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."