When he got back to his apartment, Neil dug around in his still packed boxes to find the few books he had kept as personal treasures from his childhood. The formula books had not worn well; they held little that the adult Neil McCrae could find worthwhile. But there were others that had kept their value, and he spent the next four hours accompanying the young Hunt brothers as they continued the expedition their father had had to abandon, collecting zoo animals while floating downriver on their Amazon Adventure.

# # #

On Monday morning, Neil arrived at work five minutes late in order to avoid meeting his colleagues before Campbell had a chance to introduce him. They were laughing and joking as old friends will when they have not seen each other for months. Neil was the only newcomer; their responses to him were quick and friendly.

Pearl Richardson was broad and heavy, with short white hair and a mouth full of laughter. Fiona Kelly sat beside her, sharing a joke, with a dry chuckle to Pearl’s hearty guffaw. Fiona was slender and pale with hair that might have been red even before her hairdresser got hold of it, and was absolutely red now.

Donna Clementi was petite and quiet. Neil thought it would take a long time to get to know her. Delores Zavala sat a little removed from the rest of the group as if she were not quite sure of her place there.

Tom Wright was well formed but slender. He had straw colored hair and a runner’s body; sitting there in gym shorts and a tee shirt he looked precisely like a P.E. teacher. Glen Ulrich looked old, tired, and ill. His eyes had the look of repressed physical pain.

“Finally,” Campbell said, completing the introductions, “is Carmen de la Vega. Her room is just across from yours, and she is teaching core to seventh graders. She will be the one to go to when you don’t understand something.”

Neil felt something like a shock run through him. It was not recognition — he did not know her and she did not remind him of anyone he knew — but it was a spark. A recognition of possibilities. It took him completely by surprise. It went straight through his smiling, guarded mask and gripped his heart in with both hands. 

But when she raised her eyes to his, there was no answering spark in them. They were cool and hooded. She smiled and said hello, but it was a distant, formal smile that brought no feeling to her eyes.

# # #

The morning was devoted to discussion of the changes in the language and social science frameworks. Neil was barely aware that such things existed and had never read one. He followed the discussion as best he could and offered no comments.

After lunch, they were free to work, so Neil went to his room. The walls were bare. It would remain a place without personality until he put his stamp on it. The student desks were a mixture of styles and colors. Some were new, but most were battle scarred veterans made of dark, much carved wood. He compared their number to the list of students he had been given and made a note to ask for two more.

It was one o’clock and the temperature outside was in the high nineties. In only a few days, Neil had come to know Modesto’s end-of-summer weather pattern. It would continue to grow hotter until four or five, and hold that heat until after sundown. The room was an oven. more tomorrow

Neil woke up stiff and disoriented. The breeze from the air conditioner had finally conquered the heat of the apartment and had gone on to chill him while he slept. He was sticky and clammy with half-dried sweat.

For a minute, he did not know where he was. He was caught up in the tag end of a dream. It had not been pleasant, but he could not remember enough details to understand his discomfort, and so he couldn’t let it go. Finally he shook his head and staggered up, forcing the remnants of sleep away by action. He turned on the lights in the kitchenette, drank deeply from the tap, and looked at the clock. He had slept six hours, and he knew the rest of his night would be sleepless.

He showered, ate, and watched the ten o’clock news. It had been 106 degrees. He rubbed his gritty eyes and thought longingly of the coastal fogs of his native Oregon.

He picked up the reading textbook again, then surprised himself by throwing it against the wall in disgust. It was trash — unfit to inflict on children — and it would get no better if he read it from cover to cover. He kicked on his shoes and went out.

The night was a pleasant shock. The heat of the day had miraculously disappeared and the evening breeze was deliciously cool as it coiled about him. He crossed the parking lot, then changed his mind, and pocketed the car keys he had been carrying. The only places that would be open at this time of night were bars, and alcohol would have no part in solving any of his problems. He walked down Sylvan and turned off onto the first residential street he crossed.

The night air was perfect, and the moon was almost full. Even between the widely spaced street lights, the lawns were well visible. It was a middle class neighborhood of twenty year old houses, neatly kept. Each lawn was well clipped, the sidewalk edges were meticulously neat, and the street trees were beginning to come into maturity. There was an air of respectability and prosperity about the place; not the snobbery of the wealthy houses in his home town, nor the poverty of the barrio apartments, but a California style embodiment of the American dream. They reminded him of the neighborhood where he had grown up, and he let the half dark houses around him fade into memories of the houses and people he had known.

Even in the midst of nostalgia, Neil was trying to solve the problems that would face him in the weeks to come. He tried to remember how he had learned to read, and found that he could not remember a single textbook. Had they been as insipid as the ones he had been given today? It was hard to believe that he would not remember such books — with loathing.

All he could remember were the books he had owned and loved, read and re-read. Many of them were trash, too, but of a different kind. They were written to a formula by anonymous authors and published under a company owned pseudonym. He had not know that at the time, of course. He had even written the “author” a fan letter, and had received a form thank-you in reply. But whatever they lacked in style, skill, and grace, they had had a plot. Someone young whom Neil had liked had gone somewhere interesting and had done something exciting while overcoming dangers without the help of an adult. That was more than he could say about the stories in the reading text. more tomorrow

Near the tracks, where the dirt road left the tarmac, there was a cluster of tiny houses. Once they had been painted white, but they were repaired with raw wood, some new, some old, giving them a patchwork appearance of gray, tan, and dirty white. Some of the roofs were of corrugated iron, others were of tattered shingles. The few trees that sheltered the little houses from the August sun were unwatered and sparsely leafed. Over everything there was a patina of dust.

Neil slowed down and turned back east once more. Those little houses were typical of the kind of housing provided by farmers for their migrant help, but Gina had said that these had been bought up by a Modesto attorney and were being rented out. They had no formal name, but everyone called them the Johnson Road apartments because the farm had once been owned by the Johnson family.

As Neil cruised by one last time, three small brown children popped up out of the weeds in the road ditch and stared impassively at him as he passed. He waved, but got no response.

He had considered driving up the tarmac road past the small houses, but it had seemed too condescending; too much like slumming. Now he was glad that he had not.  In about a week some of those faces he had seen in the road ditch would be in his classroom, and he didn’t want to start his work here by offending anyone.

# # #

Back in his own apartment, Neil turned the air conditioner up, stripped to his shorts, and sat directly in front of the thin stream of cool air. His drapes were pulled against the afternoon sunlight, so that the room was a cool refuge against the heat. He turned on one small lamp and looked again at the textbooks. Despite the poverty of the barrio apartments, he had been rejuvenated by the sight of the three children. If they were his to teach, then he had to take a closer look at the tools he had been given to teach with.

They were awful. The grammar book was so confused and overdone that he could hardly read it. Every page was overprinted with colorful drawings and pictures. When it was new, that had probably caught some administrator’s eye. It was hard to imagine a working teacher being impressed.

In New York, Neil had learned how to lead a reader’s eye across a page by the manner in which the text was laid out. It could be done subtly by column spacing, choice of typefaces, and the judicious use of headings and simple drawings.

There was nothing subtle in this textbook. Everything was in glaring reds and blues, and the eye paths spiraled and folded back on themselves in total confusion. It was like listening to rock music written by an untalented garage band. It was visual noise.

The spelling workbook was merely dull. There were twenty words per lesson to be memorized, and four or five pages of insipid fill-in-the-blank exercises.

The reading textbook was the worst. It looked good; the pictures were varied, colorful, skillful, and the page layout did not distract the eye. But the stories were so dull and pointless that it would be a wonder if any child could bring himself to read them.

Neil read the first story and shook his head. The second left him feeling hopeless all over again. The third story put him to sleep. more Monday

“They can’t expect me to teach anything to kids who don’t speak English. There has to be a better way.”

“There are better ways, for districts who can afford the specialized personnel,” Gina snapped. “This district can’t. When you’ve been around a while, you will see for yourself.”

Gina’s news was most unwelcome, and left Neil feeling sorry for himself again. For most of the summer, he had managed to keep the past out of mind by a complete change of scene. He had approached this new school with a grim determination not to let self-pity get the better of him, but that resolution hadn’t lasted out the first day.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Gina said, sensing his mood. “I didn’t mean to be critical, but things are different here than you are used to. I don’t know why Bill didn’t tell you what you were getting yourself into. It’s not like him.”

Neil wanted to change that subject. He said, “Don’t blame Bill. I walked into this with both eyes open. If I didn’t ask enough questions, it’s my fault, not his.”

“Still . . .”

“You were going to show me what books you use and what you do,” Neil suggested, and they spent some time doing that. Then Gina took her leave, waddling uncertainly out to her car.

When she had gone, he sat in stricken silence for half an hour, idly fingering the textbooks without really seeing them. First Alice Hamilton’s false accusation, and then a class full of students with needs he seemed unlikely to be able to meet. That would have been enough for depression. But the textbooks Gina had given him were awful.

Neil was in love with the English language, and with its expression in literature. That was what had taken him to New York, and it was the perversion of literature in the marketplace that had driven him back to college, and then into teaching. Now he would be teaching children who could not even read, and the materials he had been given were so trivial, so insipid, that his mind couldn’t deal with them.

All else he had born with at least an outward calm. But the descent from Shakespeare to Dick and Jane pushed him to the edge of despair.

Despair, however, was something Neil had no intention of giving in to.

# # #

Neil left a short time later, and drove eastward toward McHenry Avenue. Within a couple of miles, he approached the Western Pacific railroad tracks, and slowed down. According to Gina, most of the Chicanos who attended Kiernan School lived in a barrio-like cluster of houses and apartments on either side of the tracks. He rode slowly by, trying to gauge the depth of their poverty but it was impossible from the main road. He turned around and drove by a second time, more slowly.

On the east side of the tracks was a small, run-down apartment complex. It was called the Oaks; or miscalled, because the two huge trees shading it were sycamores. Two scruffy, unbarbered palms flanked a broken concrete fountain at the east entrance. The grass around the buildings was cut and green, but the dusty field beyond was full of abandoned cars. A few children were clustered around a swing set.

On the other side of the railroad, a pot-holed tarmac road led north parallel to the tracks. Two hundred yards from Kiernan, a dirt road led to a huge and ancient barn, a cluster of ragged trees and the burned out shell of what had been a two story farm house. Near the tracks, where the dirt road left the tarmac, there was a cluster of tiny houses. more tomorrow

“Why,” Neil asked, “do they use one of the air conditioned rooms for a lounge instead of a classroom. That doesn’t make sense. In fact, it seems downright cruel.”

Gina pointed to the photocopy machine purring in the corner. “There’s your reason,” she said. “In hot weather kids grumble, complain, and get cranky. So do teachers. But xerox machines grumble, complain, get cranky — and quit. And it takes a lot of money to get them fixed.

“Now tell me, how did you teach when you were teaching high school kids?”

“We read together sometimes, sometimes they read alone, we discussed what they read, and they wrote papers on it.”

“Did you teach grammar?”

“Some. I taught it when I taught freshmen, but for my last three years I didn’t have to teach as much. It was pretty fully covered in the first two years of our high school.”

“How many of your students couldn’t read? And how many of them weren’t native English speakers?”

It seemed an odd question. Neil said, “All of my students could read, of course, and if any of them weren’t native speakers, I had no way of knowing it. Why?”

Gina looked puzzled. She said, “Let me ask you one more question. What was the socio-economic base of your school?”

“It was in a pretty rich district. I would say that it ranged from middle class to the country club set.”

Gina sighed, then grinned sympathetically. “Neil,” she said, “welcome to the real world. This is a small rural district. When the new mall went in ten years ago, we expected to grow, but it hasn’t happened. We are right next to the fastest growing part of town, but not quite in it, so we are still too small to hire more than a bare minimum staff. Fortunately, they are mostly good people who try hard, but we don’t have much to work with. The fact that four out of seven classrooms don’t have air conditioning tells you how tight our budget is.

“And that isn’t all. Over half of our students are Hispanic, and half of them come and go on an irregular basis. We have kids in the eighth grade who haven’t spent three complete years in school.  Some of them can barely speak English, let alone read or write it. They come in for a couple of months in the fall, go back to Mexico for the winter, and come back in the spring.

“Of the ones who stay, some of them are excellent students. Half our eighth grade valedictorians are Hispanic. But the others will break your heart. Just when one of them seems to be making progress, away he goes and you don’t see him again for six months — or never.”

This was news Neil could have done without. “What do you do with students who don’t speak English?” he asked.

“You do the best you can. There is a Spanish speaking aide who will come into your class two hours a day. Her name is Delores, and you will find that you can’t get along without her. But she has to cover all three grades, so most of the time you’ll be on your own.”

“But why are they passed on if they don’t speak English? They surely can’t learn anything that way.”

“Would you want to teach a six foot tall sixteen year old in first grade?”

“No, but they can’t expect me to teach anything to kids who don’t speak English,” Neil said. “That’s ridiculous. I don’t speak Spanish. There has to be a better way.” more tomorrow

No matter how long he looked at the walls, Neil could see no thermostat. “Don’t you have air conditioning?” he asked.

“Only in the new portables.”

Neil found that hard to believe. “Does this heat last long?” he asked.

Gina took the time to seal one box with masking tape before she said, “That’s right. I forgot. Bill said that you were from out of state. Oregon wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Who’s Bill?”

“Bill Campbell. The superintendent. And the heat . . . if you’re lucky, this heat will break in a week or two, but I’ve seen it last right into October. And I’ve seen it start in April, but not very often. Most of the time you can figure one month in the fall and another in the spring.”

Gina sat down with a groan. “What are you doing for the next hour?” she asked.

“I just came to see my room and pick up copies of the books I am supposed to teach out of. But since you’re here, I’d like to hear how you run your class. It will be new to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been teaching high school.”

Gina frowned. “Now why didn’t Bill tell us that? Everyone knows you are coming in from Oregon to replace me for the year, but we all thought you would be an experienced teacher.”

“I am.”

“What’s the lowest grade you’ve ever taught?”

Her question was an echo of Campbell’s question four months ago. Neil said, “Ninth grade.”

“And you are just now getting here? Haven’t you studied the books we use?”

“No. How long can it take to read kids’ books? I’ve allowed myself the weekend.”

Gina shook her head in dismay. “Neil, Neil. You’ve got it all wrong. You must think you can come in here and teach with no problems because you’re coming down to elementary. Right?”

“I don’t mean to be condescending, but . . . yes.”

“You are in trouble. Teaching elementary is twice as hard as teaching high school. You’re lucky that you are at least teaching sixth grade. Teaching first or second is twice as hard as sixth.”

Neil smiled. He said, “You’re kidding.”

“You’ll find out. Look, I’ll make you a trade. Help me sort these boxes and drag them out to the car for me, and I’ll spend a couple of hours giving you a run-down on how we do things.”

Neil was happy to oblige. For half an hour he fetched and toted, and observed Gina Wyatt. She was dressed in shorts that probably had not fitted well since the seventh month of her pregnancy and a maternity blouse that could not quite cope with her girth. Her hair was cut short and plastered to her head by sweat. She was untidy in the extreme. Yet he found himself drawn to her. She was making the best of a bad situation with aplomb. And though she must have known how sloppy she looked, she did not to apologize.

Finally, the last box was packed. Gina wiped her face for the hundredth time and said, “I’m glad that’s over. Let the boxes set and let’s go cool off before I throw up.”

Neil grinned and said, “Fine with me. Where?”

She led him to the teacher’s lounge. It was the fourth room of the air conditioned quad. She offered him a soft drink from the refrigerator, and they sat at a table that looked like it might be a cast-off from someone’s kitchen. more tomorrow

August 1988

There is a certain forlorn emptiness about a school yard in summer, but as summer draws to a close the excitement begins to return. Teachers drop in to arrange their rooms and put up decorations to welcome the new classes. Janitors find themselves busier, making sure that all the repairs that were put off from the previous year are done before the children arrive.

Most of all, the difference is the children. For a few days after school is out in the spring they continue to come in twos and threes, habituated, but during the middle of summer they are gone. As mid-August arrives, they begin to return, peeking shyly into the rooms that will be theirs, greeting friends they have not seen since summer began, and making the acquaintance of the teachers they will have during the coming year. By the time of the teacher preparation days that precede school, no day passes without dozens of little hangers-on, sad for the ending of summer but anxious for a change.

Neil came back on campus August twenty-sixth. Evelyn Rawlings, the secretary, drew a sketch map. It wasn’t much of a campus. There was one old building in the California schools style, with broad expanses of window and wide eaves covering a concrete walkway. All four classrooms and the office faced outward. There was no hallway. North of that building and parallel to it was a quad made up of portable classrooms, and beyond that was an open playground. Off to the left was a high cyclone fence; beyond it was the elementary wing.

There were sixth, seventh, and eighth graders on Neil’s side of the fence. Neil would teach sixth grade language; the other language teachers, Carmen de la Vega and Pearl Richardson, taught seventh and eighth. Glen Ulrich taught math, Tom Wright taught P.E., Fiona Kelly taught science, and Donna Clementi taught history. There was a Spanish speaking aide, Delores Zavala, to help in the language classes. Clementi, Richardson, and de la Vega all had classrooms in the quad of portable classrooms. Neil had one of the four classrooms in the older building.

He found his room open and occupied by an extremely pregnant and extremely irritable woman. He knocked on the doorframe and said, “You wouldn’t be Gina Wyatt, would you?”

She wiped the sweat out of her eyes with the back of her hand and snapped, “And just why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, I was told that Mrs. Wyatt would be having her baby in July, so you must be somebody else.”

“That’s what the doctor told me, too, but he was wrong. And frankly, right now I wish I was someone else. Someone who wasn’t pregnant in August.”

“I’m Neil McCrae.”

“Congratulations. You inherit the oven.”

Neil came on into the room and looked around. There was more than the typical pre-school confusion. Gina had boxes scattered all about the room, perching on student desks and spilling over onto the floor. She was moving books, papers, games, bright paper cut-outs, and a hundred other things Neil could hardly identify from box to box in a systematic fashion. But the logic of the system behind her sorting evaded Neil.

One wall was made up of steel framed windows from waist to ceiling. The upper row of widows swung inward and the lowest row swung outward. Both rows of windows were jacked open as far as they would go and the door was open, but the other three walls were bare of windows and there was no cross-ventilation. The air seeped in the door and heat drove it out the upper windows, but it was a slow circulation despite the wind outside. The room was sickeningly hot. more Monday