September 1988

Neil’s relationship with his fellow teachers was strained for the first couple of weeks. He was naturally friendly and under normal circumstances he would have quickly fitted in, but there was one question each teacher had to ask him, for which he had no answer.

It was clear that he was not used to teaching sixth graders, and if he had any particular aptitude for the younger children, it did not show during those first weeks. So why was he here?

Neil said that he had wanted to try his hand at teaching younger children. That was not entirely a lie, since he used to think about it in that dreamy state of considering unlikely alternatives. But he would never have done anything about it, so he had a hard time putting conviction into his voice when he replied.

That answer only led to the next logical question. Why didn’t he get a job in his home town? Why move away and leave all his friends behind to make the experiment? There was really no way to answer that question.

By the second week, the other teachers knew that Neil would not talk about his reasons for being at Kiernan and his reluctance to share such basic personal information made them all pull back from him. They were unfailingly polite, but that initial friendliness had faded.

That was the situation when circumstances threw him in with Fiona Kelly.

# # #

In any school, some of the students are the sons and daughters of the teachers. Teaching some other teacher’s child can be a little unsettling; under the best of conditions there is a flavor of conflict of interest.

The children of teachers are angels or hellions or something in between, just like the children of bums and businessmen. Sean Kelly was something in between. He was not quite a top student, but close.  He made mostly As and Bs. He loved baseball and he was good at the game. He was open and friendly, and if anyone had accused him of unkindness to any of his fellow students he would have been shocked and angry at the accusation. Yet, he had a weakness; a nemesis; his own personal Dr. Moriarity.

He could not stand Duarte Zavala.

Duarte Zavala was one of the Chicano children who broke the stereotype. Duarte was not quite a top student, but close. He made mostly As and Bs. He loved baseball and he was good at the game. He was open and friendly to anyone, as long as that person observed certain conventions. If someone disliked Hispanics because they were Hispanics, then that person became Duarte’s mortal enemy.

Duarte conceived the idea that Sean didn’t like Hispanics and began a campaign against him.

Sean Kelly liked Sean Kelly a great deal, and generally thought of others as adjuncts to himself. In this, he was almost identical to Duarte but, at eleven years old, neither could see the similarity. Sean’s self-infatuation made him condescending to the other children around him, male or female, Anglo or Hispanic. Duarte saw only that Sean condescended to his Hispanic friends; he could not see that it was an equal-opportunity egotism. Nor did Duarte realize that he also condescended to the same Hispanic children that Sean did.

Eleven year olds are not particularly good at self-analysis.

A prelude to the final confrontation came during the second week of school. Neil was on noon playground duty, wandering about to see to it that none of the larger children took unfair advantage of the new sixth graders. more Monday

Finally, he circled back. The sun was hanging low above the mountains when he came back into town, but the heat had not relented. He stopped at a mini-mart, bought a liter of Seven-Up and a pint of Seagrams, and returned to his apartment.

Still, he would not face the source of his feelings. He mixed a stiff drink and turned the air conditioning on high. He wandered into his bedroom to the rickety bookcase and made a selection, went to his casette collection and made another. While Eric Clapton sang and played on the stereo, Neil drank and lay back on his couch.  He opened the book and read:

Napoleon I., whose career had the quality of a duel against the whole of Europe, disliked duelling between the officers of his army. The great military emperor was not a swashbuckler, and had little respect for tradition.

Two songs later his drink was empty, so he laid the book aside and made another. Last year he had introduced The Duel into his class for the first time. What would a sixth grader make of Joseph Conrad? Nothing! From Conrad to the insipidity of a sixth grade reader. The thought was bitter gall in his mind.

His drink was empty again and he smiled at that, almost as if he were cherishing his weakness. He had not gotten drunk one time since the whole affair began. He would feel wretched in the morning. Good enough; he was in the mood to feel wretched.

In the months since this all began, he had not allowed himself the luxury of self-pity, but he was ready for it now.

The tempo of the music had changed. Clapton was singing softly about his shy, sweet lady, and how she looked “Wonderful Tonight”. The song brought Carmen to mind. He remembered the liveliness in her face when she was with her students, and the dead stillness when she was with him. He wondered again what Campbell had told her.

Back beyond Carmen’s image was another face, and that face was the source of all his melancholy. For it was not Alice Hamilton who had betrayed him the most. She was just a foolish young woman who had owed him nothing.

But there had been betrayal. When the accusations had come, there had been one he should have been able to turn to. Lynn; a tall girl with wild hair and soulful brown eyes, who had shared his dreams, shared his bed, and who had planned to share his life.

She would share those things, but she would not share his troubles. She was a teacher, too, and she could not afford to be associated with someone accused of sexual misconduct. That was what she said, but it was a thin excuse. Now that alcohol had loosened the iron fist of his self-control, he remembered once again the look in her eyes when he had told her about Alice Hamilton. She had hesitated. She had doubted.

How could she have doubted? Was it some fault in her that prevented belief. Or was there some secret weakness in him that only she had seen.

How could he be the man he wanted to be — the man he had thought he was — if his lover could look at him in the moment of his accusation and have such doubts? more tomorrow

After lunch, Neil’s second class arrived. The temperature had passed eighty-five outside; it was hotter still in the classroom. The children were tired and cranky from a long first day at school. The bloom was off, and they were not half so eager and mild as his morning class.

This group had P. E. first hour, so Tom Wright had done all the housekeeping chores that the district required. Neil only had to explain his own rules, pass out books, and they were ready to work a full hour sooner than his morning class had been.

They read the same story the morning class had read, but this time Neil listened more carefully to their performance. The ones he had chosen by watching for readers-by-choice were quite good for their age. He dreaded finding out how the others read. When he assigned them the same writing exercise, there was a perceptible psychic flinch. They had probably done that assignment or one just like it the first day of every school year since they had been able to write. Neil realized that he would have to be more imaginative in his assignments or sheer boredom would stop their voices.

He tried to study them as they wrote, but it was hard to concentrate with sweat running down his face. The children were suffering and whining. He didn’t blame them, but it irritated him nonetheless. What they think he could do about the heat?

Aaron Garcia snarled at Mickey Kerr, and Neil snarled at both of them.

When the last break bell rang at 2:15, the children did not run out. They walked out slowly and threw themselves down on the grass in the shade of the trees.

Neil watched them. Most of them were too hot and miserable to even play. He sighed and said, “The hell with it.” He had no desire to take his class outside before they were housebroken, but in this heat anything else would be cruel. He tucked a book under his arm, followed them out, and locked the door behind him. That got him some curious stares.

The bell rang to return to class, but Neil waved the other students over and sat among them with his back against a tree trunk. He said, “Who’s hot?”

They all were and they were vehement in saying so.

“Me, too. You know, we live on a funny planet. Even though people have been on Earth for three or four million years, we still can’t find a place that suits us. Every place on Earth is either too hot or too cold, at least part of the year.”

“What about Hawaii?”

“Or Tahiti?”

“Well, most of the planet is either too hot or too cold most of the time. Right now, I would like to be back home in Oregon, surf fishing in the ocean, in the fog. Where would you rather be?”

That question opened the floodgates. Everyone had someplace they wanted to be, and all of them were cold places. In Alaska, in the refrigerator at home, in a boxcar full of chocolate ice cream, or at the North Pole with Santa Claus; everyone had a preference. It took twenty minutes to hear them all. Lorraine Dixon had written two sentences about who she was, but she spent five minutes and a hundred sentences describing how much she liked ice skating. more tomorrow

“Who are you?”

“I’m Dixie.”

Neil nodded and smiled. “I know your name, Dixie. Now tell me some more. What are your parents’ like? Where do you live? Do you have brothers and sisters? What do you like to do? Tell me some of those things.”

“Oh.”

The other hands had gone down, so Neil turned to some papers on his desk and pretended to study them. In fact, he was studying the class as they “worked”, and he found that most of them didn’t work. They stared at their papers or stared out the window or chewed on their pencils. Two of the readers-by-choice sneaked their reading texts open, looking up from time to time to see if Neil was watching. Sabrina Palmer tried to get Tasmeen Kumar’s attention, but Tasmeen was one of the few who was trying hard to write. Lauren Turner and Lydia Ruiz carried on a quiet conversation. Pedro Velasquez flipped a paper wad at Brandy Runyon and she shot him a look that could have killed.

The bell rang. Neil told the students to leave their papers on his desk, and as Pedro came by he said, “Wait.” The other students trooped by, putting their papers on the pile and watching a very uncomfortable Pedro as he waited to one side. When the last one had left, Neil asked, “What did I tell you this morning?”

Pedro shrugged. Neil waited. Finally, Pedro said, “You told me to leave Brandy alone.”

“And did you?”

“Well, she’s always bugging me.”

“And I suppose you never bug her? Pedro, in my class, every student has the right to learn. It doesn’t matter if that student makes As or Ds, he or she still has the right to learn as much as she can. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“I’m sure Brandy didn’t find it easy to write the paper I assigned today. Do you think you made it any easier by throwing paper wads at her?”

Pedro scuffed his feet and said, “No.”

“Pedro, if you bug people and keep them from working, you are going to be in big trouble with me. Do you understand?”

Pedro nodded.

“Okay, scoot.”

Pedro was gone like a shot.

Neil sorted out the papers of the students he had observed. On Lauren’s and Lydia’s he wrote in red, “You would have written more if you hadn’t spent all your time talking!” He made similar comments on half a dozen other papers, including, “I appreciate the way you ignored interruptions,” on Tasmeen’s paper.

When he actually started to read the papers, a chill went through him. Five of the sheets were completely blank. Another seven had no more than one misspelled and unpunctuated sentence. He counted the papers and checked them against his class list. Five students had sneaked out without turning in papers. Only thirteen students had actually tried to do the assignment, and their work started at very bad and ranged downward from there.

Richard Lujan had written: “My nam is Richrd Lujan    I am twelve years   I hav two brothers and a cat”

Rosa Alvarez had written: “My name is Rosa    My mother works for a bank and my Father works in the fields     I hav  two sisters younger than me and i don’t hav no brothers”

Oscar Teixeira, the boy who had made five years of  excellent scores and one year of zero on his yearly test, simply said: “I am Oscar Teixeira and I am very smart” 

Well, maybe. more Monday

Since physical punishment had been outlawed, Kiernan, like most school, had gone to a step system. First came verbal warnings, then more formal verbal warnings, and finally, if a student persisted in rule breaking, a detention. If a child got so many detentions, a letter went home to his parents. So many more detentions and the parents had to come in for a conference. So many more and he would be suspended. So many more and he would be suspended for a longer time. So many more and he was expelled from school for the remainder of the year.

It was a fairly effective system. Most students never got to step one, and very few were ever suspended. But every year there were a few who moved through the system to the bitter end, not caring, or pretending not to care.

Explaining the discipline system was easy. The hard part was teaching the children the rules.

One would think that a few general rules like, be kind, don’t take anything that isn’t yours, and do your own work, would be enough.  For children, it never is. Rules for eleven year olds have to be numerous and specific.

Can you chew gum? (On the playground, yes; in class, no.)

Can you go to the bathroom? (Go during the breaks unless you have an emergency. Then ask.)

Do you have to raise your hand to talk? (Yes.)

Can I get out of my seat? (To get a kleenex or a drink of water, get up quietly and don’t bother me with asking. If I am talking to the class, don’t get up. If you are working at your seats, you may get up for books or paper or to sharpen your pencil. But not to visit.)

And so forth.

The rules had to be taught over time. Within a week, the children would know most of them, but they would forget, and Neil would still be reminding them of some of the rules in June.

By the time Neil had added the names of the new students to his roll and talked about discipline and rules, the second hour was over. The children headed for recess and Neil headed for the teacher’s  lounge.

# # #

Twenty minutes later, they were together again. All of the eagerness had gone out of the students’ faces. The housekeeping chores had been no fun. He distributed the language, spelling, and reading textbooks and gave them some time to look them over. It gave him a chance to observe them. Within five minutes he had moved Duarte Zavala into an empty seat far away from Sean Kelly. Their dislike for one another was plain to see. No other deadly combinations were immediately apparent.

After ten minutes about a third of the class was still content to explore the books, another third had settled down to read, and the others had become restless. Neil did not want his non-readers to be embarrassed on the first day of school, so he had quietly noted the names of those who read by choice. When the class read a short story together, he only called on them. That made things go smoothly.

Then he distributed paper and told the class, “I want two things now. I want to see how well you write, and I want to begin to get to know you individually, so write a paragraph or two telling me who you are.”

Four hands went up. He chose one. “I don’t understand,” Dixie Margaret Trujillo said. more tomorrow

There was a diffuse groan at the mention of Ulrich’s name. It sounded genuine, so Neil pretended that he did not hear it. Then Brandy Runyon yelled, “Stop that,” and slapped the boy beside her.

Neil snapped, “Brandy!”

“Well, he’s bothering me!” Brandy’s face was red with anger and humiliation, and her eyes were wild.

Neil kept his face calm, but he was cursing fluently inside. This was something he had not had to face in high school. By that time the students with real learning disabilities had been weeded out. Until Brandy was moved out of his classroom, he had to use the same discipline on her that he did on everyone else, yet she probably would not respond as they did. It was a no-win situation for both of them. He said, “What is he doing?”

“He’s making fun of me!”

The boy, Pedro Velasquez, spread his hands and said, “I didn’t say nothing.”

Neil had no idea who was telling the truth, so he said firmly, “Pedro, if you were making fun of her, or anyone else in my classroom, I want you to stop it right now. I won’t put up with it. And Brandy, you will learn to keep control of yourself.”

Brandy muttered something unintelligible under her breath and Pedro gave a wry shrug. Neil let it go, and got another surprise. The class had ignored the whole incident. They had not waited to see what would come of it, as they had with Tony’s boundary testing. They were used to Brandy’s interruptions, and took them in stride.

They neither approved nor disapproved; they simply accepted Brandy for what she was, because she was one of them. It was a lesson in the difference between a large and a small school.

Neil had lost the thread of his thought, but Linda Muir brought it back to him with a question. “Do you mean that we all be together all day?”

“That’s right.”

“Then we will never get a chance to be in the same class with any of our friends.”

Neil smiled. “Don’t you have friends in this class?”

Linda twisted her hands together and squirmed in her seat. All of the students were getting restless. “Sure, I have friends in here,” she said, “but my very best friend is in the other section. I won’t see her all year!”

Neil tried to look sympathetic, because it was clearly a tragedy for Linda. He explained that they  would have recess, breaks, noon time, and after school together. That didn’t help. Linda said, “But that’s just not the same!”

Privately, Neil agreed, but he wasn’t about to criticize the school’s schedule in front of his class. He was saved by the bell for the end of the first period.

# # #

The children left the room like water poured out of a bucket. The echoes of the bell had not died before Neil found himself alone, and he was thankful to be alone. He could have used an hour to collect himself. Instead he had five minutes to rush to the bathroom and back.

Next came the distasteful task of explaining the school’s discipline system. Most of the students had lived under that system for years, but there are always new students, and children forget. Since physical punishment had been outlawed, Kiernan, like most school, had gone to a step system. more tomorrow

Neil sat down at his desk and half a dozen of the children moved quickly to their places. Some of the others looked at the clock and saw that they had five more minutes. Two of the boys ran out the door, and a handful of others began to look for their assigned seats.

They were a mosaic. They were very pale and very brown and every color in between. Like a mosaic, each piece was complete in itself, but put together would form a greater pattern. Now the mosaic was still a heap of multicolored stones, but the pattern would emerge. Neil’s job was to find it, without damaging any of the individuals in the process.

The bell rang. Those who were still wandering took their seats, and the boys who had left came running back. They were very docile, unsure, and even a little scared. This was their first year across the fence, with the big kids, and for many of them Neil would be their first male teacher.

Neil had known they would be different from high school students, but until now he had had no idea how different. They were meek (that would surely change), they were eager (he prayed that would not change), and they were tiny. Neil was nearly six feet tall, but he was used to looking up at many of his students. Here was a little girl — his seating chart told him it was Tanya Michelson — who could not be much more than four feet tall. He couldn’t even guess her weight; he had no standard for comparison. Tiny! And she wasn’t the only one; half the boys and a third of the girls were nearly as small.

Three of the students were still standing. One of them said, “Where do I sit?”

“What’s your name?”

“Rafael Ortiz.”

Without looking, Neil knew he had not seen that name. He asked, “Are you a sixth grader?”

He was, and as he spoke two more students came in. There were a number of empty seats, so he had them sit anywhere while he took roll. Of the thirty-two students on his list, nine had not shown up. When he called Duarte Zavala, one of the new arrivals spoke up, and Neil shifted him to his assigned seat. Tim Galloway was home with the chicken pox, according to his neighbor, and would be back in about a week. Juan Rogers was in Mexico; they could expect him back in about a month. And nobody knew where Olivia Pinero was, except that she was out riding her bike last week so she hadn’t moved.

It was clear that the empty seats were nothing unusual to them, but Neil was amazed. He could count on one hand all the first-day absentees he had had in four years of teaching at his last school.

Neil put down his class list and said, “Let’s finish that later. Everyone has a seat for now. If  you aren’t in the right place, or you aren’t on my list, we’ll take care of it, but first I want to introduce myself. I am Mr. McCrae. I will be taking Mrs. Wyatt’s place this year while she is having her baby.”

“She already had it!” Tanya Michelson interrupted. “She had it last night.”

Neil smiled at her and said, “That’s good news, Tanya, but you need to raise your hand before you speak. Otherwise things will get unruly.”

Tanya pouted and added, “It weighed seven pounds, and it is a boy named Michael.” more Monday

Day One

School began on Friday the second of September. All of the other teachers complained about having the students for only one day and then losing them for the Labor Day weekend. They said it was like having to do the first day of school twice. For Neil, it was a Godsend. It allowed him three days grace to rethink his ideas after having a day with his students.

Even the weather relented and gave him a day that did not reach above ninety.

When Neil arrived, there was a short line of students with their parents in front of the secretary’s desk. Half a dozen early arriving students had begun a baseball game out back, and there were half a dozen more hanging around the doors of some of the classrooms.

Neil unlocked his door and propped it open with a chair. He had arranged the student desks in straight rows, and had put a student name tag on each desk. Neil’s mother would not have approved, but she had been teaching elementary for thirty years and could handle less restrictive seating arrangements. Neil intended to have everything orderly, at least at first. He had even seated the students in alphabetical order to make it easier to learn their names.

Neil was in his room by eight o’clock in case any parents came to meet him. Only four showed up and two of them dropped their children off at the door without coming in. Mr. Kruger brought Kenneth in and introduced himself briefly. Then Mrs. Whitlock brought in her son Larry and stood by while he introduced himself, squirming with embarrassment, and stayed to chat for a few minutes. Neil found out that Larry always did well in school, that he always liked his teachers, but that he sometimes forgot to do his homework, and that Neil was to call her immediately if anything went wrong. Neil said that he was happy that she cared enough to come in. He meant what he said, but privately he reserved judgment. She was a little too good to be true. He wondered if Larry loved school as much as she thought he did, or if she was reading her own enthusiasm into him.

By the time Mrs. Whitlock left, the room had begun to fill up with children. Some stood in small knots, talking and trying not to be seen looking at Neil. Others ignored him quite completely and wandered around the room without self-consciousness. One skinny blonde girl went up to look at the books that Gina had left, and began telling a dark haired friend which ones she had read. Three boys looked at a display of National Geographic maps Neil had put up.

Larry Whitlock had joined a trio of other boys in the back of the room and already two of them were beginning to scuffle. Neil raised his voice until his baritone filled the room. “Gentlemen,” he said calmly but sternly, “people don’t wrestle in my classroom, even between classes.”

The room was instantly silent, and all eyes were on him. He turned to look at the papers on his desk — papers he had no need to look at — and seemed to ignore the boys. They eased out the door and began wrestling again under his window. He continued to ignore them, so they went out onto the playground. more tomorrow