Clipboard

I started carrying around a clipboard with a class list. At Martha's House, I knew documentation was the key to holding kids accountable. Everything that a resident did was documented so that, as case managers, we could make sure we created a consequence for anything inappropriate. With an even more watchful discipline, I documented every time my students misbehaved. I even had my own code: if they were defiant, I wrote down an A; if they were threatening, I wrote down a B; if they fought, I wrote down a C. So this is how it played out:

Lauren gets out of her seat and starts bothering Sean. He’s looking at her strangely, and I say, “Lauren, sit down in your seat.”
“I don’t have to!”
The teacher dutifully writes down A next to Lauren because she was defiant, and repeats, “Lauren, you have to sit down.”
Lauren yells at Sean, “You better shut up or I’ll steal you!”
“Lauren that was a threat!” as if she was unaware, and I write down B next to the A.

When Sean flicks Lauren off, she charges and rams her shoulder into his chest. I run over to the fight to grab her arm and pull her away from Sean while he begins punching me, trying to reach his fists around me to get at Lauren. As I hold Lauren, kicking my shin and screaming at Sean, I awkwardly drag her over to the door to peak my head out of the door and look down the hall for security. Usually there wasn’t anyone because security was always walking from one classroom to the next. So then I turn around and drag Lauren back through the class to an intercom, where I have to yell multiple times over her screams that I need security. By this time, even my quiet kids are out of their seat jumping and yelling in excitement; it was always the best part of the day. Some thirty minutes later, security comes to get her, and with a very shaky hand, I write down a C next to Lauren and a C next to Sean. There were usually between 5 and 10 fights in a day, including times when there were two separate fights breaking out at the same time. I had to hold onto something to keep myself afloat, and the clipboard was an imaginary flotation device. I pretended that my careful documentation might mean future expulsions but it meant very little to anyone else. No one seemed to care about the fights; they were just happy that it was October, and I hadn’t left yet.

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.