Schoolville: Chapter 21

“The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies.”

• Thoreau

Chapter Twenty one

“Mr. Kyle, why do teachers have to make this so boring?”

“I don’t know.” I replied, shrugging.

“Oh, c’mon! You can do better than that!” B.D. always enjoyed these freewheeling discussions. The kids were a riot when they were awake.

B.D. quipped. “The students seem to be expecting to learn something today. Isn’t that nice?”

Horton turned to B.D. “What a sarcastic grump! Is this your professional contribution? Horton’s voice trailed off into silence.

We were well into November, almost finished with our second six-week grading period, and everyone had finally settled into the routine of school. Glancing at the battery-operated clock, which I had hung on the wall, I could see it was 7:16 A.M. Glancing around the class, everyone was awake and sitting up. They were smiling. I had decided to skip all of the other crap and give the class over to reading works by Henry David Thoreau. Specifically, I was going to teach them a unit on both Self Reliance and Civil Disobedience.

With final exams coming right before Christmas, we would be finished just before that. In the back of my mind, I rather hoped that at least one of my students would write on their exam that they refused to participate, put their name on it and turn it in blank, which is what I’ve always imagined Thoreau might have done. I had already made up my mind that if anyone did that, I would excuse him or her from the exam and not count it against their grade. I was toying with the idea of giving him or her an “A” on the exam for demonstrating they truly understood Thoreau.

I smiled back at Tanya Hilliard, a very perky blonde in a cheerleader dress with a cute face. It was she who had asked the question. I suspected that she was trying to move the class into a discussion rather then doing anything academic. I had fallen for that several times in the first few weeks until I started hearing a little too often how “cool” I was. That’s when my bullshit detector had gone off.

“Sorry dude, but you just aren’t that cool!” B. D laughed. “You need to teach something because they’re just taking advantage of you.”

B.D. had been right once again. He had saved me from meeting Tanya Hilliard’s low expectations, which were remarkably similar to Sara Getty’s expectations of me.

Invulnerable, head cheerleader, perky blonde, sexy,

bullet-proof, got away with murder and expected the victim to thank her for it, Tanya Hilliard was trying to lead the class into that land of banal discussion and low level thinking that would eventually lead to how good looking she was. Fortunately, I knew what was going on by now.

“Do you find all of school boring, Tanya?”

Tanya’s eyes actually flickered to the football player across the room before answering. “Well, not all of it.” Then she smiled at Jason Simmons.

B.D. couldn’t help it. “Apparently Jason’s the football player du jour.”

“Well…” I smiled, holding up my cup of coffee; “Does caffeine help to keep you awake?”

“Yeah, it duz!” Francine spoke up. “So why can’t other teachers be as cool as you are?”

Francine was one of my black students who did her best to sound like she was ignorant so I wouldn’t expect much from her, and I wouldn’t call on her. She had once tried to convince me that she was really a special education student, and that I had lost her modification list, which among other things, specifically said she shouldn’t be assigned any homework. Francine was a very dangerous student because she had a very well developed bullshit detector herself. She could embarrass a teacher in a few seconds, I had a secret, yet sincere respect for this girl. Although I tried not to play favorites, and I’m embarrassed to admit it, she was one of my favorites. She was dangerous, and I had already concluded she had no interest whatever in what I had to teach her, which was English language and literature. She was also in my History class. I found it puzzling that the worst behaved student in the 11th grade had been assigned to the new teacher for both classes. I shouldn’t have been puzzled though. My background had led me to believe that a team all shared team values, such as academic success for the students. I know better now.

Francine hated school, but tried her best not to let it get the best of her. She was in my fourth period history class, and my eighth period English class. She wasn’t supposed to be in my class at 7:15 A.M, but there she sat having even managed her usual seat.

“Why do you think I’m cool, Francine?”

“‘Cuz you let us drink cokes and such in class.”

“Why do you think that I’m doing that?”

“‘Cuz you’re cool!”

“There’s more than that. Why else do you think?”

Francine mulled, but remained silent.

Allison spoke up. “Maybe you want us to learn something?”

I smiled at Allison and raised my hand. Allison took the hint, and raised her hand. “Yes, Allison?”

She repeated, but this time with a smile; “Maybe you want us to learn something while we’re here.” I notice that this wasn’t a question any longer, but rather a statement. She seemed more certain.

I turned to Francine. “What do you think, Francine?”

“Thaswhy you cool, Mr. Kyle!” She nodded emphatically.

I imitated Francine’s accent. “Is tha’why you in my classroom this morning?”

Francine smiled and dropped the ghetto diction for a moment. “Mr. Kyle, I didn’t think you noticed!”

I couldn’t help but laugh along with everyone else. “You don’t think I noticed that you’re supposed to be in my fourth period, and this is first period? Francine, I may be old, but I’m not senile yet!”

The rest of the class started clapping for Francine apparently noticing for the first time that they had a visitor in class. Marti, Allison’s best friend, apparently couldn’t help it. “My God! Where are you supposed to be?”

Francine smiled slyly. “I.P.C.” This meant she was supposed to be in integrated physics and chemistry. “But, I cussed out the substitute teacher yesterday, so I’m not going today.”

“Aren’t you going to get called to the principal’s office and get in-school suspension?” Allison was flabbergasted.

“Not if they can’t find me! Today is Friday. I won’t be grounded this weekend if they don’t find me ’til Monday! Hee hee!” Francine giggled.

Several of the students were looking around at me, to see what I was going to do. Clearly they were expecting me to chew her out and peremptorily send her to the office. I smiled into my coffee as I sipped it.

“I guess I had better take attendance.” I wasn’t sure if I was speaking to Horton or B.D.

“You may have a space alien in here for all you know!” B.D. shook his head at me in disgust.

Taking attendance was easy enough. I glanced over at Leslie, who smiled at me. “She’s your only visitor Mr. Kyle.”

“Thanks Leslie.”

I got both Francine and me off the hook easily enough. “Francine, let’s have a chat after class, ok?” Perhaps she guessed what I was up to, because she seemed to be playing along. “Sho’ nuff, Mr. Kyle, whatever!”

I had no idea what I was going to say to her, but it most certainly wasn’t going to be another meaningless speech about following rules. She had probably heard that speech a hundred times before, and it had obviously done no good. I think that she knew that too. She certainly wasn’t scared of me, and that made me feel very comfortable around her, except when it scared me.

“Good for her!” B.D. laughed. He loved Francine too, although she terrified Horton.

“Ok, let’s talk about English, shall we?” A groan went up around the classroom. Would someone please describe Francine’s behavior here today?”

“She’s a bad girl!” Jordan spoke up with a smile.

I looked up with a smile. Jordan was a very small student with a cute smile. She loved to dress in tennis shirts and jeans. Jordan said little, but she was very bright. Her favorite activity in my class, as near as I could tell, was to sit with a sparkle in her eyes and smile. She always seemed to be thinking of some private joke all by herself.

Jordan had missed two weeks earlier in the year due to a concussion from a bump on her head. When she had returned, she was much quieter, but smiled even more. Everyone had known about the concussion and now her nickname was “noggin”. I don’t know who really started it, but it had been an immediate hit. This comment of hers, about Francine being “a bad girl”, had been the first time she had spoken up in several weeks. I was happy and surprised to hear her voice again. I had almost forgotten how it sounded.

“Yeah Noggin, but please be more specific.”

Most of the students picked themselves up off their desks where they had been slouching, and began to scratch their heads or rub their eyes, thinking. Rachel, who I had already marked as highly intelligent, finally raised her hand in a rather laid-back manner.

“I think that she is a radical.”

“Wha’chu callin’ me?” That brought another laugh from the class.

“Relax Francine, it’s a compliment.”

“It better be a compliment!”

“Would someone please grab one of those dictionaries off the shelf and look up the word ‘radical’?” I always made it a point to use “please” and “thank you” with every student as often as possible. I wanted to model the respect that I wanted reciprocated back to me. This had become an urgent mission of mine sometime during that first week of school when I realized how easy it would be for me to become another Sara Getty or Lisa Daniels. “Please” and “thank you” were my first resolutions.

Ernesto raised his hand. “Mr. Kyle, it says here a radical is, ‘drastic, militant, activist, revolutionary, diehard, uh, and uh… non…conformist’.”

“OHMYGOD!” It was B.D. screaming. You are fixing to look like a genius! You couldn’t have swerved into this better if you were a drunk careening down the highway!”

I had been busy wracking my brains to find a way to introduce Henry David Thoreau without watching my students roll their eyes up and fall asleep. Rachel and Francine had handed it to me as a gift, only neither seemed to know. Glancing around at my blackboard, I saw that I had already written “Thoreau” on it. I glanced at Rachel, who smiled blandly in return. Then I looked at B.D. “Well, maybe Rachel is the genius, not you.” He mumbled as he settled his butt on my desk.

Horton minced no words. “See what happens when you do the right thing?” I pretended to play along by remaining silent, as though she had a point.

“Only if doing the wrong thing is now considered the right thing.” B.D. was mimicking Horton’s voice in his most annoying manner. He had heard Horton’s insipid preaching too many times to know that Horton never agreed with allowing a student, such as Francine, to break a rule. I was bemused by this little role reversal of Horton and B.D, but I did have a class to teach.

I put down my coffee on the overhead projector; “Would it be alright with you if we did something else instead of grammar today?”

“Yeah, that’d be cool!” Travis was happy to be class spokesman when it was the easy assignment. Apparently Rachel was the only one who knew I didn’t have the slightest intention of doing grammar. I glanced over and flipped her a piece of candy, which she pulled from the air and began to unwrap as she laughed quietly to herself.

“Let’s talk about why Francine did what she did. Does this make her a radical? Does this make her a non-conformist?” They began shifting around in their desks and sitting up.

“Nawww Mr. Kyle, she’s just being bad,” Allison stated with a bland smile.

“Maybe…maybe…but maybe not. Maybe she’s just not going to obey the rules anymore. Does this make her a ‘bad girl’ as Allison says?”

“Mr. Kyle, you can’t run a school without rules!” René was skeptically crossing her arms with a scowl on her face.

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“Oh, I agree, but whose rules? And what if the rules are unfair and unjust?”

“Since when has that ever mattered?”

“I think it has always mattered. That’s what America is all about.”

“Bullshit!” Everyone suddenly looked around at J.T. J.T. was a very large, muscular black student who always had an angry scowl on his face, as if he was looking to get into a fight. J.T. never spoke. He just sat in the back row and scowled. He had a booming voice that made everyone jump, including Horton and me.

“Fair enough, uhhh…Joseph.” I was looking down at the role sheet.

“It’s J.T!” He angrily shot back.

“You’re right! Sorry about that. Why do you think that America being built around what’s right, as you so eloquently put it, ‘is bullshit’?”

“Cause all I ever see is the opposite!”

“Yeah, I agree. But that doesn’t mean that it was meant to be that way. I pointed to a shelf full of literature textbooks that had sat ignored since August. “In those books is a very famous treatise by a guy named Thoreau, who would agree with you!”

J.T.’s scowl lightened up noticeably. “Whas’ a…uh…a…” He was struggling with his question.

“A treatise?” I helped him with his question.

“Yeah!” He glanced nervously around. He had spoken up for the first time all year, and now the fat was in the fire. He was going to have to interact with his classmates as well as me. I’m not sure which made him more nervous.

“J. T, a treatise is a fancy name for a paper that basically states an opinion and then backs it up with smart thinking. This particular one discusses how it can sometimes be wrong to follow the rules. Wanna see it?”

“You sure you wanna show us that Mr. Kyle?” René interrupted him.

I replied. “It may be news to you guys, but America was founded by radicals, with ideas that would horrify most of the people who run this place, if they ever read them.”

I remembered hearing that Sara Getty had been an English teacher on this very floor nearly twenty something years prior to my appearance. Her reputation as a teacher was still discussed in the teacher’s lounge. The story on her was that she was the worst example of a teacher that any of them had ever seen, and considering some of the teachers I worked with, that alone spoke volumes. Jessica Miller and others had been around so long, that they actually had taught with Sara. They had some frightening stories to tell. I wondered how she had taught Civil Disobedience, since she now inspired it so deeply from me.

“Now that’s a scary notion.” B.D. was creeped-out by the notion of being a student of Sara Getty, and being at her mercy for a whole year. Horton positively shivered with the willies over that idea.

Turning back to the class, I asked an extremely quiet student, Emilio, to please pull one of the class set of English textbooks off the shelf and bring it to me. He flipped to the front of the book.

“Ummm, Mr. Kyle.”

“Hummm?”

“Wha’chu lookin’ for?”

“Civil Disobedience, by Henry David Thoreau.”

Running his finger down the table of contents, he found it. Flipping to the proper page, he brought it up slapping it down on the overhead projector. “Here go!” Normally a very shy boy, Emilio was certainly enjoying showing that he knew his way around a textbook.

Since Emilio was a recent immigrant from Guatemala, I was looking for ways to give him a smile and some praise. He was getting over his silent period in English and beginning to use the language. When someone begins to speak a new language, they will go through what ESL teachers call “a silent period”. When asked to speak in social situations, their self-confidence fails them, and they simply avoid speaking. If you force them to speak, it can cause stress and be highly embarrassing to them, likely setting them back even further. It is best to coax and invite them, but to wait for them to take that first step on their own. Emilio had just started speaking up in class about two weeks ago.

“Nice job, Emilio!” I smiled again at him as I took the book.

I scanned the work, looking for a likely way to tie Francine’s radical and disobedient attitude into what Thoreau had to say. I didn’t have to look past the first sentence. I began to read aloud:

I heartily accept the motto, — “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, — “That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

Looking up at them, I pulled out my coffee can of hard candy. Shaking it so that the candy bounced around inside loudly. It gave off a nice rattling sound, and had a stimulating effect on the kids. They knew that I was about to start asking questions, but if they were willing to take a risk and answer with some thought, they would earn a piece of candy.

Horton had been aghast at how easy I could persuade a kid to do something that they didn’t want to do with a little piece of candy. “It’s scary what they’ll do for that lump of sugar!”

B.D, on the other hand, saw thing differently. “Don’t you ever read those reports about how kidnappers can lure a kid with a piece of candy? I’m not surprised at all!”

“But these kids are sixteen and seventeen years old!”

“So?”

Horton hadn’t known what to say to that, and neither had I. Since B.D. wasn’t always fathomable, we let the matter drop.

Shaking the can again, I asked; “What is Thoreau saying here?”

J.T. was rapidly looking back and forth from the can to me. Finally, he couldn’t stand it anymore. He jumped up and ran over to get a textbook himself. Evidently his bullshit detector had just gone off.

“What page is that on!” He urgently demanded.

Giving him the page number, he flipped over to it as he slowly slid back into his cramped wooden desk that must have been hell for a person of his size.

“Mr. Kyle…Uhhh…You gotta be kidding me!” I guessed what J.T. was going to say.

“I wish I was…”

Francine suddenly became curious and demanded to know what we were talking about. “Whus’ up wit’ you two?”

J.T. cut me off. “This guy’s saying that we should overthrow the school administration!” That comment set off a general stampede for books from everyone except Rachel, who sat smirking in her desk.

“What the hell?”

“What page was that?”

I let them settle down with their books and read for several minutes until I saw them begin to bog down in the diction of Thoreau. But they had gotten the point, and they were looking around and smiling at each other as if they had just found a dime bag of marijuana in their backpack they had forgotten all about.

I asked. “Is J.T. correct? Is this guy saying we need to overthrow the administration?” There was a quiet pause as they looked again. Slowly Rachel straightened up from her usual slouch, and raised her hand. “Rachel?”

“I’m not sure about that, but I think he’s saying that we shouldn’t put up with ‘em.”

Several of the students were looking around and nodding. “Yeah!” or “That’s right!”

Francine smiled evilly. “Mr. Kyle, whachu thinka ‘dis?”

“Well Francine, as you once said, this is the “Serengeti School District. Are people animals? Should they live as such?”

“You caught that, did you Mista Kyle?”

I laughed. “Well, it is interesting that we have lions for a mascot.”

Rachel snickered. “I think that’s inadvertent though. I mean, nobody really planned that!”

J.T. boomed out. “Sara Getty be da queena da jungle!”

Rachel interrupted. “Perhaps she’s the hyena.”

Francine couldn’t resist. “Say Rachel, ain’t a hyena a kind of dog?”

Rachel shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“I knew it! I knew it! Sara Getty be a bitch”

Allison spoke up. “She’s queen bitch!”

“Well, long live the queen!” Marti smiled.

I hadn’t said a word. I didn’t say anything to them. I was busy pretending not to hear them. I gave me plausible deniability with Horton. Turning to the class, I decided it was time to give a little direction to this passion. “Why don’t we read some of this today, outline some of our favorite quotes tonight, and come prepared to discuss what we think about Thoreau’s words in the morning? Shall we?”

They began to groan. “AND…let’s see if we want to apply any of them to this school, shall we?”

Rachel looked up and smiled. She could see where this was going. J.T. looked up in disbelief. Francine raised her hand.

“Francine?”

“Mr. Kyle, you know they gonna fire you fo’ dis.”

“They can’t.” I smiled. “Like I said before, I have a one year contract with them. And besides…it’s in the curriculum. I have to teach this.”

“Bingo.” Said Horton.

“Bingo.” Agreed B.D.

“Ok, who wants to read first?” I asked. Stephanie, a very quiet girl in the front row raised her hand.

“Stephanie?”

“May I start, Mr. Kyle?”

“Yes, please do!”