I'd Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had (11 page)

I’m haunted by one particular research finding I learned during orientation, that students who don’t read over summer vacation can lose as much as a whole grade’s reading level. How can I make sure this doesn’t happen to my kids? The only way I can think of is to make them want to read on their own, and the only way to do that is to convince them that they enjoy reading. A tall order. I decide to get as creative with our reading drills as Northeast’s athletic coaches are on the practice field. If Howard can have fun kicking a ball, he can have fun with reading.

First I find short stories for them about sports and celebrities. Then one day I hear the kids talking about the movie version of
Twilight
. It dawns on me: teen romance and vampires. Irresistible. These books are written in the vernacular of their age group. They might not be great literature, but if I can get my students excited about reading vampire romances, that excitement just might spark a reading habit that continues even when they’re out of school. I get a deal on thirty copies of the first book in the Twilight series and plunk one down on every desk.

The volume’s door-stopper thickness is a shocker. “It’s four hundred ninety-eight pages!” Howard yelps in disbelief. But most of the girls are game and help me convince the boys. We’ll go slow. I have them read just three chapters a week, with quizzes on Fridays. I make study work sheets for
Twilight
just as I do for the regular books in the curriculum. The work sheets help to focus their attention on plotlines and help them understand what they’re reading, although no one except a few of the boys is having trouble with this book. The work sheets also help them prepare for my quizzes.

The point that
Twilight
helps me drive home is that books are more than boring print, more than strings of letters and pages to turn. “Books are stories,” I tell the class over and over. And
Twilight
is proof positive. This particular story, of forbidden and dangerous love between the sweet and innocent Bella and the bloodsucking but gentlemanly Edward, resonates with kids who are both attracted to and terrified by the opposite sex. As far-fetched as I find the story, I see why the kids get into it: they can relate. Even the boys start coming around. Eric Lopez breaks the ice and makes me look good when he openly admits he likes the book. Howard laughs at the love scenes, but he has no trouble with the quizzes. And he’s no longer complaining about Steinbeck as much.

Meanwhile, I’m also getting creative with our “real” work. On Halloween, I devote the entire class to my own special edition of Pictionary. Competing in teams, the kids have to draw scenes from everything we’ve read since the beginning of school, from creation myths to
Of Mice and Men
. Nakiya proves to be our virtuoso artist, illustrating “Theseus leaving Ariadne on the island” with a full-color cartoon. For fun, and to give them something to really lampoon, I throw in a few prompts from class, including “Eric Choi’s head lean” and “Mr. Danza.” For some mysterious reason, their drawings of me all have very big mouths.

When we finish reading
Of Mice and Men
, I’m faced with the prospect of my first major exam. As my quizzes have taught me, writing a test can be even more challenging for the teacher than taking it is for the students. My very first quiz, second week of school, asked the kids to name the elements of plot, to draw a plot diagram, to identify the hallmarks of a myth, and to write a twenty-word gist of a short story we had read. That day I was so proud of myself for working all this out that I practically skipped down the corridor, telling the other teachers, “I’m giving my first quiz.” They nodded or gave me a thumbs-up while not so subtly shaking their heads at the new guy. Since then my quizzes have taught me that accuracy counts long before the student gets anywhere near the test, and woe be to any teacher who misspells Theseus or confuses Anansi with Ashanti. The kids may not be able to answer every question correctly, but they’re sure to find every punctuation or spelling mistake
you
make on a question and rag on you about it for weeks. Also, the test can’t be too easy, and you can’t just “teach to the test.” The questions have to cover all the information you’ve been stressing in class, but they also have to require higher-level thinking. The test might ask them to discuss the concept of irony, for example, or to explain how a situation in a story gives them some insight into their own lives. Oh, and a little humor woven through the questions is always a plus, because the kids like it and it makes you feel clever. Tests, like every other aspect of the classroom, have to
engage the students
.

But a comprehensive exam is like a quiz on steroids. Because my Steinbeck exam is my first attempt at a unit test, I study quizzes and tests from the Internet and from my teachers’ textbooks as if I’m the one being tested. I ask some of the other English instructors what exactly they would include on the test. Their consensus is that students in the tenth grade should know the story, the characters, and vocabulary used in the book. But I also want my students to understand tone
and mood, imagery, and all the figurative language. I have to make this test my own.

The first section ends up being twenty questions on story points and background information. In the vocabulary section I use each target word in a sentence and ask for a choice of a corresponding word. To test command of figurative language, I pull passages from the book for the students to read and decide which literary term applies to each one. The final section asks them to describe the tone and mood of five different passages and decide which words appeal to which senses.

When the test is finally written, I feel good about it. Now to prepare the class. Again,
engage the students
. Creativity counts.

“Tomorrow,” I announce, “we’re going to do a final review for your
Of Mice and Men
exam.” As usual, groans and moans. I hold up my hand like a policeman. “Relax, the bunch of you. The review will be a scavenger hunt.”

They look at each other. Not everyone knows what a scavenger hunt is. I don’t explain, just break them into six teams and tell everybody to meet for class the next morning at the baseball bleachers behind school. After class I fill one paper bag for each team with a map of the school showing the test station locations, a passport with a picture of everyone on the team, a page for each challenge, a pack of Post-its, and two Sharpies. I fill burlap bags with sand and lean on Dr. G., the science teacher, to loan me a couple of his live hamsters to stand in for dead mice. I recruit teachers, guards, and anyone else I can nab to serve as “station monitors.”

The next morning rewards me with beautiful crisp October weather. Everybody’s present, and when they’ve assembled on the bleachers, I read out the basic rules. “At six different locations throughout the school you will meet challenges related to
Of Mice and Men
. When your team has passed each challenge, the station
monitor will stamp your passport and give you the clue to your next location. There is to be absolutely
no
running in the hallways, no loud or disruptive noise, and no leaving campus. Your team has to stay together, and all team members must be at the station when you complete the task in order to receive your stamp. Finally, each team must show integrity. You know what that means? That’s your word of the day.”

I’ve never seen these kids so energized by a class. As I hand each team their closed bag of equipment, they taunt each other. “You goin’ down!” “I got this one. The rest of you losers might as well quit now.” “Just you wait, man. I’ve got
skills
.” Competition is a drug, and when I blow the whistle for them to open the bags, read their first location clue, and get going, they’re like ponies out of the gate at Belmont. The rule against running is a lost cause.

Here are their first five challenges:

And while my students are tearing around the school, I stay on the baseball field and set up the final challenge—a game of horseshoes to play, just like the characters do in the book. Having worked up one of my best teacher sweats setting up the hunt, using a rolling desk chair as a dolly to move all the stuff around the school, I’m still
wet when the first team of scavengers comes screaming out the gym door.

“We won! We won!” You’d think there was a million-dollar purse attached to this victory. And much to my surprise, one of the members of this winning team is none other than I-can’t-remember and I-don’t-like-to-read Howard.

I could be a schmo about it and give him a hard time, but I raise a high five, and Howard meets it with a big grin. “Game’s not over yet,” I tell his team. “There’s still one more challenge, and the others aren’t far behind.”

We start playing horseshoes and don’t stop until the bell rings, by which time everybody, I most of all, feels like a winner. Tired, but a winner.

The next morning is test time, and another thing giving quizzes has taught me is that administering tests is its own art. As I patrol the class, I recall that when I was in school the nuns seemed to grow extra eyes in the backs of their heads for test days. Cheating was an exercise in futility. We could write the answers on our palms, slip cheat sheets up our sleeves, read our neighbors’ answers horizontally or upside down, but we always got caught. Those nuns had what teachers at my orientation called “with-it-ness.” However, being with it takes a few extra skills in the twenty-first century, when virtually every student carries a portable electronic device capable of instant messaging, texting, and data storage. Every classroom today is unofficially wired. Students will look you straight in the eye and pretend to be listening to you while texting blindly with the devices in their pockets. On regular days I have to punctuate every lesson with reminders, requests, and demands that kids take out their earbuds and put away cell phones. On test day, I have to be hypervigilant.

Still, I believe that my students really have absorbed their Steinbeck, and after class I’m elated to discover that almost everyone—including
Howard—has passed the test with flying colors. In between the fake dead mice and barley bags, it appears they’ve actually figured out the irony of George killing his best friend, Lennie, and why Steinbeck used that biblical tone. The biggest thrill for me is Al G, who pulls a ninety-one. When I give him back his results next morning, he smirks at me, and it’s definitely one of his best smirks.

F
OR THE PAST
two years the school has been planning to switch from free dress to uniforms this November. It’s Ms. Carroll’s decision, but the kids and some of the parents have fought her, and as the day of the switch approaches, they’re still up in arms. The kids see it as an infringement of their rights, and the parents are riled up over the expense of the uniforms. Now add to this a strong and unfair suspicion that the new policy has something to do with our show. I hear the grumbling: “Only reason we have to wear uniforms is because Tony Danza’s here.” That’s not true, but it is a sentiment that will linger all year.

I tell my class that, in solidarity with them, I will wear the same outfit every day, too. “I actually like the idea of uniforms, since it takes the worry out of what to wear,” I say. What I don’t tell my kids is that my uniform set me at odds with my production team, just as theirs sets them at odds with the school administration. When I went out to shop for my teacher clothes, the producers sent along an assistant who would phone back to the production office with my choices, which amounted to black shoes, gray pants and a belt, blue dress shirt, and a Northeast High School tie. Neat, easy, and classic, just like the kids’ uniforms. To get me through the year, I bought five pairs of identical slacks and six shirts, all of which passed muster. But then we came to the tie. A showdown over a tie! The producers were dead set against the neckwear, said it made me look stodgy and old-fashioned. I wouldn’t budge. To
me the tie signifies respect for the job of teaching and the students. It’s the way a teacher is supposed to dress. I won, which turned out to be a very good thing, since the boys’ uniform includes the same school tie.

“Viking pride, everybody!” I point at my uniform as kids pass me in the hall. “We’re all in this together.” This doesn’t even make a dent in their grumbling, but I feel good and I think I look good, too.

On the day the policy takes effect, any student not in uniform is directed to the auditorium, where I’ve been given monitor duty, thank you very much. I appear in the doorway, and more than a thousand kids boo me so loudly that I have to leave to make them stop.

Outside, I spot my student Pepper stopped at the security gate for a uniform violation. Pepper’s a small, quirky kid called by his last name because it describes his personality, but he’s not usually a troublemaker, so I go over to see what’s up. He’s wearing the khaki pants, white shirt, striped school tie, and dark sweater the code requires, but he has on the wrong color shoes. His tough luck that Ms. DeNaples happens to be monitoring that entrance. She points him toward the auditorium.

Pepper grins and tells her, “I have the right shoes in my backpack.”

“If you have the right shoes, why aren’t you wearing them?” Ms. D. demands.

Pepper doesn’t answer, but after he changes his shoes, he hands a small object to Ms. DeNaples saying, “This is for your trouble.”

She looks in her hand to see what he’s given her, and her face turns scarlet, then purple. Before he has time to blink, she’s on him, hauling him down to the office. I trail them at a safe distance, but they disappear into the principal’s office. No telling how long this will take, so I head back to the auditorium. A few minutes later I’m flagged down by a teacher who takes particular pleasure whenever administration has a “problem.”