Schoolville: Chapter 19
“Illegitimi non carborundum..” -Latin Proverb
(Don’t let the bastards wear you down.)
Chapter Nineteen
It was 1:00 P. M. on the third Friday of the new school year. I was happy today was Friday. My eighth period class and I were glaring at each other across the overhead projector. It would be incorrect to say that the entire period was glaring, actually it was only six students. The rest of the class was busily finding something else to study on their desks, because they were looking down at the tops of the old wooden desks. They looked embarrassed. They were embarrassed for me.
On the right hand side of the room, Donita was beaming triumphantly over at Amber, on the far side of the room, who was not able to suppress her laughter. King, who sat on the right side, in the front row was smirking behind his hand. They had managed to disrupt class again, as they had successfully done every day since school had started.
Donita was a special education student with a low I.Q. She had an extensive list of modifications that I was required to implement for her to be successful in English III. The list was so extensive, that it was literally impossible to fail her. She knew that fact better than anyone else. She hadn’t learned anything about writing or English since roughly the fifth grade, or so it seemed from reading her papers and listening to her use of vocabulary, as she had so clearly demonstrated about a week before.
“Mr. Kyle, why we gotta learn ‘dis stuff!”
“What stuff is that, Donita?”
“You know, dis stuff?”
“What do you mean by ‘stuff’?” I knew perfectly well what she meant, but I wanted to see if she had any other noun in her vocabulary besides “stuff”. I wondered if she could substitute a less ambiguous noun and clarify her question.
She held up the vocabulary book that we had been working on. “Dis stuff!”
I glanced down at the first page of her vocabulary chapter and saw at least three synonyms that she could have used to substitute for “stuff”. Since the chapter had been assigned as homework the previous week, it appeared that Donita had viewed it as a waste of time.
I hadn’t even bothered to answer her after that. Donita knew that as a special education student, she wouldn’t be allowed to fail, as she had amply proven every year since the fifth grade. Donita was a minority student, and she was supremely aware that there would be severe repercussions for any teacher who dared to fail her. As a result, Donita hadn’t done a lick of work so far, she was absolutely lost, and had developed very little intellectual ability.
It turns out that institutional racism is harder to prove than failing a minority student being an example of racism. Poor Donita would enter the adult world with no marketable skills because she was black. If I chose to fail a white male student for lack of performance, I could be reprimanded for not doing enough perhaps, but the underperforming minority students were being screwed because they couldn’t be held accountable. This is an excellent example of institutional racism by the way.
By way of comparison, Jesse, another special education student, and a minority student from my first period class busted his ass to learn. As a result, Donita was phenomenally bored. Jesse was having fun.
Donita loved to disrupt class in any way that she could find. She was making my eighth period hell. In addition to giving me a hard time, she, King, and Amber were robbing the other twenty five students of the chance to learn. What Donita didn’t know, was that since I wasn’t going to return to Wilson High, I was gleefully looking forward to being the first teacher to ever fail her. She was going to get it from me. It was long overdue, and since she was making my life hell during eighth period, she was going to discover the dark side of Mr. Kyle.
Across the room, Amber was laughing at me. Unlike the others, who were embarrassed by my predicament, she was thoroughly enjoying it. She didn’t bother to hide her delight at having disrupted class and broken my teaching stride. Amber weighed at least two hundred and fifty pounds, and her whole body shook and jiggled with each laugh. She covered her mouth with both hands as she began to break into loud guffaws just to rub my frustration back into my face. Amber wasn’t a special education student. She didn’t have anyone who made sure she passed. I had to put up with Donita for a while yet, but Amber was going to get flamed, and that was going to start very soon. She was exchanging glances with King, who was sitting a few desks from Donita, since I had already moved King to the front row.
King was trying to hide his delight in having helped disrupt class yet again. He wasn’t openly defiant as Donita and Amber were. King’s father was an assistant principal at the middle school just six blocks away. His father had sought me out the first week of class to inform me of his son’s defiant and disruptive nature, and the fact that he had been busted for marijuana in the parking lot at the end of the previous year. Since King’s behavior threatened his father’s promotability within the school district, King’s father had thrown the book at him and had come over to ask me to watch King closely. King’s father had handed me his cell phone number if he was needed. Mr. Davis, King’s father, had told me that he would come over immediately and sit with his son, if his son ever disrupted my class. It was time for that call.
Sighing, I pulled out my cell phone and crooked my finger in King’s direction. “Please come with me King.” I started walking for the door as I pushed the buttons for his father’s cell phone.
“What did I do!” King shouted defensively.
“I’ll explain it to your father. He can explain it to you.”
“I didn’t do nothing! I ain’t going nowhere with you!”
“Ok, if that’s what you want…” I had finished dialing the number, so I stopped in the middle of class and put the phone up to my ear. After a few rings, a gruff male voice answered. It was Vice Principal Davis.
“Good afternoon Mr. Davis. This is Tom Kyle over at Wilson High. Yes, that’s right, King’s English teacher…”
“Yes, he’s been disruptive for the last several days, and I can’t seem to focus his attention on the problem…”
“OK! That would be great! Thank you sooo much!” I smiled at King, and then at the boy who was sitting right behind him. “Leon, I’m sorry, but it appears that Vice Principal Davis will need your desk for the next several weeks. Would it be all right if I move you over to that empty desk at the end of the row?”
“Sure Mr. Kyle.”
“Thanks Leon.”
Amber’s voice drifted across the room.
“Sure Mr. Kyle…” She was imitating Leon’s voice, trying to provoke him. She clearly wasn’t finished with her class disruptions. Donita giggled at Amber’s hi jinx.
“Amber, would you please take your books and go to the hall?”
“Sure thing, Asshole!” She huffily stood and stomped out of the room. Apparently she didn’t approve of the way that I had decided not put an end to the games in eighth period.
“Thank you Amber!” I called to her.
She stopped and turned to look at me. “For what?”
“For calling me an ‘Asshole’. Now I can have you sent to in-school suspension.”
“Fuck you!” She sneered at me and stomped out as I walked over to my desk and pulled out an office referral slip and filled it out. When I was finished, I handed it to Leon and asked him to carry it to the Principal’s office for me.
He didn’t say a word, he just smiled and walked out with it in his hand.
I walked to the door and leaned out. Amber was sitting on the hallway floor, looking like Jabba the hutt with gas pains. “Amber, you need to go to the Principal’s office now.” I turned and shut the door before she had a chance to reply.
King had his head on his desk. When he heard me shut the door, he looked up with sad puppy-dog eyes on his sad puppy-dog face.
“Mr. Kyle?”
“Yep?”
“Why did you call my dad in front of the whole class Mr. Kyle! You aren’t supposed to do that.” He was looking for some mud to sling on me.
“Well Gee King, when you refused to come to the hall for a private conversation, what option did you give me?”
“How long will my father be here?”
“He told me that he would be sitting in English class with you every class for the next two weeks.” Smiling gleefully, I rubbed it back in his face now. “I hope you enjoy this as much as I will!” He gave me a poisonous look, and then his face went back onto his desk.
I glanced over at Donita, who was no longer smiling. I gave her my hardest glare, but said nothing. She was going to get her comeuppance, but I wasn’t going to let her know. I’d had enough of her horse shit. She smiled wanly, and went to work on her vocabulary. I made a mental note to have an office referral pre-filled out every day for Donita and Amber from now on.
I walked over to my desk and sat down and began filling in an office referral to use when Amber returned to class next week after completing in-school suspension. As I wrote, I realized that I had 25 other students who were learning nothing, and as busy as I was maintaining control, they weren’t going to learn anything today. The three stooges had won, and would continue to win until they were removed from my classroom. Since filling out discipline reports took about 10 minutes for each student for each incident, everyone else would have to be content with vocabulary worksheets. The system wasn’t set up for education, the system was set up for control.
I thought about things, and realized that no matter what Amber did, I could make it look like anything I wanted. I put checks next to the infractions for disrespect, defiance, and profanity. As I was putting this in my files, the door was violently wrenched open, and a very large black man stalked in. It was King’s father. He literally picked King up by the arm, hauled him to the hallway and shut the door. It took him a few moments to work up to full volume, but soon I could hear him clearly through the wall, as he shared his thoughts with King and everyone else within fifty yards.
“…don’t have time for this nonsense. I told you that if I had to come over and straighten you out you’d be grounded for a month!” A loud thump, reverberated through the room. I smiled and began to silently walk around the room making sure everyone was studying their vocabulary. Finally, Will’s hand went up.
“Mr. Kyle?”
“Yes, Will”
“Why didn’t we ever get to have any fun, like Francine is always telling me she has in your class?”
“Because I can’t get the cooperation I need to do a simple vocabulary assignment. That’s no-brainer work…how could I ever hope to hold a class discussion? When you have to teach fifth graders, you treat ’em like fifth graders. Now, eleventh graders on the other hand…” I shrugged.
Will didn’t like my answer. He looked down mumbling.
“I’m sorry Will, I didn’t hear what you said.” I stated in a matter-of-fact tone of voice.
Will looked up. His face was red. “You really think you have that ‘cool teacher’ act down, don’t you! You think we can’t see you’re trying to act like one of us, like you’re cool or something?”
I was surprised by this. “Will, do you mean ‘cool’ like you are?”
I hadn’t considered that some students wouldn’t want a teacher who was nice. Apparently, this was cause for Will to be suspicious of my motives.
“Will, it is the battle that I have everyday when this class comes in here which keeps us from doing anything other than have a teacher-controlled classroom. That’s why all you’re going to do from now on is study worksheets, or something changes.”
Will and I exchanged dirty looks, then I shrugged. “Whatever you want. I don’t care. If you want the usual boring English class, I can handle that. I hope you can too.”
Victoria, who sat next to Will, raised her hand.
“Yes Victoria?”
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“How come we never get to have soft drinks like your other classes do?”
“Why do you think?” I answered her question with a question.
“We never get to make poster presentations like the rest of your classes. All we do are study guides and vocabulary worksheets.” She sneered, “Why is that?” She had her arms crossed and her face was getting redder than Will’s had been.
I shrugged. “You tell me. You’re a bright girl.” I was beginning to finally lose my composure.
Franklin, a nice kid who sat behind Victoria raised his hand. “We don’t ever get to take roll, or do in-class reading either. It isn’t fair.”
Franklin, unlike Victoria and Will, was a nice guy. He had never treated me with disrespect, so I gave him a civil answer.
“Well Franklin, I’ll tell you how it is. I never have to redirect a student in my other classes.”
“Never?” He looked skeptically at me.
“Well, hardly ever. They never spend class period trying to disrupt what I’m doing or treating me disrespectfully, that’s for certain.”
“But Mr. Kyle,” Franklin interjected. “Neither do I.”
“That’s true. Unfortunately, too many of your classmates do. If you want to transfer to another period, I’ll be happy to support your request.”
Franklin looked down at his book and swayed in his seat. “I wanted to shoot hoops like the other periods are doing!” His voice was thick and husky. His anger had finally worked its way to the surface.
The door flew open as Vice-Principal Davis entered with King, who promptly took his seat and flew to work on his vocabulary. I looked from them, back to Franklin.
“Franklin, this class can be just like the others. All I need is some respect for what I’m trying to do. Remember what I told you the first day?”
Franklin looked at me confusedly, so I pointed to a small poster on the front wall of my classroom. It read: IF I GET WHAT I WANT, YOU GET WHAT YOU WANT. THAT IS A PROMISE!
“Think about it Franklin. Your class is the only one I ever assign homework in.”
“Why!” Victoria blurted out. “It isn’t fair!”
“Because I can’t complete what I have to teach due to constant disruptions. If I get what I want…” My voice trailed off with a shrug once again.
Franklin looked at my poster for quite a while, then he looked over at King and Donita. He didn’t look happy. After a bit, he leaned over and began to whisper with Victoria and Will. Will turned away from him, but I could see that he and Victoria were discussing what I had said. I allowed them to continue. Vice Principal Davis never took his eyes off the back of King’s head. King must have felt them, because he never lifted his eyes from his vocabulary workbook.
I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Franklin. He, like 90 percent of the eighth period, was a nice kid. Unfortunately, it was the other ten percent who were ruining the class. I couldn’t understand it either. Francine, who was in my 3rd and 6th period classes, which were English and U.S. History, was vastly more delinquent than Donita, King, and Amber put together, and the classes she was in could have been much worse than eighth period. Yet, for some reason, known only to herself, Francine had chosen to treat me with respect. Eighth period had chosen to have a teacher-fronted, teacher-controlled classroom. In the end, I think B.D. said it as well as anyone I ever heard.
“You know, some kids just can’t handle the freedom.”
That was as good an explanation as any I ever heard.
It was three class periods before I saw Amber again. She walked in ready for combat, but I had already laid the ambush for her, and she obligingly walked straight into it.
“Amber?”
“What?”
“Do you have your homework that was due last class period?”
“No, I ain’t got no homework!”
“Gosh Amber, are those strapless shoes you’re wearing?” I asked with grinding politeness.
“So the fuck what!” She snapped out without thinking.
“Ok. Please go ahead and report back to the Principal’s office.”
She looked at me with her mouth open. I handed Franklin her office referral sheet. “Would you please take this down to Mrs. Getty’s office, Franklin?”
“Why I gotta go to the office?” Amber demanded.
“Haven’t you read the student code of conduct, Amber?” I looked at her with fake surprise.
“Naw!”
“Gosh Amber, that’s too bad!” I smiled a shit-eating grin at her as Franklin left the room. I was trying to provoke another outburst, and I didn’t have long to wait.
“Kiss my ass, asshole!” She yelled.
I smiled mentally checking off the comments that I’d already checked on the sheet of disrespect, defiance and profanity. Now that I was calling the tune, it was fun to watch her fat jiggling as she stood yelling. “Thanks Amber, but not today. …time for you to be going…bye-bye now!” I slathered the sarcasm on thick. “Have a nice day now…”
She stomped off. I was certain that she wasn’t headed for the office either. That was fine with me too, because it would add a charge of truancy to her disrespect to me, and her dress code violation, which was the pretext that I had used to write her up in the first place, only she didn’t know that, because she assumed I was an idiot. Amber always wore strapless shoes, and those were out of dress code. Scanning the classroom, nearly every girl in class had on strapless shoes too. Which they were now demurely hiding under their back packs while avoiding eye contact with me.
“It’s too bad that I didn’t notice them, or I’d have to write them up too.” I smiled to B.D.
“Yep, it’s a good thing you didn’t see their shoes.” B.D. nodded and laughed.
Turning to the door, I noticed that King was already sitting at his desk. His father would be along any minute, and we both knew it. He glanced at me and looked away as he took out his vocabulary workbook.
Looking past her, Donita had a worried look on her face. She hadn’t expected me to be writing them up before they even had the chance to disrupt class. Looking closer, I saw she was chewing gum.
“Donita, You aren’t chewing gum are you?”
Donita swallowed it with obvious difficulty.
Looking back at King, I asked him with some politeness. “King, would you please pick up your books and come up here?”
As I predicted, King jumped up. “I ain’t doing nothing! I ain’t goin’ nowhere,” he yelled as he threw his workbook back on his desk.
“You really should say, ‘I’m not doing anything’.” I was slow and polite. I wanted this to take as much time as possible. I could see Daddy Davis was standing at the door watching through the tiny window, but King didn’t see him.
“Oh, whatever you say!” King sneered back as the door to my classroom was jerked open so hard it slammed against the hallway wall outside. Mr. Davis, who had been standing in the hallway watching King through the window strode over and jerked King to his feet. Picking him up by the arm, as he had done just last week, he and King disappeared out into the hall, with the door glass vibrating as it slammed shut.
“Vice-Principal Davis looks like a no-nonsense guy, doesn’t he?” B.D. smirked.
“I certainly do wish he was here more often.” I replied as voices started coming through the wall.
“I DON’T CARE WHAT HE TOLD YOU! GOD DAMN IT, YOU WILL DO IT!” There was a loud thump on the wall outside.
Turning to Donita, I smiled. “You’re next.”
Donita turned pale. “Ummm, Mr. Kyle, could I please study this in the Special Ed. tutoring room?”
“Sure!” I replied. Donita headed for the door as quickly as she could gather her books. Apparently she was afraid I might change my mind.
Turning to the rest of the class, I asked them, “Would you rather have a class discussion today?”
Victoria looked up smiling. She had figured it out.
“Well,” B.D. smirked. “You’re the one who said that she was a bright girl.”
Both of us turned around as the door was jerked open again and Vice-Principal Davis and King reentered the room. King was looking pale. Mr. Davis looked like he was considering homicide, and I decided to leave him strictly alone. Turning back to the class, I asked politely.
“Could I please have two volunteers to pass out the literature books?”
“Well, today might just be fun!” B.D. commented. “Do you think this might solve the problems in this class?”
“Hell no! I’m not going to fight like this every class period! I’m just going to show the rest of the class what they are missing.”
“Too bad that Amber will be back.” B.D. replied.
“Yeah, but the second referral should keep her down in in-school suspension for at least another week, if I’m lucky it’ll be two weeks. Maybe I can teach the rest of them something if I’m fast enough.”
