Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (95 page)

They drink their milk. I have to take them to toilet recess. I have to watch them. No one goes unless they’re supervised. We watch them outside. If there’s too much monkey business, I have to go in and stop them. When they raise their hands in class, I let them go, even if they’re lying. I tell them, “If you’re lying and get in trouble, you won’t be able to go again.” So I hope they tell me the truth every once in a while.

About eleven ’, I give them an English workbook. I pass the free lunch tickets out about a quarter to twelve. Sometime during the day I give them stretching exercises. Sideways, then up and down, and we put our hands on our hips and heads up and so on. I’m good at it. I’m better than the kids.

I have reading groups. One is advanced, one is the middle, and one is the lowest. At a quarter to two we have our spelling—two words a day. Six words a week, really. If I did any more, it’s lost. I tried other ways, they did everything wrong. I didn’t scold them. I researched my soul. What am I doing wrong? I found out two words a day is just right. Spelling is a big deal. We break the words. We give them sentences. I try to make it last till two’. Fifteen, twenty minutes, that’s their attention span. Some days it’s great. Some days I can’t get them to do anything.

I take them to the toilet again because they’re getting restless. Again you watch them. From a quarter after to about two thirty we read together. I give them music, too. That’s up to me, up to my throat. They love music. I have it two, three times a week. At two thirty, if they’re good, I give them art. I make beautiful Valentines. We show them how to decorate it. And that’s the day. If they’re not good—if they scream and yell and run around —I don’t give them art. I give them work. If they’re not nice to me, I’m not going to be nice to them. I’m not going to reward them.

Three fifteen, they go home. You walk them all the way down to the door. You watch them all the way. (Laughs.) I go home. I’m never tired. I go shopping. I give every store on my way home a break. At twelve ’ I go shopping, too. I have to get away from the other teachers. They’re always talking shop.

I don’t take any work home with me. With these children, you show them their mistakes immediately. Otherwise they forget. When I’m home, I forget about school, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. I have never thought of being a principal. I have fulfilled my goal.

As for retirement, yes and no. I’m not sixty-five yet. (Laughs.) I’m not tired. It’s no effort for me. My day goes fast, especially when I go out the night before and have a wonderful time. I’m the original La Dolce Vita. If I have a good time, I can do anything. I can even come home at two, three in the morning and get up and go to work. I must have something on the outside to stimulate me.

There are some children I love. Some have looks and brains and personality. I try not to play favorites. I give each one a chance to be monitor. I tell them I’m their school mother. When I scold them, it doesn’t mean I hate them. I love them, that’s why I scold them. I say to them, “Doesn’t your mother scold you?”

These children baffle me. With the type of students we had before, college was a necessary thing, a must. They automatically went because their parents went. The worship of learning was a great thing. But these children, I don’t know . . . I tell them, “Mrs. Hoffman is here, everybody works.” Mr. Hoffman teases me: “Ah, ah, here comes Mrs. Hoffman, everybody works.” Working is a blessing. The greatest punishment I can give these children is not to do anything. If they’re bad, you just sit there and we fold our hands. I watch them. They don’t want a teacher, they want a watcher. I say, “Mrs. Hoffman is too dumb to do teaching and watching. If you want me to be a teacher, I’ll be glad to be a teacher. If you want me to be a watcher, I’ll have to watch you.”

The younger teachers have a more—what is their word?—relaxed attitude. It’s noisy and it’s freedom, where they walk around and do everything. I never learned to teach under conditions like that. The first rule of education for me was discipline. Discipline is the keynote to learning. Discipline has been the great factor in my life. I discipline myself to do everything—getting up in the morning, walking, dancing, exercise. If you won’t have discipline, you won’t have a nation. We can’t have permissiveness. When someone comes in and says, “Oh, your room is so quiet,” I know I’ve been successful.

There is one little girl who stands out in my mind in all the years I’ve been teaching. She has become tall and lovely. Pam. She was not too bright, but she was sweet. She was never any trouble. She was special. I see her every once in a while. She’s a checker at Treasure Island.
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She gives no trouble today, either. She has the same smile for everyone.

 

I’m a strict kind of teacher. When I say something to one student in a very quiet voice all the way across the room, I want it quiet enough to reach him. I don’t have to tell them to shut up very much. It’s self-enforced. †I make a lot of demands on my students and I get honestly angry if they don’t live up to their possibilities. The importance is not whether a teacher is strict. Is it for the kid’s benefit or is it to make his teaching role easier and not get involved? My idea of being a teacher is influenced by my idea of being a particular person. I’m dealing with a particular kid.

I don’t have any idea what any of them will end up being. So I’m an unsettled teacher in a classroom. A certain tenseness, nervousness about me because I don’t like facing a lot of kids who have the cards stacked against them. They catch on and have some hope and that helps a little.

It isn’t the kind of free school you read about. We’re involved in picking up basic skills that others have neglected to teach the kids. Some of them have feelings of rage, undefined, and they’re acting it out in school—dangerously. We try to calm them down.

In a neighborhood like ours it’s very dangerous. It’s low income and there are many ethnic groups. This community has experienced its war on poverty and hasn’t changed. The kids now don’t believe in politics. They don’t believe things will get better for them. There’s a feeling of hopelessness and despair.

They’re from ages six to seventeen. The age difference doesn’t really . . . Certainly a fifteen-year-old kid is not going to see an eight-year-old as his equal. But kids do throw off the age barrier and relate to each other as human beings. Because they see us doing the same with them.

The person’s who’s sixteen realizes he has a lot of catching up to do, work. He knows I’m not gonna embarrass him. Other kids are having the same problems. I discourage competition in the classroom. The only one I accept is the student’s competition with himself. He has to compete against where he is, against where he wants to be, and against where he has been. I think every kid understands that. They don’t have to prove anything to me. Each kid has to prove to himself that he’s worthwhile. There’s no cheating here. There’s no reason for it.

We’re not trying to jive ‘em into learning. We lay out powerful materials in front of them, and tell ’em they’re perfectly capable of doing it—and not to make any excuses about it. We use newspapers, too, and catchy urban stuff—but more as diversions. If you con someone into learning, you really believe they’re not capable of it. So we’re straightforward. Our learning materials are very hard. That’s tough.

I have some that may end up in college, but I don’t push them. I sent a boy to Latin School.
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He got a scholarship. He was so unhappy there he did everything he could until I took him back. I thought he would have everything to make him happy. Bright, colorful people who smelled of the security of success, friendly teachers, a magnificent building, all the books he could read. But he was missing something—friendship.

I don’t think they want to be doctors or lawyers. It’s not because they don’t know. It’s that they have no expectations. Some have vague feelings of wanting to be teachers. They aren’t interested in professional roles. See? They just want the security of working—a steady job. Something their parents haven’t had in Chicago. These kids are living out their parents’ hopes. It’s popular today to look at success of minority groups in terms of upward mobility. I don’t know that upward mobile groups are so happy.

The majority of our parents are on welfare. When they screw up, they get ashamed and hide from us. The family’s falling apart and we’ve known them for a long time. They can’t face the fact. They know it doesn’t have to be as bad as it gets sometimes. They know what they’re capable of.

We only get to know the families if they want to know us. If a kid doesn’t want us involved, we trust that that’s the best thing for him, that somehow he needs us all to himself, not to share with his family. If there’s a real problem between the kid and his family, the greatest respect we can show him is not to get involved. To give the kid a chance to pull himself out by himself. We trust the kid enough to be an autonomous individual. Hopefully, if he feels better about himself, the family will pick up on that. Very often the kids become effective—quote—therapists—unquote—in the family situation. One kid has carried the major load in helping his father get through some difficulties.

I try to be fairly aware of their feelings. Sometimes I feel guilty that I identify too much. I always let them know when they touch on my feelings, and what those feelings are like. I think children are unaware of what adult’s feelings are like. Some of these kids that I’ve taught for a while—I’ve had some for four years—who are sixteen and seventeen, are getting a taste of those feelings. On the other hand, adolescents have new feelings, different from the ones I had when I was their age. So they’re willing to share my feelings as an adult, because they know that I know they have new kinds of feelings. Maybe that’s the pain—trying to share it with them. They’re reaching across and trying to touch something they’ve never experienced before —adulthood. In a specific situation of urban life—poverty.

In my school the teachers have the decision about who they want to take or not. No administrator does that. He decides what he wants to teach and how he teaches it. My only requirement, as an administrator, is that he teaches well.

Our classes are segregated by sex. It’s easier for them to study. They don’t have to play out the traditional sexual roles demanded of them in the neighborhood. They’re not secure in being men, so they play at being rough around their women. They have to be. The girls overact and become overseductive and overteasing. We give them a chance to have one place in their lives where they can put aside these roles. Our students have a chance to become more natural in their sex roles as they get away from the defenses that their parents have felt.

We spend so many hours here. Our lives, fortunately or unfortunately. It’s very hard for us to get away from it. My work is everything to me. I find myself trying to get an hour or two of personal life now and then—in vain. I’d rather die for my work life than for my personal life. I guess you can’t really separate them. The school’s not an institution. We have a building, that’s where the school exists. But it also exists when we leave.

We often work after six. The people we work for—the National Institute of Mental Health—once wanted us to do an honest time sheet. After they saw our honest time sheet they said, “Just please put in eight hours a day on the time sheet.” (Laughs.) Weekends? What weekends? (Laughs.) I work Saturday morning, writing letters, administrative details. I usually work Sunday afternoons and Sunday evenings.

My first year I taught at an all-black school on the South Side. I worked with a very strong woman teacher who was well liked by the students. I picked up a lot of her strength. My second year I was on my own and very unhappy. The students were holding back and I was holding back. I couldn’t get involved in their lives and they couldn’t in mine. We were playing roles. It was like a polite dance. I liked them, they liked me. We both knew there was a great deal missing.

I have to have complete freedom in what I’m going to teach, and what words I use in the classroom. If I want to cuss at them for something, I cuss at ‘em. A certain kind of cussing is an emotional release. If I want to discuss intimate matters with them, I want to be free to do so without justifying it to an administrator. I want to go to the parent’s house and scream and yell at ’em if I feel that’s gonna shape the kid up.

If I see the day’s gonna be a rotten day because everybody’s in a lousy mood, I want the freedom to pick up and go someplace and not pretend it’s going to be an okay day. I don’t tell them, “Let’s be happy today, have fun.” Sometimes I say the opposite. (Laughs.) I say, “I’m very unhappy today and we’re not gonna have fun, we’re gonna work.” They pull me out of it. And when they’re in a lousy mood, they don’t hide it. They certainly let me know it.