do when she saw me drowning. I mentioned the meeting to Ms. Johnson, the straight talking first grade teacher, who was surprised I didn’t know, “They’ve always wanted to teach together, they’re butt-buddies.” After telling Johnson, I knew it wouldn’t be long before the whole hallway of teachers heard that I just found out what everyone else already knew.

The next morning in cafeteria duty, Ms. Smith saw me and told me she wanted to talk, no doubt Ms. Johnson informed the duo what I had heard from Franklin. “I just want you to know that I had no intentions of taking your job. I can’t believe Steve told you that I wanted your job. That was so unprofessional.” Unprofessional, but it was still true. That afternoon we had a staff meeting, and Price sat right next to me, almost leaning on me. The whole year Price would never even sit at my table during professional development, a clear sign to every other teacher that she had nothing to do with me. Today she was uncomfortably close, and as I pretended to listen to the speaker while finalizing some cut-outs, she leaned over and scribbled something on my notepad; it was a smiley face. Huh? After a full year of ignoring me, you break the ice, with a smiley face. It seemed like I was in seventh grade again. Then, I knew it wasn’t a conspiracy theory at all. She didn’t have to ignore me anymore because it was all an act. An act to get me out, and well, I guess it worked.

Walking without the crutch

By the end of February, Grandma told me her son was really sick, and she was going to leave for a few weeks to take care of him. I was by myself again, just like the fall when everything fell apart. But this was going to be good for me; I was leaning too heavily on her anyway. I relied upon her to do all things that could mess up a well-planned lesson, like handing out pencils, giving out bathroom passes, and even chatting it up with a student when something seemed wrong. When she left, I had to do everything she was doing and teach, and it left me exhausted, but I was also impressed that I could even do it by myself. She did come back after a month, but it was with bad news. Her son had passed. I felt it was her right to be done with volunteering in my class, but she cared too much about me and those kids to leave; she was there to stay. “You got to keep on living, Mr. Slaughter.” Amen to that.

When the class was behaving better in March, she told me about the conversations she had in the teacher’s lounge; I never knew what went on in the teacher’s lounge because I always stayed out. “Mr. Slaughter, I keep on telling everybody how great the class is doing, but nobody believes me. Then, when they do believe me, they don’t give you any credit. They think I’m the one who deserves all credit.” I’d smile slightly, “It doesn’t matter what they think, remember?”

Even though I tried hard not to think about it, it was strange that no one mentioned the turn around that happened in my class. Well, there was one person, the nurse, “Mr. Slaughter, I just have to tell you; your class has really turned around, and I know you have been working hard to get them back on track. You are doing great.” If the nurse noticed it, then you would have to guess that at least the teachers in my hall noticed it, but nothing was said, at least not to me. It all became clear when I spoke again with Principal Franklin.

Afternoons

Afternoons were always rough, and usually, I over-planned them, taking the kids endlessly from one failed activity to another. So in February I tried something different and I spent all of my planning time on one really engaging activity, making Martin Luther King, Jr. books. The book was about 10 pages long, and I copied enough for all the kids. I even individually cut them and stapled them to make booklets. The activity seemed beautiful because of its simplicity. At 2:00, with approximately an hour until dismissal, I would sit the kids down and read the book aloud. Then, because the book was a reading level just under their grade level, I could have them take turns reading it aloud. Then, the best part, the books were in black and white, and after reading, they could color it! With over 10 pages, the coloring would take the whole afternoon, and it would run me right through until dismissal, easy.

So as the afternoon showed its first signs of deterioration, I brought out the book activity just a little earlier than planned, more like 1:45 instead of 2. No big deal because it was such a long activity anyway. I sat down all the kids, started to read the book, and they seemed happy to follow along with their own books. I didn’t have any class collections of books, so it was a big deal. Now, as I was reading, I noticed they were getting fidgety on the carpet, and I decided the story was a little long anyways so I stopped it short, “Let’s leave the ending for a surprise, now, you get to read the story; let’s all turn back to page 1…” Now some kids were getting really fidgety; they didn’t want to read anything, especially aloud, and Adam and Ryden started rolling up their books to use as bats, so I shifted gears again. I was great at shifting gears, just not driving, “Well, I think we have read enough on the carpet, guess what!? Now we get to go back to our seats and color them!” It was now 2:05, and I was praying that the coloring would last, but I forgot that my most difficult kids sprint through everything, especially coloring, and after ten minutes, Adam yelled, “I’m done, Mr. Slaughter!” Ryden chimed in, “Me too!” That meant there was a full forty minutes until dismissal. There were no worksheets to complete, no games set up, and no stations planned out. I told them they could spend the time reading their books or writing in their journals; no surprise that running around the classroom was much more fun than any of that. It was too late to escape it; I could only hold my hat for the tornado, but instead of thinking, “those darn kids,” I thought, “I won’t make that mistake again. They’ll never have a spare moment again.”

Even now, afternoons were still rough, but something had changed. Suddenly it didn’t matter if it was the kids’ fault or the parents’ fault, Price’s fault, or the principal’s fault; I was the damn teacher. I was the only one who could do anything about it. So after one particularly bad Monday afternoon, on Tuesday I kept the whole class in for recess, by myself; 25 versus 1, the odds weren’t good. Taking away recess was one of the classic teacher punishments that I could never do right. At first, I tried walking the whole class to recess and then escorting the trouble makers back to my room. As I dismissed all the good kids, the bad kids of the day just eyed the door. One would break for it, and as I would go for his arm, then the rest would break free - a classic jail break. Other times, I put the bad kids in the back of the line (always a bad idea), then after letting the good ones out to recess, I moved myself in front of the door to block anyone trying to make a break for it until I felt like they had served their time. But this was my break time too, and I started worrying more about the copies that I needed to make rather than the punishment I needed to dole out. There were other times when I was really upset with a certain student, and knowing he or she was incapable of walking with me back to class, I would physically drag him or her back; I just kept my head down, avoiding the stares from my fellow teachers and administrators. When Grandma James joined my class, my problem was solved: she could take the good kids to recess, and I could just stay in the room with the bad kids while getting my work done. But then I discovered that a group of bad kids could be tear apart a room really quickly. Then I finally conceded to staying back with just one kid, but even then there were times I had to sit at the door as the kid would repeatedly ram his shoulder up against me to break through. Taking recess was taking too much effort, and when it seemed like it wasn’t working I avoided it at all costs.

However Tuesday was a new day; I would hold the whole class in for recess. It could be the end of me. I just kept them busy with work, allowing each lesson to run a little long, and I didn’t mention a word about recess. Every few moments, I nervously glanced at the clock waiting for one of my smarter students to yell out, “Hey, aren’t we supposed to be outside?!” But nothing happened, and when I finally walked them down to the playground with only three minutes left of recess, I very calmly announced, “You only have three minutes left of recess because you were so horrible yesterday afternoon.” They seemed confused; I had never done this, and they must have thought I was lying. But the whole class was upset when I picked them up after lunch. They seemed ready to get their revenge by making my life hell for the afternoon, but then in my snootiest teacher voice I told them, “Well, you all lost your recess because Monday afternoon was so bad. Let’s see if you all need to lose another recess.” And they didn’t, at least not for that afternoon.

Making strides (ish)

Every day, I had demanded they work silently when I handed out their work. There were teachers who told me it was hard for 2nd graders to be completely silent while working. Even Grandma James questioned why I cared so much about silence, but I felt any chatter could only lead to a major breakdown, so I spent my most of my time hopelessly hushing students. I decided to try something new. There were times when I really needed silence, like silent reading, and then there were other times when I decided it was okay to chatter a little, like writing. It made sense that someone might see their neighbor’s drawing and ask, “What are you drawing?” On the other hand, I took silent reading time very seriously. I put chairs in each of the corners of the room, and anyone that even seemed like they might talk, I sent to a chair…and then there were my more difficult kids. I knew Ryden wouldn’t move to a corner chair at his own will, so when I had to, I moved anyone that he talked to. It usually meant Ryden would get a full table to himself, but he was left with no one else to bother. For Laila, I knew she wanted to seem the best, so I told her to read five books silently, and then she’d get to sit on the carpet with her books. And for Adam, when everyone else was silently reading, he would just fall right in line and silently read with the rest of them. I started by telling them how much time they had to read silently; when I heard chatter, I stopped the clock, waited until they were silent, then I started the time again, and we didn’t stop until we hit the goal for the day. I even placed silent reading twenty minutes before recess so that any time that they wasted meant less time outside.

There were positive changes afoot, but things were still ugly. A new girl, Zoey, had come to the class, and she figured if she wanted to be cool then she had to be friends with Laila, who was still a powerful leader of the dark side. As the class was dismissing, Laila told Zoey to hit Abigail, as some sort of a rite of passage. Abigail was the biggest girl in the classroom, and Laila wanted to know if Abigail liked to throw down without incurring any of the risk herself. So Zoey punched Abigail in the arm for no reason, and Abigail turned to Zoey with a look of shock and started crying. Zoey had done exactly what Laila wanted, and as they walked out together, Zoey leaned up against Laila’s shoulder and started to laugh just as a friend might, but by the time they were down the stairs, Laila was done with Zoey. She picked up some snow and stuffed it onto Zoey’s face, and now it was Zoey crying. To some it may have seemed like justice for Zoey, but all I saw was two girls crying, and Laila laughing, running away from her teacher, down the sidewalk and into her neighborhood.

Towards the end of the year, Laila was getting worse. Her bullying Anna was becoming a daily occurrence and even though I wrote everything up and sent it to the office, no one seemed to care. She was just as bad in the CHOICE room (a.k.a. in school suspension); she screamed and threw books all over the room. Principal Franklin made a decision that she could no longer go to CHOICE because she was such problem there, so from then on she was sent straight to the office whenever she was out of hand. That wasn’t working either. Whenever I sent her I imagined her sitting on the nice chairs, waiting for an administrator to smile and say, “Okay, it says here that you were trying to stab Anna with a pencil. Why did you do that?”
“She made me mad.”
“What should you do the next time you are mad?”
“Tell a teacher.”
“Right, do you think you should apologize to Anna?”
“Yes.”
“You think you are ready to go back and apologize?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now, I don’t want to see you again, ok?”
“Yes, ma’am.”

When she came back, she walked right at Anna with her fist instead of a pencil. By the middle of March during one of my conversations with Anna’s mom, she said she was tempted to tell Anna to just beat up Laila because nothing else was stopping the bullying. I was at the point that I almost agreed with her. I had talked with the principal, assistant principal, social worker, discipline administrator, and most of the teachers in my hall, but this time I talked with the school’s police officer about my frustration with Laila, and she said she was going to have a talk with Laila’s mom. I left messages with mom at least three times per week, but she always acted like she didn’t know what to do. It turned out that the police officer had already driven Laila home multiple times, and whenever she dropped her off at the door, mom never allowed the officer to come in. She told me it was a classic sign there was something bad going on at home. So she told mom she could either make an appointment at Children’s Hospital for Laila, or she would call social services. There was an appointment the next day. After the appointment, I was told to call a counselor if there were any more problems with Laila, and it wasn’t long before Laila threatened Anna again. I called, and the counselor came to pick Laila up from school. She was at a psychiatric hospital for the next two weeks.

After she returned, I got to speak with Laila’s mom about her visit. She told me she wasn’t able to visit Laila, but she did talk to her on the phone. Mom said she was doing well, but she was still the same old Laila, even in the hospital.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she told me that she hadn’t fought with anyone.”
“Okay, that’s good.”
“Yeah, then she said she only locked a girl in a closet.”
“Okay…”
“Yeah she said that the girl had slapped her so instead of hitting her, she locked her in the closet for the afternoon, I mean, at least she didn’t hit her back.”

When Laila came back, she was medicated, and she was well-behaved for the first day. The next day, she threatened to slap Anna, and the psychiatrist eventually doubled her prescription. It was clear that mom didn’t want to give her daughter medication, so she decided not to refill the prescription when it ran out.

So, why the attitude change?

I had already given up on being the superstar teacher I planned to be. That happened in the fall, when the class started getting worse, and I decided the best thing to do was quit. Now I had been job searching for two months, and my hope of escape was causing more anxiety instead of alleviating it. I had to accept that I wasn’t escaping; I had to accept that a new teaching method would not make my class any better; I had to accept where I was and what I had to do. I was in that classroom until June, and there was nothing to get me out of it. I finally stopped trying to avoid the pain, and I decided to live with it. I accepted that I was stressed and that it might never get any better. To make it to June I could either be a zombie or a teacher. As a zombie, I could give up completely, still coming in every day, but I would bring in movies, let the kids do what they wanted, and take them outside when it got to be too much. I could show up late, leave early, “forget” about cafeteria and recess duty, and I could stop planning completely. Or I could teach. But I had been trying to teach for a year and a half now, so why keep trying when I knew there was no point?

The importance was in the “why.” In October, I thought I had to take back the class to make my life easier. If I could get the kids under control, then I wouldn’t be so stressed, and life would get better. But now I knew that my attempts weren’t helping anything; my life was only getting more difficult. I also expected a few pick-me-ups along the way like “Wow, you are really trying hard, keep up the battle and they’ll turn around soon.” But now, despite my efforts, it seemed like most staff had stopped talking to me completely. There was a huge problem with relying on future improvement and positive reinforcement as motivation for teaching; it was contingent upon victory, and when victory didn’t come, then the only thing left was defeat. I was already consumed by failure, so much so that I thought the only solution was to escape it by any means. My failed classroom directly made me a failed teacher, which directly made me a failed person, or so I thought. I needed to separate my class’s performance from my worth as a person in order to see things a little more clearly.

To teach right, I had to stop caring about what others thought about me. When an administrator walked in the class when everyone was doing their work, I expected them say something like, “I’m glad to see them so focused on their work.” But when I got nothing, I turned to Ms. James, “Why don’t they say anything?” She responded, “It doesn’t matter what other people think when you know what you’re doing is right.” I could only teach, and teaching was the right thing to do no matter how others had judged me. I knew that failure was a reality, but I had let failure be defined by others. If I taught, then I could neither be a failure nor a success, just a teacher, and there was nothing wrong in that. I also knew that if I became the zombie and gave up on the kids, then I would walk away in June - maybe with a broken will, but I would still walk. For the kids, a failed teacher meant a lost year, maybe the beginning of many lost years, and maybe the lost chance to make it out of Candler Park. They deserved a teacher, not a zombie. I decided to just give up on the escape, not the class. It was time to do the job, and let people say what they wanted to say.

Baby Time

My wife finally had my daughter 9 days late, early Saturday morning. I had taken that Friday off again, but this time even my wife wanted me to take it off. We spent all of Friday walking from one store to the next, preparing for the impending blizzard. First we walked to the local movie shop just in case we got snowed in, and then that evening we walked a mile and a half to Wendy’s. As we were sitting there watching the local news, something was happening. Her contractions hadn’t stopped. We knew the plan was to stay at home as long as possible before going to the birth center, so we put in the movie but neither one of us was really watching it, “Are they still consistent?” “Yep.” I smiled, “I guess we might be having this baby tonight.” “Yep.” It had been snowing for over an hour, and there were already two inches on the roads. So we called the midwife, and she told us to hurry over to the birth center before it starting getting ugly. Our friend had an SUV, and she drove us through the then six inches of snow. The ride normally took thirty minutes, but in these conditions, it took an hour. My wife wasn’t talking anymore. She had brought a pillow, and she spent the whole ride with her head down, breathing heavily. When we got there, I wanted to get the hot tub ready because she was in major pain, but the midwife said there was no use, our daughter was coming. Twenty minutes later, Neve was born. Both mom and daughter were beautiful, and I was grateful that I was a part of it. My wife was a warrior, and I got to be the dad and husband that I wanted to be. While she lay on the bed exhausted, I got to put Neve in her very first outfit. It was hard pulling her tiny little arms and legs through the holes, and of course my wife just had to pick something with tons of buttons. But I did it. And I picked her up and sang “Ba Ba Black Sheep” until she calmed down.

We were hit with 26 inches of snow, and our new family made it back to the house that same morning, just before the brunt of the storm hit. Winter Break was everything I needed it to be. I also had the added comfort that I would take my paternity leave the first week of January.

I came into work the first day back from break just to set everything up for the rest of my paternity week. I still needed to make some copies and finalize my notes for the sub. I figured I could handle just one day with the kids to ensure I wouldn’t get any phone calls from the school about how all the subs had walked out on my class. To my surprise, Franklin had already called in my sub. I asked him if that meant I could leave early to be with my wife, and he said it would be fine. It was her first time with both kids alone, and I was more than willing to leave work and spend the remaining part of the day with her. As I quickly ran over everything with the sub, the class saw that I wasn’t paying attention, and they started getting rowdy. I yelled: “If you hear me, clap once!” Nothing. “If you hear me clap twice!” Only a few kids clapped. “If you hear me, clap three times!” No one clapped. After trying several things to get their attention, I gave up and told them I would be back the following week. As I walked out the door, I heard Mr. Preddy yelling, “If you hear me clap once! Why aren’t you clapping?! You are supposed to clap!”

Back at home, my wife was giddy that I was coming home early. Already the kids were taking over her life. She happened to read that Montgomery County was hiring teachers, and I anxiously waited for her to leave the computer so I could see what she was reading. Montgomery County was a much better school district than DC, and any school there would better than Daley. It occurred to me this paternity leave was perfect for job searching. I could call up one of the hiring schools today, and then go out and interview tomorrow, maybe have a second interview by Friday. I could be hired within a week or two. But hadn’t I just given up on escape? I applied for the position anyway, and I tried as hard as I could to forget about it. But I couldn’t. I called the HR office the next day to see my status, and it turned out the job openings were for the following year. That didn’t help me at all.

Over break, I met up with my teaching buddy, Matt. He had spent the previous year with a bad school, and now he was enjoying life at a new school as a math and science coach. I mentioned to him how anxious I was; he told me that he had the same issues the previous year, and I needed to get out. I already knew that, but he actually meant that I needed to get out after I made it through June; he didn’t know I was trying to get out before the upcoming Monday. He told me I could approach the next 5 months like a marathon; slow and steady wins the race. I counted the remaining days left in the school year, 97 days, divided it by 26.2 and found that every 4 days could be equal to one mile in a marathon. It was the first time I had ever allowed myself to think about June, and I was starting to think about how to get there. Up until this point, I never thought about June because I was planning on quitting before then. Now that I had given up on the struggle, I was coming to terms with reality. I just might make it, one step at a time. I even signed up for a marathon in Vermont on May 30th just to have a symbolic finish to my two years of hell. When Sunday night came, I knew I had 97 days left. I guessed that the hardest step of a marathon was the first, so I closed my eyes and took it.

When I walked in the building on Monday morning, each teacher I walked by welcomed me back, but there was only one thing I wanted to know. “Did he make it?” He did. Not only did Mr. Preddy show up every day, but there was no screaming heard in the halls, no fights in the line, and nothing was missing from my desk. Naturally, I had mixed feelings: it was a good for the kids, it was a good week for Mr. Preddy, but he exposed me. If they could be good for him, then I was the reason for their behavior. It wasn’t long ago that I would have beaten myself down in this situation, “You see, you are a failure. You need to get out now!” But I had a marathon to run and a new thought came instead, “So they CAN be good”

Campbell

One of my more difficult kids was a boy named Campbell. In the beginning of the year, he was one of my favorites. He always came in with the same untucked uniform shirt with patches of dirt all over it. His old shoelaces were frequently untied, and it became clear to me that he had no idea how to tie them. But, he usually had a smile on his face, and he was a good reader. He had “my little project” written all over him. He always brought in action figures to play with after school. He didn’t have a backpack so he had to fit them in his pockets. Their heads usually peaked out of his pockets when he sat down, which was just too tempting. Whenever I caught him hopping them across his desk, he just handed them to me, right away, with an embarrassed smile on his face. One day, I forgot to return them to him, and when I found him in aftercare, he yelled out, “Mr. Slaughter!! You have my toy! I knew you wouldn’t forget. You are the best!” He wrapped his arms around me, and the aftercare teacher told me how much he talked about “the greatest teacher ever, Mr. Slaughter.”

By now, things had changed dramatically. Campbell still didn’t have any friends, and he was picked on everyday. After he learned that there wasn’t much I could do to protect him, he defended himself and turned bad. He was tiny, but he scrapped when he needed to, and he spent too much of his class time crawling on the floor, hopelessly trying to entertain his classmates and aggravating me. I spent the first two months telling his mom how great he was, and now I was telling her just the opposite. By December, he was out of the class and running the halls. He had found a few 3rd graders that always ran the halls; none other than my friends from my first year, Sean and Colin. And he joined them, like a stray cat joining a pack. Today, he ran out in the halls only to return a few minutes later to peek in through a crack in the door. I welcomed him back to class with a wave and a faked smile because I knew that there was little chance of him getting to work. He sensed my hesitancy, and he just scattered down the halls again, looking for another adventure or even another teacher, someone to give him the attention he deserved.

Baby Watch

Tuesday

I had already figured it would be best for me if my new daughter was born either Thursday or Friday so paternity leave would combine with Winter Break, but just as I started to walk down the halls to pick up the kids, I changed my plans; I wanted to get that phone call today. It no longer mattered how many days I would get off, I just needed out now. But then, when I saw them line up so nicely in the cafeteria, I realized my kids were trying. When they started on their morning work, I noticed Gabe sitting up straight and silently raising his hand for a pencil. Usually, Gabe spent the morning swimming on the floor, and then I’d bend down to pick him up, ask him why he was on the floor, and he’d smile and say, “I don’t have a pencil.” I did meet with Gabe’s mom on Monday and told her that I was afraid he had ADHD, but I used teacher-speak, “Gabe has extreme difficulty focusing on his work for more than a few minutes. I’m afraid that his lack of focus is poorly affecting his progress, and I’m not sure if he’ll be prepared for the 3rd grade.” It would have been clearer to say, “Your son is driving me nuts, please medicate him.” She was defensive like she had heard it all before and she told me how smart he was, and how he was reading chapter books at home. He struggled with Dr. Seuss; there was no way he was reading at home. I guess mom told him to straighten up, and it looked like he was at least trying. Unfortunately, the peaceful morning came to a regrettable finish. Ryden was out of control again in the afternoon. He was swinging his jacket in Amelia’s face because he thought she had taken one of his cut outs, but it was really lying there just behind his seat. After I repeatedly asked him to hand me the jacket, and I stared into his eyes with big teacher scissors in hand, “Do you want me to cut your jacket!?” Luckily, he gave it to me.

That night my wife was starting to have contractions, and I was getting hopeful that Wednesday might be my last day.

Wednesday

The contractions amounted to nothing. That afternoon, Asia’s mom came in early to pick up her daughter. I always got really nervous when parents came in to pick up their kids and saw the chaos first hand. My first year, Camryn’s dad always came in early to pick his daughter up, and he just stared in the front window with a clear frown on his face. There would usually be at least one fight happening at the time; he must have been thinking about his daughter and wondering how she could be learning in a class like this mine. When Asia’s mom came in, there were no fights to be seen, but still, barely anyone moved from their seats when I told them it was time to line up. Asia’s mom yelled, “You all need to listen to your teacher!!” Excuse me, Ms. Simpson, but you should know these students don’t need to listen to their teacher because he is satisfied as long as they aren’t trying to punch each other.

Thursday

Thursday arrived and still no contractions. I came to pick up my kids at the cafeteria, and they were particularly chatty. I noticed that the principal, Franklin, had visitors with him, and he was showing them around the school. The school was under a microscope because it was a turn-around school, and it was common for visitors in suits to stop by and see if we were actually turning anything around. Previously, Daley had a justified reputation as a school filled with poorly performing and violent students surrounded by defeated adults. As I was trying to walk my kids down the hall, they were chattering more than I could handle and because my patience was always paper thin, my voice went from a stern reprimand to a shrill yell, “Keep your eyes forward and stop talking!!” I looked up and saw Franklin and his visitors turn towards me with their eyebrows raised. Whoops.

Friday

Friday morning came. Throughout the week I carried my cell phone in my front pocket, and during every small break I would call my wife to see how she was doing. Sometimes if the kids were quietly doing their work, I’d sneak back and give her a call. Each day there were fewer and fewer contractions, but when I woke up to get ready for work that Friday, she was feeling them again. They weren’t consistent, but they were painful and that was enough for me to call Franklin. My wife had no illusions, she knew they were probably nothing, but my mind was made up. I had planned it out carefully: if she didn’t have the baby today, then she would definitely have her over the weekend, and if the baby still wasn’t here by Monday, then I would just show up at work and tell Franklin it was false labor. I even entertained the idea of completely lying about the birth to stay home for the rest of Winter Break. How would he ever find out? The idea made no sense to my wife. I had forgotten that I was taking days off to help her with the new baby, not so I could get a break from my class. She asked, “So if the baby isn’t even here yet, why would you waste paternity days staying home?” She didn’t understand that I would happily donate a kidney just to get the week off.

The second time around, lying and taking the day off had gotten easier. It just took a quick phone call, a lie, a few minutes of feeling bad because my kids would probably run the sub out the door by lunch, and then I relaxed. This day, I read an email from one of my good friends, Mark, who told me there was an opening at his school for a 5th grade teacher. Without caring about the details, I picked up the phone hoping to talk to him before he arrived at school. I was prepared to drive to his school that day to try and land the job. I was sure anything had to be better than what I was doing, but when I talked to Mark, he told me how the previous teacher was a veteran teacher who had been run out by a group of very rough kids. It didn’t seem like a great idea to jump from one sinking ship to another. Needless to say, I didn’t meet my daughter that Friday, and on Monday morning I told Franklin it was false labor.

Parent Teacher Day

I came in early for Parent Teacher day to make packets for the kids so they would have plenty of work when I left for paternity leave. I was holding back a goofy grin while making those packets. They were the physical evidence that I was leaving, and I hoped that they were the last copies I would have to make. Ever. I was still banking on finding a job during the combination of paternity leave and Winter Break.

For my very first parent teacher day, I spent hours preparing portfolios for all the kids, planning on all of the parents showing up. One parent came. So this year I spent my time scrubbing off marker stains and making copies, but this time, instead of one parent, seven parents came. I guess the constant phone calls were becoming too much. So much for the portfolios; I had to just wing it.

My first parent conference of the day was an embarrassing one, with a mom who demanded her daughter, Abigail, be more challenged. She was afraid that Abigail might not be prepared for 3rd grade. I completely agreed with her because there was a secret that I wasn’t telling any parents. Too many times, I let the slower kids dictate the pace of the class because they were the ones who gave me the biggest headaches; it was the smarter ones who were left with their wheels spinning. Abigail was extremely smart, but I just treated her as a girl who liked to talk and more importantly, as a girl who didn’t like to fight which meant she didn’t get much attention. She had also been held back, and she was the largest kid in class. She was a new student and with every new student, I judged them on their propensity for getting into fights. When a new kid walked in for her first day, I would protect her from the crazies for at least the first few days. I would sit the new kid in the least warlike table; sometimes I would put a sweet girl on both sides of the new kid. I would find a friend for the new kid, someone that was marginally cool with the bad kids, but was good enough that he would also listen to me. Then, over the next couple days, I would carefully watch the new kid’s reaction to the inevitable teasing. If she was quick to fight, I had to play prevent defense, and if they avoided fighting at all costs, then they didn’t get as much attention. Abigail didn’t get that much attention.

I suspected a few parents weren’t happy that I was teaching their kid, and Evan’s mom, Ms. Lee, was the worst at concealing her disgust. According to Ms. Lee, Evan had been a well-behaved boy in 1st grade, and she seemed unconcerned he was such a problem now. If he truly was a well-behaved boy, then it was something I was doing wrong, she thought. In September, when he was upset, he liked to push back his feet, slide back on his chair and then topple over to the floor. He may have started out upset, but by the time he was swimming on the floor, he was smiling; the class was his audience, and he was the star. When I called home, this was her response, “I don’t know why he’s doing that. He didn’t do that last year. Is the other 2nd grade teacher a man also? Oh, she’s not. Ok.”

By this point I was starting to get a sense of the kids’ home lives, which gave me insight into their erratic behavior in the classroom. There was one time I called Evan’s mom, and I could only hear a man screaming at her in the background; I asked if I could call her back another time. Grandma James was convinced she was on crack, just by her appearance. When Ms. Lee came to school, she walked unsteadily with mangled hair and black rings under her eyes. Grandma James kept on mentioning how surprised she was that Evan wasn’t worse off. By this time, Evan was respecting me, and he was back to his pre-corrupted 1st grade behavior, I guess. However, Evan was still a fighter, and when his buttons were pushed, he went all out. When I broke up one of his rare fights, Evan started punching me. It wasn’t the first time he had done this, but I had to bring it up with her again, even though I knew it wouldn’t be worth it. After giving her the full details of what happened, including how her son hit me, she said, “Well, you shouldn’t ever lay hands on my boy anyhow.”

When Ryden’s mom came on conference day, I told her about how I caught him climbing a locker to pull down a bag of snacks during dismissal. I told him that he had to clean it up, but he refused, and so I told him he couldn’t leave the room until he cleaned it up. He pulled down all my book shelves and scattered my categorized books all over the room. I still wouldn’t let him leave until he picked up everything. I had to wait until his mom’s girlfriend came to pick him up an hour later before he actually cleaned everything up. As he was leaving, he stared me down, and it looked like he was going to spit in my face, but he held it back. He had learned nothing. In fact, he was getting meaner. When I told his mom the full story, I was really hoping she would be shocked. Instead she told me he does that kind of thing at home too. When he was upset, he liked to punch holes in her walls; she said she had seven holes so far. She was relying on school to get her son back on track; that’s ironic, I was relying on her.

Mr. Barcik

There was only one teacher that I smiled in the halls; it was Mr. Barcik, the music teacher. Partly because he had just as many behavior problems in his classes as I did, and partly because we were both awkward white guys, I was often called Mr. Barcik and he was often called Mr. Slaughter by both students and staff. There was a moment our first year of teaching that I think solidified our relationship as the white guys who had no idea what was going on. There was a security guard, Officer Morrison, who took me under his wing to teach me the ways of behavior management. His way included a strong yell and phone calls home; both were big no-no’s in my handy dandy handbook.

One day during music class, Mr. Barcik called security for help because my kids, as usual, were terrorizing his classroom. Colin had grabbed one of the cymbals, and he was running around the classroom banging it as Lauren and Sean gleefully slammed their hands down on the piano. Just like me, Mr. Barcik had run after Colin a few times, trying to corner him unsuccessfully and then, defeated, he called security. I happened to be walking upstairs to pick up the kids, and there was no mistaking which room my kids were in. The screaming made the walls shake.  When I arrived, security hadn’t come yet, so I tried to line up some of the kids to go even though it was clear they would much rather be in Mr. Barcik’s room. So when Sean wasn’t looking, I grabbed him and dragged him towards the line while Mr. Barcik grabbed and dragged Lauren. At least the piano playing stopped.

At this very moment, Officer Morrison came bumbling in and yelled, “What are you all doing! Get in line!”, and they all looked up and then straightened up, well, except for Colin, but by now everyone knew Colin was an exception. Colin was one of two kids in the whole school that was actually classified as emotionally disturbed, even though a quarter of the student body fit the qualifications. So when Officer Morrison saw the children line up so easily without complaint, he had an epiphany. Why did the kids act up with Mr. Slaughter and Mr. Barcik, but they listened to me? His answer was written on our faces; we were white, and he was black! So with his new discovery, he felt he had to share it with everyone, including the 2nd graders. As he started explaining our racial backgrounds, they nodded repetitively. “You see, there is a certain way that black people talk, and both Mr. Slaughter and Mr. Barcik talk in a white way, a more educated way.” This was when Mr. Barcik and I started to wince. He continued, “you all should listen and learn from them because they’ve come here to teach.” Both Mr. Barcik and I were too embarrassed to react; Officer Morrison both described himself and the black race by default as uneducated and then pointed at the elephant in the room--Mr. Barcik and I were white. Mr. Barcik and I pretended like it never happened.

This year, we were struggling again, and Barcik mentioned how my class had steamrolled him last week. I asked him, “Is my class the worst in the school?” He smiled, “Two years in a row.” At first, I took a little pride in the statement, and thought, “It isn’t me, it’s those darn kids.” It was a classic teacher line, and I was sticking to it. But it didn’t have the same crunch as last year, the line had gone stale.

From crazies to kids

That night I did something I never do on a Friday. I planned for the next week. And instead of focusing on which phoneme I could work on, I thought about which kid I could work on.

Adam was in the top tier of misbehavior. He hated school. He never smiled, and he had no friends. He was easily set off, and he could tear apart the classroom with swiftness. Two weeks ago I had to call his mom three times until she showed up at the classroom door with a hand on her hip. I had sent him to CHOICE three times already, and after each time he left the classroom, he came back worse. At the end of the day, I sent him to time out for yelling at a classmate. Adam wasn't doing his work so he decided to bother Abigail. Abigail told him to shut up, and he told her he was going to slap her across the face.

When he was pouting in time out, until I saw him stand up and tear my class calendar in half, and then he swung the trashcan across the carpet--old pencil shavings covered the white tiles. He was standing there crying as she walked in. A fierce glare bore down on Adam, but he kept his head. She said, “I’ll talk to him.” When I explained why Adam was upset, she asked me why Adam wanted to slap Abigail.
     "There must be a reason Mr. Slaughter."
     “Well, he was bothering her and she told him to shut up.”
Her eyebrows rose; she grabbed Adam's arm and walked him into the hallway.
      "Alright, Mr. Slaughter, he won't do it again."

It happened that the security guard was in the hallway when she was speaking with Adam. That afternoon she told me what was said. "She looked the boy straight in the eye and said, 'if anyone ever tells you to shut up, you pop 'em, alright?' That just ain't right, Mr. Slaughter."

Adam always wanted to be first. He didn’t care about how his writing sounded or how his pictures looked because effort took too much time; he just wanted to finish it, whatever it was. Every day we did writing, and every day I gave him a stapled stack of three sheets that had about five lines on each page. Every day he wrote the damn same story: “I went to the playground. It was fun. I went to the pool. It was fun. I went home. It was fun…” He wrote in huge letters so only a few words could fit per line. At first, I was sure he wanted to finish so he could have time to goof off, but he usually didn’t goof off when he was done; he just spaced out. When he finished, he looked around for a few seconds, and then he put his head down on the desk. Sometimes he played imaginary battles between two pencils.

Then someone had to say, “Wow Adam, are you done already?” He smiled a sheepish grin and shrugged his shoulders.

 He was like a bottle rocket on the carpet. When I could get him to sit on the carpet, he would rock back and forth with his hand raised whenever I asked a question. If I called on someone else, he would yell out the answer as soon as I motioned to the other student. As I thought about him that night, I put the pieces together and realized he was just wanted to be first, not make my life miserable.

I shouldn't have changed my mind about the psychiatrist. But I did. The appointment was Monday morning, and I could have easily shifted my workday to fit it in because it was a teacher workday. After finishing a full week, I was cocky about my mental stability, and I decided I could just push off the psychiatrist to come home earlier. I thought journaling was all I needed at least until I could quit. I also thought it would only be few more days until my extended winter vacation. If my wife had the baby on Thursday (a week before her due date), then I might have four days left of teaching. Ever.

The Full Week- Pushing Through to Friday

Wednesday

On Wednesday the roller coaster swept right back down to Monday’s low. I thought it was my anger and glare that caused the golden 15 minutes of silence so I ratcheted it up. If I was pissed off on Tuesday, this morning I was on fire, yelling and screaming at every little thing, “Keep your eyes on the book! Do you want recess?!” The kids were less confused and more despondent, and I was losing my own sense of control. Grandma James pulled me aside, “Calm down, Mr. Slaughter. All you keep on yelling is ‘SILENCE!’ Let the kids be kids. They are going to talk a little.” During my lunch break, I started thinking about my job search again, and I widened my search to more obscure jobs. I even applied to a job at the Zoo; I’d happily pick up poop every day. I wrote it over and over again in my journal: “I want to be home.” At least I was being honest.

I could tell you a hundred reasons why my behavior system was failing, but there was no way I could view it rationally. My fear of complete failure was making me second guess everything I was doing. It was fear that told me every inch that I gained was precious, and if there was any slip, I just might crash. I had read and reread at least a half dozen self-help management books telling me all the different things I should try out, and then there was my insane class screaming that those methods meant nothing. I just inched myself along the tight rope with an abyss below and what felt like a shotgun behind.

That afternoon actually went better. The journaling was helping me calm down, and somewhere along that roller-coaster ride, my kids figured it was time to take a break. Maybe they were getting just as dizzy I was.

Thursday

By Thursday, I was getting closer to the end of the week, and I couldn’t even think about reaching it, out of fear that I would jinx it. Due to a combination of holidays and mental health days, I hadn’t made it a full week since the first week of November. Everything was going decently until the afternoon. Laila was back from her suspension for choking Tybee, and this time Laila was going after Anna. Anna was another cute girl in the class who had a lot of the boys’ attention. In the beginning of the year, I didn’t really like Anna because she couldn’t stop talking. By this time, I had moved her to a corner all by herself; she still managed to write notes and make hand gestures just to keep up with the latest gossip. At recess, she lead cheers with the girls on the sidelines of the boys’ football games. Laila usually tried to take over the cheer game, but her cheers weren’t that good--she wasn't that good at rhyming. Anna left the game with most of the girls following right behind her, and Laila was alone. When they were back in my class, Anna kept on looking up from her writing to bat eyes at Evan who sat right next to Laila. It was too much for Laila, and she leaned up on Evan, “What do you think of my drawing?” Evan ignored her.
Then Laila announced,“Evan wants to kiss Anna!”
“No I don’t!”
“Did you hear that Anna, he doesn’t want to kiss you because your breath stinks!”
Anna muttered under her breath, “Not like your momma’s.” Too bad it was just loud enough for half the class to hear it, including Laila.

Laila walked up to Anna’s desk, threw Anna’s writing on the floor, and stood there. It was clear, Laila wanted a fight. But Anna didn’t flinch. She might have been holding back tears, but she kept her head up. As I waited on hold for security, Laila raised her shoe and smudged dirt on Anna’s desk. Laila was begging for a fight, but Anna continued to just sit there. “Anna how about you sit with Tybee until security comes.”   Immediately Anna gabbed with Tybee about whatever daily gossip as if nothing had happened, but it was too much for Laila. She walked over to Anna’s table again and raised her foot again. I kind of wished Anna would grab that foot and yank it over her shoulder, but Anna kept on talking with Tybee. With Laila’s back to me, I managed to sneak up behind and grab her wrist. Security arrived 30 minutes later and Laila was kicking and screaming obscenities at Anna while I held her on the carpet. Even though my anxiety was clouding my vision, something positive was emerging in the classroom. Both Anna and Tybee were standing up for themselves. But I still needed to stand up for myself.

After Thursday was done, there was just one more day to finish the full week, and I started to think about ways to get out again. In my journal, I wrote these exact words, “We should do a map tomorrow and math games... I don’t think I can make it. What I would do just to escape…” There was one voice trying to stay positive, “you can do this!” but the other voice knew it was a lie. I had promised myself that I would be honest in my journaling, and it appeared that there was one safe and mandatory choice: I had to quit.

Friday

It was 8:37am, and I had to pick up the kids in three minutes.  This is what I wrote: “I WANT OUT. GET ME OUT! ANXIETY IS KILLING ME!! Calm down… calm down. It’s going to be okay. It’s only one day. On Monday you’ll have the psychiatrist. It’s okay.” I had an appointment with a psychiatrist on Monday, and I hoped the appointment was just the thing to save me. The morning went decently, but I had to get treats during my lunch break for the grab bag that afternoon. As I was in the car driving, I wrote in hardly legible writing, “I’m in the car, and it’s back!! I need to QUIT. Come on Slaughter get a grip. Don’t let 7 year olds ruin your life… YOU CAN DO THIS!” Not only was I driving, but I was also stuffing a sandwich down with one hand, and writing with the other. I was in Memento, but instead of trying to find a killer, I was running from one.

I made it through the afternoon, and yes, I made it through a full week. Instead of cheering after getting off the roller coaster, I threw up. I knew that it was only two days before I had to get right back on it.

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.

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.”