SO LONG, FAREWELL, GOODBYE, BB

As most teachers can testify students come and students go. Occasionally one will linger in your thoughts after graduation, that special academic scholar, the class leader, a star athlete, an outstanding musician, or a student that brightens your first period each day. This year the student that I will miss is none of these. Most of the time BB is a pain in the rear. He seldom spoke English. Screaming to get your attention was his favorite form of communication. Spaghetti O's is his lunch of choice every day. Standing a mere five feet tall, with very thick glasses, most teeth missing, and the worst chapped lips on the planet BB had the general look of a 70-year-old-man. Oh, did I mention his bowed legs?

At 6:20 A. M., every school morning, the yellow short bus deposited BB on the sidewalk outside of the school annex building. Some mornings he would leap from the bus and run head long into me, screaming, "BB, BB". We would hug before he attempted to explain the toy soldier he always carried. Frequently it was the same soldier. He tried to explain something different about the toy. Then with the abandonment of a puppy, I stopped existing, and he would run into the annex.

Some school mornings he chose to ignore me. He acted out imagined anger that went on for hours. By lunch again he ran headlong to get a hug. On some days he would "hide" under the cafeteria dining table until I acknowledged his prank. BB will graduate this year at the age of eighteen. His grandmother and lifelong guardian decided BB would travel America with her husband and herself in an RV. BB could stay in high school until he turned twenty-two, but the time has come for him to see America.

At 8:30 A. M. I watch from my portable classroom as BB slams through the glass annex doors running to get aboard the yellow short bus. BB participated in the school-to-community work program. His favorite job sight was the Food Lion grocery store. He was also a favorite of theirs. On the event of a man making fun of BB while bagging the man's grocery the manger refunded the customer's money and told him not to return to the store. With the help of a job coach BB loved to work. His favorite assignment was moving food carts back into the store. He was a vision. His five-foot, one hundred pound frame trying to maneuver a string of fifty carts across a busy parking lot was entertaining to the customers. He never lost control of the carts. The parked cars were always safe.

The lesser memory I have of BB is his attendance at the senior prom. The gym is not air conditioned, but it was beautifully decorated. The decorations were lost on BB. He quickly stripped himself of the tuxedo jacket. He “disco” danced and watched the girls. He consumed twenty-three cups of punch drink. He threw up and then fell asleep on the toilet in the restroom. It was a wonderful prom for a graduating senior.

I would like to bask in the glory of my collective teachings I’ve imparted upon BB. I just can’t recall any. However, I can bask in the teachings of BB, like how to smile at 6:20 A.M., or how to bump a lunch line without upsetting the “normal” students, and the way of making people on a job site appreciate how much different their lives could be, or hugging just for the sake of hugging, and how much I miss playing with toy soldiers.

BB is graduating on this fine Sunday from high school. I’m not sure the high school will ever be the same? I know I won’t be the same. He and his family sets out to see America on Monday. Be prepared America, BB is on his way.

RIMSCAPE IS NOT AN ONLINE FANTASY GAME

Rimscape is not an online fantasy game. It is a reality.

One of the saving graces of being an emotionally disturbed genius is creating your own reality and then living in it. I first encountered Lucas while he was sitting cross-legged on the gym floor silently refusing to participate. His principal had approached me to "help" Lucas by tricking him into dressing out for Wellness. The class use to be called Physical Education. No one in a government school should physically tax students. So the name was changed to Wellness. I suppose this new name is used to encompass the total person and to aid them into becoming a well person. Never mind that Lucas could not walk from one end of the campus to another without resting. The long tenured Wellness teacher has no tolerance for non-conforming students. Looking at my class list throughout the year testifies to the idea that non-conforming students quickly come to my class for the semester from Wellness class. Lucas is about as far from conforming as a student can become.

My first encounter with Lucas was very quiet. He may have had a lot to say to me, but he didn't. I left him sitting on the "Wellness" floor after telling him he could drop by my portable haven when he wanted. The principals expects me to make a difference in these student's lives and intercept them before they make it to their office again. I did not see Lucas again for one month.

Checking my teacher's mailbox on a Tuesday morning has become a behaviorist treat. On Mondays I find the normal bureaucratic pabulum. This includes edicts from the school board, and the school department chair, and from the liaisons in the Special Education department at the central office. Is there a commonality between the Central Party from the Cold War days and the central office we all answer to now? In my mailbox on Tuesday mornings are the referral sheets from the principals to "help" the students that had occupied their offices on Monday afternoon.

Tucked in with the other notes was a brief note instructing me to check in with the Honors Geometry teacher, Ms. Bottomline. Lucas is a student in her fourth period class telling me why I should check with her. The vision of him sitting on the gym floor not communicating clashed with my previous impressions of Honors Geometry. I could not and didn't care to argue with Ms. Bottomline's teaching style. She has been teaching the same class for twenty-six years. She teaches to the test, producing very good standardized scores and students. If anything is positive about Lucas it's his non-standardized persona.

After checking when her planning period was scheduled I entered her doorless room at the beginning of third period. All of the classrooms in the main building of the high school are doorless. The school had been built during the seventies trend of open classrooms. A time when the belief was that teaching crossed from one teacher to another and one student to another. Teaching by osmosis was a trend whose time long came and went. Now the school board was funding one door at a time enclosing each classroom. This year alone, one door was funded. It was not in Honors Geometry.

"How are you young lady," I asked Ms. Bottomline? My approach to each teacher is different. None of them view me as a "real teacher". Ms. Bottomline sometimes responded well to my good old country boy personality.

"What can I do with Lucas?"

I looked at her feigning my innocence, "What's he doing?"

"Nothing except drawing weird characters for some sort of computer game." Her desire to have him out of her class was barely masked by her anger for a student not conforming.

I had been quietly following any progress Lucas was or was not making in his classes for the past month and I knew the answer to this question. "How are his grades in Geometry?"

"He won't write notes, won't work in group. He won't even help on class projects!"

Okay, it's tooth pulling time. "But, what kind of grade is he making?"

"He's failing the class. He has no grades for anything except tests."

"How bad are his tests grades?"

The loudness and indignity mostly disappeared from her voice. "He gets one-hundred on all of his tests."

I could have replied in many different ways. I chose the politically correct response. "So you've found a way to penetrate his diagnosis of Emotionally Disturbed and teach to him?"

"But he's not doing any of the work I assign."

"So he doesn't participate and still makes hundreds on all tests?"

"Right, but that's not fair to the other students." I wanted to say it appeared that she thought it wasn't fair to her as a teacher. This student was absorbing everything that came from her and was spouting it back on the tests achieving perfect scores. This was not the time to expound on my belief that fair meant each student gets what they need to be successful. They do not get what everyone else has.

"Is there a chance that you could grade him on his tests scores and disregard everything else he is not doing?"

"That wouldn't be fair."

"Would your life be easier," I asked?

"Well, yes."

"And we would be compliant with the accommodations listed on his Individualized Educational Plan?" I was trying to guide her into being compliant with the law.

"It says he doesn't have to do assignments, but just take tests?"

"No, it says we will accommodate his unique disability. We should attempt to guide him during his high school career trying for academic success."

"Well?" She wanted me to say I could take him out of her fourth period class and shelter him in my classroom. I was not prepared to do that just now. However, I knew in the near future Lucas would become a permanent fixture at one of my computer monitors during fourth period. What I did not foresee was Lucas attempting to drag me into his Rimscape computer world. He would begin to share daily with me the "exciting" world of a computer game "reality". The game Lucas stayed up most of the night exploring. Exploring his reality and trying to ignore his twin brother's form of computer reality inside the same Rimscape world.

The only reality is the one we live in. Perhaps it is Rimscape? Perhaps it is the government school system. Perhaps it is the one we nurture with our students while we attempt to demonstrate that many things are important in our lives. It might even be school at some point.

Reality? What a concept.

The Family That Attacks Together,
Generally Are Jailed Together

It should be that a teacher could be shocked from time to time in the course of their daily class gatherings. To be true to myself I'm jaded. I believe my actions on behalf of my forgotten students speak for me. My collection of students has generally spread carnage in their regular classes. Administrators and teachers in this over-populated high school view my program as the last stop for their 'hoods and huns" before expulsion from school. My view is that of a halfway house preparing these students to return to the general population. The students, all of them, see my classroom as a safe haven sometimes from teachers, from administrators, but mostly from their life outside of school. It is probably all of these interpretations. My greatest ally and my greatest nemesis is the No Child Left Behind Program. A program developed by the feds for their government schools. This barely successful law makes it very difficult to get rid of a problem student.

Now, to the days event that continued to add to my education in family values. The family values that are in stark contrast to the values of a teacher born and raised in the fifties and sixties.

"Good morning Marty," I said.

I watched the normally grumpy student come into his first period class. I wondered if this was the week he was speaking to me?

"Hey dude," he replied. This must be the week. He sat, looking around the empty room. My assumption was that he was waiting for an audience larger than one.

"We missed you yesterday."

"Yeah, I wasn't here." His attention and clarity were amazing. He didn't have long to wait. Four of his morning classmates came in wanting nothing more then to go to sleep. Each one perked up a little when they saw him sitting at the table. If Marty knew the truth about the way his posse talked about him when he was absent he would still tell them outlandish stories, but he would dislike each fellow student even less then he did now.

"Man, me and my boy was chillin' out at my mom's place Tuesday night. I was in court all day yesterday. Somebody put a knife at my throat I don't want to press no charges. My old lady pressed them. I just wanted to take care of them myself."

After so many years of hearing this type of English drivel come out of their mouths I'm sad to say that I understood all he was saying. I knew I did not have to become part of the conversation to collect all of the information. Perhaps even some information the juvenile court judge did not have. I appeared to become absorbed in my morning paperwork. All five of them quickly forgot I was in the room.

"I was hangin' with my boy when Caesar, his step mom, sister, and his old man pulled up in our yard. I went outside. Me and Caesar hang together. Before I knew what was happenin' all four of them knocked me to the ground and Caesar had a knife at my throat. He told me he was going to kill my white ass. One of the neighbors called the cops. My old lady didn't. When they heard the cop cars comin' they all got in his step mom's car and got the hell out of the yard. The cops got them over in the next block and arrested all of them. I had to go to court yesterday."

I would hear the story several times throughout the school day. Each time a bit of embellishment was added by Marty. By the end of the day I had pieced the story together. Marty has a girlfriend, Angel, he is on the outs with since the weekend. She had a relationship with Caesar before she moved on to Marty. Marty had decided to move on briefly to Tiffany, just for a weekend, then back to Angel on Monday. However, Angel had decided to get even with Marty. Evidently she had called Caesar to inform him that Marty was going to kick his ass the next time Marty caught him on the street.

It is safe to say that marijuana was involved in both camps. Caesar dealt drugs and used them with his whole family. Marty, on the other hand, gets his stuff from Caesar. All of the participants were high. When Angel told Caesar his step mom became worried that her best salesman would be injured so she gathered the whole family together and drove over to Marty's rented house.

Marty had been inside his house with a friend smoking marijuana. His mother was in the back room of the house drinking with her current boyfriend. She could not have called the police even if she had heard the attack. The next day in court she could not string together enough of the facts to press charges.

Thankfully the police pressed charges for reckless driving, driving under the influence, juvenile probation violation, and driving without a license. Caesar's whole family managed to get locked up until a future court date.

Marty was inconvenienced having to go to court. A small footnote, Marty did lose his stash to his friend that was smoking with him. This brave soul ran out the back door when the attack began taking Marty's stuff with him. Perhaps the worst punishment any of the characters received would be Marty's misfortune. He got Angel back.

How To Steal A Car And Get Caught

I listened as the disheveled high school boy related how he was going to sue the high school. My feet shuffled under my desk in uncomfortable anticipation of leaving in the mid-afternoon. "I fell up the steps," Conner said.

Eased back to the conversation I looked at him as if I knew what he was talking about. "Why do you need to sue, little fellow?"

"I fell up the steps," he restated.

Thinking about what steps he could have fallen up or down on the level land, where the one-story inner city high school was constructed, I watched him bend forward and fold his left ear over to demonstrate the extent of his injury. I half-looked at an injury I could not see and at the same time presenting a look on my face of sincere interest.

"Over next to the science lecture hall."

"Where?"

"Right over there," Conner pointed to the wall of my portable building. Somehow, this high school student, the pride of his family, had found the only place on campus that could be called steps (two) to fall up.

"Did it embarrass you?"

"No, not really. It was during lunch."

The thought passed through my mind how falling in front of many students was less embarrassing then falling up two steps when you're alone? It was quickly replaced by his voice continuing on with the story. "It hurt me right behind my ear. It hurt all night."

"Concrete and human heads are generally an unfair match." I said.

"Wow, you can say that again, but don't. It still hurts," he said, while rubbing behind the opposite ear. I watched him rub the wrong ear and wondered what the real story was?

I would not begin to know the complete story until the School-Resource-Officer approached me. He is a somewhat effective young policeman in a government school setting. "Did Ashton attend all of his classes yesterday," he asked?

"To the best of my knowledge," I half-heartedly assured him. "However, if you need some information about what's going on around here I'd pull him in for a talk."

"Probably a good idea." I watched Officer Burns walk down the wooden ramp leaving my aged portable classroom. He is generally a man of few words and I suspected few original thoughts. Always on his desk was the school and sheriff's department book of rules and polices, along next to a Nintendo game controller. I wondered if he was ever a street cop? I'd heard rumors that he was very good at playing Grand Theft Auto on his game console.

Less than fifteen minutes later I watched the policeman escort Ashton into his office. I was sure he could extract any information he needed and probably some he didn't. Still I had not connected the sore ear, falling up stairs, and the current incident being investigated. Enlightenment would be forth coming to me within the next thirty minutes.

Almost to the minute, Officer Burns opened my classroom door and allowed Ashton to enter. The SRO leaned into the opening and asked to speak with me. "What can I help you with, sir." I said exiting my portable.

"Do you know these five kids?"

I looked at the paper note he cupped in his left hand. I also noticed his right hand resting on a 9mm pistol on his belt. My sense was that he felt safer in that position while on school grounds. "Sure, I know all their names and at least two of them have spent considerable time in my behavior class."

After I gave him their last names he told me what had occurred, thanked me and again walked down the ramp from my portable. Now the story was getting interesting as I began to put the pieces of the puzzle together. It went something like this.........

During first period two days earlier, Conner, Angelina, Kasey, and two other non-descript players had decided that a joy ride, in a stolen car, was what they needed to break the boredom of a grueling high school schedule. So, being inventive young souls, they found a rundown Mazda to fulfill their desires. The Mazda belonged to a friend of Angelina, Cybil Livingston.

Cybil would never be mistaken for the sharpest tool in the high school shed. She drove much to fast onto the student parking lot daily, because she could not decrypt the instructions on her alarm clock. Bounding from the tiny four-door import she always tossed the car keys on the dash in front of the steering wheel in plain sight of one thousand and ninety seven other students, most itching to leave campus during the day. Sometimes, Cybil would comment how good the gas mileage was for her misfiring little Mazda. If she knew the truth, several students borrowed the car daily and some of them even replaced the gas they used.

Angelina was the leader of the Grand Theft Auto gang. She wanted to smoke a cigarette, pickup a soda, and just ride around. Conner was not interested in stealing a car. He was interested in Angelina. Going with her meant there was a slim chance he could get closer to her especially in a small, four-door Japanese car. He never gave the three other students a second thought about being in the car.

If you're out having fun during second period of a mundane school day, why not speed? Why not speed on a wet two-lane country road? Why not speed on a wet two-lane country road and pass a cigarette around to five people? Then the cigarette took a tumble from the waiting fingers of the driver, and Conner attempted to rescue Angelina from imminent harm. Kasey reached from the rear seat to grab the steering wheel. Of course, the automobile was not out of control until Kasey jerked the steering wheel into a hard right turn. This solved the problem of the hot cigarette in Angelina's lap. It dropped from the seat to the roof as the car tumbled over.

"I hit my head on the roof. Dude, it still hurts," Conner said.

Mustering my concern I ask, "Are you all right?"

"I guess so."

"Which hurt more, the car wreck or falling up the steps?"

Conner, looked at me and you could almost hear the gears turning in his brain. A glaze crossed over his teenage face and he said, "You figured it out, man!"

I didn't belay the point, because now Conner understood his story of falling up the steps to cover what really injured his head wouldn't float. He had dedicated most of the night creating and fine-tuning a story to account for his injury. Again, the point had been driven home to him that it is always easier to tell the truth. You don't have to remember as much.

The ending to the great Grand Theft Auto caper was not written for another three days. All of the participates, except Angelina, received three days suspension out of school and the strong possibility all would be charged by the local authorities. Angelina was transferred to the area alternative school mostly due to her long record of infractions. Conner took his three days out of school in stride, sleeping late each day, playing Grand Theft Auto on his Playstation, and generally going and coming as he pleased. All believed their partners in crime were “kool” anti-heros.

Conner, returned on day four with a warning from his principal that one more infraction of the rules would result in his immediate transfer to the alternative school where Angelina now pursued her education. He lasted ten minutes into the beginning of the school day. He managed to become angry; the reason still remains unclear, and stormed out of his first period class. He now gets to pursue the "love of his life" at the alternative school. I hope Angelina's very large boyfriend, that attends the same alternative school, understands.

The Whales Are In Danger!

Morris doesn't have Downs Syndrome. His diagnosis states he has this disability, but with all due respect to his mother, doctors, grandmother, and late father, the rest of us have Downs Syndrome and Morris is the "normal" one.

He graduated from high school in 2005 after turning eighteen, but will continue his education until he is twenty-two. He participates daily in a non-paid work program. I see him frequently in the morning getting on the yellow short school bus to be transported to a burger place one week and perhaps a grocery store the next week, and then maybe to wrap eating utensils at a pizza place the next week. He often says his favorite work places are the restaurants. His favorite food is chicken. The fondness and capacity he has for the Kentucky Colonel's creation, extra crispy, is astounding. Perhaps there is a research study somewhere attempting to discover the allure that chicken has for some people with disabilities? Regardless, he loves his chicken.

What he doesn't love is anyone with a disability. He does not like to associate with "them". Many times he has told me he does not have a disability he's buff. All 5' 2", 273 pounds, black hair, muscle shirt, and sagging pants, buff. The only time he seems to overcome another's disability is when a young lady in his class or work program becomes his girlfriend. He is a buff ladies man with frequent girlfriends. Not the going out on date type girlfriend, but the standing on the school sidewalk before lunch waiting on them, then chasing behind when they don't stop on the way to the cafeteria.

For the most part our conversations go like this;
"Good morning, Morris."
"Good," he replies.
There was a time when he was assigned to my classroom for a brief two week period for the whole school day. He had assignments from other teachers to work on during the day. However, the only assignments he would attempt were math. Probably because he got to use plastic checkers to count.
"Morris, what is six minus three?" With a box of checkers dumped on the table in front of him he would separate six of them. Then he began taking one away at a time until he had the answer.
"One....................."
"Two....................."
"Three..................." and so on regardless of the the problem being solved. This loud counting went on for three periods each morning. Over and over and over and................................

Then lunch time came. His internal clock went off each morning at 11:15 A.M. "It's time for lunch." The excitement in his voice was undeniable. At that announcement he took out his insulated lunch bag from his wheeled book bag. The only thing he ever transported in this book bag was his lunch.

After opening the lunch bag he carefully laid out his lunch in the following order on the table;
Chicken sandwich
Fruit cup
Two cookies
A carton of milk
Two bite size candy bars.

I remember as a child my mother telling me to chew each bite 32 times for good digestion. Morris was not counting, but he intently stared at his sandwich after each bite while chewing a certain number of times. This went on until his lunch was consumed and washed down with the milk. Then he returned to his assignment;
"One................"
"Two..............."
"Three............."

There was a time, right out of college, when I was surely in the "Save The Whales" mode of education. I and my classmates were going to change the academic world by enlightening each and every student. I must have a small piece of that remaining deep inside. From time to time I know I'm going to make a difference in Morris' life. The latest time came during one of his sidewalk waits for a current girlfriend. I was returning to my portable classroom and could not help but pass him. He didn't look in my direction as I passed so intent was he on waiting for a girl.

"Hello Morris."
"Good," he said.
"That's not the appropriate answer, Morris. When someone says hello you should reply, Hello Mr. Best."
He looked at me through his glasses and with extreme lucidity he said, "What if it ain't you?"

With all due respect to his mother, doctors, grandmother, and late father, the rest of us have Downs Syndrome and Morris is the "normal" one. In a flash of clarity I understood I had been put in my place and teaching was on a long lunch break.

Shackles?

Why Are Shackles Inhuman?

I'm an old "fuddy-duddy". In my time on this spinning rock the definition of shackles has changed many times in my cerebral dictionary. I read The Diary of Anne Frank and understood the shackles that are imposed mentally and physically, many times by others. Then I see some of my students out in the "hood" and I grasp the concept of environmental shackles. On a daily basis in the classroom I'm slapped across the academic face by the shackles created from missing parents, single-parent "families", and just plain uncaring "parents".

Of the multitude of governmental shackles thrust upon citizens No Child Left Behind has tightened itself around the academic wrist of some students that need reality. Not the "reality" of the SAT score, the "insistent reality" that every student should attend college, and surely not the "reality" that if you score a certain number on a standardized test then your life will be set firmly in success.

What about the young mind that can take a lawn mower engine apart inside their head and even put it together again, or the hands that can transform a stack of lumber into a dining table, and the young souls that small children relate to in the realm of child care? It is so easy to expound on the lack of teaching knowledge and virtues when students don't pass into a standardized life, such as the students that have no family support, the ones that exercise their math skills counting the days until their eighteenth birthday and can quit, or the ones that find a "reality" in the quick buck mentality of the streets, and the ones that receive their esteem from developing a "street cred". A student that shoots a store clerk twice just to have others look at him with "respect".

Many teachers find themselves in the quicksand position of teaching to the test, especially in the core classes. Mostly, what is missed is that life after high school is the test. There was a time when public schools were more then a babysitting service. They were the focal point of the community. The pride of the richest, poorest, and all falling between these two. Now these institutions have morphed into government schools. Controlled by the State Department of Education. A government agency that has never educated a student and never will, but exercises a strangle hold on local school boards through the disbursement of federal money. It is not so much that school systems need federal money as they want federal money.

Technology is the current emphasis and watch word. The more computers and related hardware that can be crowded into a classroom then more education that must be taking place. The real technology of the classroom is the cell-phone, text messages, and iPods. Of course, the one thing that just about guarantees placing a teacher in a dangerous, confrontational position is demanding that a student give up their cell-phone if caught having it out during class or outside of class. This teacher is also expected to disregard another teacher just outside the school building using their cell-phone while trying to reason with an angry student being told they can't have their cell phone back.

"Hey, I'm Thomas, but my boys call me Street."
This new student had transferred in today from another county system that suggested with his difficulties there with academics and the court system he would do much better transferring. His family, an older sister, took the hint and moved out of the jurisdiction of that court system.
"Have a seat. Do you have your class schedule yet?"
"I lost it man."
"You lost it between the guidance office and here?" A distance of about 246 feet.
"Guess so."
"Well, I'll get you another one."
"Don't matter, I'll just lose it too."
I looked at this student. He dressed like most of the others. Sagging pants, oversized t-shirt with a cryptic advertising message that only a street kid cared to understand, a shiny "grill" covering his upper teeth, and a large chain around his neck with a fake medallion hood ornament from a Mercedes attached. The more he tried to dress to be different and cool, the more he looked and acted like the other students.
"Where do you live," I asked?
"You know, over in the 'hood."
"What grade you in Thomas?"
"Don't matter. They call me Street."
"I don't use nick names in this class."
"I don't give a damn about this class or this school. I'll be eighteen in two months and I'll be gone."
"What are you going to do when you're out of school?"
"What I always do. I make money. I don't need no loser job like yours."
"I see. Then you have a plan."
"What I always do, dude."
"Do you want to get another copy of your schedule?"
"No, dude. I'm tired. I been up all night. I need to rest." With those enlightening words he pulled the hood on his Jordan jacket over his head and fell asleep. The other students in the class looked at me with the same expressions on their faces that was now being hidden by Street's hood.

This kid has embraced the shackles of his life. No Child Left Behind, more technology, teaching to the test, and government school plans mean nothing to him. He has a plan, an agenda for life and knows he is not going to be left behind by the street. At least for a short period of time.

It's The Time; Of The Season....

Well, well! It's the time of the school year when the four principals have had enough. Of course, that means they are tired of seeing the same few students out of two thousand, in their offices, day after day.

Unfornunately for me and my wonderful Educational Assistant we do not have the same luxury of moving them to one room all day long. The principals talk a good story during the rest of the school year; Value Added, N.C.L.B., Gateway test scores, and the educational well being of all students. In the end let's send them to the portable classroom at the greatest distance from our offices. Additionally, let us smile at the teacher while we "include" them in the discussion of students well being. Then, when all is said and done; let's send them to the portable classroom at the greatest distance from our offices.

Due to the lateness of this post I will pass on the glorious stories, for now, that each new student uses to describe themselves on their path to world domination; The Female Black Leprechaun, Fat-Boy Gansta, The Model, I'm Eighteen and Free (Almost), School I Don't Need No School- I'm Short.

Perhaps, I'm "fried" by this time, but standardized testing is only two weeks away. Of course, none of us teach-to-the-test! A complete education for each student is number one priority. All students must go to college. Warning Will Robinson- Danger, Danger!

Later.......................

Time Tempers Educational Gusto!

Since my last posting many events have occurred with some assisting my students to mature and some leading to the hospital or handcuffs. The hospital event should have been the most traumatic?

Zorba the Geek is an unusually short, thin, and very loud teenage boy. His most pressing goal in life is to be just like his older brother. The brother that was released from jail in November after doing 11 months - 29 days for breaking and entering.

Zorba the Geek has not passed a class in two years. However, he does know everything about everything and freely tells anyone. His parents long ago washed their hands of educational accountability for this son. Additionally, teaching manners were never an important priority. He cannot help but interrupt any conversation he hears explaining how his knowledge of the subject is the best knowledge. It does not matter if his information is correct or not. Now on to an event that should have impacted his life. Life's jury is still out on how it impacted him.

Just before Christmas Break, that's right, I did not say Winter Break, Zorba the Geek decided another way to prove his street credentials was to ride along with a “known” drug user and seller to consummate a deal. The location of choice for these two “wanna-be” criminals was a house owned and operated by a local “group” of Asian youth.

As the story goes his companion suggested it would go much easier if Zorba stayed in the car while he finalize the deal. Of course, Zorba new much more than anyone that offered advice. While the deal was going down he took the opportunity to “talk his trash” to the lead Asian's girlfriend. Obviously this would not go unnoticed. Three of the “homeowners” decided to correct Zorba's manners with the use of a brick. Two of them held him down while the leader crushed his head with a brick.

The good thing about Zorba's companion was that he returned to find Zorba lying in his own blood and called for help. Zorba was taken to the local hospital which was not equipped to handle the severity of his injuries. He was life-flighted to a much larger university hospital and died during the flight. The paramedics were able to revive him and after admission he was placed in a chemically induced coma for the next month.

Zorba remained out of school for over three months. Upon his return I've observed him during class many times. Perhaps it is my cruelty, perhaps my thick skin, or perhaps I'm right. After sustaining what should have been a Traumatic Brain Injury I see no change in his behavior or academic skills. I like to think it is a credit to the hospital staff, but my cruel side believes the brick had little to work with and injure.

Since his return to high school he continues on as before. He attempts no assignments, skips class freely, smokes whenever he desires, knows everything about whatever anyone is speaking about, and draws out any anger from his peers that he can find.

As we approach a week of Spring Break, Zorba the Geek has an extra week out of school for smoking on school property. My sense is that this child has been left behind by his family,
peers , school, and himself.

More on other events having occurred during my period of not posting, later....................

Now Reality Returns

The holidays are over; now reality returns. Reality! What a concept the comedian wrote. For reasons that escape me I have neglected this diary for most of a month. As a welcome return to my high school scholars the doorbell rang this past Saturday morning. I could see a silhouette through the dark green curtain covering the oval window in the door. I suspected the identity of the silhouette waiting for a stranger to open the door.

The previous Monday a new student had transferred into the school. His mother had moved him and herself into a very low rent district of town perhaps one step ahead of the law. Matt is a pleasant young man with an unusual hairdo. He tends to comb his wet blonde hair forward toward his eyes. As it dries, laying flat on top of his head, the ends curl upward on his forehead. In an attempt to completely cover his young babyish face he tries to grow a beard on his chin. The wispy hair does little to cover his chinny-chin-chin. The one thing he has going for him; he is smarter then my average SPED student. In his last school he had been placed in an honors English class. The only reason he failed the class were the thirty-five days he occupied a cubicle in the in-school-suspension portable classroom.

Through the green curtain I saw the curled hair on his forehead. He was looking down at a folder he held in his hand. I unlocked the door and swung it open. He looked up and was ready to say his memorized speech. However, the best he could muster was a shocked, “holy shit”!

“It’s good to see you also Matt,” I replied to his surprised words.

“I a, I mean a, I didn’t know you lived here?”

“Well, well, surprise to you. What can I do for you?”

Before he answered I knew why he was at my door. He was completing a probation period imposed by the local juvenile judge. A lady that had ran on one platform and like
many other politicians had changed after winning elections. His sentence was a year’s probation as long as he held a job. Otherwise, if he lost his job, he would finish his sentence in the juvenile detention center. The job was selling local newspaper subscriptions with most of his salary going to pay court cost. He had been blanketing most residential areas of this fast growing town.

“Okay, here’s your free newspaper. You want to buy a subscription? You can get a five-day a week subscription for $10.00 a month, or Saturday and Sunday for $8.50 a month, or you can just make a donation.”

Matt had not looked at me from the time I opened the door. He stood there with his sagging pants, Artic Polar coat, untied Nike shoes, and hairy chin waiting for me to choose a subscription.

“How much longer are you on probation,” I asked?

“Four hundred dollars worth.”

I wondered about the legal lesson he would take away from his probation experience? My guess was the same lesson he garnered from his prior two probations. Briefly a picture crossed my mind. A picture of him appropriately clothed, in honors English, passing with a solid A, and colleges lining up to offer him scholarships.

“How about a donation,” I asked?

“If that’s what you want to do.”

Leaving him standing on the small concrete porch I fished fourteen dollars from my wallet. “All I have is this,” I told him over my shoulder.

“Whatever,” he said.

My ideal picture of the future was quietly shattered and replaced with a mental slide show of poverty, despair, evictions, minimum wage jobs between jail sentences, several children with different partners, and no high school diploma or college degree. He pocketed the fourteen dollars and walked off down the street to the next house.

“Thanks man. See ya Monday.”


…………I could be wrong?

FEW WILLING TO CHANGE JOBS WITH TEACHERS

Published: Monday, 01/09/06, Nashville Tennessean

There are days when I'm glad I chose writing as a profession and not, say, teaching school children. As a writer, I have solitude as a constant companion during work hours, with only that fickle lady, my muse, to deal with. But even she can be wooed with fresh coffee. But look at what public school teachers have to deal with. I'm thinking specifically of a recent incident at a Clarksville middle school where a teacher laid a hand on a student's arm to prevent him from leaving the class without his permission.

The incident became big because the student's mother chose to make it so. A complaint was made, charges were filed, because "strong force" she said had been applied on her son. And so it came about that a hand on an arm became tantamount to assault, and a teacher, 34-year unblemished teaching record notwithstanding, received a reprimand and the incident became front-page news at the local daily.

I sometimes wonder how public school teachers find the will and motivation to continue doing their jobs. You have to hope that most of them, or at least some, found their way into this, one of the "noble" professions, for the right reasons: to make a difference, mold impressionable minds, impart education, be a catalyst in at least some students' lives. And you wonder how long it took for them to feel deflated by some of the realities of their job.

Look at what is on their plate: A low starting salary and a continuing one that is hardly commensurate to their qualifications or the work they do; a society that expects miracles from them; raw material to work with that is diverse in every way imaginable — diverse in terms of ethnic and religious background, and diverse in terms of socio-economic background — kids who come from low-income, unsupervised households; kids from middle-class households who are unsupervised because their parents are too busy; kids from the other end of the spectrum — from households with high-strung parents who over-manage and over-schedule their kids' lives.
And let's not forget the federal standards that ask teachers, in effect, to put all these different kids onto the education assembly line and produce products with a decent education. If you ask me, teachers ought to be paid a king's ransom.

But I haven't yet come to that category of Obnoxious Parents, a category that needs a couple of paragraphs, and can't be dismissed in a sentence or two. Apparently, there is a new breed of parents that has sprung up in recent years; a breed that has taken parental involvement to new heights, that sees their child being always in the right and school authorities in the wrong, and that is combative and confrontational with teachers.

Time magazine carried a report on this trend last year, and asked teachers to name the hardest challenge they faced in their jobs. The answer was not limited resources or standardized tests or unruly students but dealing with parents, which is saying something.

As a parent of two school-going children, I know the difficulties. You want to stay involved in your child's school and life because the times demand it. For an increasing number of parents, however, it seems to have gone from simple, lower-case parental involvement to bold-type, upper-case PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT, often to the detriment of the child.

Part of being a columnist is to be negative, and I don't want to be unduly that. I know that there are fine teachers in every school district and motivated students and moments of quiet glory when things click together marvelously. But when members of the public sit around and tut-tut about public school education, as we sometimes do, we would do well to remember that schools can only be as good or bad as the societies around them, and reflect, in a way, what goes on outside — parenting styles, attitudes toward education, the after-school hours kids spend on multiple media sources thus hampering their education, and much, much more.

Public school teachers can't tread on water, but we sometimes expect them to do just that.

Everyone Needs a Place for Their Crap!

If your stomach is weak from the virus that is running rampant through the local classrooms then this recount of ten minutes out of a day dedicated to No Child Left Behind is not for you.


“Where do we store our crap?”

I looked at the 17-year-old-girl sitting across the table from me. It had been several months since a question from a student had thrown me. However, the confusion on my face had to be evident to her.

Shalay stared at me desperately waiting for words of explanation and wisdom. For reasons that did not escape me I was her favorite teacher. Not that she liked me, but she respected me because I never deviated from my stance with her. Young ladies act like ladies and young men act like gentlemen. Sure it is my interpretations of young men and women. However, I feel confident in my formative years of development.

“What crap are you talking about?”

I was sure her concerns were for her worldly possessions that she daily left in the singlewide mobile home. A mobile home she shared with her grandmother, great-grandmother, two sisters, one brother, but not her mother or father. Her mother was half-way through her second jail term for drug use and sale. It was anyone’s guess where her father was or who he was. Oh, did I forget to say that in addition to the above-mentioned people her 11-month-year-old baby also lived there? The father of the child, one of the finer alternative school students in Nashville, sometimes visited. Having him visit was preferable to him moving into the two-bedroom mobile home.

“You know, Poop!” she said with a small flash of embarrassment on her face.

For a fleeting moment I thought she was making a joke out of some comment by another student in the classroom. Then I realized she was asking about bodily functions. Perhaps I should have brushed the question off and discussed it later with her. However, the teacher reared its knowledgeable head inside me. I was sure this could be a biological, No Child Left Behind, Value Added, inspirational, educational moment. In a few minutes I would learn it was nothing more then the dying gasp of a delusion about saving the whales left over from my college career.

I easily slipped into my finest special education science teacher persona. My explanation was masterful. Employing graphic, but not obscene, details of the digestive system ending with a wonderful analogy of a school book bag and the colon. I leaned back in my padded desk chair and looked at Shalay’s newly educated face. Yes sir, what a lesson! The gazed on her face did little to confirm my posturing. It was a vacant and yet confused, This Child Left Behind, Little Value Added, uninspired, non-educational gaze.

“I thought it was stored in your testicles?”

I tried to shuffle around in my chair to avoid the question. This was not to be. Her gaze followed me no matter which way I turned. She could easily have been one of those paintings in your wealthy aunt’s house whose eyes followed you everywhere. My whole teaching career came down to this impromptu biology lesson.

“Ain’t it stored in your testicles,” Shalay asked again?

The two guys sitting quietly at the second table could no longer be silent. Their laughter exploded across the tables and washed across my dying biology lesson.

“What the hell are you talking about Shalay,” Teddy asked? “What the hell are your testicles attached to?”

Demonstrating no embarrassment and a wonderful anger control impulse, which she was not noted for, Shalay turned toward them. They both immediately became silent. The last thing either one wanted was to confront her physically.

“My testicles are attached to my baby’s daddy,” she said this with all the calm of a mature mother. “You don’t seem to have any attached to you.”

With that Shalay rose and exited the portable classroom. This left the two male students and me to digest our failures in different arenas of Special Education in public school.

The Maternity Ward (Foolish me! I thought it was a classroom in a public school)

“There must be something in the water,” Sammi said in response to my question.

“I don’t think it’s in the water, sweetie.”

“My daddy was mad as hell at me. He acted like he loved me or something.”

Sammi is the fourth 15-year-old to become pregnant this school year. The year is not half over. I assume sex education in the home or the school is not going as planned. The first to announce the blessed event was Angelina. One week to the day of her happy proclamation the father of the child was shot dead during a drug deal gone bad. Bad for him, but I’m unsure if it was bad for mother and baby. The following month Gina was proudly traversing the campus telling anyone that would listen about her unborn child.

“I really want to be a mama! I love dolls. I hope it’s a boy.”

I looked at this wanna-be “Barbie” well on her way to giving birth to a real world Ken and asked her, “You realize babies grow for at least eighteen years unlike a doll?”

“Of course I do. Don’t be silly. Anyway, I love dressing dolls and I’m going to dress my little boy so cute.”

My sarcasm and feeble attempt with a lesson was lost on her. The fourth to announce the impending joy was Christy. She is the longtime girlfriend of Roosevelt. This announcement did not surprise me. For two years on a weekly basis she stated over lunch “I’m going to have Roosevelt’s baby that way I can keep him.” Having failed with her master plan of bringing him food, lots of food each morning, with the goal of fattening him to the point that no other girl would want him she then decided to fatten herself instead.

Roosevelt could always find female companionship, some even willing to buy him meals. On Christy’s surface this did not seem to bother her. Her mother had become pregnant at fifteen, followed two weeks later by a car accident. Mom was confined to a wheelchair there after. Christy’s father had not been seen sense her day of birth. I believe I saw her mother outside of their home once, but Christy assured me I was mistaken. I hoped history would not repeat itself.

“Sammi, your father does love you. That could be why he is so angry,” I told her returning from my thoughts of the other girls.

“No. He’s mad at me. Just like he gets when I don’t come home at night. My mom doesn’t care how late I stay out, so why should he?”

My excellent powers of deduction, developed from watching old Sherlock Holmes movies, told me I could have stumbled upon the cause for her pregnancy. Her boyfriend, Duke, is a mere 24-years-old. Mom and dad had only stepped up to complain about this age difference, when perhaps they should have reined in their 15-year-old daughter. Sammi’s mother tried for several years to be her daughter’s best friend instead of her parent. Now she gets another chance to raised a child with better results I hope.

“How’s Duke feeling about you being pregnant?”

“I think he’s happy about it. He told me he’s going back to Ohio this weekend.”

“Why?”

“He hates his job right now and he’s going to look for another one.”

“Where’s he work?

“Huh, I can’t remember the name of the place.”

“Where is the place?”

“Don’t know.”

“What does he do?”

“He never told me.”

“Why doesn’t he look for work around here?”

“More jobs in Ohio.”

I realized she knew very little about Duke. My hunch is the one thing she surely didn't know was that he will not be returning from Ohio. I wondered if he’d take Roosevelt with him to search for work. Of course, Christy only had bad luck and Roosevelt leaving town could only be classified as good luck.

The other pregnant girls settled in around my large classroom table during first lunch. They had gravitated to meeting in my classroom on a daily basis. I’ve taken to calling the first of three lunches scheduled for the school as The Maternity Ward. The girls all think it’s cute. I’ve tried to recall which college class, designed to mold me into a liberal special education teacher, addressed this situation. The one thing they have accomplished is the taming of the guys that once-upon-a-time dominated my classroom. Tamed some and ran others away. Morning sickness, weight gain, stretch marks, baby food, sex, and any other baby discussions sure cramped the style of my hardened “gangstas”.

Oh yes, discussions about cramps weren’t appreciated by the “gangstas” either.

QueenAnne's Wonderful Blog!

Without permission, but I hope without a complaint, I have included this link.

http://queenannelace.blogspot.com/

This blog is informative, well constructed, and above all is written by a teacher that cares.
Please forgive me QueenAnne for posting and assuming your permission.

Special Edd

Thanksgiving Turkey

The doorbell rang. Looking through the glass storm door, there he was. The son I never wanted. I first met him three years ago at an intake meeting where his grandmother proclaimed herself an international expert on special education. His mother attended the intake meeting. Her first words proclaimed, "I'm an adult ADHD, (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), and I know what my son is going through!" My first thought upon meeting her was an NFL linebacker. She easily topped six feet tall and probably weighed in at two hundred pounds. Honestly, she did not appear fat. Just broad shoulders, short hair, and very large feet. Of course, her overwhelming feature was ADHD. She went out of her way to maintain her ADHD as the driving force in her life. Through several meetings, attempting to address her son's academics or behavior, she contributed a long litany of events to her "Adult ADHD"; a broken down car, the loss of three jobs, never cooking a meal for her son, failed relationships, rain, sunshine, night, day.

Her mother was always on the telephone while snuggled down at her D.M.V. desk in Kansas. She once taught, for a grueling two years, in a rural public school. Then her career took a hairpin curve into a sixteen-year pit stop at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Many meetings later, filled with accusations about the inadequacy of the education system, and three years of weekly telephone call updates to Roosevelt's mom succeeded in making him my shadow. For three years seldom did a school day pass that he was not with me for at least two hours. More often he blessed me with his presence for six-and-three-quarter-hours. His ADHD and immaturity ruled his life. Additionally, he craved the attention of any male figure offering guidance or discipline.

“Hello,” Roosevelt said, waving through the glass storm door.

“Just a second,” I said, trying to slip into my pajama pants. The comfort of sitting around in my underwear on a lazy holiday was erased from the agenda.

Roosevelt made himself comfortable on the couch. His childish smile dominating his face. My dog stood on the footstool barking at him nervously. She doesn’t care for visitors in her domain and cares less for them talking to me. “What you doing, bud?"

“Just running around. I came by around 9:30 this morning, but it didn’t look like anyone was up.”

“It’s a good thing you didn’t ring the doorbell,” I stated with fake anger. He didn’t need to know I had been up since 3:30 A.M. “You celebrating Thanksgiving with your mom?”

“Yeah, my grandmother came in, too.”

“How’s your mom’s roommate,” I asked? He came by several months before to inform me that his mom had announced to him that she is gay and introduced her new roommate, Wendy, to him and his newly pregnant girlfriend.

“How’s your grandmother dealing with your mom’s friend?”

“She’s cooking Thanksgiving dinner.”

“And?”

“And ignoring Wendy,” he replied, followed by a nervous laugh. “She walks around like Wendy isn’t in the house. That’s okay I don’t really like Wendy, either.”

“I’m shocked.” I decided to let the subject drop. “You working?”

He lifted up his left foot to proudly display a tennis shoe covered with paint specks. “I’m painting the inside of new houses in a subdivision over in Franklin. My boss picks me up at 5:30 every morning. Man, it was a lot easier in school, not having to get up until 7:00.”

I could have steered the conversation toward the virtues of staying in school and graduating, but it would have been lost on him as it was several hundred times before. “Where’s Christy?”

“She’s at her mom’s house. We’re going over to my house to eat, later.” Christy is his very pregnant girlfriend, due February 21^st. She had sat out to become pregnant at the age of sixteen to keep Roosevelt. Now it appears she will have two babies to raise.

The conversation touched on several subjects from his impending fatherhood to friends of his that had recently been arrested for armed robbery and the shooting of a convenience store clerk. He tried to take the side of the crooks, but even he knew it was the wrong side to take.

“Why do you think they did it,” he asked?

“Boom Boom wanted the street rep.”

“But they had the money and then shot the clerk.” He wrestled with why a seventeen and fourteen year old would commit a string of robberies and shoot someone.

“I don’t get it either.” It was best to leave it where it was instead of trying to impress my middle class adult values on a bi-racial youth trying to find his place in the world. His most daring crime to date had been shoplifting a pair of pants from an upscale mall store. They weren’t even his size. He wanted to impress a friend.

“I’ve got to be going.”

“It’s about time,” I said with a smile. He smiled back understanding my fake sincerity

“Happy Thanksgiving, man,” he said over his shoulder getting into his worn out car. My dog continued to bark until he had driven out of sight.

I returned to the writing of another entry for my Special Education journal with the knowledge I would never have a lack of situations to write about.

"Happy Thanksgiving, Roosevelt."

They Just Don't Make Book Bags Like They Use To

I look at him now, November 2005, and remember when we first met in August 2003. He entered my rundown portable classroom scuffing his feet on what I suspected were asbestos tiles covering the rotted sub-floor.

"Pickup your feet bud," I quietly said, "Men don't scuff their feet when they walk." He said nothing, but picked up his feet. "Pull up a chair and join the party."

"Where's my desk?"

"The only desks in here are in those two cubicles," I jestured toward two cubicles, one at each end of the classroom. "Those are for students that decide they don't like anyone in here and want to be alone." He surveyed each one and chose one of the orange plastic chairs placed around one of my large, worn-out library tables.

His hair style was unusual to say the least. Trimmed short on the sides of his head, but grown long on top. So long in fact that his bangs, combed forward, easily touched his upper lip. This was his preference in styles. Combed forward to hide what he perceived as his many defects. Also, it helped him hide from the world.

Casey's world consists of, a mother that sometimes entertained employment for periods of up to two months, a father that no one seemed to remember, a string of single-wide-mobile-homes he called home, and the conscience ability to tear-down anything that may be going right in his life. Casey's conformity to his own sense of right conduct is admirable, but ultimately flawed by being one of the hordes of high school students that have raised themselves. He can't even be described as a "latch-key kid" because his trailer doesn't have a lock on it's only door.

Casey and his mother have been evicted from five rented mobile homes within the same rural trailer park over the last two years. Each trailer came with one of these additions; a) a new "family", b) another woman with one or two children, c) a boyfriend (with or without other children), d) other single mothers forever down on their luck. Whenever he comes to school with a new child that lives with him he always introduces them as his sister or brother. They're not, but it makes him feel like part of a family.

It took Casey most of three weeks to feel comfortable enough to initate a conversation with me or my aide. It was a much longer period of time for him not to expect the worse from us and cease attempting to place us in situations that proved he was right; we were there to get him into trouble, not to get him ready for "life" outside of high school. A life that could not slap him any harder then he had been slapped for the first seventeen years of his life.

I enjoy standing on the wooden deck of the portable classroom in the spring watching the classes change. Most of 2000 students herding themselves between the main school building and the equally sized annex building walk within six feet of me up and down the cement path. All teachers are expected to stand outside of their classes during the changes more as a deterent to "bad" behavior then to physically intervene if trouble breaks out. I just enjoy the spring sunshine on my face and bald head. Through the years many students have asked how I know when I stop washing my face and begin washing my head? Each time I react has if it is the first time I've heard the joke. I welcomed the spring of 2004 after a dreary, cold, winter in middle Tennessee.

"Hey dude, can you do me a favor," I heard Casey loudly ask as he came up to ramp to the deck?

"Depends on the favor Casey."

"I got to go to the prinicpal's office and he'll search me."

I cared less about the search then I did for the reason he had been summoned to the office. "Why do you have to go see the principal?"

"Man, Mr. Slagg jumped on my case. I wasn't doing anything, just talking to Angela. He told me to be quiet and to move to another desk."

"Did you?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Didn't want to. I wasn't doing nothing."

"How many times did he ask you to move?"

"I don't know, one or two."

"Four or five?"

"Maybe."

"Look at me when we're talking. Men respect each other while they're talking." He looked up from the deck and continued the story.

"I got mad. He don't like me."

"What did you do?" I suspected the answer before he told me. Casey's anger was always just beneath the surface.

"He told me to go to the office. He wrote a pink slip on me." A pink slip was a dreaded response to a behavior. Dreaded by teachers and principals. Ignored by most students. "I walked out before he finished."

"And?"

"And what?"

I waited. There is always more to the story.

"I called him a bitch."

I successfully surpressed a smile. Gender definition is always a problem for some students. However, it was the best he could come up with at the time.

"So you took the problem to another level?" He looked at me trying to sort through the situation and his reaction.

"I was just talking to Angela."

I understood his need for female attention. Angela was three months pregnant and just showing. Casey was attracted to her. Partly because he sensed her need to be accepted as a pregnant freshman student and partly because he knew she had experienced sex. Something he had yet to encounter, except with himself. He remained attracted to her for nine months, before moving on to another crush.

"What's the favor," I asked?

"Look man, my mother's boyfriend loaned me his cigarette case. I' m going to be searched and it will get takened. Can you hold it for me?"

I watched him fiddle with something in his worn jeans pocket. Most students believe that all teachers just "fell off a turnip truck". We're all gullible and open to any scam. This was no exception.

"Sure, I'll hold it for awhile."

He handed me the fake silver case. He turned and headed down the ramp, mumbling something about that damn teacher, and made his way to the office. I looked inside the case and saw three flattened Basic brand cigarettes. Cheap, but affordable. Casey's mother bought him cigarettes once or twice a week. It kept him busy while she entertained in the mobile home. I left the deck and headed toward the courtyard between the main building and gym.

I walked up to the principal. He generally stood here during lunch periods, more to greet football players then to be a discipline presence. A few seconds later Casey approached. I beat him there because I didn't have to stop and tell other guys the story of being tossed out of class. Casey came to my side, somewhat surprised I was there. Standing there I put my arm around him and his unused bookbag. Unused for books, but well used to hide various contraband.

"What are you doing here Casey," the principal asked?

"Mr. Slagg threw me out for talking to Angela." The principal had no idea whom Angela was and cared less.

"You got anything on you?"

I watched the loose gears turn in Casey's brain. He had just formulated a plan to divert trouble from himself to me. "I had some cigarettes, but he told me he would hold them for me so I wouldn't get in anymore trouble then I was," Casey said, nodding his head in my direction.

"What's he talking about," the principal asked me?

"I have no idea," removing my arm from Casey and his book bag and stepping back.

"Empty your pockets Casey." He did what the principal told him. There was nothing incriminating in them. "Let me have the book bag."

Casey took the bag off of his shoulder, handing it to the principal. He tossed a quick smile in my direction. The principal opened the small pocket on the top of the bag and brought out the fake silver cigarette case. Casey's smurk quickly changed to shock. The cigarettes and case succeeded in securing three days out-of-school-suspension for Casey.

On the fourth day Casey made his way to my portable for lunch. Entering, he sat at the second used library table, away from me, but not to far away.

"How was your three day vacation," I asked, not looking in his direction.

"We missed you," my aide said.

"Yeah, it was okay, I slept in everyday," Casey replied.

"Where's your book bag?"

"I'm not carrying it anymore. The flap on the pocket opens to easily, stuff keeps falling out."

I smiled at him, "It's hard to find a good book bag that you can trust. A teacher you can trust lasts longer."

The Aroma of Success, (or could that be Ramen Noodles)?

"Where you been man," the wanna be gangsta student asked?

"My family had some health problems."

"Yeah, I know what you mean. My old man shot my moms."

It struck me hard how easily this student accepted the act of violence in his family. Of course, his family was his mother, his two sisters, himself, a half brother almost his age, and a five-month- old half sister. I remember, several months ago, asking him where his father was and being told he was in lockup for "dealin".

"Yeah, my old man got out in October, found out my moms was going out with her probation officer."

All I could do was lean back in my chair listening to the tale unfold from the mouth of this 17-year-old child. Seventeen going on forty in street years. The magnatron tube in the microwave sounded like it was whirling, cooking the "wanna be gangsta's" Ramen Noodle breakfast.

"My pop found her down in the Meadows sitting in her boyfriend's car drinking some 45's. Her boyfriend must of seen my old man coming and got away. Pop shot moms in her shoulder."

The Meadows, a bastion of social reform, is well known around town as a breeding ground for crime. "She okay." I asked?

"Yeah, she's straight. Got out of the hospital last week."

"What about your father?"

"He's in lockup for attempted murder. He didn't mean to murder her just scare her. My old man is straight, if he wanted to kill her she'd be history."

How easily he continued to defend the man amazed me. This man could not be described as a father in the traditional sense. They had never lived as a family. I knew from the boy that his "pop" had mostly been in lockup during the student's seventeen years of life. The bell on the microwave announced the Ramen Noodle breakfast was ready. I watched this child take the hot plastic bowl out of the oven. He carefully balanced the hot bowl in his hands, opening the only door in the portable classroom with his foot, and draining the excess water out of the bowl over the railing of the wooden deck. The liquid starch from countless bowls of noodles stained the ground yellow below the deck attached to the portable.

He returned to one of the two old white library tables I used in the classroom. My belief is that if these students share a table with 5-or-6 other students then negative behaviors could be decreased. Perhaps, it's hard to fight with someone you break bread with five days per week? So far there have been no physical battles just verbal jousting incidents. He tore open the small foil package containing the salty chicken flavored powder and sprinkled it on his hot noodles.

"You going to be here the rest of the year," he ask while stirring the noodles.

"Far as I know." I watched him take the first bite of the noodles, burning his tongue and acting like he hadn't.

"Well, this is the third six weeks and you had some crazy subs taking your place. The principals were in here more then their offices."

"I'm back for good."

"I've only been back from alternative school for two weeks."

"Why did you go there?"

"Damn English teacher said something about my pop. No mother f*!@#r talks about my pop."

"What did you do?"

"Called him a mother f*!@#r and left the class."

The ease that he told me the story left no doubt that he had restrained himself. He could just as easily attacked the teacher with fists, or worse. Most of his noodles were gone and the ringing of first bell announced six minutes before final bell for first period. He looked up at one of three clocks placed around the room and tossed the empty bowl in the trash can. The metal door swung open and I saw his half brother enter the portable.

"Hey man, got any noodles?"

I quickly looked at a clock and told him to help himself. I understood I'd be writing a note to their first period teachers explaining they had been with me doing some "work." Not one of the other teachers would question the notes or explanations for their tardiness. They would silently be thankful for any reprieve, ever how brief, from these and other students.

After a repeat of the noodle cooking ritual from fifteen minutes earlier, some small talk about me being back and no mention of the shooting, the two of them were off to class, notes in hand. There had been no talk of the shooting because the two shared one mother and different fathers. Different, but identical.

The stack of papers on my desk needed to be sorted and meetings scheduled. Meetings with parents that sometimes even showed for the meetings. More often meetings without parents. Just the student and representatives from the school; regular education teachers, special education teachers, assistant principals, and a student with little understanding or caring for the meeting. Now these plans had to be written with the idea that all students will continue on to college after high school.

No Child Left Behind and Lottery Scholarship Money!

How can education fail?

Perhaps, No Child Left Behind, Lottery Scholarship Money, and Ramen Noodles?

"Man, he threw me out of class and told me to go to the principal's office or somewhere. I ain't going to no principal's office. F!@k him, man!"

I heard him before I saw the door fling open and my gangsta stomp into the portable.

"Calm down."

"Yeah, I will. That mother f!@#*r," he loudly said, displaying considerable male posturing. "Can I have another bowl of noodles, man?"

How To Steal A Car and Get Caught!

The Master Plan

I listened as the disheveled high school boy related how he was going to sue the high school. My feet shuffled under my desk in uncomfortable anticipation of leaving in the mid-afternoon. "I fell up the steps," Conner said.

Eased back to the conversation I looked at him as if I knew what he was talking about. "Why do you need to sue, little fellow?"

"I fell up the steps," he restated.

Thinking about what steps he could have fallen up or down on the leveled land, one-story building, inner city high school, I watched him bend forward and fold his left ear over. This to demonstrate the extent of his injury. I half looked at an injury I could not see and at the same time presenting a look on my face of sincere interest.

"Over next to the science lecture hall."

"Where?"

"Right over there," Conner pointed to the wall of my portable building. Somehow, this high school student, the pride of his family, had found the only place on campus that could be called steps (two) to fall up.

"Did it embarrass you?"

"No, not really. It was during lunch."

The thought passed through my mind how falling in front of many students was less embarrassing then falling up two steps when you're alone? It was quickly replaced by his voice continuing on with the story. "It hurt me right behind my ear. It hurt all night."

"Concrete and human heads are generally an unfair match." I said.

"Wow, you can say that again, but don't. It still hurts," he said, while rubbing behind the opposite ear. I watched him rub the wrong ear and wondered what the real story was?

I would not begin to know the complete story until the School-Resource-Officer approached me. He is a somewhat effective young policeman in a public school setting. "Did Ashton attend all of his classes yesterday," he asked?

"To the best of my knowledge," I half-heartedly assured him, "However, if you need some information about what's going on around here I'd pull him in for a talk."

"Probably a good idea." I watched Officer Hagan walk down the wooden ramp leaving my aged portable classroom. He is generally a man of few words and I suspected few original thoughts. Always on his desk were the school and sheriff's department book of rules and polices, along with a Nintendo game controller. I wondered if he was ever a street cop. I'd heard rumors that he was very good at playing Grand Theft Auto on his game console.

Less than fifteen minutes later I watched the policeman escort Ashton into his office. I was sure he could extract any information he needed and probably some he didn't. Still I had not connected the sore ear, falling up stairs, and the current incident being investigated. Enlightenment would be forth coming within the next thirty minutes.

Almost to the minute Officer Hagan opened my classroom door and allowed Ashton to enter. The SRO leaned into the opening and ask to speak with me.

"What can I help you with, sir." I said, exiting my portable.

"Do you know these five kids?"

I looked at the paper note he cupped in his left hand. I also noticed his right hand resting on a 9mm pistol on his belt. My sense was that he felt safer in that position while on school grounds.

"Sure, I know all their names and at least two of them have spent considerable time in my behavior class."

After I gave him their last names he told me what had occurred, thanked me and again walked down the ramp from my portable. Now the story was getting interesting as I began to put the pieces of the puzzle together. It went something like this.........

During first period two days earlier, Conner, Angelina, Kasey, and two other non-descript players had decided that a joy ride, in a stolen car, was what they needed to break the boredom of a grilling high school schedule. So, being inventive young souls, they found a rundown Mazda to fulfill their desires. The Mazda belong to a friend of Angelina, Cybil.

Cybil would never be mistaken for the sharpest tool in the high school shed. She drove much to fast onto the student parking lot daily, because she could not decrypt the instructions on her alarm clock. Bounding from the tiny four door import she always tossed the car keys on the dash in front of the steering wheel. On the dash in plain sight of one-thousand-and-ninety-five other students, most itching to leave campus during the day. Sometimes, Cybil would comment how good the gas mileage was for her misfiring little Mazda. If she knew the truth, several students borrowed the car daily and some of them even replaced the gas they used.

Angelina, was the leader of the Grand Theft Auto gang. She wanted to smoke a cigarette, pickup a soda, and just ride around. Conner, was not interested in stealing a car. He was interested in Angelina. Going with her meant there was a slim chance he could get closer to her. Especially in a small, four-door Japanese car. He never gave the three other students a second thought about being in the car.

If you're out having fun during second period of a mundane school day, why not speed? Why not speed on a wet two lane country road? Why not speed on a wet two lane country road and pass a cigarette around to five people? When the cigarette takes a tumble from the waiting fingers of the driver, and Conner attempts to rescue Angelina from imminent harm, Kasey reaches from the rear seat to grab the steering wheel. Of course, the automobile was not out of
control until Kasey jerked the steering wheel into a hard right turn. This solved the problem of the hot cigarette in Angelina's lap. It dropped from the seat to the roof as the car tumbled over.

"I hit my head on the roof. Dude, it still hurts," Conner said.

Mustering my concern I ask, "Are you all right?"

"I guess so."

"Which hurt more, the car wreck or falling up the steps?"

Conner, looked at me and you could almost hear the gears turning in his brain. A quick glaze crossed over his teenage face and he said, "You figured it out, man!"

I didn't belay the point, because now Conner understood his story of falling up the steps to cover what really injured his head wouldn't float. He had dedicated most of the night before creating and fine tuning a story to account for his injury. Again, the point had been driven home to him that it is always easier to tell the truth. You don't have to remember as much.

The ending to the great Grand Theft Auto caper was not written for another three days. All of the participates, except Angelina, received three days suspension out of school and the possibility all would be charged by the local authorities. Angelina, was transferred to the area alternative school. Mostly due to her long record of infractions. Conner, took his three days out of school in stride, sleeping late each day, playing Grand Theft Auto on his Playstation, and generally going and coming as he pleased. All believed they were looked upon by their peers as "kool" anti-heros.

Conner, returned on day four with the warning that one more infraction of the rules would result in his immediate transfer to the alternative school where Angelina now pursued her education. He lasted ten minutes into the beginning of the school day. He managed to become angry, the reason still remains unclear, and stormed out of his first period class. He now gets to pursue the "love of his life" at the alternative school. I hope Angelina's very large boyfriend, that attends the same alternative school, understands.

What Happens When Teachers Are Left Behind?

I hear it daily, "Can I stay in here this period?"
"Why," I ask knowing the answer.
"I don't want to go to (fill in name) class. All he does is write the questions on one board and the answers on the other board. We copy them all down while he yells at us if we ask a question."

Welcome to Teaching to the Test. Exploration, creativity, motivation are gone. They're also gone from the students. On the rare occasions students are requested to write an original paper the internet is coughed out onto the printed pages. No one cares about plagiarism. No one cares about interpreting thoughts, presenting an original thought, or using a brain given by God or evolved from earlier life forms.

Many teachers want to teach. Just as many are waiting for retirement. Just as many never knew how to teach. However, all are protected by the teachers union. The union long lost sight of what is good for the student. However, the union knows what is good for itself, political power. The group that never knew how to teach do not like students, but like working 180-days-per-year. During the first few weeks of school I hear how long before fall break. Then how long before Christmas break. I state Christmas break instead of holiday break. So much for political correctness. After Christmas we can all worry about when is Spring break, then it's just a few short weeks until school is out for the summer. Yeah! No child left behind, just teaching skills.

Winter? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Winter

I watched the snow fall and drift into mounds against the side of the metal, portable classroom. The north wall had very little factory installed insulation that slowed the transfer of outside cold to inside cold. The opposite effect of the south wall in the summer. The drift was now about three feet tall. Surely our fearless superintendent would have no choice, but to call for a snow day.

What is that annoying beeping sound? It seemed to have started off in the distance and was getting closer. Or is it getting louder? Now, I feel as if someone has dumped a bucket of warm water on my face. Wanna-be jokesters often state, "It's not the fall that hurts. It's that sudden stop at the end." I didn't laugh when I hit the floor, with the alarm clock beeping loudly, and my pound-puppy licking my face. I looked up to the couch I had just fell from. The morning sunlight was just beginning it's descent down the city water tank. The concrete tank had become my prime view since it's construction was completed two years earlier. Five-thirty always came much to soon on school mornings. The round thermometer hanging from the broken storm window showed a balmy forty-nine degrees. Another dream of snow melted away.

Four hours later I was listening to another one of the many central office liaisons drone on about No Child Left Behind and how all teachers need to be "highly qualified". Apparently, highly qualified has little to do with certification, degrees, and what you know. It does have everything to do with how much paperwork you can complete. This meeting had gone on to long, but it had given two liaisons excuses to exist for the past hour. Their excitement was wasted on us, but not on each other. They enjoyed comparing "war stories" of their heady days of teaching and the wonderful jobs they had done. After all, that is why they had been asked to transfer to the central office. Perfection!

My students do not care about highly qualified. They care if their teacher is there. For most, it is a "constant" they need. Someone that can be counted on for direction, stability, Ramen Noodles, a small degree of understanding, and discipline. Not one of them live in a two parent home. Only one has had contact with their father. Three of them live with a guardian under the guise of State's Custody. The metal, portable classroom is their anchor in the sea of unrest known as life.

The liaison ask me to sign the latest of the NCLB forms qualifying me as not highly qualified. It didn't matter what I signed. By the next day I believed the "rules" from the federal government would change and No Child Left Behind will morph again. Has the Department of Education in Washington ever educated one child? The understanding that every child should go to college only poses the question to me of: How am I going to get my car repaired or my rusted bathroom pipes replaced? I can't get a house built because the future electricians, drywaller, framers, inspectors, drivers, etc, etc, etc, are to busy in college. This is surely the dark winter of logic in education. Winter? We don't need no stinkin' winter.

I.E.P. (Individual Escape Plan)

I have yet to encounter a special education student attending their annual Individual Education Plan meeting that wanted to be in attendance. Most understand what words their parent(s) and teacher are expecting to hear. "I want to learn so I can graduate and get a good job or maybe go to college." It is said in many ways, but these are the words that are heard by the adults.

About the only time this mind-set is interrupted is when a special education student falls through the cracks and is treated as a "regular" student. Such was the case this morning.

"Do you know this student," the assistant principal said, handing me a computer printout of a class schedule.
I glanced at the name before saying, "I've seen him around. What's his problem?"
"His problem is now your problem. He's a special ed student from South Carolina, but his mother didn't mention it when she enrolled him two months ago."
"Well, I'll set him up for an evaluation."
"You might want to write a behavior plan also. He groped two girls on the school bus this morning."
"I'll see what I can do."
"He got three days out-of-school, then he got into an argument with his math teacher and called her a bitch. That got him five more days."

I quickly mentally assessed the severity of the punishment for each offense. One side of the scales contained the physical attack on two younger girls, (three days out-of-school). The other side of the scales was calling the teacher a bitch, (five additional days out-of-school). Before I could pass judgment, silently, the assistant principal continued, "When he comes back I want him in your class all day. Work with him. Connect with him." I understood the translation; If he is with you all day, then he won't be in my office. "Also, he is failing all of his classes. He's got to pass them or he will be counted against the school when the count is taken for No Child Left Behind."

I watched him walk away, leaving me to solve the problem of a sexual attacking, class failing, unknown special education student that has been suspended for the next eight school days. It was just the first period of the day and already the school target scores for No Child Left Behind were in jeopardy. Now was the time for Super Special Education Teacher to save the day. I continued on down the sidewalk to the main building where another assistant principal had one of my students waiting to be saved. He had been caught having sex in the boys restroom. The girl had denied they were having sex. "I was giving him oral sex. It wasn't like we were really having sex," she said. Thank you again President Clinton.

I called the mothers of each student to arrange a date and time for an I.E.P. meeting. Each mother told me how their child was being persecuted by the school and events beyond the student's control. "All he wants is to learn so he can graduate and get a job or maybe go to college," each one said.

"Yes ma'am, I'm sure the I.E.P., we develop as a team, will help."

I Almost Missed The Point

This past Monday was Valentine's Day, 2005. Sitting in the double-wide mobile home that the school board lists as a portable classroom, my day was starting like many of the others. Before the students shuffled in with their sagging pants, baseball caps tilted to the side on their heads, and their arms not protruding through the sleeves of their coats, but hidden inside the garment, I assume caressing themselves, I was trudging through more paperwork. The paperwork had nothing to do with student learning. My sense is that it had everything to do with justifying someone's position in the central office and acquiring more funding from the government.

Halfway into completing another three-page census form accounting for the number of hours dedicated to completing forms in my job, the metal door, with the Plexiglas window slowly opened. I watched her enter. A young girl of Jordanian decent, short, heavy, and depressed. She had been in many troublesome situations during her four-year high school stay. She was now in her senior year, looking forward to "graduating" with a special education diploma, and trying hard to resist stealing anything else. She had been busted for stealing, twice-a-year, for the past three years. Her favorite target were small, personal, round CD players. I oftentimes joked to myself that she single-handedly kept Sony in the manufacturing business of these players. Another of her hobbies were repeated visits to the local hospital emergency room. I always wanted her to have something medically wrong. Not anything serious. Just enough to have her validated as a legitimate patient.

"Good morning," she said, dropping her unusually heavy book bag on the audio visual cart.
"Morning sweetie. How are you today?" She told me her recent medical history, how she felt last night, how little she slept, and why today might not be a good day.
"What did you do last evening?"
"My sister and mom and me went to the mall. I got a new CD player. Mom, wanted me to get pants, but I didn't.
"What kind of pants."
"Ugly."
"Oh."
"Well, I hope you have a great day."
"I got a test today in drivers ed."
"You'll ace it sweetie." I had heard her digging through the book bag. While I continued trying to complete the three-page form something was shoved toward my right hand.
"Happy Valentine's Day."
I looked at the small, white, cup. It was decorated with yellow and red hearts. Inside was a square of cellophane wrapped around individual hard candies.
"For me, Sweetie?"
"Yeah. I got to go and see if my boyfriend came to school today."
Before I could thank her, she was gone. I listened to her plodding down the wooden ramp to the busy sidewalk. The loud chatter of the other two-thousand students quickly drowned out the sound of her foot-steps. The cup sat quietly reminding me of Valentine's Day and that I almost missed the point.