Chapter 11: A Not Uncommon Recipe for Melancholy
The whole world smiles with me
I dance out of bed to an imaginary orchestra playing an optimistic tune. I run in the rain. It isn’t raining hard and slows to a dripping drizzle by the 4th and 5th miles. I splash with the joy of a preschooler as some of the larger puddles surprise me in the dark. The rainy run invigorates and makes me feel real. I sigh with contented calm as I climb into my Saturn. A rainbow appears on the way to work. My grin rivals the Cheshire cat’s. At work I see the hem of my maroon and brown dress is unraveling; I staple the dress and forge ahead. No speed bumps will trip me up today. Today is an early release day. These monthly half days are usually on Wednesdays and provide a much-needed opportunity for staff development. Today is the first early release day of the school year.
Also, my wonderful new teacher, Daphne, starts today. I have never felt so positive about a new teacher. I still can’t believe she is going to teach here! She moved to Florida from New Mexico with her husband to work at our school and pursue her degree at the University of Florida. Her mother is a principal at an alternative school in New Mexico and she, Daphne, has worked with incarcerated youths. Her intelligence and enthusiasm make me giddy. When the busses pull into the parking lot, I waltz past the puddles, bursting with unborn smiles.
Funny thing though about the rain here, unlike rain in the northeast, this rain doesn’t leave the air smelling fresh and clean. In Herald County Florida, after it rains, there is this awful stench in the air that Lynne says comes from the sewage treatment plant and water logged septic tanks. It makes me inadvertently wrinkle my nose as it burns my throat. No one else seems to notice, or if they do, they just accept it as normal.
First Ingredient for the fading smile of melancholy: Dream Team Hanky Panky
The minutes between the morning meeting and bus arrival go by way too fast. It is a breathless time of photocopying, gathering materials, making coffee. Teachers hurry in and out of my office, but not Tammie or Neeley. I begin to notice this trend. Neeley and Tammie disappear after the morning meeting and reappear after the busses arrive. My curiosity piqued, I call them on the walkie-talkie. No reply. I take a walk around campus, they aren’t in the teacher’s room, the library or their classrooms. I cross the field toward south campus. I am on a mission but I remove my blinders long enough to take in the beauty of a Florida morning - the grass is wet and the crape myrtle is blooming; reds and purples shimmer in the bright morning light. Crossing the road by the baseball diamond I hear faint laughter. I round the corner to see Neeley and Tammie embracing, kissing and smoking on the back porch of an unused portable. If they are planning anything during this planning period it seems unlikely it is something from which their students will benefit. I’m disconcerted but still smiling.
Second Ingredient: Staff woes
Around 10:00, we have our first fire drill and everyone performs perfectly. We prepped for it and knew it was coming, which helped. I congratulate teachers and students smiling a substantial smile.
Sonya, the head custodian, is yelling at me: my teachers left four desk/chairs outside the classroom in the rain, the lights were left on in two classrooms, someone parked in her spot (in the grass under the tree). She has been parking there for five years and now some bus driver comes along and takes her spot. I apologize (rule one, suck up to the custodian) and suggest maybe we need a reserved parking sign. Sonya scowls, but I’m still smiling.
Jenna arrives from Ohio. She wants to teach at Prospect and is here to see the school. I spent a long time interviewing Jenna on the phone. She was in medical school but dropped out when she decided she wanted to teach. She’s read all of Jonathan Kozol’s books (I am a big fan so this impresses me). She wants to drive from Ohio to Florida immediately after the phone interview. She is very enthusiastic about seeing the school and meeting the “kids.” Jenna arrives just after the fire drill. I send her to observe Stone’s class. I forgot Tina/Natasha is back. Stone is doing a lesson on states and capitals. Somewhere between Mississippi and Missouri, Brock, one of Stone’s students, whispers that Tina/Natasha is a “ho.”. Tina/Natasha leaps from her seat shouting obscenities, threatens to kill Brock and begins to make stabbing punches in the air. Stone radios for help. I arrive and escort Tina/Natasha out the front door. At the same time, Jenna slips out the back door and makes a dash for her car. I never hear from Jenna again. My smile starts to fade, but just a little.
Third Ingredient: Children’s Tears
I learn of Lenny’s arrest as he is being guided into the back seat of the squad car, in handcuffs and in tears. Lenny is a tough, fourteen year old white kid from a rough family well known to our deputies. Lenny’s mother heats a coke bottle on the stove then presses the bottom of the hot bottle on Lenny’s shin to cure itchy mosquito bites. Lenny usually lives with his mother and her boyfriend but sometimes he ends up with his father who beats him.
Today Lenny has been charged with “disruption of school day.” Deputy Jones explains that Lenny pulled his pants halfway down while waiting to use the bathroom then offered some candy to the girls, which he identified as “penis colada” flavor. Inside the deputy’s office, Lenny also gave up three lighters he had stashed in his pant pockets. Lenny has been arrested many times before, so why is he crying? Rosie, my teacher who wants to be a counselor, says Lenny is crying out of fear, fear of the abuse he’ll suffer at the hands of his father. My early morning smile begins to tremble.
At dismissal time I learn Ernie suspended many students from the bus but neglected to ask or inform me or Shasta, the transportation coordinator. I am really regretting that I didn’t make Ernie’s resignation stick. By permitting Ernie to “unresign” I have created more pain for myself than if I had insisted his resignation was irrevocable. Now Ernie and I talk and in the spirit of progressive discipline, I write up a warning. I try to talk to him about how I know last year Mel was happy to have Ernie take charge of suspensions and arrests, but I am not Mel. I need to give permission. He can recommend but not implement. Ernie is nodding and smiling, yes m’am, I understand. Our meeting is interrupted when the man from the Division for Children and Families (DCF) comes to haul off Chloe.
The Division for Children and Families: such a falsely reassuring name for this agency. Years of under-funding have bred widespread incompetence and apathy, making DCF more of an adversary than an ally for children. I’d heard of the infamous DCF before I moved to Florida. In New York, DCF was front-page news for losing children in their care. DCF scandals include ignoring reports of abused or neglected children and failing to protect those children in their system. According to DCF, in 2003, 81 children died in Florida due to neglect or abuse. Of those 81 children, at least 36 of them, 44%, had been reported to DCF previously with allegations of abuse.
While no state fully complies with the federal standards regarding the protection of children, (an April 2004 report by the Department of Health and Human Services revealed that nationwide in 2002 over 900,000 children were victims of abuse or neglect and 1,400 of those children died) the federal government penalizes states that do not correct deficiencies with their child welfare programs. The largest penalty was charged to California; Florida was number two. Financially penalizing states that do a poor job protecting children is illogical and counter-intuitive since these states need more, not less, money to spend on child protection. Florida, like all states, struggles to recruit and retain caseworkers to investigate reports of abuse and monitor children in foster care. But Florida also struggles to find foster homes for children. The “state board rate” (the amount paid to a foster family for each foster child) ranges from $369 to $400 per month depending on the child’s age. , thus it costs Florida less than $15 per day to house a child. It costs more than that to kennel a dog.
Anyway, thanks to DCF Lenny isn’t the only person leaving campus in tears today.
About ten minutes before dismissal, a DCF worker arrives demanding to speak with a thirteen-year-old white girl named Chloe. People who observe Chloe feel mystified as to why she is at Prospect. Our own Eddie Haskell, Chloe has both the ability and the desire to play the good girl. Teachers report she isn’t as good as she appears, but I counter with the cliché: fake it till you make it. If all our students decided to “fool” us, think how much we could teach them! Chloe is an avid note writer and some of her intercepted notes detail taking crank, parties with marijuana at her house with Dad smoking it too, boys with whom she is sexually active and those with whom she would like to be.
DCF caseworkers frequently show up on campus and asking to speak to a specific child. There is never a phone call first or an explanation. If I ask why – was there an incident? An allegation of abuse? I am told it is confidential. I advise this DCF worker it is a half-day and we are about to start dismissal. He insists it is urgent and won’t take a minute, but he must speak with Chloe. I reluctantly bring him to Chloe and he stands outside the cafeteria in fire ant hills and pine needles to question Chloe regarding abuse by her mother. Chloe, who lives with her father, starts to cry. She is worried this conversation means her mother is going to regain custody. The DCF worker promises Chloe she will get to stay with her father. He escorts her to the bus. As the bus pulls away I see her tear-stained face pressed against the window looking small and frightened. I want to hurt the DCF man but he is long gone, charging out of our lot before the busses. I know there are some good, caring people who work for DCF; I just haven’t met them. I need to paste a smile, a social smile, to face my team for the afternoon in-service.
Fourth Ingredient: Staff Meetings
In our morning meeting today we had discussed plans for the afternoon’s in-service. Starting at 12:30 in the back cafeteria, I would run a demonstration of some hands-on math manipulatives and critical thinking games. Several people suggested we all go out to lunch instead. I nixed this saying we had too much to accomplish. (Yeah, yeah I know, I am such a witch.) After the meeting Noreen said her “dream team” planned to order Chinese food and Neeley brought beer and is that okay since the students won’t be on campus. Ah the Noreen charm. I quote her the policy, no alcohol on campus, but I fear I was not adamant or clear enough.
12:30 arrives but my staff does not. The dream team has been involved in a parent conference with Marcus’s mother for over thirty minutes. Usually they are skilled at wrapping up their conversations with her, but not today. Rosie, Daphne and Stone are the only people attending my training, Rosie and Daphne learn the African math game, mancala. Stone reads the paper scowling that the idiots in his room don’t need anything hands-on, they need to learn to keep their hands off! My smile is painful to maintain.
Fifth Ingredient: Fundraising for things that should already be funded
After everyone leaves, I work on grants. I continue my work on the Memorial Hospital grant, start the application process for a United Way Grant, and start a rewrite on a Title One grant. Writing grants is part of my job description and is a necessity. The public school dollars we receive for our students do not even cover the minimum costs of educating them, there are several reasons for this.
First, everyone gets a piece of the action. The State of Florida has a complicated school funding equation. When we contract with the public schools, they pay us as much “per student” as a regular public school would get. But then, both the public schools and Ebencorp take a percentage for administrative fees. By the time they are done skimming dollars, my very difficult, at-risk students receive 25% less than their public school counterparts. Ironically, of course, they are sent to my school because the public schools, with all their resources, couldn’t handle them. They need more resources. They need smaller classes. They need counselors and deans, not two people who zip around campus playing both roles. But instead of more, they get less.
Another reason I have to write grants is that Prospect spends roughly five times as much on transportation as the contract with the public schools allocates. At 1,652 square miles, Herald County is bigger than the state of Rhode Island and my students come from all over the county. I must pay for the bus drivers’ salaries and benefits, gas, oil, tires, and regular and unscheduled maintenance on the busses. Transportation costs make up to over 25% of my budget: money that should be spent educating my students is spent getting them to and from school.
It is also sad that while every public school in our county has a business partner who donates money each year and also helps fund special projects, the businesses I contacted didn’t want to support the school for “bad kids.” Also the school for “bad kids” is not entitled by the state to compete for funds based on student performance on standardized tests. No matter how I manipulate the numbers, we come up short.
One of the grants I am writing is for Title One. Title One is a Federal grant for schools with a high percentage of children who receive free or reduced lunch. My school easily meets the criteria. The original grant was written by Mel, my predecessor. Corinna, the Title One liaison, tells me she nearly lost her mind and job last year because Mel didn’t administer the Title One grant money properly, didn’t save receipts and wrote up the grant application incorrectly. Not only do I need to change the application, I want to do it. The Title One grant application Mel wrote calls for most of he money to be spent on computers. I want to use the money for a Title One reading teacher, a Title One math teacher and books, books, books.
Writing grants is very time consuming. You inevitably need information that is not readily available: the minutes of an Ebencorp board of directors meeting, the population of the school broken down by race, grade and income, etc. Kind, well-intentioned people are always telling me “there is all this money out there, just apply.” Grant writing is something I can’t do with a smile on my face.
Sixth Ingredient: Dealing with The Boss
My cell phone rings at 7:00 p.m. It is The Boss. He is upset with my cell phone bill and the cost for the walkie-talkies. I spend a long time explaining that his predecessor, Sheila, told me to get a cell phone with at least 1000 minutes and his other predecessor, Stephen approved the walkie-talkies. But he is not happy. Finally my morning smile turns into an out and out scowl. I try to slow my breathing and look for calm. I know the Boss’s new role as Education Director is not an easy one. He probably isn’t getting the guidance or support a new administrator needs from Clyde, his boss. I try to find the seemingly bottomless patience I have for everyone else to use with The Boss. When parents demean, condescend, curse and worse I remain untouched and non-plussed. Why is it I can cope with bad children, screaming parents, challenging employees, wild eyed custodians, power hungry deputies and balancing imbalanced budgets, but not angry, chastising calls from my boss? Do I secretly want his job? I don’t think so. I am energized by the hands-on work of talking to students and teachers everyday. His job would be too administrative and bureaucratic for me. Then why am I so annoyed by The Boss?
The Boss frequently phones me in the evening; his calls are not a good way to end my day. I awaken at 3:00 am and can’t sleep. I go to Wal-Mart to buy tennis balls as per Noreen’s request so she can teach her students to play tennis. When I return from shopping, I run, but my time is way off, I am distracted trying to formulate a plan for managing a difficult boss. Coping effectively with The Boss is an area where I need improvement! As I run I chant: “If I’m so smart I should be able to handle him.”
The Boss, the ultimate smile thief.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Chapter Ten: Sharing Rules
Chapter 10: Sharing Rules
Rule Number One: Never Disrespect the Custodian
Once upon a time I was a first grade teacher in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My class ate popcorn every Friday, which, unbeknownst to me, really infuriated the custodian. He quietly fumed and plotted his revenge. When parent conference day came around I arrived at school to find all the desks in my classroom pushed to the corner and piled to the ceiling. By the time parents arrived, I was dripping sweat and red-faced. I learned the importance of making friends with the custodian. Over the years, as I racked up different teaching experiences around the county, I realized this rule applies to other school support staff as well. I hadn’t forgotten these lessons when I came to Prospect, I just found it a little more difficult to be successful.
Our entire campus is owned by the public schools. We use part of the campus and Haven High, the alternative high school, uses the rest. The key players at Haven High are the principal (Oscar), the curriculum specialist (Tara), the secretary (Agnes) and the custodians (Vince and Sonya). Figuring out how to share space with the Haven High is an on-going headache.
Vince and Sonya are responsible for the custodial care of the entire campus: both Haven High and Prospect. However, their office and allegiance is at Haven High. Vince is the daytime custodian. He arrives at 7:00 and leaves at 3:00. Sonya works from 9:00-5:00. She used to work nights until she was mugged on campus one night, although word has it she gave as good as she got. Sonya has more seniority so she sees herself as Vince’s boss. Vince vacuums, Sonya watches, leaning against the wall. Vince mows the lawn, Sonya watches, leaning against the office doorway. When Vince empties trash, Sonya will sometimes grab a basket or two to empty. Mostly Vince and Sonya stand around, watching the comings and goings of the campus and reporting any gossip to Miss Agnes, the Haven High secretary.
Sonya has a crush on Ernie, my counselor. She “puts on her lips” when she knows she is going to see him. I am now the villain who is “hassling Ernie” and Sonya spends long hours commiserating with secretary Agnes about how awful I am. She complains that my students throw away too much trash, that the floors are too littered, that the bathrooms are too smelly. Sonya directs me to tell my teachers to stop the boys from peeing all over the toilet seats. Before I arrived, Vince and Sonya didn’t do bathrooms. I had to trade cleaning classrooms for cleaning bathrooms and emptying trash. Sonya’s complaints are not limited to custodial issues. She tells me my students are too loud, curse too much, walk where they should not walk....
Vince and I get along better than Sonya and I do. I usually arrive at work shortly after 7:00 am; Vince comes in my portable to vacuum about that same time. Although he and Ernie are friends, despite the escalating problems between me and Ernie, Vince isn’t giving me the silent treatment, at least not most days. Sometimes he is moody, but he usually apologizes the next day saying it was his low blood sugar that made him so nasty. Vince and I talk about the new house he is building and what we did over the weekend. Often I’ve flown someplace north, often he has fixed something electrical. Vince is somewhat deaf and holds these conversations while vacuuming. We both nod a lot and have to guess at what is being said. Vince has a good sense of humor and we engage in some sarcastic bantering. Vince could vacuum my office anytime but I think he enjoys our early morning conversations - before anyone else arrives, before any children fight, before teachers threaten to quit and before Sonya comes to watch him work and talk about how awful everything is.
Every time we have a celebration at Prospect, I invite Vince and Sonya. Vince always says he has to check with Sonya and Sonya always says no. When one of my students says he wants to be a custodian, I ask Vince if this boy could spend some time “job shadowing” Vince. Vince has to ask Sonya. Sonya is angry with me for not asking her first. She tells me Custodians are not to have contact with students. Vince seems happiest on those days when he is at work and Sonya is off, he whistles and smiles. Vince never complains about Sonya although once when Vince was out sick for a week, I welcomed him back saying “I think Sonya missed you.” Vince replied “Guess she had to do some work for once.”
Rule Number Two: Make Friends with the Secretary
Agnes, the secretary, sits just inside the main entrance to Haven High. The first things you see when you enter the school are Agnes’s desk, Agnes’s head and Agnes’s giant Confederate flag. The flag is enormous, it covers the entire wall behind Agnes. Agnes is very proud of her flag and her southern heritage. In fact, when I first arrived, we bonded over my interest in Florida history. Agnes gave me a hard-covered book on Florida and offered to speak to my students when we did our Florida History unit. Agnes was friendly towards me initially, but that was before the Ernie problems started. Sometimes when I call Ernie on the walkie-talkie and he doesn’t respond, I can find him trading laments with Agnes. Agnes has become my archenemy. When I phone, she answers in her southern lilting sing-song until she identifies me as the caller. Rapidly the tone changes to harsh, barely contained anger, perfunctory at best. Never let the secretary become your enemy. The only thing worse is alienating the custodian. Alas, by disciplining Ernie, I have done both. Agnes likes to “keep her eyes open” and report to Oscar, the Haven High principal, on what she has seen.
Rule Number Three: Bond with Fellow Principals
Oscar, the principal of Haven High, arrives late, leaves early, does very little work, and is constantly feeling threatened by imaginary conspiracies. Once he was a public school principal on the verge of being fired. Then someone decided it would be easier to marginalize his incompetence by putting him in charge of the public high school program for drop-outs. Once again the students who need the most, get the least.
Oscar meets with me shortly after I start at Prospect. He explains that this is his campus and I am his guest and I must behave like a good guest and this includes, but is not limited to, making sure my students behave and not trespassing on certain areas of campus which are off limits to me, my staff and my students. Oscar has a large office in the cinderblock building (not in a portable) with plush carpet and a door. His sanctuary is decorated with dog and train art. He owns two dogs. He speaks often of their health. I invite Oscar to drop in on my office and visit my classrooms anytime. He does not.
When secretary Agnes reports to Oscar on my coming and goings, it often results in tersely worded memos to me from Oscar. I suggest he just pick up the phone and call me when something troubles him. He refuses. “That’s not my job; I’m not your boss.”
Tara is Oscar’s brain. Her official title is Curriculum Specialist. She is a kind, dedicated, work-a-holic who manages to be loyal to Oscar, tolerate Agnes and help me any way she can.
One day I ask Tara if we can use classroom A for our Tuesday afternoon staff meetings. Classroom A is on Haven High’s side of the cinderblock building, but it is not used for students. It is used once a month for Haven High staff meetings. Tara says we can use it. This is a much better meeting location than having my staff sit in the snug student desk/chairs in the classrooms (unlike my mostly slender students, many of my staff members are on the large side) and the acoustics are better than in the cafeteria. We hold our weekly meetings in Classroom A and all is good, until Oscar sends a memo. We will no longer be permitted to use classroom A. It is inconvenient for custodian Sonya to unlock it and once she found dirt footprints on the carpet. I call Oscar and try to renegotiate. No luck. I am a guest and some places are off limits to guests. Oscar tells me he regrets he ever extended this kindness to me in the first place.
One day Oscar does call me; his call makes me wish for his toxic memos. At 7:30 that morning, Vince had given me some bad news. The girls' bathroom in the cinderblock building has a leaking toilet. Although maintenance has been called, they haven’t arrived, so the bathroom is out of order today. The nearest student bathroom is in the classroom behind the cafeteria but that classroom is being scraped and painted so people can’t go in. I wait until 8:30 then try to contact Oscar, Agnes or Tara. Oscar isn't in yet, Tara has an appointment and won’t be in until 10:30 and Agnes is home sick. At this point, three classes are left without convenient toilet access. I make a decision and advise those classes to use the staff restroom in the cinderblock building until the girls’ bathroom is repaired.
The first class to do so is stopped by Sonya. She tells them this is forbidden. The teachers radio me for instructions. I suggest they use the boys’ room but the girls are horrified and refuse. I tell the teacher to march the students over to my office. It is a hike, but they can use this staff bathroom.
Oscar finally arrives at work. His first agenda item is to phone me. Oscar is very upset. He speaks rapidly, loudly and without pausing. He says he will have a union grievance if my students use the staff bathroom. He accuses me of “willful disobedience” by not asking. He says the leak in the toilet in the girl's bathroom is due to my staff providing poor supervision and if the students suffer due to this inconvenience then this is an appropriate punishment for their destructive behavior.
I wait until he takes a breath then suggest since he is clearly very angry we should talk face-to-face. He begins the tirade anew. He says I need to see things his way, adding "and I really don't care about your perspective.” He isn’t finished. He says if I had spoken to his staff first he might have been able to bend the rules temporarily. I point out there was no one to speak with earlier but since we are talking now, could we temporarily bend the rules? Oscar says no, “You have to learn to ask first and not ask forgiveness later. I will not permit your students to use the staff bathroom.” He then complains about graffiti in the bathroom. He says I need to teach my staff to supervise the students correctly. Shortly after he hangs up, Oscar sends me a memo, cc’d to his boss, assistant superintendent Paul Cook and to Henry, my liaison in the public school. Terse bullets outline my outrageous behavior. Henry phones to say how sorry he is that I have to contend with Oscar. While I appreciate Henry’s sympathy it does occur to me that Henry is in a position to apply some pressure to Oscar, but has chosen not to do so. As I will slowly learn, Henry does not rock the boat.
Thus the staff of Haven High is added to my list of potential daily stress inducers which already includes: troubled students, angry parents, stressed-out teachers and a difficult boss. When someone shouts “incoming” I’m not sure in which direction to look.
Rule Number One: Never Disrespect the Custodian
Once upon a time I was a first grade teacher in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My class ate popcorn every Friday, which, unbeknownst to me, really infuriated the custodian. He quietly fumed and plotted his revenge. When parent conference day came around I arrived at school to find all the desks in my classroom pushed to the corner and piled to the ceiling. By the time parents arrived, I was dripping sweat and red-faced. I learned the importance of making friends with the custodian. Over the years, as I racked up different teaching experiences around the county, I realized this rule applies to other school support staff as well. I hadn’t forgotten these lessons when I came to Prospect, I just found it a little more difficult to be successful.
Our entire campus is owned by the public schools. We use part of the campus and Haven High, the alternative high school, uses the rest. The key players at Haven High are the principal (Oscar), the curriculum specialist (Tara), the secretary (Agnes) and the custodians (Vince and Sonya). Figuring out how to share space with the Haven High is an on-going headache.
Vince and Sonya are responsible for the custodial care of the entire campus: both Haven High and Prospect. However, their office and allegiance is at Haven High. Vince is the daytime custodian. He arrives at 7:00 and leaves at 3:00. Sonya works from 9:00-5:00. She used to work nights until she was mugged on campus one night, although word has it she gave as good as she got. Sonya has more seniority so she sees herself as Vince’s boss. Vince vacuums, Sonya watches, leaning against the wall. Vince mows the lawn, Sonya watches, leaning against the office doorway. When Vince empties trash, Sonya will sometimes grab a basket or two to empty. Mostly Vince and Sonya stand around, watching the comings and goings of the campus and reporting any gossip to Miss Agnes, the Haven High secretary.
Sonya has a crush on Ernie, my counselor. She “puts on her lips” when she knows she is going to see him. I am now the villain who is “hassling Ernie” and Sonya spends long hours commiserating with secretary Agnes about how awful I am. She complains that my students throw away too much trash, that the floors are too littered, that the bathrooms are too smelly. Sonya directs me to tell my teachers to stop the boys from peeing all over the toilet seats. Before I arrived, Vince and Sonya didn’t do bathrooms. I had to trade cleaning classrooms for cleaning bathrooms and emptying trash. Sonya’s complaints are not limited to custodial issues. She tells me my students are too loud, curse too much, walk where they should not walk....
Vince and I get along better than Sonya and I do. I usually arrive at work shortly after 7:00 am; Vince comes in my portable to vacuum about that same time. Although he and Ernie are friends, despite the escalating problems between me and Ernie, Vince isn’t giving me the silent treatment, at least not most days. Sometimes he is moody, but he usually apologizes the next day saying it was his low blood sugar that made him so nasty. Vince and I talk about the new house he is building and what we did over the weekend. Often I’ve flown someplace north, often he has fixed something electrical. Vince is somewhat deaf and holds these conversations while vacuuming. We both nod a lot and have to guess at what is being said. Vince has a good sense of humor and we engage in some sarcastic bantering. Vince could vacuum my office anytime but I think he enjoys our early morning conversations - before anyone else arrives, before any children fight, before teachers threaten to quit and before Sonya comes to watch him work and talk about how awful everything is.
Every time we have a celebration at Prospect, I invite Vince and Sonya. Vince always says he has to check with Sonya and Sonya always says no. When one of my students says he wants to be a custodian, I ask Vince if this boy could spend some time “job shadowing” Vince. Vince has to ask Sonya. Sonya is angry with me for not asking her first. She tells me Custodians are not to have contact with students. Vince seems happiest on those days when he is at work and Sonya is off, he whistles and smiles. Vince never complains about Sonya although once when Vince was out sick for a week, I welcomed him back saying “I think Sonya missed you.” Vince replied “Guess she had to do some work for once.”
Rule Number Two: Make Friends with the Secretary
Agnes, the secretary, sits just inside the main entrance to Haven High. The first things you see when you enter the school are Agnes’s desk, Agnes’s head and Agnes’s giant Confederate flag. The flag is enormous, it covers the entire wall behind Agnes. Agnes is very proud of her flag and her southern heritage. In fact, when I first arrived, we bonded over my interest in Florida history. Agnes gave me a hard-covered book on Florida and offered to speak to my students when we did our Florida History unit. Agnes was friendly towards me initially, but that was before the Ernie problems started. Sometimes when I call Ernie on the walkie-talkie and he doesn’t respond, I can find him trading laments with Agnes. Agnes has become my archenemy. When I phone, she answers in her southern lilting sing-song until she identifies me as the caller. Rapidly the tone changes to harsh, barely contained anger, perfunctory at best. Never let the secretary become your enemy. The only thing worse is alienating the custodian. Alas, by disciplining Ernie, I have done both. Agnes likes to “keep her eyes open” and report to Oscar, the Haven High principal, on what she has seen.
Rule Number Three: Bond with Fellow Principals
Oscar, the principal of Haven High, arrives late, leaves early, does very little work, and is constantly feeling threatened by imaginary conspiracies. Once he was a public school principal on the verge of being fired. Then someone decided it would be easier to marginalize his incompetence by putting him in charge of the public high school program for drop-outs. Once again the students who need the most, get the least.
Oscar meets with me shortly after I start at Prospect. He explains that this is his campus and I am his guest and I must behave like a good guest and this includes, but is not limited to, making sure my students behave and not trespassing on certain areas of campus which are off limits to me, my staff and my students. Oscar has a large office in the cinderblock building (not in a portable) with plush carpet and a door. His sanctuary is decorated with dog and train art. He owns two dogs. He speaks often of their health. I invite Oscar to drop in on my office and visit my classrooms anytime. He does not.
When secretary Agnes reports to Oscar on my coming and goings, it often results in tersely worded memos to me from Oscar. I suggest he just pick up the phone and call me when something troubles him. He refuses. “That’s not my job; I’m not your boss.”
Tara is Oscar’s brain. Her official title is Curriculum Specialist. She is a kind, dedicated, work-a-holic who manages to be loyal to Oscar, tolerate Agnes and help me any way she can.
One day I ask Tara if we can use classroom A for our Tuesday afternoon staff meetings. Classroom A is on Haven High’s side of the cinderblock building, but it is not used for students. It is used once a month for Haven High staff meetings. Tara says we can use it. This is a much better meeting location than having my staff sit in the snug student desk/chairs in the classrooms (unlike my mostly slender students, many of my staff members are on the large side) and the acoustics are better than in the cafeteria. We hold our weekly meetings in Classroom A and all is good, until Oscar sends a memo. We will no longer be permitted to use classroom A. It is inconvenient for custodian Sonya to unlock it and once she found dirt footprints on the carpet. I call Oscar and try to renegotiate. No luck. I am a guest and some places are off limits to guests. Oscar tells me he regrets he ever extended this kindness to me in the first place.
One day Oscar does call me; his call makes me wish for his toxic memos. At 7:30 that morning, Vince had given me some bad news. The girls' bathroom in the cinderblock building has a leaking toilet. Although maintenance has been called, they haven’t arrived, so the bathroom is out of order today. The nearest student bathroom is in the classroom behind the cafeteria but that classroom is being scraped and painted so people can’t go in. I wait until 8:30 then try to contact Oscar, Agnes or Tara. Oscar isn't in yet, Tara has an appointment and won’t be in until 10:30 and Agnes is home sick. At this point, three classes are left without convenient toilet access. I make a decision and advise those classes to use the staff restroom in the cinderblock building until the girls’ bathroom is repaired.
The first class to do so is stopped by Sonya. She tells them this is forbidden. The teachers radio me for instructions. I suggest they use the boys’ room but the girls are horrified and refuse. I tell the teacher to march the students over to my office. It is a hike, but they can use this staff bathroom.
Oscar finally arrives at work. His first agenda item is to phone me. Oscar is very upset. He speaks rapidly, loudly and without pausing. He says he will have a union grievance if my students use the staff bathroom. He accuses me of “willful disobedience” by not asking. He says the leak in the toilet in the girl's bathroom is due to my staff providing poor supervision and if the students suffer due to this inconvenience then this is an appropriate punishment for their destructive behavior.
I wait until he takes a breath then suggest since he is clearly very angry we should talk face-to-face. He begins the tirade anew. He says I need to see things his way, adding "and I really don't care about your perspective.” He isn’t finished. He says if I had spoken to his staff first he might have been able to bend the rules temporarily. I point out there was no one to speak with earlier but since we are talking now, could we temporarily bend the rules? Oscar says no, “You have to learn to ask first and not ask forgiveness later. I will not permit your students to use the staff bathroom.” He then complains about graffiti in the bathroom. He says I need to teach my staff to supervise the students correctly. Shortly after he hangs up, Oscar sends me a memo, cc’d to his boss, assistant superintendent Paul Cook and to Henry, my liaison in the public school. Terse bullets outline my outrageous behavior. Henry phones to say how sorry he is that I have to contend with Oscar. While I appreciate Henry’s sympathy it does occur to me that Henry is in a position to apply some pressure to Oscar, but has chosen not to do so. As I will slowly learn, Henry does not rock the boat.
Thus the staff of Haven High is added to my list of potential daily stress inducers which already includes: troubled students, angry parents, stressed-out teachers and a difficult boss. When someone shouts “incoming” I’m not sure in which direction to look.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Chapter Nine: Busting Children
Chapter 9: Busting Children
While I was in upstate New York over the weekend, I talked with my friend Damon, an assistant principal at a public middle school outside Syracuse. We discussed student misbehavior and sanctions. At Damon’s school, children are not arrested. “Yeah, but what if they are caught with marijuana?” Damon says he would call the student’s parents. Not so in Herald County. An assistant principal lost his job recently when he failed to inform the school Deputy that a student brought a pocketknife to school. I’m thinking about crime and punishment as I negotiate the two-hour drive home from the Tampa airport just before midnight on this dark Sunday night.
The ringing cell phone interrupts my ruminations. Someone with a Lakeboro number is calling me. There is a zero percent chance this will be good news. It’s Shasta, my transportation coordinator. She wants me to know someone broke into our busses, discharged the fire extinguishers, ransacked the first aid kits and slashed the tires. Shasta is not sure if any of the busses can be driven tomorrow morning. Wallowing in self-pity as I drive that lonely stretch of I-75, I wonder how many principals spend their Sunday nights dealing with vandalized busses.
Mondays always get me down
Going to work knowing the busses were attacked is bad enough, but on this Monday I arrive at 6:45 am to find someone also broke into my office and stole five of our walkie-talkies along with some random knickknacks. No computers, money or other valuables were taken. Since our Deputy on Duty won’t be on campus until 9:00, I call 911. A deputy arrives and is dusting for prints when children’s voices crackle across the remaining walkie-talkies. We suspect the thieves live in the neighborhood adjacent to our school and they are waiting for the school bus. We try to hurry the deputy outside to find the thieves, but he doesn’t share our urgency. Lynne the business manager does, and she is soon in her car speeding through the suspected neighborhood in time to observe the culprits boarding their school bus. Sharp-eyed Lynne notes the bus number. I call King Middle School and ask Rex Stewart, the principal (also my friend and mentor) to nab anyone with walkie-talkies riding bus #413. Rex is on the case and finds the guilty parties in short order. By afternoon we retake possession of our stolen goods including not only the walkie-talkies, but also my mini nerf football which one of the young criminals chewed on thinking it was chocolate. The bite mark, my souvenir.
We credit Lynne with the collar. “What” Rusty asks “would you have done if you’d caught the kids before the bus arrived? Lynne shrugs, but I am certain those children would have preferred handcuffs.
While Deputy One dusts for prints and interviews employees, a second Deputy arrives, it is our Deputy of the Day, Deputy Creighton, and with him is a Lakeboro Police Detective. One of our students, Jimmie, stole a bicycle in his neighborhood, which is in the Lakeboro Police Department’s territory. The LPD (Lakeboro Police Department) officer is here to arrest Jimmie. My office now contains more law enforcement agents than educators.
Amidst all this excitement, good old Counselor Ernie saunters in saying he must speak with me. He hasn’t been back since he “resigned” in anger last week when I confronted him about calling Ebencorp. Ernie tells me he called The Boss last night. He doesn’t actually say he is un-resigned and I don’t press the issue. I feel impotent about not dealing more effectively with Ernie but I excuse myself, blaming the distraction of the bus vandalism, my office theft and Jimmie’s bike. I resolve to devise and implement a new plan so next time Ernie resigns it will stick. Looking at Ernie glad-hand Deputies, charm staff and mingle with students, I clench my teeth. When a military commander loses control of his troops and they switch their allegiance to a rival faction, that leader had best watch his back. Or hers.
Ernie always seems to know the Deputies. Maybe this is a function of the good ol’boy network. Every morning Ernie and the Deputy of the Day are back slapping and hand shaking and howzitgoin. Noreen often joins in, flirting with Ernie and the Deputy. Today’s recipient is Deputy Creighton. Deputy Creighton fancies himself Inspector Clouseau. Before we are done unloading the busses, he is launching an investigation regarding a fight that happened on the bus. It seems Nora hit Dirk with a broom. Dirk’s Mom supposedly phoned and told Ernie that she wants to press charges. Ernie has a knack for inspiring that response.
Busting Nora’s Family
Nora Ruze’s family is very poor, white and well known to Prospect. Nora’s older sister attended Prospect a couple years ago and later dropped out to have her baby. Both Nora and her brother Noah attend Prospect. Noah has been arrested enough times to make him eligible for “a program” (boot camp) and is now just waiting for an open bed. Rumor is he’ll be assigned to a program on the outskirts of Jacksonville. Since Noah knows his fate is sealed, he concludes he has no reason to behave. We have a few students in this position. The courts tell the children they are going to a program but no firm date is given. Living on borrowed time, these students are highly disruptive. Nora, Noah, their older sister, her baby, plus their parents live in a dilapidated van in The Forest. No one has a job.
About 6 months ago, before I’d even heard of Lakeboro, a significant event occurred in the Ruze household. Mr. Ruze was intoxicated and physically attacking his wife. Nora phoned the police. When they arrived to arrest her father, he resisted and the police used force. Noah ran to the defense of his father and began to punch and kick the arresting officers. The officers handcuffed both father and son and prepared to take them to jail. Nora began to scream and flail and demand their release. Perhaps she felt guilty thinking she caused the arrests; she just wanted her father to stop hurting her mother. Nora was so out of control the police Baker Acted her. On that day Nora, Noah and their father all left in Deputy patrol cars. Anger is strong in this family.
Dirk escapes getting busted. . .
Deputy Creighton’s altercation investigation involves Nora and Dirk. Dirk is a skinny white fourteen-year-old boy with long stringy blond hair. I’ve spoken a few times with the principal who sent us Dirk. Before he was Dirk’s principal, he was Dirk’s third grade teacher. Even then Dirk was a problem. Dirk’s parents were in denial and they still are. Dirk is currently our only student not eligible for a free or reduced price lunch. The two problems with Dirk are his career choice (he wants to be a porn star) and his incredible laziness (he can’t be bothered to do any schoolwork or exert any effort). When Dirk is standing he wants to sit, when he is sitting he wants to lie down. When he lies down, he sleeps. It is easy to pick out Dirk in the parking lot during bus arrival - he is the student sprawled prone on the concrete.
In the case of Dirk vs. Nora, Inspector Deputy Creighton decides to interview all the witnesses. This is rather disruptive with students in and out of class for interrogation most of the morning. After talking to nearly every student on the Nora/Dirk bus, Inspector Deputy finds both children were rough housing and Nora didn’t mean to hurt Dirk. This time no children are arrested, but in the course of his investigation Deputy Creighton uncovers a more serious crime involving Nicholas.
. . . Nicholas doesn’t escape getting busted
Nicholas’s family is feuding with a former Prospect family. I don’t know all the details; it began before I arrived. I do know it involves racial slurs and CD’s. Nicholas is one of the few students in our school whose presenting problem is truancy (many of our students have truancy issues, but most have more pressing problems involving violence or drugs). Nicholas is a polite, quiet child who seems happy to be at school, when he does attend. Every morning when he comes to school, he runs from the bus over to me to say “Good Morning Ms. Smee.” He then greets each of his teachers. He is a light skinned black twelve year old who lives with his white mother and a stepfather. He has younger half-siblings and I suspect he is often kept at home to help care for them. He is very protective of his mother and makes up many excuses as to why he is needed more at home than at school. “She had a headache again, a bad one.”
Nicholas is a follower and often latches onto the class clown, of which we have many. Nicholas is the first child to achieve “level one” in our behavior management system and we have a formal ceremony scheduled for this afternoon. We told him first thing this morning and he is thrilled. We tell him he might be our first student on level two if he keeps up the good work, but there is an attendance requirement for level two: no unexcused absences. Nicholas says he thinks he can meet that challenge.
When Deputy Creighton calls Nicholas in to ask about Dirk, Nora and the broom, Nicholas is anxious to talk. He doesn’t want either student arrested and he knows they were just playing. But one look at Nicholas and Deputy Creighton is off on a different track.
“Nicholas, don’t you recognize me?” Creighton queries. Nicholas shakes his head.
“I arrested you for stealing your friend’s CD’s.”
Nicholas remembers but shows no concern believing this was a distant event resolved long ago. Then the Deputy drops the clincher.
“There is an outstanding warrant for your arrest.”
The Deputy explains to me about an arrangement between Nicholas’s mother and the feuding mother in which Nicholas’s mother would pay restitution for the CD’s Nicholas took from his friend. It turns out Nicholas’s mother only paid part and then stopped paying so the other Mother put out a warrant for Nicholas’s arrest. This was months ago; it is unclear how actively the police were looking for Nicholas, but Inspector Deputy has found him now. I take the Deputy aside, isn’t there some way we can work this out without arresting Nicholas? No, not with an outstanding warrant. Nicholas bites his lip but doesn’t cry as he is led away from my office in handcuffs and loaded into the back seat of a squad car.
Tina/Natasha is almost busted
After lunch Tina/Natasha calls her teacher, Noreen, a bitch. Counselor Rusty is summoned to Noreen’s room to escort Tina/Natasha to his office. Tina/Natasha screeches at him “If you put a hand on me I’ll kill you.” Noreen is on the walkie-talkie to Deputy Creighton (she wants to make a withdrawal from the charm account she opened with him this morning). When the Deputy hears that Tina/Natasha “threatened” Noreen and Rusty, he launches an investigation. Rusty understands that Tina/Natasha has a history of abuse; Rusty is not intimidated by her threats but the Deputy is adamant, insisting he needs to interview Noreen in his office. With no one to cover her class, Noreen and her “dream teammates” decide their whole team (Noreen’s class, Neeley’s class and Tammie’s class ) will have an unscheduled recess with the students running about playing many sports at one time, using the bathroom, water fountain and being disruptive. When Deputy Creighton completes his fact-finding mission with Noreen, he looks at the chaos on my campus and tells me this is the worst school he has ever seen and how can anyone learn in this environment. Rusty and I convince the Deputy not to arrest Tina/Natasha. We suspend her instead.
I do not like Deputy Creighton.
In 2001 the state of Florida detained, incarcerated or placed in residential facilities some 6,776 juveniles out of 3,882,271 children under age 18 residing in the state. Illinois, a state with a similar population of children (3,254, 523) managed to only detain, incarcerate or place in residential facilities, some 3,560 children. Even New York, with nearly a million more children than Florida (4,613,251), only detained, incarcerated etc. 4,593 juveniles. Clearly the state of Florida believes that arresting and incarcerating juveniles is a good solution to a difficult problem.
Driving back to my apartment I ponder this reality: why, in the face of studies and evidence showing that arresting children doesn’t help them, does the state of Florida continue to arrest, detain and lock up so many children? Surely the odd anecdote, probably more urban myth than truth, about the bad boy who gets arrested, is sent to a “program” sees the light, goes “straight” and becomes a successful (fill in the blank – probably construction foreman) isn’t powerful enough to maintain a failing policy? No, I think there are other, stronger forces at play here.
Change is always hard. No doubt the state of Florida has been arresting and incarcerating children for years now. It isn’t easy to fight the: “We’ve always done it this way” gang. Moreover here in the Bible belt there is a strong urge to punish sinners and that includes “bad” children. There’s no sparing the rod here.
Further, the alternatives to arresting and incarceration are not obvious, easy or cheap. Maintaining school discipline and safety is hard. It is much easier to remove the violent and disruptive children than to treat them on campus or in the community. The alternatives to incarceration are often more expensive. In a land where the population objects to spending money on education, there is little support for allocating additional funds for troubled youths, for “throwing money” at the bad kids.
In Florida, as in most of America, electoral politics rules. The children sent to detention centers and boot camps (and alternative schools) come from poor families riddled with drug and anger problems, and in which the parents are unlikely to vote. Elected officials can safely ignore them: they don’t vote for me, they don’t look like me, they don’t live near me, who cares? The voters, especially those with school age children, are comforted to hear talk of protecting their good children by removing the bad apples. In addition, the individuals and corporations who run the programs (boot camps, alternative schools) don’t want to lose their jobs and funding; and since they do vote and they have connections with the local people and groups who control the purse strings, their voices count.
It’s still Monday. Back in my apartment, I call my son who is turning 21 today. This is the first time we aren’t all together for his birthday. He is in New York preparing to start his senior year at Columbia. My husband is in Providence, RI for work and I am in Lakeboro trying to keep children in class and out of jail.
While I was in upstate New York over the weekend, I talked with my friend Damon, an assistant principal at a public middle school outside Syracuse. We discussed student misbehavior and sanctions. At Damon’s school, children are not arrested. “Yeah, but what if they are caught with marijuana?” Damon says he would call the student’s parents. Not so in Herald County. An assistant principal lost his job recently when he failed to inform the school Deputy that a student brought a pocketknife to school. I’m thinking about crime and punishment as I negotiate the two-hour drive home from the Tampa airport just before midnight on this dark Sunday night.
The ringing cell phone interrupts my ruminations. Someone with a Lakeboro number is calling me. There is a zero percent chance this will be good news. It’s Shasta, my transportation coordinator. She wants me to know someone broke into our busses, discharged the fire extinguishers, ransacked the first aid kits and slashed the tires. Shasta is not sure if any of the busses can be driven tomorrow morning. Wallowing in self-pity as I drive that lonely stretch of I-75, I wonder how many principals spend their Sunday nights dealing with vandalized busses.
Mondays always get me down
Going to work knowing the busses were attacked is bad enough, but on this Monday I arrive at 6:45 am to find someone also broke into my office and stole five of our walkie-talkies along with some random knickknacks. No computers, money or other valuables were taken. Since our Deputy on Duty won’t be on campus until 9:00, I call 911. A deputy arrives and is dusting for prints when children’s voices crackle across the remaining walkie-talkies. We suspect the thieves live in the neighborhood adjacent to our school and they are waiting for the school bus. We try to hurry the deputy outside to find the thieves, but he doesn’t share our urgency. Lynne the business manager does, and she is soon in her car speeding through the suspected neighborhood in time to observe the culprits boarding their school bus. Sharp-eyed Lynne notes the bus number. I call King Middle School and ask Rex Stewart, the principal (also my friend and mentor) to nab anyone with walkie-talkies riding bus #413. Rex is on the case and finds the guilty parties in short order. By afternoon we retake possession of our stolen goods including not only the walkie-talkies, but also my mini nerf football which one of the young criminals chewed on thinking it was chocolate. The bite mark, my souvenir.
We credit Lynne with the collar. “What” Rusty asks “would you have done if you’d caught the kids before the bus arrived? Lynne shrugs, but I am certain those children would have preferred handcuffs.
While Deputy One dusts for prints and interviews employees, a second Deputy arrives, it is our Deputy of the Day, Deputy Creighton, and with him is a Lakeboro Police Detective. One of our students, Jimmie, stole a bicycle in his neighborhood, which is in the Lakeboro Police Department’s territory. The LPD (Lakeboro Police Department) officer is here to arrest Jimmie. My office now contains more law enforcement agents than educators.
Amidst all this excitement, good old Counselor Ernie saunters in saying he must speak with me. He hasn’t been back since he “resigned” in anger last week when I confronted him about calling Ebencorp. Ernie tells me he called The Boss last night. He doesn’t actually say he is un-resigned and I don’t press the issue. I feel impotent about not dealing more effectively with Ernie but I excuse myself, blaming the distraction of the bus vandalism, my office theft and Jimmie’s bike. I resolve to devise and implement a new plan so next time Ernie resigns it will stick. Looking at Ernie glad-hand Deputies, charm staff and mingle with students, I clench my teeth. When a military commander loses control of his troops and they switch their allegiance to a rival faction, that leader had best watch his back. Or hers.
Ernie always seems to know the Deputies. Maybe this is a function of the good ol’boy network. Every morning Ernie and the Deputy of the Day are back slapping and hand shaking and howzitgoin. Noreen often joins in, flirting with Ernie and the Deputy. Today’s recipient is Deputy Creighton. Deputy Creighton fancies himself Inspector Clouseau. Before we are done unloading the busses, he is launching an investigation regarding a fight that happened on the bus. It seems Nora hit Dirk with a broom. Dirk’s Mom supposedly phoned and told Ernie that she wants to press charges. Ernie has a knack for inspiring that response.
Busting Nora’s Family
Nora Ruze’s family is very poor, white and well known to Prospect. Nora’s older sister attended Prospect a couple years ago and later dropped out to have her baby. Both Nora and her brother Noah attend Prospect. Noah has been arrested enough times to make him eligible for “a program” (boot camp) and is now just waiting for an open bed. Rumor is he’ll be assigned to a program on the outskirts of Jacksonville. Since Noah knows his fate is sealed, he concludes he has no reason to behave. We have a few students in this position. The courts tell the children they are going to a program but no firm date is given. Living on borrowed time, these students are highly disruptive. Nora, Noah, their older sister, her baby, plus their parents live in a dilapidated van in The Forest. No one has a job.
About 6 months ago, before I’d even heard of Lakeboro, a significant event occurred in the Ruze household. Mr. Ruze was intoxicated and physically attacking his wife. Nora phoned the police. When they arrived to arrest her father, he resisted and the police used force. Noah ran to the defense of his father and began to punch and kick the arresting officers. The officers handcuffed both father and son and prepared to take them to jail. Nora began to scream and flail and demand their release. Perhaps she felt guilty thinking she caused the arrests; she just wanted her father to stop hurting her mother. Nora was so out of control the police Baker Acted her. On that day Nora, Noah and their father all left in Deputy patrol cars. Anger is strong in this family.
Dirk escapes getting busted. . .
Deputy Creighton’s altercation investigation involves Nora and Dirk. Dirk is a skinny white fourteen-year-old boy with long stringy blond hair. I’ve spoken a few times with the principal who sent us Dirk. Before he was Dirk’s principal, he was Dirk’s third grade teacher. Even then Dirk was a problem. Dirk’s parents were in denial and they still are. Dirk is currently our only student not eligible for a free or reduced price lunch. The two problems with Dirk are his career choice (he wants to be a porn star) and his incredible laziness (he can’t be bothered to do any schoolwork or exert any effort). When Dirk is standing he wants to sit, when he is sitting he wants to lie down. When he lies down, he sleeps. It is easy to pick out Dirk in the parking lot during bus arrival - he is the student sprawled prone on the concrete.
In the case of Dirk vs. Nora, Inspector Deputy Creighton decides to interview all the witnesses. This is rather disruptive with students in and out of class for interrogation most of the morning. After talking to nearly every student on the Nora/Dirk bus, Inspector Deputy finds both children were rough housing and Nora didn’t mean to hurt Dirk. This time no children are arrested, but in the course of his investigation Deputy Creighton uncovers a more serious crime involving Nicholas.
. . . Nicholas doesn’t escape getting busted
Nicholas’s family is feuding with a former Prospect family. I don’t know all the details; it began before I arrived. I do know it involves racial slurs and CD’s. Nicholas is one of the few students in our school whose presenting problem is truancy (many of our students have truancy issues, but most have more pressing problems involving violence or drugs). Nicholas is a polite, quiet child who seems happy to be at school, when he does attend. Every morning when he comes to school, he runs from the bus over to me to say “Good Morning Ms. Smee.” He then greets each of his teachers. He is a light skinned black twelve year old who lives with his white mother and a stepfather. He has younger half-siblings and I suspect he is often kept at home to help care for them. He is very protective of his mother and makes up many excuses as to why he is needed more at home than at school. “She had a headache again, a bad one.”
Nicholas is a follower and often latches onto the class clown, of which we have many. Nicholas is the first child to achieve “level one” in our behavior management system and we have a formal ceremony scheduled for this afternoon. We told him first thing this morning and he is thrilled. We tell him he might be our first student on level two if he keeps up the good work, but there is an attendance requirement for level two: no unexcused absences. Nicholas says he thinks he can meet that challenge.
When Deputy Creighton calls Nicholas in to ask about Dirk, Nora and the broom, Nicholas is anxious to talk. He doesn’t want either student arrested and he knows they were just playing. But one look at Nicholas and Deputy Creighton is off on a different track.
“Nicholas, don’t you recognize me?” Creighton queries. Nicholas shakes his head.
“I arrested you for stealing your friend’s CD’s.”
Nicholas remembers but shows no concern believing this was a distant event resolved long ago. Then the Deputy drops the clincher.
“There is an outstanding warrant for your arrest.”
The Deputy explains to me about an arrangement between Nicholas’s mother and the feuding mother in which Nicholas’s mother would pay restitution for the CD’s Nicholas took from his friend. It turns out Nicholas’s mother only paid part and then stopped paying so the other Mother put out a warrant for Nicholas’s arrest. This was months ago; it is unclear how actively the police were looking for Nicholas, but Inspector Deputy has found him now. I take the Deputy aside, isn’t there some way we can work this out without arresting Nicholas? No, not with an outstanding warrant. Nicholas bites his lip but doesn’t cry as he is led away from my office in handcuffs and loaded into the back seat of a squad car.
Tina/Natasha is almost busted
After lunch Tina/Natasha calls her teacher, Noreen, a bitch. Counselor Rusty is summoned to Noreen’s room to escort Tina/Natasha to his office. Tina/Natasha screeches at him “If you put a hand on me I’ll kill you.” Noreen is on the walkie-talkie to Deputy Creighton (she wants to make a withdrawal from the charm account she opened with him this morning). When the Deputy hears that Tina/Natasha “threatened” Noreen and Rusty, he launches an investigation. Rusty understands that Tina/Natasha has a history of abuse; Rusty is not intimidated by her threats but the Deputy is adamant, insisting he needs to interview Noreen in his office. With no one to cover her class, Noreen and her “dream teammates” decide their whole team (Noreen’s class, Neeley’s class and Tammie’s class ) will have an unscheduled recess with the students running about playing many sports at one time, using the bathroom, water fountain and being disruptive. When Deputy Creighton completes his fact-finding mission with Noreen, he looks at the chaos on my campus and tells me this is the worst school he has ever seen and how can anyone learn in this environment. Rusty and I convince the Deputy not to arrest Tina/Natasha. We suspend her instead.
I do not like Deputy Creighton.
In 2001 the state of Florida detained, incarcerated or placed in residential facilities some 6,776 juveniles out of 3,882,271 children under age 18 residing in the state. Illinois, a state with a similar population of children (3,254, 523) managed to only detain, incarcerate or place in residential facilities, some 3,560 children. Even New York, with nearly a million more children than Florida (4,613,251), only detained, incarcerated etc. 4,593 juveniles. Clearly the state of Florida believes that arresting and incarcerating juveniles is a good solution to a difficult problem.
Driving back to my apartment I ponder this reality: why, in the face of studies and evidence showing that arresting children doesn’t help them, does the state of Florida continue to arrest, detain and lock up so many children? Surely the odd anecdote, probably more urban myth than truth, about the bad boy who gets arrested, is sent to a “program” sees the light, goes “straight” and becomes a successful (fill in the blank – probably construction foreman) isn’t powerful enough to maintain a failing policy? No, I think there are other, stronger forces at play here.
Change is always hard. No doubt the state of Florida has been arresting and incarcerating children for years now. It isn’t easy to fight the: “We’ve always done it this way” gang. Moreover here in the Bible belt there is a strong urge to punish sinners and that includes “bad” children. There’s no sparing the rod here.
Further, the alternatives to arresting and incarceration are not obvious, easy or cheap. Maintaining school discipline and safety is hard. It is much easier to remove the violent and disruptive children than to treat them on campus or in the community. The alternatives to incarceration are often more expensive. In a land where the population objects to spending money on education, there is little support for allocating additional funds for troubled youths, for “throwing money” at the bad kids.
In Florida, as in most of America, electoral politics rules. The children sent to detention centers and boot camps (and alternative schools) come from poor families riddled with drug and anger problems, and in which the parents are unlikely to vote. Elected officials can safely ignore them: they don’t vote for me, they don’t look like me, they don’t live near me, who cares? The voters, especially those with school age children, are comforted to hear talk of protecting their good children by removing the bad apples. In addition, the individuals and corporations who run the programs (boot camps, alternative schools) don’t want to lose their jobs and funding; and since they do vote and they have connections with the local people and groups who control the purse strings, their voices count.
It’s still Monday. Back in my apartment, I call my son who is turning 21 today. This is the first time we aren’t all together for his birthday. He is in New York preparing to start his senior year at Columbia. My husband is in Providence, RI for work and I am in Lakeboro trying to keep children in class and out of jail.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Chapter Eight: The Walkie-Talkie is Calling Me!
Chapter 8: The Walkie-Talkie is Calling Me
If you look closely through the dark before dawn, you can make out my neon yellow sleeveless top as I run the one-mile loop around my apartment complex over and over and over. My husband and I are training to run our first (only?!) marathon five months from now. I run not just to train, but also to think about and solve problems. The still of the night that isn’t yet day gives me the freedom to think without interruption. Today’s running ruminations are hijacked by doubt. I am questioning the effectiveness of my strategies in dealing with my staff, especially Ernie, one of my counselors. What if I am better at running in circles than I am at running a school? Self-doubt is not my usual MO, but right now I am feeling less than competent. No matter how inspiring I try to be, my faculty meetings are a disaster, no one wants to try anything new and most of my teachers don’t even want to teach. Today’s run sheds little light on my problems, it does leave me physically sore and spiritually weary.
7:00 a.m.
“All the teachers are afraid of me and I run the school like a prison camp.” At least that is what Ernie, my difficult counselor, is telling The Boss and his boss, Clyde. I am at my desk changing into my sneakers (all the better to chase you with) when my workday starts with a phone call from Fred, The Boss’s business manager, to let me know Ernie has been calling people at Ebencorp headquarters to tell them all the teachers are ready to quit and someone needs to deal with me. Fred is often a good source of inside information but he has no loyalties except to himself and, like a double agent, works both sides against each other. Fred’s facts are not suspect, just his motives.
I meet with Ernie after the 8:00 meeting and ask about his phone calls to Ebencorp. Ernie denies, denies, denies and tells me he thinks this school is great and he has no issues with me. He then tells me he is going to resign because of how Ebencorp is treating him. He says he might reconsider his resignation if he can talk with The Boss. I suggest he take a day off to think about how he really feels about working at Prospect. He leaves my portable calmly but I hear him gunning his engine and roaring down the driveway.
I have no time to ponder Ernie because Lynne says she needs to meet with me before the busses arrive and it’s important.
8:20 a.m.
Lynne is waving a stack of papers in her hands “These all came over the fax today!” She exclaims. I shrug, clearly not getting it. Lynne takes a breath and explains what I should already have known. When a principal wants a child removed from his or her school, Henry, my liaison with the public schools, makes the determination whether a transfer to an alternative school is appropriate. If he agrees with the principal, Henry then decides to which school the child will be sent. When Henry selects Prospect, his secretary faxes a referral sheet to Lynne with a few facts, child’s name, parent’s name, child’s infraction, phone number. Someone on our staff is responsible for calling the student to set up a time for him or her to come to Prospect to sign up, what we call doing “intake.” Each piece of paper in Lynne’s hand represents a new child coming to Prospect. Lynne is holding at least a dozen pages. She wants me to be aware of this onslaught. There is no time to ask why the sudden flood, but our conversation about how Stephanie will handle all the phoning and intake meetings on top of running her orientation group is interrupted by the arrival of the busses.
9:00 a.m.
Good principals greet their students when they arrive in the morning. At least, this is what I believe. I work hard to make sure I am in the parking lot when the children disembark from the busses every day. Greeting the students and running the 8:00 staff meeting are two of the few objectives I am able to meet regularly. I have other plans and goals (stop in every classroom at least once a day, conduct a teacher observation, role model a teaching skill, meet with students, talk to parents, work on budgets, write grant proposals, respond to email) but what is constant is my inability to accomplish most of these tasks. The walkie-talkie keeps calling me.
9:30 a.m.
“Ms. Smee, Marcus is missing. Do you copy?” Several of us saw Marcus in the parking lot this morning as the students lined up for class. His hair, Marcus’s mood ring, was only half braided. Fully braided Marcus is a quiet, even attentive student. But half-braided Marcus always spells trouble. Sometime after getting off the bus, we lost Marcus. His teacher Noreen, the thief, doesn’t notice his absence until after breakfast when one of Marcus’s friends asks whether Marcus got arrested again. A search ensues and Marcus is found wandering behind the school, agitated and muttering to himself. We ask where he has been. He says he was talking to Rusty, our counselor. Rusty says he hasn’t seen Marcus today. With Marcus back in the classroom, Noreen unwisely confronts him with the discrepancies in his story. Marcus calls her a stupid white bitch (his regular moniker for Noreen when he is in his unbraided mode). Noreen calls for a Deputy and says on the walkie-talkie she wants Marcus arrested for threatening her. I am able to run across campus (sneakers, remember) and arrive in time to have Marcus escorted to my office, his mother is called and she takes him home. No arrest, this time.
10:00 a.m.
The walkie-talkie is calling me: the Deputy has a problem involving Tina/Natasha and Ionya.
Tina/Natasha is a white, thirteen year old girl, who used to be just Tina. Tina’s parents were terrifyingly abusive and lost custody to an aunt. In an effort to protect Tina, the aunt had her name legally changed to Natasha. Trouble is, Natasha will only respond to Tina. Name confusion is the least of her issues. Tina/Natasha likes to tease but can’t tolerate being teased. She has a wicked temper. Minor slights send her reeling into a dervish of lashing and cursing. Tina/Natasha is articulate and bright and at times can be charming, but to spend time with her is to walk through broken glass, barefoot.
We call Tina/Natasha’s aunt in for a conference during the first week of school to enlist her help in coping with the wrath of Tina/Natasha. She arrives looking like a nurse dressed in turquoise scrubs, but she says she works as a housekeeper. When Tina/Natasha joins the conference she screams that we (principal, teachers, counselors) are all a bunch of liars. Her aunt first tries to support Tina/Natasha and ask for her version of the story, but Tina/Natasha is too far gone, howling and ranting. When Tina/Natasha senses her aunt might be going to the “dark side” and believing staff, she lets loose a barrage of curses directed at her aunt. The aunt absorbs it all without comment.
That morning Tina/Natasha decided to tell fragile, black, twelve year old Ionya, that she is gay. In fact Tina/Natasha made a loud announcement in the middle of adding integers “Ionya is gay and she eats the chewed gum from under the desks.” Ionya shouted back that she isn’t gay and that she eats the gum because she wants to kill herself.
Tina/Natasha was removed from the classroom for counseling with Rusty.
Ionya was Baker Acted.
In 1971 Maxine Baker, state representative from Miami, sponsored an act to protect the mentally ill by devising a “bill of rights” that strengthens the civil and due process rights of the mentally ill. The Florida Legislature passed the Florida Mental Health Act, which took effect in 1972. It is known informally as the Baker Act and covers voluntary and involuntary admissions for the treatment of mental illnesses as well as providing for emergency services and temporary detention for evaluation. At Prospect, the Baker Act is a verb. We try to Baker Act a child if she or he makes what we believe to be reasonable threats of suicide. But it is not up to our counselors, teachers or me as the principal to determine whether to Baker Act; it is up to law enforcement. Usually the Deputy on our campus concurs with our assessment and requests a squad car to transport the child to a mental health facility.
In 2003 Herald County Deputies transported over 300 juveniles under the Baker Act; many of those juveniles were my students. Parents are notified and typically the child is observed for three days then sent home. Some of our more serious cases are sent out of town for longer stays and additional treatment since prior to 2004 Herald County didn’t have a single bed for juveniles in need of inpatient mental health services. Ionya has been Baker Acted before. Mom reminds us that Ionya is a liar and if we Baker Act her we are just falling for more of her lies and giving her exactly what she wants. We still Baker Act Ionya.
10:45 a.m.
The walkie-talkie is calling me. “Ms. Smee I need you to come remove Lorayne’s tongue ring.”
Our handbook states students may only have two stud earrings, one in each ear, no hoops and no body piercings besides the ear. The staff unanimously agrees on this rule but implementation often takes more energy than they wish to exert. Rosie, the teacher who wants to be a counselor, modifies the rule to say you can have other piercings as long as staff can’t see them. Lorayne’s tongue ring is the topic of the crisis this hour. Stone sees the tongue ring, quotes policy, and tells her to remove it. Lorayne, as is her nature, spits vulgarities rudely informing Stone that Miss Rosie allows it. Now Lorayne and I are having a talk.
In the late 1990’s fashion models with dark circles under glazed eyes defined the “heroin chic look.” Lorayne could pass for one of these models. She looks much older than her fourteen years, somewhat haggard and streetwise. She explains to me the physiology of the tongue: unlike an ear, a tongue hole will close up immediately. I am dubious, I express sympathy, but tell her she needs to give me the tongue ring. After some tears and cursing she does so. I place it in an envelope, label it with her name and lock it in my safe with the other student contraband. Lorayne advises me she will have the ring back at the end of the day. When Miss Rosie confiscates items from the students SHE returns them at dismissal. I’m not Miss Rosie. The rule with confiscated items is that I hold them until a parent or guardian comes to retrieve them. This isn’t fair, Lorayne sputters, Mom can’t come get it.
Lorayne explains: The person she calls Mom is really her Grandma. Her real mother is a “crack whore” in Orlando. Her mother doesn’t know that Lorayne knows that she is a crack whore but Lorayne knows because someone who loves her very much told her this. Lorayne has to try to be good because her Grandma is going to die soon. Her grandma is 52 and has diabetes and smokes. Lorayne doesn’t know what she’ll do when Grandma dies. Lorayne confesses that she too smokes, and hates that I made a rule of no smoking on the school busses. I escort Lorayne back to class with a free anti-smoking lecture.
11:00 a.m.
For the moment the walkie-talkie isn’t calling me, so I decide to make some calls on my list. I call Claymont’s family because Claymont doesn’t have a planner. (The planner costs $5, includes the school handbook, and is in the form of a calendar so students can record assignments and teachers can write daily notes to parents.) Every student is required to buy a planner.
Thirteen-year-old Claymont, like nearly all our students, does not live with two biological parents. Claymont has dark black skin and a solid build. He lives with an aunt and uncle. When something is about to “go down” on campus, Claymont knows about it and often has had a hand in the orchestration. It is rare for Claymont himself to get in trouble. He is “the brains.”
I speak with Claymont’s aunt. She is hostile before I can even tell her why I am calling. I wonder whether it is my position, my race or my accent. I talk about the importance of a planner and she interrupts: “Claymont gets a planner when I get the money. Can’t be buying that boy every little thing he wants.”
11:20 a.m.
The walkie-talkie is calling me. It’s the Deputy informing me that LaQuanda has been arrested, again. Rosie needed to send some worksheets to science teacher Tammie’s classroom. LaQuanda, now in Rosie’s room and fully recovered from her first-day-of-school-Ionya-slapping-incident, volunteers. Rosie, forgetting about the Tammie/LaQuanda situation, permits LaQuanda to go. After LaQuanda leaves the room, another student, Lenny , tells Rosie that LaQuanda brought a knife to school and plans to stab Tammie. Rosie sends an urgent walkie-talkie message. The Deputy intercepts and arrests LaQuanda. She has a knife and admits it was to “take care of Tammie.” Goodbye LaQuanda.
11:30 a.m.
The walkie-talkie is calling me with more jewelry woes. “Ms.. Smee I need you to come remove Luke’s hoop earring.” Fourteen-year-old Luke is wearing his hoop earring, again. Luke, a white boy who is small for his age, wears expensive blue tinted glasses and a scowl. He talks like his cartoon “heroes”, Bevis or Butthead (I’m not sure which, but is there a difference?) and spends his out of school hours playing video games. Yesterday Luke was told to remove his hoop earring; he refused. He was told if he wore it the next day it would be confiscated. Today is the next day. Luke is wearing it and refusing to remove it. Counselor Rusty tells him he can take it off before school each morning and put it back in his ear when he gets home; his ear holes will not close during that time. Luke refuses. Rusty calls Luke’s mother. She is at work at McDonalds. Rusty wants her to speak with Luke to reason with him so he will understand this is not an issue on which he needs to take a stand. Mom curses at Rusty and refuses to tell Luke to remove the earring. Now it is my turn to call the mother. She is still at work at McDonalds. She works about 80 hours a week to support Luke and his older brother. She left an abusive spouse in Ohio. After she curses at me she tells me that the hoop is actually a stud earring because they told her that at the tattoo parlor last night. Then she says she will get Luke a note from the doctor saying he has an allergy to stud earrings. Then she tells me I will have to pay $30 for re -piercing when his ear hole closes up. Eventually she agrees to speak to Luke and tells him to remove the earring.
12:00 pm
Not all contraband is created equal. Yesterday Riley, a tall, fourteen year old white boy, was nervously fidgeting with something that looked like a balloon. He was standing next to his grandmother as she signed him in late from a court date. I saw the balloon, but did not identify it as a problem. Ah, the mark of the inexperienced principal. Balloons are cheap, easy to carry and aren’t an obvious weapon. They can also multiply. One day Riley has one balloon, the next day ten students each have pockets full of balloons; the fad spreads like chicken pox. Soon we have an epidemic of students secreting balloons into the bathroom, filling them with water and voila, instant excitement. Now the walkie-talkie is vibrating with voices on top of voices calling for a counselor, reporting water balloon fights in PE class, in the cafeteria, on the busses and even in Stone’s math class. We run a few surprise searches, confiscate all the balloons and put an end to the fun.
Before we catch our breath, rubber band powered flight is discovered. Elastics begin to appear on wrists and the arms race takes off. Simply shooting a rubber band isn’t enough. The elastics are wrapped around paperclips and folded index cards to make flying projectiles. We confiscate not only the elastics, but also the paperclips and index cards. Fortunately when we wrote our code of conduct and listed contraband, one member of my faculty had the prescience to add the sentence “At any time Prospect staff has the right to determine anything is contraband.” None-the-less, next year’s contraband list will specifically include balloons and elastics.
12:30 pm
Athena from Sun Trust Bank has stopped by to see me. My husband and I have decided we want to build a home in Lakeboro. We apply to Sun Trust Bank for a mortgage. Although my husband is mostly in New York and I am right here in town, he handles most of the communication with the bank because I don’t have a spare moment. But from time to time there is paperwork to be signed. Athena called me at work last week to set up a time so I can come in and give her my signatures. As we talk, Athena, notices my profession, (it’s listed on the loan application forms) and says: “It must be hard for the principal to leave the school. Why don’t I swing by your school with these papers. My lunch hour is 12:30-1:30, will that be a good time?” So now the bank is coming to me! Athena arrives just after 12:30. I sign the forms and she is off leaving me to marvel at how she just delivered a quality of customer service the likes of which New Yorkers can only dream about.
1:00 p.m.
Principals are supposed to observe teachers. I like to observe teachers and I feel it is a valuable and worthwhile use of my time. It permits me to give concrete feedback and coaching. But the walkie-talkie is the enemy of observations. I have been trying to do an informal, unannounced observation in Stone’s classroom all morning. After lunch I finally get the chance. When I enter he is sitting at his desk writing in planners while the students cavort – tossing two footballs across the room, looking at car magazines, writing on the chalkboard. Every now and then he looks up and yells at them. I observe no teaching or learning. Before I have a chance to talk with Stone or demonstrate some other teaching techniques, the walkie-talkie calls me to the Boys room, I make an appointment to talk later with Stone and leave the classroom in the unproductive state in which I found it.
1:20 p.m.
I head to the Boy’s room. This is not my favorite place; it always smells. The custodians claim the urine has seeped deep into the cinderblocks and no amount of cleaning can get it out. The six classrooms in the cinderblock building share one boy’s room and one girl’s room (our portable classrooms have their own bathrooms). We can’t let our students use the bathroom unescorted, therefore whole class bathroom breaks three to four times a day are necessary. Today, during the mid-afternoon break, Neeley’s class discovers a strange young man in the boy’s bathroom. He is supposedly a crack addict who used to attend school here. The Deputy and I arrive on the scene and the Deputy chases him off.
1:45 p.m.
The walkie-talkie is calling me. Noreen wants help with her class. I observe her students walking across campus. Noreen, like many of my teachers, does not insist on correct line protocol: silence, arm’s length apart, hands behind back. I compliment those teachers who make any attempt. Her students resist not only the line protocol, but also the uniform policy. Noreen is unable or unwilling to enforce either set of rules. The school uniform consists of a navy blue collared polo shirt to be worn tucked into blue jeans or khakis (shorts or pants or skirt). I see Noreen’s girls rolling up their shirts to show the top of their thong underpants and rolling down their collars to reveal their cleavage. Noreen usually plays blind to avoid confrontations, but in our morning meeting today I emphasized the responsibility of the teachers to enforce all our rules especially related to lines and uniforms. Noreen wants me to be the heavy and chastise her students. As I approach Noreen’s class, I don’t have to open my mouth since the students know the rules and who will and will not enforce them. When Noreen’s students see me heading towards them, there is a shuffling as shirts and collars are unrolled, shirts are tucked in and the jumble of students forms into a straight line.
2:00 p.m.
The walkie-talkie is calling me. “Tina/Natasha is AWOL.”
Rosie has been running a counseling group on anger. She tells the students they need to work on containing curse words inside their heads rather than speaking them. “Thinking a cuss word won’t get you in trouble; saying it aloud will.” Torrey raises her hand to ask a question but before she can speak, Tina/Natasha is out of her seat and screeching at Rosie. “You fucking bitch, I don’t need to listen to none of your bullshit. You ain’t my goddamned mother.” In mid tirade Tina/Natasha charges out the door. The class is momentarily stunned but Claymont eases the tension: “Miss Rosie, I bet you’re cussing in your head right now. I bet you’re thinking LOTS of cuss words!” Rosie smiles, “I might be, but you’ll never know!” Meanwhile I’m half-way across campus when I see Tina/Natasha heading into Rusty’s office. No need to break into a sweat this time.
2:30 p.m.
The walkie-talkie is calling me. Stephanie, the orientation leader, asks me to come to the orientation classroom. She explains the boys in her room have been calling Tyryona “Dollar Girl” all day. Listening to Stephanie I am reminded that this morning I saw boys’ heads hanging out bus windows shouting “Yo dollah girl, lookit, I gotta dollah.” I was distracted at the time and ignored the taunts not fully realizing they were hooting at Tyryona. Tyryona, a thirteen-year-old black girl, wants to be an actress and even when angered, she manages to keep her temper and smile her butter-melting grin. Unlike so many of my students, Tyryona doesn’t have that lean and hungry look (the problem of childhood obesity in America is not reflected in my student population; I have maybe two students who are overweight). She’s not overweight, but she doesn’t look scrawny either. Stephanie explains the problem with Tyryona. She just started here two days ago but rumor is that on the way home on the bus yesterday, Tyryona masturbated Luis and Claymont for $1 each.
Stephanie continues saying that yesterday Tyryona performed a lap dance on a student in orientation. It is unclear to me when Stephanie noticed this and how quickly she stopped it; so many questions and so little time. I leave the orientation class and ask Shasta, my transportation coordinator, to remind Quentin, Tyryona’s bus driver, to seat the girls in the front of the bus. My students brag that their assigned seats are a joke and as soon as the busses leave the school, the drivers let them sit wherever they want. I phone Tyryona’s guardian, who asks to come meet with me right away. I agree.
By 3:15, Tyryona’s guardian, Beryl is here. Beryl tells me she is upset we didn’t call sooner. Then she tells me a little about Tyryona. Tyryona was living with her mother and some men, related and unrelated. Tyryona was sexually abused and generally neglected; Mom has an alcohol problem. When Mom was arrested Tyryona was going to go “into the system” but Beryl, a friend of Tyryona’s mother, stepped-in and took Tyryona. Beryl isn’t receiving money from the state of Florida nor is she a blood relation. She is unsure how long she can keep Tyryona. She has two little children of her own and her husband is not supportive of Tyryona’s presence. Beryl offers to pick up Tyryona from school for a few days to avoid any more $1 jobs. I walk her to the orientation classroom to get Tyryona.
Tyryona inspires me to contact the health department for material on adolescents and sexuality. When I call, I am introduced to Mallory who organizes and runs free abstinence training. I am dubious about the efficacy of that approach with my students, but we schedule sessions to start next week.
4:00 p.m.
On Tuesday afternoons I hold a staff meeting from 4:00-5:00. This gives us a chance to work on those projects and problems we can’t handle in our fifteen-minute morning meetings. Today’s meeting does not go well. Stone makes sarcastic comments under his breath about his coworkers, his students and about me. Stone is the most hostile of my employees. He has two responses to all ideas: “What I need in my classroom is a cattle prod” and “Cover the kid in honey and put him on an ant hill.” While Stone sharpens his tongue, Rosie complains about all the changes and not enough prep time. Meanwhile Ernie fumes about my Marcus arrest lecture and Rusty talks loudly, getting on everybody’s nerves. Noreen is upset that two students keep calling her a bitch. Tammie complains that the school day is way too long. Tammie is having trouble with LaQuanda, the graffiti-writing foster child. She says LaQuanda hates her and she hates LaQuanda! Rosie offers to take LaQuanda. I change LaQuanda’s homeroom assignment to Rosie’s class. Of all my staff only Neeley is silent and alas, this is probably not a good sign.
5:00 p.m.
Officially my workday ends at 4:00, but I‘m rarely able to leave on time. The walkie-talkie keeps me running most of the day, leaving no time to read email, work on reports and grants, return phone calls or do the other 101 things principals do in their offices.
After the students and teachers depart I work on the Memorial Hospital grant. Ebencorp expects Prospect principals to obtain grant money so they can use the public school contract money to pay debts to Ebencorp. The actual writing of a grant isn’t difficult, but it requires research and is time consuming. Mel, my predecessor, obtained the Memorial Hospital grant but I can’t receive the money this year because of Mel’s poor reporting last year. The grant representative is very nice. She simply wants me to explain how the money was spent last year (prior to my arrival) before she will free up the money for this year. $61,000 is riding on my ability to do this correctly.
Lynne, always organized, has some receipts, but Mel “fudged” a lot of expenses and didn’t keep records. The grant was designed to decrease drug and alcohol use among our students but Mel used the money for salaries without defining how these staff members’ work helped on the substance abuse front.
7:00 p.m.
I have had enough of the grant writing and my growling stomach reminds me of another item on my lengthy to do list: order candy. Plain and peanut M&M’s, Snicker Bars and Skittles. I order hundreds of bags to sell at our open house next month. Rex Stewart, my mentor, tells me this is a great way to make some money for field trips or to buy books. I’m a little uncomfortable from a health perspective but I feel desperate to obtain some books. Right now, our school has a library without any books in it.
I was going to leave as soon as I faxed the candy order, but I feel the need to work on hiring more teachers. I spend over two hours calling prospective employees and manage to find three who are interview worthy. When I get back to my apartment, I am too tired to open a bag of salad and microwave Lean Cuisine.
10:30 p.m.
I pour a bowl of Product 19 and lie on my bed digesting cereal and the day’s events.
My predecessor Mel focused on counseling the children. Under his guidance, there were few academic lessons, lots of basketball, playground time and therapy sessions. Mel’s degree is in counseling and therapy, not education. Am I wrong to shun the therapeutic approach? Am I neglecting Maslow? Do my students need to talk about their problems before they can conjugate verbs? On the other hand, their problems are so many, so horrendous, and require so many resources we don’t have. In the meantime their basic reading and math skills are pathetic. I believe we can accelerate their learning and give them a rich education while applying band-aids to their gaping emotional wounds.
In the blurry world just before sleep I see the faces of Marcus, Ionya, LaQuanda, Tina/Natasha, Tyryona, Lorayne and Luke. Their needs are so many and time is so short.
If you look closely through the dark before dawn, you can make out my neon yellow sleeveless top as I run the one-mile loop around my apartment complex over and over and over. My husband and I are training to run our first (only?!) marathon five months from now. I run not just to train, but also to think about and solve problems. The still of the night that isn’t yet day gives me the freedom to think without interruption. Today’s running ruminations are hijacked by doubt. I am questioning the effectiveness of my strategies in dealing with my staff, especially Ernie, one of my counselors. What if I am better at running in circles than I am at running a school? Self-doubt is not my usual MO, but right now I am feeling less than competent. No matter how inspiring I try to be, my faculty meetings are a disaster, no one wants to try anything new and most of my teachers don’t even want to teach. Today’s run sheds little light on my problems, it does leave me physically sore and spiritually weary.
7:00 a.m.
“All the teachers are afraid of me and I run the school like a prison camp.” At least that is what Ernie, my difficult counselor, is telling The Boss and his boss, Clyde. I am at my desk changing into my sneakers (all the better to chase you with) when my workday starts with a phone call from Fred, The Boss’s business manager, to let me know Ernie has been calling people at Ebencorp headquarters to tell them all the teachers are ready to quit and someone needs to deal with me. Fred is often a good source of inside information but he has no loyalties except to himself and, like a double agent, works both sides against each other. Fred’s facts are not suspect, just his motives.
I meet with Ernie after the 8:00 meeting and ask about his phone calls to Ebencorp. Ernie denies, denies, denies and tells me he thinks this school is great and he has no issues with me. He then tells me he is going to resign because of how Ebencorp is treating him. He says he might reconsider his resignation if he can talk with The Boss. I suggest he take a day off to think about how he really feels about working at Prospect. He leaves my portable calmly but I hear him gunning his engine and roaring down the driveway.
I have no time to ponder Ernie because Lynne says she needs to meet with me before the busses arrive and it’s important.
8:20 a.m.
Lynne is waving a stack of papers in her hands “These all came over the fax today!” She exclaims. I shrug, clearly not getting it. Lynne takes a breath and explains what I should already have known. When a principal wants a child removed from his or her school, Henry, my liaison with the public schools, makes the determination whether a transfer to an alternative school is appropriate. If he agrees with the principal, Henry then decides to which school the child will be sent. When Henry selects Prospect, his secretary faxes a referral sheet to Lynne with a few facts, child’s name, parent’s name, child’s infraction, phone number. Someone on our staff is responsible for calling the student to set up a time for him or her to come to Prospect to sign up, what we call doing “intake.” Each piece of paper in Lynne’s hand represents a new child coming to Prospect. Lynne is holding at least a dozen pages. She wants me to be aware of this onslaught. There is no time to ask why the sudden flood, but our conversation about how Stephanie will handle all the phoning and intake meetings on top of running her orientation group is interrupted by the arrival of the busses.
9:00 a.m.
Good principals greet their students when they arrive in the morning. At least, this is what I believe. I work hard to make sure I am in the parking lot when the children disembark from the busses every day. Greeting the students and running the 8:00 staff meeting are two of the few objectives I am able to meet regularly. I have other plans and goals (stop in every classroom at least once a day, conduct a teacher observation, role model a teaching skill, meet with students, talk to parents, work on budgets, write grant proposals, respond to email) but what is constant is my inability to accomplish most of these tasks. The walkie-talkie keeps calling me.
9:30 a.m.
“Ms. Smee, Marcus is missing. Do you copy?” Several of us saw Marcus in the parking lot this morning as the students lined up for class. His hair, Marcus’s mood ring, was only half braided. Fully braided Marcus is a quiet, even attentive student. But half-braided Marcus always spells trouble. Sometime after getting off the bus, we lost Marcus. His teacher Noreen, the thief, doesn’t notice his absence until after breakfast when one of Marcus’s friends asks whether Marcus got arrested again. A search ensues and Marcus is found wandering behind the school, agitated and muttering to himself. We ask where he has been. He says he was talking to Rusty, our counselor. Rusty says he hasn’t seen Marcus today. With Marcus back in the classroom, Noreen unwisely confronts him with the discrepancies in his story. Marcus calls her a stupid white bitch (his regular moniker for Noreen when he is in his unbraided mode). Noreen calls for a Deputy and says on the walkie-talkie she wants Marcus arrested for threatening her. I am able to run across campus (sneakers, remember) and arrive in time to have Marcus escorted to my office, his mother is called and she takes him home. No arrest, this time.
10:00 a.m.
The walkie-talkie is calling me: the Deputy has a problem involving Tina/Natasha and Ionya.
Tina/Natasha is a white, thirteen year old girl, who used to be just Tina. Tina’s parents were terrifyingly abusive and lost custody to an aunt. In an effort to protect Tina, the aunt had her name legally changed to Natasha. Trouble is, Natasha will only respond to Tina. Name confusion is the least of her issues. Tina/Natasha likes to tease but can’t tolerate being teased. She has a wicked temper. Minor slights send her reeling into a dervish of lashing and cursing. Tina/Natasha is articulate and bright and at times can be charming, but to spend time with her is to walk through broken glass, barefoot.
We call Tina/Natasha’s aunt in for a conference during the first week of school to enlist her help in coping with the wrath of Tina/Natasha. She arrives looking like a nurse dressed in turquoise scrubs, but she says she works as a housekeeper. When Tina/Natasha joins the conference she screams that we (principal, teachers, counselors) are all a bunch of liars. Her aunt first tries to support Tina/Natasha and ask for her version of the story, but Tina/Natasha is too far gone, howling and ranting. When Tina/Natasha senses her aunt might be going to the “dark side” and believing staff, she lets loose a barrage of curses directed at her aunt. The aunt absorbs it all without comment.
That morning Tina/Natasha decided to tell fragile, black, twelve year old Ionya, that she is gay. In fact Tina/Natasha made a loud announcement in the middle of adding integers “Ionya is gay and she eats the chewed gum from under the desks.” Ionya shouted back that she isn’t gay and that she eats the gum because she wants to kill herself.
Tina/Natasha was removed from the classroom for counseling with Rusty.
Ionya was Baker Acted.
In 1971 Maxine Baker, state representative from Miami, sponsored an act to protect the mentally ill by devising a “bill of rights” that strengthens the civil and due process rights of the mentally ill. The Florida Legislature passed the Florida Mental Health Act, which took effect in 1972. It is known informally as the Baker Act and covers voluntary and involuntary admissions for the treatment of mental illnesses as well as providing for emergency services and temporary detention for evaluation. At Prospect, the Baker Act is a verb. We try to Baker Act a child if she or he makes what we believe to be reasonable threats of suicide. But it is not up to our counselors, teachers or me as the principal to determine whether to Baker Act; it is up to law enforcement. Usually the Deputy on our campus concurs with our assessment and requests a squad car to transport the child to a mental health facility.
In 2003 Herald County Deputies transported over 300 juveniles under the Baker Act; many of those juveniles were my students. Parents are notified and typically the child is observed for three days then sent home. Some of our more serious cases are sent out of town for longer stays and additional treatment since prior to 2004 Herald County didn’t have a single bed for juveniles in need of inpatient mental health services. Ionya has been Baker Acted before. Mom reminds us that Ionya is a liar and if we Baker Act her we are just falling for more of her lies and giving her exactly what she wants. We still Baker Act Ionya.
10:45 a.m.
The walkie-talkie is calling me. “Ms. Smee I need you to come remove Lorayne’s tongue ring.”
Our handbook states students may only have two stud earrings, one in each ear, no hoops and no body piercings besides the ear. The staff unanimously agrees on this rule but implementation often takes more energy than they wish to exert. Rosie, the teacher who wants to be a counselor, modifies the rule to say you can have other piercings as long as staff can’t see them. Lorayne’s tongue ring is the topic of the crisis this hour. Stone sees the tongue ring, quotes policy, and tells her to remove it. Lorayne, as is her nature, spits vulgarities rudely informing Stone that Miss Rosie allows it. Now Lorayne and I are having a talk.
In the late 1990’s fashion models with dark circles under glazed eyes defined the “heroin chic look.” Lorayne could pass for one of these models. She looks much older than her fourteen years, somewhat haggard and streetwise. She explains to me the physiology of the tongue: unlike an ear, a tongue hole will close up immediately. I am dubious, I express sympathy, but tell her she needs to give me the tongue ring. After some tears and cursing she does so. I place it in an envelope, label it with her name and lock it in my safe with the other student contraband. Lorayne advises me she will have the ring back at the end of the day. When Miss Rosie confiscates items from the students SHE returns them at dismissal. I’m not Miss Rosie. The rule with confiscated items is that I hold them until a parent or guardian comes to retrieve them. This isn’t fair, Lorayne sputters, Mom can’t come get it.
Lorayne explains: The person she calls Mom is really her Grandma. Her real mother is a “crack whore” in Orlando. Her mother doesn’t know that Lorayne knows that she is a crack whore but Lorayne knows because someone who loves her very much told her this. Lorayne has to try to be good because her Grandma is going to die soon. Her grandma is 52 and has diabetes and smokes. Lorayne doesn’t know what she’ll do when Grandma dies. Lorayne confesses that she too smokes, and hates that I made a rule of no smoking on the school busses. I escort Lorayne back to class with a free anti-smoking lecture.
11:00 a.m.
For the moment the walkie-talkie isn’t calling me, so I decide to make some calls on my list. I call Claymont’s family because Claymont doesn’t have a planner. (The planner costs $5, includes the school handbook, and is in the form of a calendar so students can record assignments and teachers can write daily notes to parents.) Every student is required to buy a planner.
Thirteen-year-old Claymont, like nearly all our students, does not live with two biological parents. Claymont has dark black skin and a solid build. He lives with an aunt and uncle. When something is about to “go down” on campus, Claymont knows about it and often has had a hand in the orchestration. It is rare for Claymont himself to get in trouble. He is “the brains.”
I speak with Claymont’s aunt. She is hostile before I can even tell her why I am calling. I wonder whether it is my position, my race or my accent. I talk about the importance of a planner and she interrupts: “Claymont gets a planner when I get the money. Can’t be buying that boy every little thing he wants.”
11:20 a.m.
The walkie-talkie is calling me. It’s the Deputy informing me that LaQuanda has been arrested, again. Rosie needed to send some worksheets to science teacher Tammie’s classroom. LaQuanda, now in Rosie’s room and fully recovered from her first-day-of-school-Ionya-slapping-incident, volunteers. Rosie, forgetting about the Tammie/LaQuanda situation, permits LaQuanda to go. After LaQuanda leaves the room, another student, Lenny , tells Rosie that LaQuanda brought a knife to school and plans to stab Tammie. Rosie sends an urgent walkie-talkie message. The Deputy intercepts and arrests LaQuanda. She has a knife and admits it was to “take care of Tammie.” Goodbye LaQuanda.
11:30 a.m.
The walkie-talkie is calling me with more jewelry woes. “Ms.. Smee I need you to come remove Luke’s hoop earring.” Fourteen-year-old Luke is wearing his hoop earring, again. Luke, a white boy who is small for his age, wears expensive blue tinted glasses and a scowl. He talks like his cartoon “heroes”, Bevis or Butthead (I’m not sure which, but is there a difference?) and spends his out of school hours playing video games. Yesterday Luke was told to remove his hoop earring; he refused. He was told if he wore it the next day it would be confiscated. Today is the next day. Luke is wearing it and refusing to remove it. Counselor Rusty tells him he can take it off before school each morning and put it back in his ear when he gets home; his ear holes will not close during that time. Luke refuses. Rusty calls Luke’s mother. She is at work at McDonalds. Rusty wants her to speak with Luke to reason with him so he will understand this is not an issue on which he needs to take a stand. Mom curses at Rusty and refuses to tell Luke to remove the earring. Now it is my turn to call the mother. She is still at work at McDonalds. She works about 80 hours a week to support Luke and his older brother. She left an abusive spouse in Ohio. After she curses at me she tells me that the hoop is actually a stud earring because they told her that at the tattoo parlor last night. Then she says she will get Luke a note from the doctor saying he has an allergy to stud earrings. Then she tells me I will have to pay $30 for re -piercing when his ear hole closes up. Eventually she agrees to speak to Luke and tells him to remove the earring.
12:00 pm
Not all contraband is created equal. Yesterday Riley, a tall, fourteen year old white boy, was nervously fidgeting with something that looked like a balloon. He was standing next to his grandmother as she signed him in late from a court date. I saw the balloon, but did not identify it as a problem. Ah, the mark of the inexperienced principal. Balloons are cheap, easy to carry and aren’t an obvious weapon. They can also multiply. One day Riley has one balloon, the next day ten students each have pockets full of balloons; the fad spreads like chicken pox. Soon we have an epidemic of students secreting balloons into the bathroom, filling them with water and voila, instant excitement. Now the walkie-talkie is vibrating with voices on top of voices calling for a counselor, reporting water balloon fights in PE class, in the cafeteria, on the busses and even in Stone’s math class. We run a few surprise searches, confiscate all the balloons and put an end to the fun.
Before we catch our breath, rubber band powered flight is discovered. Elastics begin to appear on wrists and the arms race takes off. Simply shooting a rubber band isn’t enough. The elastics are wrapped around paperclips and folded index cards to make flying projectiles. We confiscate not only the elastics, but also the paperclips and index cards. Fortunately when we wrote our code of conduct and listed contraband, one member of my faculty had the prescience to add the sentence “At any time Prospect staff has the right to determine anything is contraband.” None-the-less, next year’s contraband list will specifically include balloons and elastics.
12:30 pm
Athena from Sun Trust Bank has stopped by to see me. My husband and I have decided we want to build a home in Lakeboro. We apply to Sun Trust Bank for a mortgage. Although my husband is mostly in New York and I am right here in town, he handles most of the communication with the bank because I don’t have a spare moment. But from time to time there is paperwork to be signed. Athena called me at work last week to set up a time so I can come in and give her my signatures. As we talk, Athena, notices my profession, (it’s listed on the loan application forms) and says: “It must be hard for the principal to leave the school. Why don’t I swing by your school with these papers. My lunch hour is 12:30-1:30, will that be a good time?” So now the bank is coming to me! Athena arrives just after 12:30. I sign the forms and she is off leaving me to marvel at how she just delivered a quality of customer service the likes of which New Yorkers can only dream about.
1:00 p.m.
Principals are supposed to observe teachers. I like to observe teachers and I feel it is a valuable and worthwhile use of my time. It permits me to give concrete feedback and coaching. But the walkie-talkie is the enemy of observations. I have been trying to do an informal, unannounced observation in Stone’s classroom all morning. After lunch I finally get the chance. When I enter he is sitting at his desk writing in planners while the students cavort – tossing two footballs across the room, looking at car magazines, writing on the chalkboard. Every now and then he looks up and yells at them. I observe no teaching or learning. Before I have a chance to talk with Stone or demonstrate some other teaching techniques, the walkie-talkie calls me to the Boys room, I make an appointment to talk later with Stone and leave the classroom in the unproductive state in which I found it.
1:20 p.m.
I head to the Boy’s room. This is not my favorite place; it always smells. The custodians claim the urine has seeped deep into the cinderblocks and no amount of cleaning can get it out. The six classrooms in the cinderblock building share one boy’s room and one girl’s room (our portable classrooms have their own bathrooms). We can’t let our students use the bathroom unescorted, therefore whole class bathroom breaks three to four times a day are necessary. Today, during the mid-afternoon break, Neeley’s class discovers a strange young man in the boy’s bathroom. He is supposedly a crack addict who used to attend school here. The Deputy and I arrive on the scene and the Deputy chases him off.
1:45 p.m.
The walkie-talkie is calling me. Noreen wants help with her class. I observe her students walking across campus. Noreen, like many of my teachers, does not insist on correct line protocol: silence, arm’s length apart, hands behind back. I compliment those teachers who make any attempt. Her students resist not only the line protocol, but also the uniform policy. Noreen is unable or unwilling to enforce either set of rules. The school uniform consists of a navy blue collared polo shirt to be worn tucked into blue jeans or khakis (shorts or pants or skirt). I see Noreen’s girls rolling up their shirts to show the top of their thong underpants and rolling down their collars to reveal their cleavage. Noreen usually plays blind to avoid confrontations, but in our morning meeting today I emphasized the responsibility of the teachers to enforce all our rules especially related to lines and uniforms. Noreen wants me to be the heavy and chastise her students. As I approach Noreen’s class, I don’t have to open my mouth since the students know the rules and who will and will not enforce them. When Noreen’s students see me heading towards them, there is a shuffling as shirts and collars are unrolled, shirts are tucked in and the jumble of students forms into a straight line.
2:00 p.m.
The walkie-talkie is calling me. “Tina/Natasha is AWOL.”
Rosie has been running a counseling group on anger. She tells the students they need to work on containing curse words inside their heads rather than speaking them. “Thinking a cuss word won’t get you in trouble; saying it aloud will.” Torrey raises her hand to ask a question but before she can speak, Tina/Natasha is out of her seat and screeching at Rosie. “You fucking bitch, I don’t need to listen to none of your bullshit. You ain’t my goddamned mother.” In mid tirade Tina/Natasha charges out the door. The class is momentarily stunned but Claymont eases the tension: “Miss Rosie, I bet you’re cussing in your head right now. I bet you’re thinking LOTS of cuss words!” Rosie smiles, “I might be, but you’ll never know!” Meanwhile I’m half-way across campus when I see Tina/Natasha heading into Rusty’s office. No need to break into a sweat this time.
2:30 p.m.
The walkie-talkie is calling me. Stephanie, the orientation leader, asks me to come to the orientation classroom. She explains the boys in her room have been calling Tyryona “Dollar Girl” all day. Listening to Stephanie I am reminded that this morning I saw boys’ heads hanging out bus windows shouting “Yo dollah girl, lookit, I gotta dollah.” I was distracted at the time and ignored the taunts not fully realizing they were hooting at Tyryona. Tyryona, a thirteen-year-old black girl, wants to be an actress and even when angered, she manages to keep her temper and smile her butter-melting grin. Unlike so many of my students, Tyryona doesn’t have that lean and hungry look (the problem of childhood obesity in America is not reflected in my student population; I have maybe two students who are overweight). She’s not overweight, but she doesn’t look scrawny either. Stephanie explains the problem with Tyryona. She just started here two days ago but rumor is that on the way home on the bus yesterday, Tyryona masturbated Luis and Claymont for $1 each.
Stephanie continues saying that yesterday Tyryona performed a lap dance on a student in orientation. It is unclear to me when Stephanie noticed this and how quickly she stopped it; so many questions and so little time. I leave the orientation class and ask Shasta, my transportation coordinator, to remind Quentin, Tyryona’s bus driver, to seat the girls in the front of the bus. My students brag that their assigned seats are a joke and as soon as the busses leave the school, the drivers let them sit wherever they want. I phone Tyryona’s guardian, who asks to come meet with me right away. I agree.
By 3:15, Tyryona’s guardian, Beryl is here. Beryl tells me she is upset we didn’t call sooner. Then she tells me a little about Tyryona. Tyryona was living with her mother and some men, related and unrelated. Tyryona was sexually abused and generally neglected; Mom has an alcohol problem. When Mom was arrested Tyryona was going to go “into the system” but Beryl, a friend of Tyryona’s mother, stepped-in and took Tyryona. Beryl isn’t receiving money from the state of Florida nor is she a blood relation. She is unsure how long she can keep Tyryona. She has two little children of her own and her husband is not supportive of Tyryona’s presence. Beryl offers to pick up Tyryona from school for a few days to avoid any more $1 jobs. I walk her to the orientation classroom to get Tyryona.
Tyryona inspires me to contact the health department for material on adolescents and sexuality. When I call, I am introduced to Mallory who organizes and runs free abstinence training. I am dubious about the efficacy of that approach with my students, but we schedule sessions to start next week.
4:00 p.m.
On Tuesday afternoons I hold a staff meeting from 4:00-5:00. This gives us a chance to work on those projects and problems we can’t handle in our fifteen-minute morning meetings. Today’s meeting does not go well. Stone makes sarcastic comments under his breath about his coworkers, his students and about me. Stone is the most hostile of my employees. He has two responses to all ideas: “What I need in my classroom is a cattle prod” and “Cover the kid in honey and put him on an ant hill.” While Stone sharpens his tongue, Rosie complains about all the changes and not enough prep time. Meanwhile Ernie fumes about my Marcus arrest lecture and Rusty talks loudly, getting on everybody’s nerves. Noreen is upset that two students keep calling her a bitch. Tammie complains that the school day is way too long. Tammie is having trouble with LaQuanda, the graffiti-writing foster child. She says LaQuanda hates her and she hates LaQuanda! Rosie offers to take LaQuanda. I change LaQuanda’s homeroom assignment to Rosie’s class. Of all my staff only Neeley is silent and alas, this is probably not a good sign.
5:00 p.m.
Officially my workday ends at 4:00, but I‘m rarely able to leave on time. The walkie-talkie keeps me running most of the day, leaving no time to read email, work on reports and grants, return phone calls or do the other 101 things principals do in their offices.
After the students and teachers depart I work on the Memorial Hospital grant. Ebencorp expects Prospect principals to obtain grant money so they can use the public school contract money to pay debts to Ebencorp. The actual writing of a grant isn’t difficult, but it requires research and is time consuming. Mel, my predecessor, obtained the Memorial Hospital grant but I can’t receive the money this year because of Mel’s poor reporting last year. The grant representative is very nice. She simply wants me to explain how the money was spent last year (prior to my arrival) before she will free up the money for this year. $61,000 is riding on my ability to do this correctly.
Lynne, always organized, has some receipts, but Mel “fudged” a lot of expenses and didn’t keep records. The grant was designed to decrease drug and alcohol use among our students but Mel used the money for salaries without defining how these staff members’ work helped on the substance abuse front.
7:00 p.m.
I have had enough of the grant writing and my growling stomach reminds me of another item on my lengthy to do list: order candy. Plain and peanut M&M’s, Snicker Bars and Skittles. I order hundreds of bags to sell at our open house next month. Rex Stewart, my mentor, tells me this is a great way to make some money for field trips or to buy books. I’m a little uncomfortable from a health perspective but I feel desperate to obtain some books. Right now, our school has a library without any books in it.
I was going to leave as soon as I faxed the candy order, but I feel the need to work on hiring more teachers. I spend over two hours calling prospective employees and manage to find three who are interview worthy. When I get back to my apartment, I am too tired to open a bag of salad and microwave Lean Cuisine.
10:30 p.m.
I pour a bowl of Product 19 and lie on my bed digesting cereal and the day’s events.
My predecessor Mel focused on counseling the children. Under his guidance, there were few academic lessons, lots of basketball, playground time and therapy sessions. Mel’s degree is in counseling and therapy, not education. Am I wrong to shun the therapeutic approach? Am I neglecting Maslow? Do my students need to talk about their problems before they can conjugate verbs? On the other hand, their problems are so many, so horrendous, and require so many resources we don’t have. In the meantime their basic reading and math skills are pathetic. I believe we can accelerate their learning and give them a rich education while applying band-aids to their gaping emotional wounds.
In the blurry world just before sleep I see the faces of Marcus, Ionya, LaQuanda, Tina/Natasha, Tyryona, Lorayne and Luke. Their needs are so many and time is so short.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Chapter Seven: School's Open - Welcome to the Working Week
Section II: Autumn 2002 – the first academic quarter
Chapter 7: School’s Open – Welcome to the Working Week
Before school opened that August 2002, there were some things I already knew about my students. Reading through reports printed from the Herald County Public School database I learned that 80% of Prospect students are male. The racial balance changes with each new arrival, but typically the students are almost evenly divided between black and white students: 50% black, 45% white and 5% Hispanic students. They are poor, over 85% are eligible for free or reduced price breakfast and lunch. And with few exceptions, they are all angry.
Three rationales for transferring children out of public schools and into alternative schools are frequently cited. The most common explanation is that it is done for the sake of the other well-behaved students: “We have to give teachers back the power to discipline.” “Get the bad kids out of the classroom so the good kids can learn.” “Pull the weeds so the flowers can grow.” Then there is the ever-pressing desire (some would say obligation) to punish the children who are bad: “They need to learn there are consequences.” The final rationale is the belief that some children need a more restrictive environment in which to learn both behavior and academics.
I also knew that most of the children who are assigned to Prospect School have pages and pages of discipline files. Occasionally I read a student file in which a seemingly well-behaved student with no documented discipline infractions is expelled for breaking a “zero tolerance” rule such as bringing a knife or drugs to school. But most of our students, while in public school, received multiple suspensions for many infractions. Common misbehaviors include fighting, violent acts, and behavior that is deemed threatening, disruptive or sexual in nature. The public school has usually tried and documented many interventions including parent conferences, in-school suspensions, counseling and multi-day out of school suspensions. But when a child continues to be disruptive, exhibiting behaviors that interfere with classroom instruction, that child is seen as taxing the school’s resources. It takes time for these multiple behavioral referrals to accumulate. Henry, my public school liaison, must approve all requests for students to transfer to Prospect.
Henry won’t approve a principal request for a student transfer if the student has only one or two referrals. He shared an anecdote with me about refusing a principal’s request to transfer a child with no “priors” after the child threw an open bag of potato chips in the cafeteria. Although Henry must approve all principal requests for transferring children to alternative schools, the severity of the misbehaviors that result in a transfer to Prospect varies from school to school. A middle school in an affluent neighborhood will define a disruptive student differently from a middle school in a lower income neighborhood. Each principal has his or her own threshold for tolerating misbehavior. When we receive a referral from Rex Stewart, my mentor and the principal in one of the poorest sections of Herald County, we know the child is VERY troubled. Rex works long and hard to help his students and at some level views students he transfers to Prospect as a personal failure.
When Henry approves transferring a child to an alternative school, he can select from four alternative schools that contract to provide services for Herald County Public School children: ESAK, SBAA, Avenue School and Prospect. Each of these alternative schools has criteria for incoming students, and depending upon a child’s grade, age, gender and academic performance there may be only one appropriate alternative school assignment.
Ebencorp is the parent company for both ESAK and Prospect. ESAK is designed for students ages 14-18, primarily those who have been in trouble with the law. Students who attend ESAK typically spend part of their day preparing for the GED and the rest of the day working at a minimum wage job. Few ESAK students graduate with a standard high school diploma, more likely they earn a GED. Ideally there should be no competition between ESAK and Prospect for students. However since many Prospect students have been held back more than once, there are several who are at least 14 years old and could attend middle school classes at Prospect or pre-GED classes at ESAK.
SBAA accepts only 40 girls ages 12-18. SBAA always has a waiting list so there is no real competition between SBAA and the other alternative schools. In the past, I’ve had a bias against schools that segregate on the basis of gender. However, very soon my experiences with troubled girls at Prospect will change my opinion as I realize some adolescent girls clearly function best in an all-female environment.
Although the Avenue School enrolls students from kindergarten through high school, it only accepts “Special Education” (children labeled as handicapped – physically, emotionally, mentally) high school students. The elementary and middle school students are both “regular education” and Special Education, but there is a clear understanding that the school prefers Special Education students.
In the parlance of alternative school contracts, Special Education students are “worth more” than regular education children. Henry, my liaison with Herald County schools uses a worksheet to determine how much Herald County will spend on contracted services. This worksheet shows a higher multiplier for children in kindergarten through third grade, for high school students, and a much higher multiplier for special education students. When Herald County wrote the Prospect contract, they wanted to ensure there would be plenty of empty seats at Prospect for all their “naughty” students, most of whom would be regular education middle schoolers, the students for whom the fewest dollars would flow.
Since Henry is unlikely to approve a transfer for a student who lacks multiple referrals, we typically find very few students are transferred in the first two months of the school year since they haven’t had enough time to accumulate “referrals.” But there is a loophole: any child who was previously at an alternative school can be returned to the alternative school at any time, no questions asked.
At the end of last school year there were over 150 students at Prospect. My Ebencorp bosses told me I should expect at least 100 of them to be re-enrolled at Prospect on the first day of school. Given the long history of our students’ discipline problems, rarely is a student ready to return to public school after less than one year in an alternative school. In addition to Prospect students engaging in classroom misbehavior, most have serious problems not likely to be resolved in a few months or even a year, if ever: truancy, poverty, abuse, anger control issues and drug addiction. Moreover, when Prospect students do return, they aren’t exactly welcomed back to their old public schools with open arms. The students and teachers who were victimized by Prospect students or who had classes disrupted by Prospect students, remember and, with good reason, are cynical and dubious that these students are “reformed.” Thus it is rare that a Prospect student is a good candidate to return to public school.
But on the days leading up to opening day, I learn that last year Mel, my predecessor, decided that of the 150 Prospect students, he would return all but 40 to public school. Did he do this because he genuinely felt they deserved a second chance? Or was this his passive-aggressive revenge as he realized he was losing his job? Did Mel think: if there are no Prospect students the school will have to close? I can’t know the mind of Mel but the boatloads of Prospect students he launched into the public schools begin to haunt me before on the first day of school. As July turned to August, public school teachers and principals began to look at their student rosters and shudder as they eyes widened at those dreaded names from the past. Then they picked up their phones to call me and complain.
D-Day
For as long as I can remember, whether I was a student, teacher or principal, I can never get to sleep on the night before the first day of school. This year is no different.
I finally abandon any pretense of slumber, get up and run laps in the dark, finding strength in the stars. I arrive at Prospect early brimming with equal amounts of enthusiasm and fear.
My cell phone rings and in my few months at Prospect, I already know these early morning calls never bring good news. Shasta, my transportation manager tells me bus driver Wanda just called in sick and Shasta has to drive for her. After a summer of bus headaches I should have known we’d open school with bus problems.
When I start our 8:00 staff meeting Ernie, one of my counselors, is missing but the rest of the staff accepts my pep talk despite clichés about first impressions, smiling faces and optimism. At 9:00, when the busses arrive, on time despite the last minute Wanda substitution, the staff and I are ready and waiting in the parking lot to greet the students with hugs and handshakes. Teachers and all the support staff (except Ernie who still hasn’t arrived) work together to shepherd the students into lines according to their class assignments.
Over the summer I worked with the Prospect staff to develop class rosters and schedules. I introduced the concept of “houses” or teams of teachers who will work closely together explaining that the students in each house will have their own homeroom teacher, but will be taught their core subjects by each of the teachers in their house.
I try to create teams of teachers who work well together and have complimentary skills, I then work to place students in a house with teachers who have a teaching style that will best match the child’s learning style and discipline needs. By keeping all my middle school classrooms as multi-grade (6-8) I have the flexibility to place students where they will be most successful and I don’t run into situations whereby I have a seventh grader but no room in the seventh grade classroom.
Multi-grade classes and “houses” are new concepts for the Prospect staff and although I take time over the summer to introduce these ideas and the underlying rationales, the Prospect staff scowls and resists every change; anything un-Mel-like is suspect.
In assigning students to houses I take a number of variables into account. I consult with Stephanie to get her read on the child. Stephanie was here last year and knows the returning students and as Orientation leader, all new students spend at least a week in Stephanie’s classroom before they are assigned to a house and teacher. When assigning students, I also look at their test scores. Within each house I try to assign students to homerooms based on reading ability. By putting all the top readers in one room and the lowest readers in another room, it makes it easier to instruct English, Social Studies and Science. I also pay attention to peer relationships since many of my students were involved in fights in their former schools and some are court ordered not to be near their co-victim. Parents and probation officers frequently lambaste me for not following these court orders (“She isn’t to be within 50 feet of him”) but with both perpetrators in my school, it is hard to strictly enforce some of these court mandates. I do make sure I don’t assign these non-contact students to the same homeroom and usually not to the same house. In placing students, I work to maintain a racial and gender balance so I don’t have all boy or all black classrooms. Like everything else at Prospect, I never have time to ruminate and ponder my selections due to competing priorities, but I do put into place the structures to make these student placements rapidly.
I maintain a roster of class lists. It is organized by House and teacher and including student names, grades, birthdates, home phones, test scores and salient comments. I have to update it several times a week as new students arrive, students leave and, less frequently, children move from class to class. Last year my predecessor, Mel, moved children from teacher to teacher constantly. Anytime a parent complained about a teacher, or a teacher complained about a student, and even sometimes when students complained about their teachers, Mel took the path of least resistance and reassigned the student. Chaos and confusion reigned. I made a pact not to do this but this means fending off pressure from students, parents, teachers and counselors.
Off the busses and lined up in the parking lot, the students look around and start to grumble about the new procedures, the new principal, their missing teachers and the new teachers. They blame me for the absence of their “favorite teachers” shouting aloud “Where’s Mr. Stan at? What happened to Miss Dede? Why you fire them? These queries are interspaced with cursing. The new teachers try to hush their classes, but veteran teachers, Stone and Rosie, appear to be enjoying the anger and accusations – these students are expressing their sentiments. The ever-perceptive Prospect students, empowered by the silence of the veteran staff, become bolder in their principal blaming, name-calling and retorts.
Ernie doesn’t arrive until after the students have been sorted and led into their classrooms. Ernie’s excuse for tardiness has to do with his high school son starting school and the excuse turns to bragging as Ernie boasts about how he used the good ol’boy network to get his son in a better school than their neighborhood school.
I should have predicted that Ernie, like the bus drivers, would increase the tension level on opening day. But even during my most cynical moments, I never could have imagined the turmoil Ernie would cause on not only the first day of school but for many days yet to come. Arriving on campus, Ernie zeros right in on the students’ unhappiness with the staff and schedule changes. He is overheard telling students (who all adore him) that the new, mean principal has lengthened the school day, taken away their PE classes and fired some of the best teachers. Ernie proposes the students start a petition to get rid of me. When I confront Ernie he denies, denies, denies.
Principals expect plenty of confusion on the first day of school: bus route mix-ups, class schedule uncertainty, new unregistered students. A principal has to be, like a Boy Scout, always prepared. During my sleepless night I thought I had done imaginary walk-throughs of every potential trouble spot. But at Prospect we have another source of grief most principals don’t have: our students get arrested.
“Disruption of school function” is the standard crime for which my students are arrested. It is a broad, general crime that could be applied to just about all of my students on any given day.
The concept of arresting children for relatively minor misbehavior is both alien and anathema to me. Most schools in Herald County have an SRO, or School Resource Officer, who is assigned to this duty and develops a relationship with the school, its students and staff. But Prospect is different. At Prospect we have a different SRO every day with the deputies signing up for duty on their days off. It is hard to explain our students and my philosophy to a new deputy daily. Since this is their day off, some deputies are not interested in any headaches and arresting is easier than counseling.
Many of the deputies have never worked at an alternative school and don’t know what to make of a school full of naughty children. During the course of the year I frequently hear them joke that we should “arrest ‘em all.” In Herald County during the 2002-2003 school year, approximately 40,000 children were enrolled in schools and of them, 2,830 were arrested. 26% of the ones who were arrested were age 13 or younger. Although I educate less than 1% of all Herald County students, my students account for nearly 10% of all arrests of children under age 13.
On the first day of school three of my students are arrested and like the busses and Ernie, student arrests will be a constant source of pain and frustration throughout my time at Prospect. On this day the Deputy does the actual arresting, but Ernie is the catalyst. Ionya, Torrey and LaQuanda are all the victims.
Ionya, fragile Ionya could be made of Spanish moss she is so delicate. Ionya is a very light skinned, twelve year old, black child. She attended Prospect last year and so far is continuing in the same vein this year. She eats chewed gum from the undersides of desks and has no friends. She is always hungry and begs extra food in the cafeteria. Ionya says while her mother is at work, her older sisters are in charge of her and they make her do all the work and won’t give her any food. Ionya’s mother says Ionya is a liar. But whenever Ruth, our cafeteria manager, asks Ionya to wipe off the tables and rewards her with extra food, Ionya inhales it.
LaQuanda is tough, compact and scowling. She has to be, she lives in a foster home; I think it is her 6th. Thirteen-year-old LaQuanda has dark black skin and angry burning eyes. She writes her name everywhere - on the porch railings, on her arm, on walls, in the bathroom -posting messages from an untethered, invisible child “Look world, LaQuanda was here.”
Torrey is a large, loud and brazen white girl who likes to pull up her shirt and show her breasts to the boys. Torrey is fourteen but looks like twenty and acts like eight.
Torrey and LaQuanda supposedly slapped Ionya’s face. Ernie takes them to the Deputy.
Deputies on school campuses tend to take their cues from the staff. When Ernie brings two girls to Deputy Rivera and tells him they assaulted another girl and Ernie thinks they should be arrested, the girls leave in handcuffs.
When children are arrested, the Deputy calls for another Deputy to take the child, in handcuffs, in a squad car, to the “JAC.” The JAC is the Juvenile Assessment Center, located next to the adult jail. The JAC does a risk assessment based on the child’s criminal history. How many “points” does a child have as far as the JAC is concerned? Children amass points for crimes, and the number of points determines whether the child will be assigned “secure detention” (locked up in the JDC – Juvenile Detention Center), home detention (ankle bracelet to monitor) or sent home with a parent or guardian. A child who isn’t on probation and has no prior arrests is usually sent home, unless the child’s crime involves a weapon or aggravated assault. Frequently when parents are called to come pick up their child at the JAC, they tell the Deputy to keep the child. “She needs to be taught a lesson.” or “I can’t do a thing with her, you keep her.” Deputies then have to threaten the parents with arrest; failure to pick up the child is illegal child neglect.
Trail dates are set, often 6-18 months in the future, although rarely do juvenile cases go to trial. Arrested children are encouraged to “plea out,” or admit their guilt in a hearing. Punishments for children with no priors or only a few “points” include community service, working Saturday mornings on the work farm, writing letters of apology, entering an “alternative sentencing program” such as teen court or MAD DADS (MAD DADS seeks to reduce crime by offering services like mentoring, vocational training, tutoring and alternative sentencing), getting anger control or anti-drug classes or some combination. Children who have amassed many “points” can be sentenced to a “program” otherwise known as boot camp. When the JAC determines the number of points make the child a risk to release, the child stays in the JDC until a hearing. At a hearing, the judge decides the child either needs to stay until he or she pleads guilty, gives a sentence at a prison or boot camp, or sends the case to trial.
At JDC children are issued orange jump suits, sleep two to a room and attend classes with half a dozen other children. But mostly they sit in large rooms with nothing to do but watch television. There are few fights since the guards carry pepper spray. Those who fight are put in “confinement”: a padded room with a toilet. Children are supposed to stay in confinement at least an hour but no more than three days at a time. A therapist is assigned to meet with the children, but they often meet sitting on the floor in the hallways. If a parent phones, a child may talk no longer than 15 minutes per day. Parents are permitted to visit once a week and are charged $7 per night for every night their child is incarcerated.
LaQuanda and Torrey need to be punished, but arrested? I meet with Ernie. I explain my philosophy of dealing with misbehavior in-house and avoiding arrests. I remind him ALL our students are here because of their antisocial, often violent, behavior. We don’t solve anything by arresting them. Ernie, as always, says he absolutely agrees with me then shifts blame, thus time it’s to the Deputy. He was the one who decided to arrest them.
I emphasize to Ernie that from now on, no one is to be arrested without my knowledge and permission. I write up our discussion and hand it to him as a verbal warning, reading it aloud to be sure he understands. His attitude is agreeable and pleasant. But within a few hours, I see it was an act of pure optimism to believe Ernie would change his behavior in response to anything I say or do.
Meanwhile Lynne is piling up the messages from unhappy Herald County principals. Former Prospect students, passengers on Mel’s own Muriel Boatlift, are appearing in their public school classrooms on the first day of school just as angry, belligerent, violent and disruptive as when they were sent to Prospect. The principals are annoyed at Prospect (and by default, at me). My phone is ringing with indignation
The Deputy calls me to his office shortly after LaQuanda and Torrey are arrested to discuss Marcus. When I arrive, I am upset to see Marcus in handcuffs. Marcus is a thirteen year old, black boy who weighs 200 pounds and is six feet tall. When his hair is nicely braided, Marcus is usually fairly calm. But when the braids are out and his hair is big and wild, so too is Marcus. Marcus’s mother is supportive and patient. She and Marcus stopped by the school several times over to summer just to talk with me and reassure me she will come to school in a heartbeat to pick Marcus up when he misbehaves. In addition to Marcus, she has a multiply-handicapped grown daughter at home who is dying.
I am unable to “undo” Marcus’s arrest. Counselor Ernie tells me he was running a counseling group and Marcus tried to choke Luke and luckily Ernie was there to remove Marcus. When Ernie is done telling me how he was the hero I remind him that he was to inform me prior to any arrests. He looks confused, wrinkling his nose and tilting his head to one side like a small boy who has conveniently forgotten he wasn’t to eat cookies before dinner.
And now for the rest of the first week
I felt like having survived the first day of school, it HAD to get easier. How naive and foolish.
Once again on the second and third days of school Wanda calls in sick and Shasta has to drive for her.
The second day of school also starts with a cell phone call at 7:15 a.m. It is Audra and her bus won’t start and she can’t contact Shasta because Shasta is driving Wanda’s bus and the new CB radios for the busses didn’t arrive on time and are due to be installed today and she can’t call Shasta’s cell phone because Shasta is fighting with Verizon about roaming charges and her phone has been “suspended for nonpayment.” Audra comes into the office to phone parents telling them the bad news. Audra must wait until the other busses arrive at the school at 9:00 then she will take one out to run her route. She will be very late. Parents are not pleased. Parents phone to curse at me most of the morning.
Prospect schedules differ from those in public schools in several aspects. With the exception of some of our portables that have built-in bathrooms, the teacher must accompany the entire class to the bathroom 3-4 times a day since our students cannot be trusted to come and go on their own. I also encourage the teachers to schedule frequent “VE” or vigorous exercise breaks, but they resist and when I insist, they skip them.
After the busses arrive at 9:00, and the students are met by the entire staff, principal included, students line up in front of their homeroom teacher for uniform inspection and, once the line is silent, proceed either to their classroom or the cafeteria for breakfast. By 10:00 all students have had breakfast and for the next two hours there should be little movement on campus as teachers instruct reading, language arts and math classes. At noon the lunch rotation begins and there is a constant hum on campus as students move back and forth from bathrooms, the cafeteria, the playground and their classrooms for science and social studies lessons as well as counseling sessions. At 3:00 we have a school-wide activity period and by 4:00 the students are back on the busses and heading home. At leas that is the plan. Most days don’t go as planned.
I really had enough on my plate that first week of school without trying to orient a new teacher, but Crystal couldn’t start before school started, so I had her join the year already in progress.
Crystal just moved here from North Carolina. She and her husband relocated to Florida for his job in the grocery business. Crystal is very well dressed, put together and refined. Every hair is in place, every nail smoothly filed. Crystal taught middle schoolers in North Carolina; she describes teaching “tough kids in a bad neighborhood.” Crystal appears confident, self-assured with a take-no-prisoners attitude. Crystal is excited about the position and she and her husband move into Garden Path apartments, which my new teacher, holes-in-his shirt-Neeley, recommends. Before getting her own students, Crystal observes the Prospect teachers. She is nonplussed by the behavior she observes in the other classrooms and eager to teach her own students. She tells Lynne when she gets her class "Those children won't mess with me. I'll show them respect and they'll do the same to me. I know how to deal with them." This comment worries me, my students do not show respect easily or quickly.
After Crystal’s first day with students, she asks to meet with me. She tells me she is appalled at the foul language used by the students and asks if I have a high teacher turnover rate. She tells me “in North Carolina even the bad children say ‘yes ma'am, no sir’ If they didn’t, their pappy’d give them a paddling!” I am not reassured by this discussion.
After Crystal’s second day with students, she again asks to meet with me. She tells me this is not a good job for her and she thinks she needs to quit. I listen to her complaints and dry her tears. I give her a pep talk and make an appointment to observe her class tomorrow to provide support and suggestions.
I observe Crystal’s class. After listening to her concerns and comforting her, I am surprised to see that Crystal has excellent classroom management skills. Her class is under control and well-organized lessons are being taught. She has a zero tolerance policy and it is working. But she is unnerved when students speak without raising hands or talk back to her. Crystal is not happy.
After Crystal’s third day with students she once more asks to meet with me and gives me her resignation. The day after tomorrow will be her last day. She tells me even the bad children in North Carolina aren’t this bad. She says when she observed two teachers separating some fighting girls, “my heart was racing and I was shaking like a leaf.”
Goodbye Crystal and hello to more insomnia as I reassign Crystal’s students and begin what will become a never-ending search for teachers.
On the fourth day of school, Wanda, the absent bus driver, returns to driving, but a student named Timmy gets off her bus in the morning telling me he is afraid to go into the cafeteria to eat breakfast. It seems Wanda told her passengers, as she drove them to school this morning, that the reason they can’t smoke on her bus this year is because someone “snitched” on Mr. Jed (my former obese driver) and he was fired and that the snitch is here on this bus right now. She apparently says this while pointing at Timmy. Jed was fired for failure to pass a physical, but Wanda either doesn’t know or prefers her version of the story. Regardless, the students are now divided into two camps. First are those who believe they have the right to smoke (both on the bus and at school) and think they can convince me to permit them to do so: “But Ms. Smee, we wouldn’t fight on the bus so much if we could smoke and not be so tense.” This group believes they can change my mind and get my permission to smoke on the bus. The second group of students also believes they have the right to smoke but they think they should do so without getting permission and just intimidate any tattletales. The “Let’s kill Timmy” contingent is simmering. Wanda tells transportation coordinator Shasta she feels sick and won’t be able to do her afternoon route. She goes home and we don’t hear from her for six weeks.
Wanda is off the bus.
Back in May I had six drivers on my budget spreadsheet but by August: Cherill, Jed and Wanda are gone. Nina, Quentin and Ellie are still here, along with my new hire, Audra. My bus problems have only just begun. Like a Greek chorus, the drivers keep materializing to serenade me with their tragic lamentations.
Expectations collide with Reality
Before coming to Prospect I imagined working with a team of dedicated, motivated teachers who wanted to help me save the world, or perhaps just a few children. Truly though, I don’t believe teachers need to be Mother Theresa. I don’t believe teaching is a “calling” requiring unending sacrifice. I just expected my employees would be here because they wanted to be here. I was wrong. Most of my teachers want to be somewhere else. Stone wants to be a Baptist minister but can’t find a church. Rosie wants to be a guidance counselor in the public schools but fears she has been black balled for a slight years ago. Noreen wants to teach in a public school again but her criminal record makes that unlikely. I don’t know what the others want but with a couple exceptions, my employees tear out of the driveway as soon as the busses leave. I expected a little more dedication, a little more caring and concern.
It’s okay if the staff doesn’t like me. I knew I would have to make some unpopular decisions, bosses always do. I just never envisioned a zero sum mentality in which changes that are good for the students, are seen as hurting the staff. Every time I talk with students or their parent to gain some insight into their problems and I communicate my findings with staff, they accuse me of sleeping with the enemy. Either I support teachers or I am a dupe for the students. My suggestion that teachers pay a visit to their students’ homes is met with revulsion and disbelief. I don’t mandate this, I just encourage it as a way to bond with the family and gain an understanding of the student to improve the chance of success in the classroom. No teachers avail themselves of this opportunity. I do mandate daily notes in planners and weekly phone calls home. I only have limited compliance with these expectations. I don’t surrender but without intending to, I adjust my tone, style and attitude to match the reality of what they are willing to do. Meanwhile, morning after morning I run in circles in the dark trying to develop creative solutions to the Ernie problem, the arresting of children, transportation woes, the difficulty of hiring and retaining competent teachers, the unmotivated staff problem and the crushing problems of the Ionyas, Torreys and LaQuandas.
Chapter 7: School’s Open – Welcome to the Working Week
Before school opened that August 2002, there were some things I already knew about my students. Reading through reports printed from the Herald County Public School database I learned that 80% of Prospect students are male. The racial balance changes with each new arrival, but typically the students are almost evenly divided between black and white students: 50% black, 45% white and 5% Hispanic students. They are poor, over 85% are eligible for free or reduced price breakfast and lunch. And with few exceptions, they are all angry.
Three rationales for transferring children out of public schools and into alternative schools are frequently cited. The most common explanation is that it is done for the sake of the other well-behaved students: “We have to give teachers back the power to discipline.” “Get the bad kids out of the classroom so the good kids can learn.” “Pull the weeds so the flowers can grow.” Then there is the ever-pressing desire (some would say obligation) to punish the children who are bad: “They need to learn there are consequences.” The final rationale is the belief that some children need a more restrictive environment in which to learn both behavior and academics.
I also knew that most of the children who are assigned to Prospect School have pages and pages of discipline files. Occasionally I read a student file in which a seemingly well-behaved student with no documented discipline infractions is expelled for breaking a “zero tolerance” rule such as bringing a knife or drugs to school. But most of our students, while in public school, received multiple suspensions for many infractions. Common misbehaviors include fighting, violent acts, and behavior that is deemed threatening, disruptive or sexual in nature. The public school has usually tried and documented many interventions including parent conferences, in-school suspensions, counseling and multi-day out of school suspensions. But when a child continues to be disruptive, exhibiting behaviors that interfere with classroom instruction, that child is seen as taxing the school’s resources. It takes time for these multiple behavioral referrals to accumulate. Henry, my public school liaison, must approve all requests for students to transfer to Prospect.
Henry won’t approve a principal request for a student transfer if the student has only one or two referrals. He shared an anecdote with me about refusing a principal’s request to transfer a child with no “priors” after the child threw an open bag of potato chips in the cafeteria. Although Henry must approve all principal requests for transferring children to alternative schools, the severity of the misbehaviors that result in a transfer to Prospect varies from school to school. A middle school in an affluent neighborhood will define a disruptive student differently from a middle school in a lower income neighborhood. Each principal has his or her own threshold for tolerating misbehavior. When we receive a referral from Rex Stewart, my mentor and the principal in one of the poorest sections of Herald County, we know the child is VERY troubled. Rex works long and hard to help his students and at some level views students he transfers to Prospect as a personal failure.
When Henry approves transferring a child to an alternative school, he can select from four alternative schools that contract to provide services for Herald County Public School children: ESAK, SBAA, Avenue School and Prospect. Each of these alternative schools has criteria for incoming students, and depending upon a child’s grade, age, gender and academic performance there may be only one appropriate alternative school assignment.
Ebencorp is the parent company for both ESAK and Prospect. ESAK is designed for students ages 14-18, primarily those who have been in trouble with the law. Students who attend ESAK typically spend part of their day preparing for the GED and the rest of the day working at a minimum wage job. Few ESAK students graduate with a standard high school diploma, more likely they earn a GED. Ideally there should be no competition between ESAK and Prospect for students. However since many Prospect students have been held back more than once, there are several who are at least 14 years old and could attend middle school classes at Prospect or pre-GED classes at ESAK.
SBAA accepts only 40 girls ages 12-18. SBAA always has a waiting list so there is no real competition between SBAA and the other alternative schools. In the past, I’ve had a bias against schools that segregate on the basis of gender. However, very soon my experiences with troubled girls at Prospect will change my opinion as I realize some adolescent girls clearly function best in an all-female environment.
Although the Avenue School enrolls students from kindergarten through high school, it only accepts “Special Education” (children labeled as handicapped – physically, emotionally, mentally) high school students. The elementary and middle school students are both “regular education” and Special Education, but there is a clear understanding that the school prefers Special Education students.
In the parlance of alternative school contracts, Special Education students are “worth more” than regular education children. Henry, my liaison with Herald County schools uses a worksheet to determine how much Herald County will spend on contracted services. This worksheet shows a higher multiplier for children in kindergarten through third grade, for high school students, and a much higher multiplier for special education students. When Herald County wrote the Prospect contract, they wanted to ensure there would be plenty of empty seats at Prospect for all their “naughty” students, most of whom would be regular education middle schoolers, the students for whom the fewest dollars would flow.
Since Henry is unlikely to approve a transfer for a student who lacks multiple referrals, we typically find very few students are transferred in the first two months of the school year since they haven’t had enough time to accumulate “referrals.” But there is a loophole: any child who was previously at an alternative school can be returned to the alternative school at any time, no questions asked.
At the end of last school year there were over 150 students at Prospect. My Ebencorp bosses told me I should expect at least 100 of them to be re-enrolled at Prospect on the first day of school. Given the long history of our students’ discipline problems, rarely is a student ready to return to public school after less than one year in an alternative school. In addition to Prospect students engaging in classroom misbehavior, most have serious problems not likely to be resolved in a few months or even a year, if ever: truancy, poverty, abuse, anger control issues and drug addiction. Moreover, when Prospect students do return, they aren’t exactly welcomed back to their old public schools with open arms. The students and teachers who were victimized by Prospect students or who had classes disrupted by Prospect students, remember and, with good reason, are cynical and dubious that these students are “reformed.” Thus it is rare that a Prospect student is a good candidate to return to public school.
But on the days leading up to opening day, I learn that last year Mel, my predecessor, decided that of the 150 Prospect students, he would return all but 40 to public school. Did he do this because he genuinely felt they deserved a second chance? Or was this his passive-aggressive revenge as he realized he was losing his job? Did Mel think: if there are no Prospect students the school will have to close? I can’t know the mind of Mel but the boatloads of Prospect students he launched into the public schools begin to haunt me before on the first day of school. As July turned to August, public school teachers and principals began to look at their student rosters and shudder as they eyes widened at those dreaded names from the past. Then they picked up their phones to call me and complain.
D-Day
For as long as I can remember, whether I was a student, teacher or principal, I can never get to sleep on the night before the first day of school. This year is no different.
I finally abandon any pretense of slumber, get up and run laps in the dark, finding strength in the stars. I arrive at Prospect early brimming with equal amounts of enthusiasm and fear.
My cell phone rings and in my few months at Prospect, I already know these early morning calls never bring good news. Shasta, my transportation manager tells me bus driver Wanda just called in sick and Shasta has to drive for her. After a summer of bus headaches I should have known we’d open school with bus problems.
When I start our 8:00 staff meeting Ernie, one of my counselors, is missing but the rest of the staff accepts my pep talk despite clichés about first impressions, smiling faces and optimism. At 9:00, when the busses arrive, on time despite the last minute Wanda substitution, the staff and I are ready and waiting in the parking lot to greet the students with hugs and handshakes. Teachers and all the support staff (except Ernie who still hasn’t arrived) work together to shepherd the students into lines according to their class assignments.
Over the summer I worked with the Prospect staff to develop class rosters and schedules. I introduced the concept of “houses” or teams of teachers who will work closely together explaining that the students in each house will have their own homeroom teacher, but will be taught their core subjects by each of the teachers in their house.
I try to create teams of teachers who work well together and have complimentary skills, I then work to place students in a house with teachers who have a teaching style that will best match the child’s learning style and discipline needs. By keeping all my middle school classrooms as multi-grade (6-8) I have the flexibility to place students where they will be most successful and I don’t run into situations whereby I have a seventh grader but no room in the seventh grade classroom.
Multi-grade classes and “houses” are new concepts for the Prospect staff and although I take time over the summer to introduce these ideas and the underlying rationales, the Prospect staff scowls and resists every change; anything un-Mel-like is suspect.
In assigning students to houses I take a number of variables into account. I consult with Stephanie to get her read on the child. Stephanie was here last year and knows the returning students and as Orientation leader, all new students spend at least a week in Stephanie’s classroom before they are assigned to a house and teacher. When assigning students, I also look at their test scores. Within each house I try to assign students to homerooms based on reading ability. By putting all the top readers in one room and the lowest readers in another room, it makes it easier to instruct English, Social Studies and Science. I also pay attention to peer relationships since many of my students were involved in fights in their former schools and some are court ordered not to be near their co-victim. Parents and probation officers frequently lambaste me for not following these court orders (“She isn’t to be within 50 feet of him”) but with both perpetrators in my school, it is hard to strictly enforce some of these court mandates. I do make sure I don’t assign these non-contact students to the same homeroom and usually not to the same house. In placing students, I work to maintain a racial and gender balance so I don’t have all boy or all black classrooms. Like everything else at Prospect, I never have time to ruminate and ponder my selections due to competing priorities, but I do put into place the structures to make these student placements rapidly.
I maintain a roster of class lists. It is organized by House and teacher and including student names, grades, birthdates, home phones, test scores and salient comments. I have to update it several times a week as new students arrive, students leave and, less frequently, children move from class to class. Last year my predecessor, Mel, moved children from teacher to teacher constantly. Anytime a parent complained about a teacher, or a teacher complained about a student, and even sometimes when students complained about their teachers, Mel took the path of least resistance and reassigned the student. Chaos and confusion reigned. I made a pact not to do this but this means fending off pressure from students, parents, teachers and counselors.
Off the busses and lined up in the parking lot, the students look around and start to grumble about the new procedures, the new principal, their missing teachers and the new teachers. They blame me for the absence of their “favorite teachers” shouting aloud “Where’s Mr. Stan at? What happened to Miss Dede? Why you fire them? These queries are interspaced with cursing. The new teachers try to hush their classes, but veteran teachers, Stone and Rosie, appear to be enjoying the anger and accusations – these students are expressing their sentiments. The ever-perceptive Prospect students, empowered by the silence of the veteran staff, become bolder in their principal blaming, name-calling and retorts.
Ernie doesn’t arrive until after the students have been sorted and led into their classrooms. Ernie’s excuse for tardiness has to do with his high school son starting school and the excuse turns to bragging as Ernie boasts about how he used the good ol’boy network to get his son in a better school than their neighborhood school.
I should have predicted that Ernie, like the bus drivers, would increase the tension level on opening day. But even during my most cynical moments, I never could have imagined the turmoil Ernie would cause on not only the first day of school but for many days yet to come. Arriving on campus, Ernie zeros right in on the students’ unhappiness with the staff and schedule changes. He is overheard telling students (who all adore him) that the new, mean principal has lengthened the school day, taken away their PE classes and fired some of the best teachers. Ernie proposes the students start a petition to get rid of me. When I confront Ernie he denies, denies, denies.
Principals expect plenty of confusion on the first day of school: bus route mix-ups, class schedule uncertainty, new unregistered students. A principal has to be, like a Boy Scout, always prepared. During my sleepless night I thought I had done imaginary walk-throughs of every potential trouble spot. But at Prospect we have another source of grief most principals don’t have: our students get arrested.
“Disruption of school function” is the standard crime for which my students are arrested. It is a broad, general crime that could be applied to just about all of my students on any given day.
The concept of arresting children for relatively minor misbehavior is both alien and anathema to me. Most schools in Herald County have an SRO, or School Resource Officer, who is assigned to this duty and develops a relationship with the school, its students and staff. But Prospect is different. At Prospect we have a different SRO every day with the deputies signing up for duty on their days off. It is hard to explain our students and my philosophy to a new deputy daily. Since this is their day off, some deputies are not interested in any headaches and arresting is easier than counseling.
Many of the deputies have never worked at an alternative school and don’t know what to make of a school full of naughty children. During the course of the year I frequently hear them joke that we should “arrest ‘em all.” In Herald County during the 2002-2003 school year, approximately 40,000 children were enrolled in schools and of them, 2,830 were arrested. 26% of the ones who were arrested were age 13 or younger. Although I educate less than 1% of all Herald County students, my students account for nearly 10% of all arrests of children under age 13.
On the first day of school three of my students are arrested and like the busses and Ernie, student arrests will be a constant source of pain and frustration throughout my time at Prospect. On this day the Deputy does the actual arresting, but Ernie is the catalyst. Ionya, Torrey and LaQuanda are all the victims.
Ionya, fragile Ionya could be made of Spanish moss she is so delicate. Ionya is a very light skinned, twelve year old, black child. She attended Prospect last year and so far is continuing in the same vein this year. She eats chewed gum from the undersides of desks and has no friends. She is always hungry and begs extra food in the cafeteria. Ionya says while her mother is at work, her older sisters are in charge of her and they make her do all the work and won’t give her any food. Ionya’s mother says Ionya is a liar. But whenever Ruth, our cafeteria manager, asks Ionya to wipe off the tables and rewards her with extra food, Ionya inhales it.
LaQuanda is tough, compact and scowling. She has to be, she lives in a foster home; I think it is her 6th. Thirteen-year-old LaQuanda has dark black skin and angry burning eyes. She writes her name everywhere - on the porch railings, on her arm, on walls, in the bathroom -posting messages from an untethered, invisible child “Look world, LaQuanda was here.”
Torrey is a large, loud and brazen white girl who likes to pull up her shirt and show her breasts to the boys. Torrey is fourteen but looks like twenty and acts like eight.
Torrey and LaQuanda supposedly slapped Ionya’s face. Ernie takes them to the Deputy.
Deputies on school campuses tend to take their cues from the staff. When Ernie brings two girls to Deputy Rivera and tells him they assaulted another girl and Ernie thinks they should be arrested, the girls leave in handcuffs.
When children are arrested, the Deputy calls for another Deputy to take the child, in handcuffs, in a squad car, to the “JAC.” The JAC is the Juvenile Assessment Center, located next to the adult jail. The JAC does a risk assessment based on the child’s criminal history. How many “points” does a child have as far as the JAC is concerned? Children amass points for crimes, and the number of points determines whether the child will be assigned “secure detention” (locked up in the JDC – Juvenile Detention Center), home detention (ankle bracelet to monitor) or sent home with a parent or guardian. A child who isn’t on probation and has no prior arrests is usually sent home, unless the child’s crime involves a weapon or aggravated assault. Frequently when parents are called to come pick up their child at the JAC, they tell the Deputy to keep the child. “She needs to be taught a lesson.” or “I can’t do a thing with her, you keep her.” Deputies then have to threaten the parents with arrest; failure to pick up the child is illegal child neglect.
Trail dates are set, often 6-18 months in the future, although rarely do juvenile cases go to trial. Arrested children are encouraged to “plea out,” or admit their guilt in a hearing. Punishments for children with no priors or only a few “points” include community service, working Saturday mornings on the work farm, writing letters of apology, entering an “alternative sentencing program” such as teen court or MAD DADS (MAD DADS seeks to reduce crime by offering services like mentoring, vocational training, tutoring and alternative sentencing), getting anger control or anti-drug classes or some combination. Children who have amassed many “points” can be sentenced to a “program” otherwise known as boot camp. When the JAC determines the number of points make the child a risk to release, the child stays in the JDC until a hearing. At a hearing, the judge decides the child either needs to stay until he or she pleads guilty, gives a sentence at a prison or boot camp, or sends the case to trial.
At JDC children are issued orange jump suits, sleep two to a room and attend classes with half a dozen other children. But mostly they sit in large rooms with nothing to do but watch television. There are few fights since the guards carry pepper spray. Those who fight are put in “confinement”: a padded room with a toilet. Children are supposed to stay in confinement at least an hour but no more than three days at a time. A therapist is assigned to meet with the children, but they often meet sitting on the floor in the hallways. If a parent phones, a child may talk no longer than 15 minutes per day. Parents are permitted to visit once a week and are charged $7 per night for every night their child is incarcerated.
LaQuanda and Torrey need to be punished, but arrested? I meet with Ernie. I explain my philosophy of dealing with misbehavior in-house and avoiding arrests. I remind him ALL our students are here because of their antisocial, often violent, behavior. We don’t solve anything by arresting them. Ernie, as always, says he absolutely agrees with me then shifts blame, thus time it’s to the Deputy. He was the one who decided to arrest them.
I emphasize to Ernie that from now on, no one is to be arrested without my knowledge and permission. I write up our discussion and hand it to him as a verbal warning, reading it aloud to be sure he understands. His attitude is agreeable and pleasant. But within a few hours, I see it was an act of pure optimism to believe Ernie would change his behavior in response to anything I say or do.
Meanwhile Lynne is piling up the messages from unhappy Herald County principals. Former Prospect students, passengers on Mel’s own Muriel Boatlift, are appearing in their public school classrooms on the first day of school just as angry, belligerent, violent and disruptive as when they were sent to Prospect. The principals are annoyed at Prospect (and by default, at me). My phone is ringing with indignation
The Deputy calls me to his office shortly after LaQuanda and Torrey are arrested to discuss Marcus. When I arrive, I am upset to see Marcus in handcuffs. Marcus is a thirteen year old, black boy who weighs 200 pounds and is six feet tall. When his hair is nicely braided, Marcus is usually fairly calm. But when the braids are out and his hair is big and wild, so too is Marcus. Marcus’s mother is supportive and patient. She and Marcus stopped by the school several times over to summer just to talk with me and reassure me she will come to school in a heartbeat to pick Marcus up when he misbehaves. In addition to Marcus, she has a multiply-handicapped grown daughter at home who is dying.
I am unable to “undo” Marcus’s arrest. Counselor Ernie tells me he was running a counseling group and Marcus tried to choke Luke and luckily Ernie was there to remove Marcus. When Ernie is done telling me how he was the hero I remind him that he was to inform me prior to any arrests. He looks confused, wrinkling his nose and tilting his head to one side like a small boy who has conveniently forgotten he wasn’t to eat cookies before dinner.
And now for the rest of the first week
I felt like having survived the first day of school, it HAD to get easier. How naive and foolish.
Once again on the second and third days of school Wanda calls in sick and Shasta has to drive for her.
The second day of school also starts with a cell phone call at 7:15 a.m. It is Audra and her bus won’t start and she can’t contact Shasta because Shasta is driving Wanda’s bus and the new CB radios for the busses didn’t arrive on time and are due to be installed today and she can’t call Shasta’s cell phone because Shasta is fighting with Verizon about roaming charges and her phone has been “suspended for nonpayment.” Audra comes into the office to phone parents telling them the bad news. Audra must wait until the other busses arrive at the school at 9:00 then she will take one out to run her route. She will be very late. Parents are not pleased. Parents phone to curse at me most of the morning.
Prospect schedules differ from those in public schools in several aspects. With the exception of some of our portables that have built-in bathrooms, the teacher must accompany the entire class to the bathroom 3-4 times a day since our students cannot be trusted to come and go on their own. I also encourage the teachers to schedule frequent “VE” or vigorous exercise breaks, but they resist and when I insist, they skip them.
After the busses arrive at 9:00, and the students are met by the entire staff, principal included, students line up in front of their homeroom teacher for uniform inspection and, once the line is silent, proceed either to their classroom or the cafeteria for breakfast. By 10:00 all students have had breakfast and for the next two hours there should be little movement on campus as teachers instruct reading, language arts and math classes. At noon the lunch rotation begins and there is a constant hum on campus as students move back and forth from bathrooms, the cafeteria, the playground and their classrooms for science and social studies lessons as well as counseling sessions. At 3:00 we have a school-wide activity period and by 4:00 the students are back on the busses and heading home. At leas that is the plan. Most days don’t go as planned.
I really had enough on my plate that first week of school without trying to orient a new teacher, but Crystal couldn’t start before school started, so I had her join the year already in progress.
Crystal just moved here from North Carolina. She and her husband relocated to Florida for his job in the grocery business. Crystal is very well dressed, put together and refined. Every hair is in place, every nail smoothly filed. Crystal taught middle schoolers in North Carolina; she describes teaching “tough kids in a bad neighborhood.” Crystal appears confident, self-assured with a take-no-prisoners attitude. Crystal is excited about the position and she and her husband move into Garden Path apartments, which my new teacher, holes-in-his shirt-Neeley, recommends. Before getting her own students, Crystal observes the Prospect teachers. She is nonplussed by the behavior she observes in the other classrooms and eager to teach her own students. She tells Lynne when she gets her class "Those children won't mess with me. I'll show them respect and they'll do the same to me. I know how to deal with them." This comment worries me, my students do not show respect easily or quickly.
After Crystal’s first day with students, she asks to meet with me. She tells me she is appalled at the foul language used by the students and asks if I have a high teacher turnover rate. She tells me “in North Carolina even the bad children say ‘yes ma'am, no sir’ If they didn’t, their pappy’d give them a paddling!” I am not reassured by this discussion.
After Crystal’s second day with students, she again asks to meet with me. She tells me this is not a good job for her and she thinks she needs to quit. I listen to her complaints and dry her tears. I give her a pep talk and make an appointment to observe her class tomorrow to provide support and suggestions.
I observe Crystal’s class. After listening to her concerns and comforting her, I am surprised to see that Crystal has excellent classroom management skills. Her class is under control and well-organized lessons are being taught. She has a zero tolerance policy and it is working. But she is unnerved when students speak without raising hands or talk back to her. Crystal is not happy.
After Crystal’s third day with students she once more asks to meet with me and gives me her resignation. The day after tomorrow will be her last day. She tells me even the bad children in North Carolina aren’t this bad. She says when she observed two teachers separating some fighting girls, “my heart was racing and I was shaking like a leaf.”
Goodbye Crystal and hello to more insomnia as I reassign Crystal’s students and begin what will become a never-ending search for teachers.
On the fourth day of school, Wanda, the absent bus driver, returns to driving, but a student named Timmy gets off her bus in the morning telling me he is afraid to go into the cafeteria to eat breakfast. It seems Wanda told her passengers, as she drove them to school this morning, that the reason they can’t smoke on her bus this year is because someone “snitched” on Mr. Jed (my former obese driver) and he was fired and that the snitch is here on this bus right now. She apparently says this while pointing at Timmy. Jed was fired for failure to pass a physical, but Wanda either doesn’t know or prefers her version of the story. Regardless, the students are now divided into two camps. First are those who believe they have the right to smoke (both on the bus and at school) and think they can convince me to permit them to do so: “But Ms. Smee, we wouldn’t fight on the bus so much if we could smoke and not be so tense.” This group believes they can change my mind and get my permission to smoke on the bus. The second group of students also believes they have the right to smoke but they think they should do so without getting permission and just intimidate any tattletales. The “Let’s kill Timmy” contingent is simmering. Wanda tells transportation coordinator Shasta she feels sick and won’t be able to do her afternoon route. She goes home and we don’t hear from her for six weeks.
Wanda is off the bus.
Back in May I had six drivers on my budget spreadsheet but by August: Cherill, Jed and Wanda are gone. Nina, Quentin and Ellie are still here, along with my new hire, Audra. My bus problems have only just begun. Like a Greek chorus, the drivers keep materializing to serenade me with their tragic lamentations.
Expectations collide with Reality
Before coming to Prospect I imagined working with a team of dedicated, motivated teachers who wanted to help me save the world, or perhaps just a few children. Truly though, I don’t believe teachers need to be Mother Theresa. I don’t believe teaching is a “calling” requiring unending sacrifice. I just expected my employees would be here because they wanted to be here. I was wrong. Most of my teachers want to be somewhere else. Stone wants to be a Baptist minister but can’t find a church. Rosie wants to be a guidance counselor in the public schools but fears she has been black balled for a slight years ago. Noreen wants to teach in a public school again but her criminal record makes that unlikely. I don’t know what the others want but with a couple exceptions, my employees tear out of the driveway as soon as the busses leave. I expected a little more dedication, a little more caring and concern.
It’s okay if the staff doesn’t like me. I knew I would have to make some unpopular decisions, bosses always do. I just never envisioned a zero sum mentality in which changes that are good for the students, are seen as hurting the staff. Every time I talk with students or their parent to gain some insight into their problems and I communicate my findings with staff, they accuse me of sleeping with the enemy. Either I support teachers or I am a dupe for the students. My suggestion that teachers pay a visit to their students’ homes is met with revulsion and disbelief. I don’t mandate this, I just encourage it as a way to bond with the family and gain an understanding of the student to improve the chance of success in the classroom. No teachers avail themselves of this opportunity. I do mandate daily notes in planners and weekly phone calls home. I only have limited compliance with these expectations. I don’t surrender but without intending to, I adjust my tone, style and attitude to match the reality of what they are willing to do. Meanwhile, morning after morning I run in circles in the dark trying to develop creative solutions to the Ernie problem, the arresting of children, transportation woes, the difficulty of hiring and retaining competent teachers, the unmotivated staff problem and the crushing problems of the Ionyas, Torreys and LaQuandas.
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