Read an Excerpt
School House Diary
Reflections of a Retired Educator
By Jerry L. Roberts
iUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 Jerry L. Roberts
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-0816-2
Chapter One
A Vicious Cycle
Reducing teen pregnancy and birth is one of the most effective ways of preventing poverty in America.
Jordan Brown
When I first heard the bad news, I was both shocked and dismayed. I was shocked that this could happen to a twelve-year-old girl, a girl who in an ideal world should be laughing and playing with her favorite Barbie Doll. Kiani was a girl whose only concern should have been what outfit she was going to wear to school, or if she was going to get a love note from the boy who smiled at her in the hallway the day before. I was dismayed; I feared for her future. Honestly, I feared for all our futures, because this phenomenon was occurring with extraordinary frequency across the country and still is. Yes, you guessed correctly—she was pregnant.
As the girls huddled in the back of the room to discuss the "good news," I was fighting back an urge to vomit. I wanted to run back to those girls and scream, "What in the hell is the matter with you kids? Have you lost your minds? Don't any of you understand the implications of this irresponsible behavior? Who is going to raise this child? Oh, I know—how about your crackhead mom? Or perhaps your dad will step up. Oh, I forgot. He is still in prison for whatever. And what about those two drug-dealing brothers of yours who kick your ass every day and terrorize you and your mother?" Of course, I held my tongue; other folks like counselors and social workers were already involved. Maybe the "experts" could put the genie back in the bottle.
But I knew there would be no miracle; no divine intervention was in the making. Life doesn't work that way. The rules of life are often cold and hard; second chances are rare. Life is more existential than righteous. This poor girl had been handed a life full of people who died in the streets. For her, and the girls who supported her, sex equaled love, and a baby was evidence that someone, even for a brief moment, loved them.
She gave birth to a boy that August. By then, I had been transferred to another school within the district. I lost track of Kiani for four years. In 2001 she enrolled in the vocational high school where I was working as a student advocate. She entered into the Early Childhood Learning program. The irony that this sixteen-year-old abused child, already the mother of a four-year-old son, was entering into a program for early child care teachers was not lost on me. But as someone once said, sometimes irony keeps the heart from breaking.
I made it a point to speak with her during the first week of school to see how she was doing. On the surface she seemed fine. She had learned to camouflage her feelings quite well. She was like an actress playing the role of a normal adolescent while simultaneously hiding heartbreaking, devastating emotional pain. She had learned to be a pretty good actress—to those who did not know her, that is.
During the first two weeks she seemed positive and ready to be a good student. She came to school every day. She took her young boy to the school day care center. (He was already exhibiting severe behavioral problems.) For a while things went fairly smoothly for her. But then little fissures began to appear. First she began to miss some school; nothing significant in the beginning. But as time passed, the absences increased until they became a problem. Her attitude began to decline. She began to refuse help or advice. I learned she was involved with an older boy. The short-term thrill of drugs and sex were preferable to some abstract ideas of hard work and the future. After all, she had no frame of reference for such ideas. "Fuck the future," she once told me. "What future do I have?"
I decided I could not give up on this girl. I began talking with her teachers. We tried to offer support, to help her feel connected. I also contacted the principal from her previous school. She had worked very closely with Kiani. The two of them had formed a strong bond and developed trust during the previous three years. She gave me some ideas on how to help Kiani. We spoke to each other on a regular basis. But the situation continued to deteriorate.
I discovered she was living with her boyfriend. He was a high school dropout and a drug dealer. To make matters worse, her young son was living with them. She was living the only life she knew. As Shakespeare so profoundly observed, "the wheel had come full circle."
Her attitude continued to deteriorate precipitously. She refused to talk about her problems or accept strategies for dealing with them. She had given up any hope of changing the course of her life. The notion that she would climb the proverbial mountain to success was proving to be a cruel illusion.
Witnessing this human tragedy unfolding before my eyes was devastating. Her young life was spinning out of control. But the problem was not just Kiani any more. I accepted that her son will be the next victim of this vicious cycle of human destruction. Who would be his role models? His mother? Drug dealers? Who would guide him as he lurched from childhood into puberty without caring, loving parents?
Soon thereafter Kiani stopped attending school. She had decided that school was a waste of her time. Her youth was stolen by the cruel brutality of her world. Sadly, she has bequeathed misery to her son. My prayer is that her son will somehow rise from the depths of deprivation and the cruel reality of his existence. I truly hope a divine spark will free him from the sins of his parents. Let us all pray.
A Couple of Pricks
Prick: An obnoxious or contemptuous person.
Liz was a woman of immense character and reputation. As an English teacher of thirty years, she was known as a person who demanded respect, and she got it. She was a very good teacher, old school to the bone; order, discipline, structure was her mantra. She was also a person that did not take any crap from anyone. She would always have the last word, no matter how long it took.
This was a lesson that two of her impudent students would soon learn. They decided it would be funny to play a practical joke on her. The two mischievous guys in question were in my American History class and her homeroom. They were not bad kids. I would characterize them as ... well, having a lot of spirit. Let's put it this way; they would do almost anything for a laugh. They did not realize that the last laugh would be on them.
The whole incident began in my class. We were studying World War II. Both of these guys had fathers who served in the war, and they asked if they could bring in some dummy pineapple hand grenades their fathers had saved from the war. Sure, I said, bring them in, and we will share them with the other students.
Sure enough a day or so later they brought the grenades to class, and I included them in the lesson. What I did not know was they had also shared them with Liz as a joke. It seems the boys did not care too much for Liz's strict classroom rules. So they decided to add a little levity to the rather dull homeroom period. As Liz was doing her perfunctory chores of reading announcements and taking attendance, she glanced up to see two hand grenades rolling toward her desk. Seeing this horrific sight, she began screaming at the top of her voice and ran out of the room in total horror. She waited in the hallway for the inevitable explosion but only heard laughter from inside the class.
She waited for a few moments to regain her composure and then reentered the classroom; the students struggled to contain their laughter, which must have been extremely painful. As she sat down and continued her work, she sent a nasty look toward the two offenders, delivered a short but stern speech about respect, and pretty much left it at that. Everyone thought the incident was over—except Liz, who was plotting her sweet revenge.
Retribution for her two wayward students came two months later, on the last day of school. Kids were sharing summer plans, which mostly included no school, sleeping in every day, and, oh yes, no school. Everything seemed routine, until Liz's sinister plan began to unfold. She channeled the words of Sir Thomas Browne: "women do most delight in revenge."
Liz was careful not to tip off the boys as the homeroom bell began to ring. She followed her routine with clinical perfection: first attendance and then announcements. Now it's time for a life-long lesson, she thought, as she glanced at the clock on the wall. She then pulled two small, carefully wrapped boxes with bright red bows and walked slowly to the front of her class.
"I would like to make a special presentation to two students today." The class suddenly focused on Liz, who was smiling with perverse joy. "John and Bill, would you please come to the front of the class?" she said, as she dangled the gift boxes in front of the unwitting boys. They looked at each other with great surprise. "Come on up," she reiterated. "I have a surprise for you. I bought both of you gifts that I think are perfect for you."
"Really?" they asked incredulously.
"Yes," she said, with a phony-boloney smile. "But you both will have to open them at the same time."
"Okay," they said, and they hustled to open the gifts from their now-favorite homeroom teacher.
When the boys opened the boxes, their collectives jaws dropped to their knees, and their faces turned as red as Liz's fire engine-red hair. The class erupted into convulsive laugher as the two revealed their gifts. Ugh ... two prophylactics.
"Mrs. Wilson these are rubbers!" the boys yelled in unison.
"Indeed they are, boys. I would like for you both to open them up and put them over your heads; because you two are the biggest pricks I have ever seen!"
American, Please
English is a funny language. That explains why we park a car in our driveway and drive a car on the parkway.
Author unknown
In 1995 famed reporter Robert MacNeil wrote and produced a fascinating three-part television series for PBS titled Do You Speak American? Mr. MacNeil traveled across America in search of the "American Language." He found that the "American Language" is not just English; complex versions of the language vary from region to region among racial, ethnic, and age groups, genders, and classes. Sometimes various forms of "American" may be spoken within small groups, like the workplace and in our schools.
For example, there are over 150 different languages and dialects spoken by students in Los Angeles's city schools. Imagine the practical problems this Tower of Babel presents in a typical LA classroom. A teacher could potentially have a classroom in which most or all students speak English as a second language. It's hard enough to teach a class when everyone speaks at least some version of English, but 150 different languages and dialects—Lord have mercy.
But I am not talking about Los Angeles here. No, nothing so diverse—more of a Ferris Bueller's Day Off situation than West Side Story. To quote the school secretary in Ferris Bueller, our school was full of "geeks, dick heads, motor heads, sluts, bloods, wastoids, and dweebs." I would add African-American English and hip hop to that diverse cultural and ethnic milieu.
One day a young female student burst into the office with the subtlety of an atomic explosion. If my memory serves me correctly, she was a carpentry student. She was built like a linebacker, with the attitude to boot. Suddenly, she was standing between our two secretary's desks with an urgent announcement: "sombodyshitinmybot." Dumbfounded, the first secretary, who spoke middle-class suburban English said, "What did you say?"
"Sombdyshitinmybot."
"Did you say 'sombodyshitinmybot'"?
"Yeah!" She grew more animated. "Sombodyshitinmybot. What ya goin to do bout it?"
"About what?"
By now everyone was focused on the Abbott and Costello-like "Who's on First" skit that was taking place right before our eyes. The poor woman had no idea what the desperate student was saying. The two of them may as well have been from two different countries, neither speaking the other's language. Just when everything seemed hopeless, the other secretary, who spoke standard English but was also fluent in a variety of other urban dialects, chimed in. "She said, 'somebody shit in my boot'."
"Right," said the student. "Sombodyshitinmybot."
"Oh, somebody shit in your boot!" said the frustrated secretary.
"Yeah, what ya goin to do bout it?"
"Go see your student advocate. She will take care of it for you."
After the student's advocate performed some emotional triage and procured a new pair of work boots, the student returned to her lab, still pissed but ready for class. After a quick investigation the culprit was found and punished for his despicable act.
Eventually everything returned to normal for the student and the class. The culprit was suspended, our girl got a new pairs of boots, and, more importantly, she got respect from the boys in her program. Someone bought the frustrated secretary a Speaking Ebonics book, which she put to great use. She later confided she heard two students talking about knocking boots and announced it meant "having sex." Isn't it great that we all speak the same language differently? It's a beautiful thing.
Classroom Humor
Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.
Edward De Bruno
Humor can be a cornerstone for a teacher in a classroom. Students feel relaxed when a teacher uses humor to defuse a tense situation or just to engage students in the lesson for the day. But students are also very funny, often unwittingly. Here are a few humorous moments overheard by my wife and myself during our careers. Some are somewhat R-rated, so beware. Enjoy!
* * *
I was doing an oral review in a geography class after a chapter on the Soviet Union. As I circulated around the classroom, I noticed a boy who was obviously daydreaming. I approached him and asked if he could name an unusual characteristic about most rivers in the Soviet Union. (I was expecting to hear that most rivers in the USSR flow north.) His response, to my horror was, "Dey freezes."
* * *
One day my wife overheard a female student talking to another student about the student's rather promiscuous sex life. My wife asked the student to come to her desk for a private conversation about safe sex. When my wife finished talking, the student said, "Oh, I don't have to worry. I don't swallow."
* * *
A cute sophomore student asked me if I would like to see her school choir picture. I said, "Sure, let me see." After looking at it, I said, "Oh, how angelic." She gave me a slightly agitated wince and said, "No, Mr. Roberts, it's a cappella."
* * *
After studying the Gilded Age era in American history, I decided to show a film featuring the magnificent mansions built by American industrialists in Newport, Rhode Island. The narrator of the film made frequent references to the Vanderbilt's lavish parties, or balls. Following the film I asked the class if there were any questions. A rather perky girl, known for speaking impulsively, quickly raised her hand and asked, "Mr. Roberts, did all rich people in those days have big balls?"
* * *
I saw a friend and fellow teacher collecting his mail after school one day. For some weird reason the two of us always greeted each other with very bad Asian accents. Upon seeing me, he said, "Jedy Robert, how u do?" Before I could say a word, a Burmese teacher standing next to me replied, "Vedy gud, thank you."
* * *
A student walked into my classroom one afternoon with a note from the principal. When he handed me the note, I asked him if he had knocked on the door to get permission to enter. He quickly quipped "No" as he bowed his head slightly. I said, "Give me fifty." To wit, he immediately assumed the push-up position as taught in the army. When I saw what he was doing I immediately asked him to get up and explained I was only kidding.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from School House Diary by Jerry L. Roberts Copyright © 2011 by Jerry L. Roberts. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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