Frankie & The Post-It Notes

Frankie had a problem in my class that would keep her from being able to write on the current page of her packet. I grade by counting full pages, so leaving one unfinished would hurt her grade. She said, "I can't fill that page because I can't go back to the memory of what I wrote there." My first thought was to say, "Come on, Frankie! Get over it!" but that's obnoxious. That's me bullying, saying I don't care what she thinks and feels. That line teaches her not to care what I think and feel either. It's not the lesson I want her to learn.

Another option is to say, "It's okay, Frankie. Leave that page blank." Though that shows I've listened I don't like teaching her to give up. Surrendering to a challenge is missing an opportunity. Learning (like writing) requires some courage and school should foster that.

Which brings us to the option Frankie and I chose: we fixed the problem. Instead of reacting ("get over it" or "skip it") we responded. Frankie didn't want to see the ten lines atop her page so I grabbed Post-Its and covered the offending passage with them. Frankie liked that well enough to feel comfortable on the page. She started writing.

I hope Frankie felt heard and respected. I know she wasn't bullied or ignored. She didn't take an easy way out, but the way forward was not difficult. She might have even felt some pride at getting through the situation.

Whatever she felt, we both learned something. Who would have expected that ever to happen in school?

Return & Redemption In The Schools

Coming back to school after a break isn't fun. My colleagues are unhappy. We act glad to see one another but the general mood is depressed and though misery loves company, company doesn't breed happiness.

Outside the classroom window bare trees sway gently against a blue sky while green grass and frozen leaves stretch across the field. This view in one thing I like about the job but I want to break through and escape. The glass would likely cut me to ribbons. There has to be a better way.

I'm staying in my classroom as much as possible. The hallway, other rooms, and office are minefields of discontent. I hear people rehashing a thing from half an hour ago that was of no real consequence. I can almost smell their hair on fire. It's too early for that. It's always too early for that.

There's a chill on my shoulder from the window and a stirring of warmth on my leg from the space heater whirring behind me. Jim Hall and Pat Metheny are playing on the speakers. I have this document open and am writing. This much is right with my world.

Early today I wrote Morning Pages about managing a long-term problem such as a bad but necessary job. Grin and bear it only works short-term. To do more than survive I need to accept what the job is, confine it to contract hours, take care of myself by writing, reading, and running, laugh at the absurdities, and remember there are things to which I look forward. (Six hours until quitting time. Three school days until the weekend. February break in thirty three school days.) I have to maintain hope and take action.

Andy Dufresne says hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things but I know that hope is nothing without action. I have to make new opportunities, stay out of the nonsense at school, and refuse to light what little hair I have on fire. The way forward involves writing, hoping, and working toward some better place. Probably not Zihuatanejo but maybe even better.

Optimism & Pessimism In The Schools

Frank's voice is so quiet I barely hear it over the whir of the space heater trying to keep our cold classroom warm. This is how he speaks in class but when angry he screams the most awful and threatening things you can imagine. Even then it's tough to understand the words because he doesn't form them with the practice of someone who speaks regularly. His quiet voice leads me to believe he wasn't spoken to much as a child and his dangerous tantrums show me he has not known much love. I feel for him but know better than to get close. I've seen the danger of his eruptions and know there is little chance of changing the trajectory of his life.

At school I like to think I'm optimistic, pessimistic, and every shade between. I believe I can be kind to kids and help them become kind to themselves and others, but I don't think anything we do can overcome the harm that has come to them and continues to come, wrongs perpetrated by family and society. In school I move all along the continuum of optimism and pessimism depending on the moment. Frank is a kid unlikely to ever do well at school. I imagine that his chances out in the world are pretty slim too. Yet right now, speaking in a garbled whisper, he is calm and seems reachable except that he's lost in his phone. So it goes.

There is no making any kid do much of anything. I can request, cajole, or even threaten, but there's no guarantee that I will catch kids in a moment when they feel enough trust to follow me into darkness that has so often hurt them. I represent classes of people &mdash teachers, adults, even parents &mdash who have done them wrong, hurt them, made them feel unworthy. I represent people who should have been kind or even loving.

As I'm having these thoughts another kid, Mike, hands me a note saying that he wants me to be with him during a meeting about some legal matter because "you have been good to me and being around you makes me feel stronger." I'm touched but the idea of the meeting repulses me. I work for people who don't let me make such decisions. I write back to Mike that I'm honored and will write to my supervisor asking for guidance. I write that note in pessimism. I would rather not put myself in the crosshairs of management any more than I already have. Mike writes back, "I come to school mostly to be around you. You makes me a better man." I'm optimistic but not too optimistic. My effect on him is less than he thinks and any good we accomplish here can easily be erased. Still, the note helps me go on.

The accounting books on Mike and Frank are all red. They are owed so much more good than they have received and so much less trouble than they have been put through. My teaching amounts to pennies that leave the ledger still bleeding red.

Hours after I wrote the first paragraph about Frank he drew a giant penis on a board in the office, opened the defibrillator setting off an alarm, and ran at a social worker as if he might attack. He stormed out the front doors cursing everyone, swearing vengeance for what we aren't sure. Frank is too unstable for our meager skills and facilities. He needs special education but I'm pessimistic he will receive it. Instead, he comes here, whispering and muttering while lost in his phone until he loses control and storms out of the building. I'm pessimistic enough to believe he will hurt one of us, optimistic enough to hope it won't be me.

Balancing faith and hopelessness isn't reserved only for students. I vacillate between believing and doubting my abilities too. I used to go through a blues toward the end of each school year thinking of what I could have and should have done to make things better. This was back when I was green and long before I arrived at this school. These days I put my faith in surviving the day. I like to believe that I can leave the job behind after 2:45 but the last few weeks it has followed me into the darkness as I lie in bed waiting on sleep and gently pushing school thoughts away.

I'm less and less able to push aside thinking this is all for naught. I've taught for twenty-three years and need five to ten more before retirement. In the beginning of my career I soaked up my colleagues' wisdom while developing my craft. Now I just hope to maintain a balance between pessimism and optimism.

About Frank I'm largely pessimistic but feel absolved since he came to us with needs beyond what we can provide. I'm more optimistic about Mike who has enough skills to help himself and recognize we are trying to help.

I hear the echoes of Frank screaming curses and threats. I still hear Mike thanking me, calling me "my guy," and saying "see you tomorrow" as he got on the bus. I'm alone in my classroom with only the sound of the heater still trying to ward off the chill. I'm sure it all means something if only I can listen closely enough to hear.

Reading In The Schools

“Thus my efforts throughout this book to dissociate reading from academic life, not just because teachers and professors make reading so much more dutiful and good-for-you than it ought to be but also because the whole environment of school is simply alien to what longer form reading has been for almost all of its history.”

— Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures Of Reading In An Age Of Distraction,, 109

In the first class of the day I became anxious that management might look in the door and wonder what the hell I was doing.

The students sat, some on the heater, one on the floor, a few at desks. Each was reading a book for the most part. Occasionally one checked a phone but got back to reading pretty well given that I teach at-risk kids who have been bounced from their regular schools and most of whom come to me admitting that they hate to read.

I wasn't anxious the about the students. I worried management would take me to task.

I was sitting at a student desk, one leg crossed over the other, a book in hand, and had been reading for fifteen minutes, ever since I had helped Frank understand the word agape which had come up in his book. I had read ten pages of Alan Jacobs' The Pleasures Of Reading In An Age Of Distraction, looking up after each paragraph to scan for kids having or making trouble. There was none of that, so I had kept reading until anxiety interrupted me.

I haven't had the best relationship with management during my tenure. Imagining some manager looking in, I could hear them asking why wasn't I moving about the room checking in with kids. How could I know what they were doing if I wasn't teaching?

I almost wasn't teaching, but that was because I had set the structure of the class and was allowing them to learn. I got them into books today and over the last three months. Once they start reading, my job is to just keep things going. The only teaching left to do was to be a reader too.

It's a safe bet that management would see things in another way. That's the way it goes in schools. Management is paying me to do something and there I was looking like I was doing nothing much at all. Observing a class for a few minutes is no way to understand what is really going on. It takes understanding all that we have been doing in that classroom since September. The room full of silent readers doesn't just happen. Kids aren't wired for that. None of us are. It's a learned behavior, one that I've worked to help them learn, and from this they learn more than I could ever teach.

I tamped down the anxiety by remembering that I would hear the beeper on the outside door should any managers come by. Then I could get up and act like I was doing something management would appreciate. Or maybe I would stick to what I know is true and let the kids read. I scanned the room again, saw that everyone was still reading, and went back to my book. We all have so much left to learn and so little time to read.