I'd Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had (25 page)

However, the boys need their calculators, which have already been collected, and to retrieve them I have to go to the storeroom next to Chuck Carr’s office. I sneak in and grab a couple of calculators. Coming out, I try to be inconspicuous, but Mr. Carr spots me.

“What the hell are you doing?” he demands.

“I have two boys who didn’t complete the math section and I was going to give them some extra time to—” That’s as far as I get.

Mr. Carr unloads on me. “Are you trying to sabotage these results, Mr. Danza?”

“I was just trying to be helpful,” I say weakly.

“If this were the real PSSA and someone were to report you, Mr. Danza, the whole test could be nullified. Do you have any idea what that would mean?” He snatches the calculators from my hand and storms back into his office.

After a moment, I follow and try to apologize. “Mr. Carr, I thought I was helping, but I should have known better. I am so sorry.”

He collects himself, and then lets his guard down. This test, he admits, has everybody a little unhinged, but he feels personally responsible for the results. “I work my butt off to make it run smooth so we’re in a position to do well. Any impropriety, no matter how innocuous, could be disastrous. Do you remember what was going on last week with the principal and the letters in the mailboxes?”

I nod sheepishly.

“To tell you the truth,” he continues, “I’m not sure what the PSSA tells us about the school’s performance, but it’s the policy and my job is to get it done without a hitch.”

I push my luck. “Do you oppose the testing, then?”

His expression flickers, as if he wants to be honest but knows better. “Let’s just say it’s not like the old days.”

After the PSSAs are administered for real, I’ll come to share Mr. Carr’s doubts. Despite gains in every category except writing, we fail yet again to make our AYP target. Now called an Empowerment School—talk about a euphemism!—Northeast moves a step closer to Renaissance School status and receives even tighter scrutiny from the district and the state. Under “corrective action” we get more professional development meetings, more “walk-throughs” by district auditors, more student assessments in reading and math, and more pressure to “perform.” All of our parents are notified that the school did not make Adequate Yearly Progress and that they have the opportunity to move their children elsewhere. The other teachers tell me they’re constantly under the microscope, which is both exhausting and counterproductive. Kids learn better when classes are fun, and how can teachers make education fun when they feel humiliated and have the district constantly breathing down their necks?

The kicker is that our scores may be pulled down by kids who don’t even go to the school. When Linda Carroll addresses the staff, she says we’ve made AYP as far as she’s concerned. Without coming right out and complaining, she alludes to an unfair process that “credits” Northeast for all the kids in our designated region, even if they’re not enrolled in our school.

It turns out that there are two ways students are attributed to a school: participation and performance. We’re always able to meet the participation requirement because Chuck Carr identifies and locates all the kids living within Northeast’s boundaries who’ve been reassigned to disciplinary schools or programs like the one Phil, my Wanderer, went to. Mr. Carr also tracks down any IEP (Individualized Education Program) students in our area who’ve been placed in
other schools to accommodate their needs. And he makes sure all these subgroup kids take the PSSA.

The trouble is that these kids’ performance also affects Northeast’s AYP. These students might never have walked through our doors, but their scores are attributed to our school. Other teachers tell me that the attributed students’ performance always has a negative impact on our scores. No wonder inner-city schools can’t win.

Ten
 

O
UR FIRST DAY BACK
after spring vacation, I greet the class with a do-now assignment to write about something that happened to them over the break. When they get up to read their work, most of the kids describe family outings, or parties that were “raging.” But then Daniel, my varsity defensive tackle, volunteers to tell us his story.

“ ‘The first day of vacation it was raining,’ ” he reads. “ ‘I thought I heard a cry from out in our backyard. It was raining hard so I didn’t investigate, but next morning it was nice out, so I went into the backyard and had a look around. I heard the cry again and next to the fence I found a tiny little kitten. It was all wet, it was crying and it looked so hungry.’ ” As he describes the kitten, Daniel gently cups his huge hands under his chin and pretends to hold the creature he rescued. His mouth curls into a meow. His sad, dark eyes plead with the ceiling. Daniel is pushing two forty and the sight of him playing this imaginary kitten defines incongruity. “ ‘I named it Fluffy.’ ” He sighs.

We’re all watching this, mesmerized, when big Howard, of all people, calls out, “Hey, Mr. Danza, doesn’t Daniel remind you of that Lenny guy with the dead mouse from
Of Mice and Men?”

Yeah!

He really does!

Hey, Lenny, don’t let the cat get your mouse!

Daniel lowers his hands and smiles, but I’m the one who’s grinning. They read Steinbeck
months
ago. That’s a lifetime in kid years. I cannot believe they remember. Is it possible that I’m actually doing something right?

Leave it to Charmaine to bring me back to earth. For the umpteenth time, she strides into class late, and when I ask what’s kept her, she tosses her head and mutters, “I had to talk to somebody.”

It’s her attitude that does it. She won’t look at me. She juts out her chin and slams down her backpack, then drops into her seat as if she’s doing us all a favor. Nakiya and Tammy have seen enough. They lean toward me, fists clenched the way mine are when I’m watching a boxing match. I can feel them thinking,
Do it, Mr. Danza!

All right, then. “Charmaine, that’s a pink slip,” I say to the silent approval of the Greek chorus.

For just a moment Charmaine’s mouth falls open in surprise, but then she catches herself and puts back on her tough face. “I was right outside the door. I wasn’t even that late.”

“This isn’t the first time, Charmaine, and I’ve warned you.” I’m trying to be authoritative, but she shuts down and won’t give me anything else.

This is the first pink slip I’ve ever given, and I don’t really know how it works, so I go on with my class and afterward take the slip down to my SLC office. Lynn Dixon informs me, “Charmaine’s dean is Ms. Karpinski. I’ll get it to Ms. K., but watch yourself.” Ms. Karpinski is famous in the school as a teacher and dean who’s as tough as her name. She brooks no nonsense from either students or faculty, and she’s one of the more skeptical about my being at Northeast. The prospect of mixing with her unnerves me, but I tell myself I’m only doing what I’m supposed to.

The next day a student I don’t know brings my pink slip back to me with a note from Ms. Karpinski: “Mr. Danza, please list the consequences for this student’s actions. Are you assigning a detention?”

It’s news to me that I have to decide the punishment, but detention sounds about right. In my day, kids who got in trouble routinely went to detention hall after school; the teacher on duty handled whatever was supposed to happen to kids in detention. Assuming the same deal applies at Northeast, I return the slip with Charmaine’s assignment—my first detention.

The first rule of teaching should be, Never assume. I’m well on my way to a major dressing-down from Ms. Karpinski when Lynn Dixon saves me. “What did you do about Charmaine?” she asks when we meet for SLC.

“Detention!” I say, sounding like a kid who’s just gotten his driver’s license.

“When are you doing it?”

“What do you mean when am I doing it? I sent the pink slip back to Ms. Karpinski.”

Ms. Dixon shakes her head. “Tony, Ms. Karpinski has nothing to do with administering the punishment. That’s your job. Every teacher handles his or her own detentions.”

“You mean if I give a detention, I have to be there? Don’t the kids just go to some detention place?” I’m picturing the portable classroom where I found Al G doing his in-school suspension at the beginning of the year. I’d have been (selfishly) better off giving Charmaine an in-school suspension! Talk about a backward policy.

But the realization that detention penalizes the teacher as much as the student is quickly overshadowed by my relief at not having to deal with Ms. Karpinski. I thank Lynn profusely and track down Charmaine.

We arrange to hold her detention in my classroom before school
the next day. She arrives at 7:15 exactly, plunks herself in a seat, and glowers at me through her black-rimmed glasses. She’s a mix of contradictions, this girl, and they all show up in her wardrobe. Those glasses make her look like the smart, serious student she could be, but her ruffled blouse and black jumper suggest a little girl. Her hair is slicked back and held down with pink barrettes, and around the hem of her dress she’s stuck pins with sayings like
I
ICE CREAM
and
EYE CARE ABOUT YOU
. And finally, there are those mismatched socks. It’s no accident, I think, that Charmaine read Michael Jackson’s “Child of Innocence” for the poetry contest.

I pull a seat around to face her, and after a little small talk I ask, “How long do you think you’re going to be in school?”

She answers with sullen emphasis, “Forever!”

“No, you’re not.” I stretch my arms out wide, hands pointing forward. “Here is your life.” Now I bring my right hand in close to the left. “This is the time you spend in school. In the scheme of your whole life, it’s not really very much, right?” Charmaine gives a shrug. “The catch,” I continue, “is that what you do here in this one little piece of your life can make a really big difference in everything else that happens.” I open my arms again and wave at her with my right hand. “And you don’t want to be over here later in your life, looking back, saying, ‘Why didn’t I make the most of it back when everything was possible?’ ” Then I add, “Like somebody else we know.”

Charmaine plays with one of her pins and tries to hide her smile, but I’m pretty much in her face. “You and I both know that you can be a good student,” I tell her. “What you need to understand is that you can also have fun. It’s not one or the other. You don’t have to choose between learning and being a kid. You have the time and the opportunity now to find your passion. But you’ve got to set your priorities and budget your time. Before you know it, you’ll be on your own. You’ll need the knowledge and skills that your teachers
are trying to help you learn. Why can’t you be the one in your family that everyone is proud of and looks up to?”

I’m lecturing now, and she’s not really liking it, but she can’t help but hear me. “Remember what I told you guys way back at the beginning of the year?” I ask her. “Most people don’t aim too high and miss …”

It takes a minute, but grudgingly she finishes the line. “They aim too low and hit.”

“See that? You
do
pay attention! And I know you know your Michael Jackson. What’s that last line of ‘Child of Innocence’?”

She scrunches up her face as she runs the whole poem through her mind. “Um, ‘To change this world is my deepest desire.’ ”

I give her a second before asking, “Do you agree with that? Is it your deepest desire to change this world?”

“I don’t know.”

I sit back and fold my arms. “You know what, Charmaine? I think you do know. You chose that poem for a reason, and I think that line there is the reason. Why wouldn’t you want to change the world? Why shouldn’t it be you? If you just give yourself the chance, I know you can do it.”

The first bell rings, and the building hums with movement. As Charmaine starts to gather up her backpack, I put out my hand and point to the pin that reads
EYE CARE ABOUT YOU
. “I really do care about you, you know.”

She smiles and says, “Yes, Mr. Danza.”

O
VER THE NEXT
few days, the tenor of the class shifts. I nod approvingly as everyone, Charmaine included, arrives more or less on time. They find their seats, and stay in them. Everyone participates. One day after the break between our two periods, Ben-Kyle looks
around and exclaims, “Hey, we’re all here!” The kids applaud themselves. This can’t last, I think.