The Pen is Mightier

The Pen is Mightier

When I’m not writing books about kitchen tables, I am an eighth grade Language Arts teacher. (Please, hold the applause until the end.) Every teacher knows,the humble kitchen table is a great surface for grading papers. (Many teachers use the dining room table, but I don’t have a dining room, just a big kitchen.Poor me.) The kitchen table affords lots of room for organizing papers and supplies. For me, a typical grading session requires shoving aside all the bags and sunglasses that have been strewn about like unwanted children over the table’s surface. I then spread out and organize all the papers by homeroom, the essays and the projects that need grading.  Also, lined up like soldiers are the calculator, the erasable pen to record in the grade book, and the GREEN pen. Sometimes if I can’t find a green pen, I’ll use blue or purple or whatever I find lying about, but one thing's for sure, I never use a RED pen. Educational experts tell us not to use a red pen because if a student sees lots of red marks all over their paper they could be “scarred for life.” A student could very well become intimidated and withdrawn by all that red ink, thus never really realizing their full potential. Hence, they will not succeed in life; they will live in poverty; become a burden on society and die hungry and alone and be buried in a Potter’s Field. Red ink is to education what crack is to, well,  everything else in life.

    I teach without a red pen in a depressed, urban environment. The kids are living at the poverty level, some a little above and some well below. (Let’s just say I’ve bought my fair share of winter coats and graduation dresses over the years.) I didn’t realize this economic situation at first, and I made some stupid mistakes. I came back to teaching after being away for 16 years raising my three boys. So, trying to get my point across one day about how, if you praise someone, they try to live up to that praise, I said, “Like, you know when your cleaning girl does an okay job, but you want her to do a better job, you may say, wow! Cleaning girl! Really good job!” Twenty six blank faces stared back at me. Oops.

I never thought I’d go back to teaching, but I was lured back in with the thought of summers off and only working until three every day. “It’s practically a part time job,” I told my husband.  How short is my memory.  It’s a 24-7 job, what with the grading of papers, the worrying about certain students, accountability, report cards, quarterly progress reports for 97 students, paperwork, the extra help I provide to struggling students, the paperwork, the politics, the lack of respect, lying awake night fretting over my evaluations, the paperwork, performance anxiety because of the evaluations and oh yes, shopping for winter coats and fancy dresses. And did I mention the paperwork? As they say in the Army, “It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure.”   

But I do love being a teacher because I feel there is something I can contribute to kids who need someone and if they learn to read a write a little along the way, all the better. But this is reading and writing thing is not a must. The reading and writing are the least of what is accomplished in middle school. I always tell my students that school is not so much about learning how to read and write, but how to LIVE. How we interface with others, what acceptable behavior is, how to make and keep a friend. How to be a friend.

    Of course, I still never give up on the teaching in the hopes that everyday, at least one morsel of knowledge will be ingrained in their resisting brains.  I keep swimming upstream, teaching students who do not want to be taught, most whom are just there to get out of the house and socialize with their friends.

One of the currents I am swimming against is behavior. Behavior comes in two flavors, the boys’ mischievous antics and the girls’ penchant for the  dramatic. The girls love to talk and write on the bathroom walls.  They cry over friendships and boys, or girls if they are experimenting with being gay, and are generally in a constant state of drama the likes of which would rival any Shakespearean play. They cut themselves, post suicide notes on Facebook and let high school boys sexually experiment on them. Lots of times girls cry over their fathers. Either the fathers live at home and are abusive, or they don’t live at home and they never see them, or they are in jail, or touching them “down there.” Some days, I spend more time out in the hallway coaching and counseling and calming the girls than I do teaching.     A typical hallway conversation goes something like this:

Me: Why are you crying, honey? What’s the matter?

She:Shakes her head.

Me: I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on.

She:More crying. No answer. She looks down at her shoes.

In the meantime, the rest of the class is in a total uproar, laughing, yelling, moving about the room.  I can hear them and I want to go back in there and make a big, LOUD speech, (a layman might call it yelling) but I don’t dare for fear the girl may think she does not have my undivided attention, thus proving to her that I am just another adult who could care less about her and her problems and confirming once and for all that suicide is the only real answer.  But mostly I do not go in to YELL because there is the chance She may  finally come out with some useful information and then I can help her.

Me: Do you want to go to guidance?

She:Still looking down at her shoes. Shakes her head no.

Now I’m looking down at her shoes, because somehow I feel that maybe therein lies the answer.  Like, did someone make fun of her shoes? Are her shoes too tight? I give it a minute. The shoes tell me nothing so I press on.

Me: Is anyone home?

She: Shakes her head no.

Me: Do you want to call your mother (father,grandmother, aunt, guardian, goldfish, whomever takes care of you) at work?

She: (between sobs) N-no.

Me: Do you want to just come back in the classroom and put your head down until you are feeling better?

She: Shoulder shrug. Still looking at her shoes.

    I’m running out of options. Perhaps I should suggest we send the rest of the class home and She and I could have a nice, therapeutic chat over a cup of coffee. I think she would say yes to that.

Me: How about a friend? Do you want to go with one of your friends to the ladies room and wash your face and talk it over?

(I figure I can pry the information out of the friend once things settle down.)

She brightens at this suggestion. She looks up at me and nods her head. Yes! Yes She would like to go with a friend to the ladies room.

This means not just one, but two kids will be out of the room during most of the lesson, but it is better than ME being out of the room during most of  the lesson. So we call the best friend out into the hallway and I watch as they both trot happily down the hall to the ladies room together, arm in arm, ready, no doubt,  to text four other girls, sitting in four other classes to commiserate.

The boys misbehaviors tend to be more creative, like peeing in water bottles, stuffing the toilets with paper, peeing on the walls in the bathroom and generally any abhorrent bathroom behavior where they can wield their penises and wreak havoc. They never cry or look at their shoes, so somehow I find them easier to deal with. I often yell at them good and loud from frustration; they don’t seem to mind at all and it makes me feel gobs better. (One boy said as I was screaming in his face, “You know you’re beautiful when you're angry?” So fear not,  I don’t think I’m inflicting any permanent harm.)

I have to repeat a great deal when disciplining the boys. Apparently at home, and in some particular cultures, the boys are thought to walk on water and they are truly shocked to find that when they come to school, they jump in the pool, so to speak, and sink. Their parents can tell them a hundred times not to do something, and they will ignore it because they know there are no consequences. Mama’s boy can do no wrong. In my classroom, I can’t allow it. I have a big test to get these kids ready for and I don’t let much stand in my way. A typical reprimand for a boy goes something like this:

Me: William, turn your body and face forward.

He: I didn’t do anything.

Me: You are sitting sideways and smirking with Ellis from across the room. You are distracting Ellis and everyone around him. Now turn around and stop it.

He: I didn’t do anything.

Me: Turn around, face front and refocus on the lesson.

He: I didn’t do anything.

I stare at him, waiting

He finally turns and puts his legs under the desk, facing forward. I continue.

Two minutes later:

Me:William, turn your body and face forward.

He: I didn’t do anything.

Me: You are sitting sideways and you continue to smirk with Ellis from across the room.

He: I didn’t do anything.

Me: Turn around, face front and refocus on the lesson.

He: I didn’t do anything.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

    Both boys and girls break the cell phone rules. Their phones are to be shut off and stored in their backpacks during school hours, though ’ve never seen it done. The girls wear very tight pants, leggings with pockets actually, and their phones are always sticking halfway out of the back pocket.  I always make the joke, “You’re going to butt-dial Timbuktu those pants are so tight.” (Another stupid joke I make is: Those hoop earrings are so big, you could pick up radio stations. An eighth grader think these jokes are funny.) Kids just can't understand why they can’t have phones in school. They think, as I once did, that this is because if a student is texting or god forbid, talking on a cell phone, it will distract them from learning. Not so. Not to turn this into a Sixty Minutes investigative report, but the real reason is: schools don’t want kids taking pictures of teachers sleeping at their desks or eating a banana from the school breakfast. (Strictly forbidden. The student’s breakfasts and lunches come from state mandated money, and they would rather us throw food out than have a starving, undernourished, underpaid,teacher eat it.) Or, having a phone,  they could share test answers or post bathroom pictures on Facebook. More than just looking up answers, kids could record a teacher saying something like, Sit your ass down and shut up or I’ll break your legs, or smash your face or whatever threat is applicable at the time. (And even though most teachers, like myself, would never say such a thing, believe you me, after a long day of repeating sit down, be quiet to 97 pairs of deaf ears, we’re thinking it. You can damn well be sure, we’re thinking it.)

    I am actually jealous of cell phones. I consider them my number one rival in the classroom. It’s me against the phones and I always lose. It often goes like this:

Me: Jeanelle, are you texting?

Jeanelle: No.

Me: Then why is your cell phone out. You know the rules!

Jeanelle: I was just checking the time.

    I point to the clock.

She looks at the clock like she’s never seen it before. Like, when did someone put that there?

Jeanelle:I’ll put it away.

    My chest swells with triumph. l I have won the battle. The lesson continues. I look over at Jeanelle’s seat in the back. She is staring at her lap. I got her now!

    “Janelle, what is so interesting in that lap of yours?”  The class giggles at the possibilities.

    Don't you know, the kid pulls her textbook up from her lap, smug as can be? The class laughs at Jeanell's victory. I hate them all.

    “Okay, sorry,” I say a little too boldly to hide my humiliation, “I thought you might be  texting.”

    I move on with the lesson. I wander around the room, checking in with students along the way, planting ideas and giving some much needed praise where none is actually warranted.  

    And then I see it, from across the room. Jeanelle is leaning over, ever-so slightly, texting in her backpack! Aha! Let her try and weasel her way out of this one. Ha!

    I sneak up on her.

    Me: Jeanelle! Hand me that phone this instant!

She: What phone?

Me: Don’t you “what phone” me! You were texting in your bag and you know it! Now let’s have it!

    I extend my hand like the superior being I feel I am at this very moment.

    She shakes her head, and slaps a graphic calculator in my hand. I stare at it. The class roars. I hate them more.

Me: What is this? Why are you playing with a calculator during writing class?

She: I’m sorry, I was doing my math homework.

    In an effort to distract the class’ attention away from my cell phone delusions, I yell,

“Are you supposed to be doing math homework during writing? What about the paragraph I gave you to do?”

    She shows me her notebook. A perfectly written paragraph describing the classroom stares back at me. She has done all I had asked her to do, she has described with all her five senses, and she used similes and metaphors and imagery, the whole nine yards. She then thought to use her time wisely (where did she ever hear that?) and catch up on some homework. I didn’t just have egg on my face, I had the whole omelet.

    Jeanelle seemed forgiving enough. She just smiled and went back to her math. After class I caught her in the hall. “Jeanelle, I’m sorry I accused you of texting during class. I was wrong and I hope I didn’t embarrass you.”

“Oh, don’t feel bad, Mrs. Sherman, I was texting. Just not at those times when you thought I was!”

The little shit.

You may now applaud.