Emergency Teacher (13 page)

Jovani had been in my classroom since early September. At first he was shy, even sweet. In the first week of school, he'd affectionately drawn the two of us in a house, labeled it “Jovani and Ms. Asuith,” and sweetly pined for my attention. The trouble was that he couldn't read, write, or follow instructions. When the other students teased him, he'd pick a fight. What's more, the main office had no record of Jovani. His file was missing. None of the phone numbers he gave me worked. He told me once his mother was a bartender in the neighborhood, and I had left a message for her at the bar. Whenever I tried calling her at home I got a message saying it was disconnected. Even though Jovani was nearly thirteen, he had the skills of a kindergartner. I had wondered if he was one of those crack babies born in the late 1980s that one heard so much about then. I thought kids like this were supposed to be in special education.

Jovani wanted my attention. Yet each morning that didn't revolve around him, Jovani grew bolder, angrier, and more bitter. Sometimes he would sit in silence for hours. Other times he would demand I help him. If I was helping other students, he would slam his books on the floor and have a tantrum. The other boys—especially Rodolfo—began to pick on him. When this happened, Jovani turned mean. He lashed out to defend himself and began picking fights.

I guessed he was a special education student. These kids had legal rights to tutors and individualized learning plans, all of which Jovani clearly needed. It didn't seem fair to push him to do work that was beyond his capability and then punish him when he acted out. It also didn't seem fair to the rest of the class to have one student constantly ruining the lesson for everyone.

Jovani was bad enough on his own. When José R. arrived, he had a partner. I couldn't stop them.

Only a few days after I accepted José R., he and Jovani returned from lunch on the verge of hysteria. They burst into the classroom chasing each other and then darting back out and running down the hallway. The weather was just turning cold. They threw their big puffy coats across the room.

“It just doesn't matter!” Jovani chanted, mimicking the cry of a TV wrestler.

Vanessa made a beeline for my desk, her entourage of admirers huddling around her. The little connection I had made with Vanessa at the Puerto Rican Day Parade had paid off. She insisted on sitting in the front row, and finished all her in-class assignments with a studied attention to detail. She wasn't necessarily advanced, but the rest of the class was so far behind an average sixth-grader academically that she was well ahead of her classmates. I began to worry about how to challenge her and not lose the rest of the kids.

“Miss, she pull me out into the hall and start acting real tough because her friends were with us,” Vanessa said. An eighth-grade girl had just accused Vanessa of flirting with her boyfriend. “I told her, ‘If I wanted to get with your boyfriend, I would.' She said, ‘Yeah, right.'”

The rest of the class slammed their binders down on their desks. José R. ran back out of the room. I bumped between desks chasing down Jovani.

Class was supposed to begin immediately. It was fifteen minutes before we got going.

“Today we are learning vocabulary words for parts of the body,” I said in Spanish. I drew two stick figures on the board.

“One person is from Philadelphia and the other from Puerto Rico. Who can tell me what this part is in English?” I asked, pointing to the neck.

This was my first bilingual lesson, and I was enormously proud of creating something that, finally, did not leave the Spanish speakers behind. For weeks I had been trying to personally tutor Ronny in class and during my prep periods, but finding spare time was a challenge. He looked at me with puppy-dog eyes—he clearly wanted to learn. So I thought a lesson like this—that the whole class could do—would be an appropriate measure of their willingness to learn. It worked. The students listened and raised their hands enthusiastically. All their energy channeled into class work, and we rhythmically worked, laughed, and learned.

Not for long. Jovani drew a stick figure as I had asked but then quickly gave up. He didn't understand what I wanted. He fell behind everyone else and began to shout out, “wait for me.” And “Miss, help.” I gave him personal attention, but the second I left his desk to help someone else, he jumped out of his seat, sang songs, and ran down the aisle to the back.

“Jovani, please sit down,” I said, starting out nicely.

He ignored me and began throwing himself onto the floor in an imitation of a wrestler executing a body slam. The girls in the class complained.

“Miss, he boddering us.” The boys wavered between concentrating on me and laughing at Jovani. Ronny, who had been labeling body parts, put his pencil down and craned his neck to watch.

Meanwhile, José R. was poking his pencil into the girl in front of him, and whispering dirty words.

“I got a part,” Jovani shouted, striding with gangly legs to the front of the class and pointing to his crotch. “Dick!” He knew the word in Spanish, too, which made everyone laugh. They looked at me to see what I'd do.

His insolence was more than just personally embarrassing. If I didn't do something he'd destroy class for everyone. Each time he trod over me, he eased the path for other students to act out and ignore me.

“That's it, Jovani,” I announced. “You're getting a pink slip.”

The class looked stunned. The pink slip was the most severe form of discipline. Below that was the white slip, which was detention. But few teachers gave those out because they had to be taken home, signed by a parent, returned, and then submitted to Mrs. G. Few students ever returned them with a parent's signature. Among those who did, even fewer actually showed up to detention. If they missed detention, Mrs. G. or the vice principal was supposed to issue an in-school suspension, but they were so snowed under with bigger discipline problems that they soon forgot. Other times, the in-school suspension room was filled.

Most teachers relied on the pink slip, which sent the student immediately out of class to Mrs. G.'s office. From there, she decided what to do. Pete warned me not to use the pink slip too early in the year. It had to be a last resort. Sending a student to Mrs. G. for discipline gave the message that the teacher needed help with discipline. It made the teacher look weak. Also, every time a teacher used a pink slip, it weakened its fear factor.

This, however, was a last resort. Jovani left. I tried to return to the short story, but then Valerie, who was ten, complained that she didn't understand a single word. “You're not teaching me any English!” she demanded in Spanish. Valerie had arrived from Puerto Rico only two months before. The earnestness of her comment stopped me.

Some time later, Rodolfo teased her about her shoes, a pair of oversized red high heels. She screamed at him in Spanish. He hurled insults back. “Silencio!” I shouted over my shoulder. I was tending to another raging emergency involving Ronny and a big, hairy lewd body part drawn in his textbook when, out of nowhere, Valerie burst into sobs. As the tears streamed down her cheeks, I raced to her side, but she had completely lost control. The room fell quiet, and I watched her face go pink, her shoulders heave, and her heels shake inches off the ground, looking tiny and helpless surrounded by big kids. Again, I wondered why I had a classroom with both ten-year-olds and thirteen-year-olds—they didn't go together. Valerie was a little girl, and sixth grade wasn't supposed to be like this. My sixth grade had science experiments with Bunsen burners, reading classes with book reports, vocabulary words, and gentle, nice Ms. Mercer, who baked us cookies and made her classroom colorful and fun. Sixth grade for ten-year-old Valerie was a daily struggle with bullying, humiliation, and frustration. For a moment, we all felt guilty. I kneeled at her desk and protectively wrapped an arm around her gasping frame. “Valerie, just go to Mrs. G., okay?” I urged. She wriggled out of her desk, her high heels landing on the floor with a clack. She stumbled right out of the classroom. Everyone snickered.

At 10:00 AM the phone rang. “Shhhhh,” I told the students. It was the main office calling again. Where was my paperwork? “What?” I pressed the phone against my head and plugged my finger into the other ear. I looked at my desk, covered in half-finished student assignments. “Okay, okay. I'm sorry.” Every day the office interrupted class looking for attendance sheets, students' home phone numbers and addresses, behavioral reports. This time they wanted the emergency lesson plan they had requested in the event that I was absent. It was due last week. The principal erself asked for it. I hung up, pressing my head briefly against the phone before turning back to my class. I didn't even have a lesson plan for when I was present. Every day was an emergency.

Later, I found out the music teacher, the gym teacher, and Ms. Rohan had also been sending Jovani to Mrs. G. I was the last holdout. She sent him home with a letter saying he could not return without a parent. For days his desk sat empty. Then at 10:30 am one morning Mrs. G. knocked on my door.

“Jovani's mother is here,” she said.

My hand was resting against the chalkboard. “I'm in the middle of a lesson,” I said.

She shrugged. “This is your chance to talk to her. I'll watch your class.” So I apologized, and left them for a few minutes.

Jovani's mother stood by the windows, with light reflecting off the back of her small shoulders. Jovani stood with her. She was barely older than I and had a petite frame. Jovani's clothes were always several sizes too big, and dirty. Her jeans and shirt were skintight and her hair and makeup done perfectly. She was pretty, with a soft array of colors on her face, blue eyelids, tanned cheeks, and rosy lips.

“Hi, I'm Jovani's teacher, Ms. Asquith. Habla Inglés? Español?”

“Yes,” she said. Her voice and expression were gentle, and it took away some of my fear. I thought she would be intimidating, but she seemed more unsure and meek.

We stood awkwardly in the hallway for a minute, with Jovani between us, her hands resting on his shoulders protectively.

I searched my brain for some positive things to say about Jovani. I thought back to September. “He used to try really hard, and raise his hand,” I praised.

Then I tried to be as formal as possible, and I read off Jovani's offenses. “But, lately we've had a lot of trouble. Jovani refuses to work, he gets out of his seat, he starts fights, he sits on the windowsill, he curses in class ....”

She glared down at her son. I was surprised to see Jovani biting his lip. He backed against the window and seemed to shrink into his clothes. He tucked his face under his armpit and then looked up from his lowered head into his mother's disappointed face.

“The teachers scream at me! They hate me! The other kids bother me! They beat me up!” he cried. Then he burst into tears. Jovani looked utterly small and helpless cowering, there, in his oversized, unkempt clothing. I wanted to defend myself. Even though Jovani couldn't articulate it, I knew what he meant: The teacher doesn't give me work I understand. She doesn't help me. I want attention.

I tried to jump in, but his mother had seen this before.

“No, Jovani,” she said sternly. “The teacher say you bother everyone else.”

He dried his tears with the long sleeves of an oversized turtleneck, and she talked to him until he agreed he would do better. “Okay,” he said, nodding. “Okay.”