Tennyson Street School: jolly
Jolly: (adj) joyful, lighthearted, as a jolly good fellow
“C’mon! Just read it! It’s not that hard!”
My head snapped up, having been tucked into my new cubicle world reading program details and watching training videos. “Teachers and administrators should send messages that intelligence is fluid….”
I listened to the hubbub on the other side of the whiteboard wall.
“C’mon you guys! You can’t be doing that! SSSHHH!”
Her voice had that exhausted nasal inflection of abused substitute teachers all across America. I knew that voice well; no matter what words came out, that voice said, “I am so over this – why am I even here?”
Worse, for generations, what kids in U.S. classrooms have heard that voice say is, “I have no idea what I’m doing.”
I had no idea what I was doing, certainly. I was no teacher. My work background included dark poetry readings, downtown supper club singing, labor market surveys for employment rehabilitation services, addiction counseling, leading a recovery art group, and long talks with filthy, beautiful people who were homeless – social work, in the end. Without the MSW. A more organic career path, if you will.
My labor market surveys could have told you that on-the-job training is the most effective, and they’d be absolutely right. Nevertheless, here I was, listening to my fellow Fellow trample the program model shining at me from my laptop.
“We implemented five correlates of effective charter schools described in ….” My eyes blurred past the study authors’ names, focusing on “…human capital…and a culture of high expectations….”
Despite my lack of an advanced degree, I had always agreed that professional standards matter. I not only carried high expectations for the students, but always had for myself, and for my colleagues. We’re supposed to be that “human capital” enriching the social and educational work. We’re not just the muscle; we’re the money we put where our mouth is.
I switched screens to look at the guidance on “learning environment.” This training explained the clean organization of my cubicle space, using “word walls” and “agendas” and “anchor charts” to give the students supports to organize their own learning. “Belief in one’s own ability can lead to accomplishments great and small; it can push a struggling student to persevere.”
“No, NO! That’s not what I told you to do! Why don’t you listen?!”
MSW or no, I was hearing interactions that were pushing my professional buttons. I fought myself not to jump up and intervene.
Because this was my first day.
“Knock it OFF!” My alarm grew. I saw candy wrappers and torn paper beneath my whiteboard wall. Her kids had begun to wander, to the trash can, to sharpen pencils that they’d intentionally broken the leads off of, leaving the room without taking one of the hall passes hanging beside the door. At the end of their tutoring session, the kids hid in our bookshelves and under the cabinets in a hyperactive 10-second version of hide-and-seek. Then they ran down the hall without her. And came back into the room, pawing through her books and papers, looking for treats.
Trailer Park Babysitter. When you are a young single parent, you often resort to Any Live Body to watch your kids so you can go to work. You find a babysitter near where you live, or on the way to work, someone who doesn’t cost much, is always there, and will feed them. You correct bad habits they pick up from the Trailer Park Babysitter, like swearing, or incorrect grammar.
The Trailer Park Babysitter can be anyone – they’re not confined to actual trailer parks. Mine was in a licensed childcare center where I’d found this “teacher” frustratedly balancing her checkbook as a roomful of toddlers ran about unsupervised – now including my toddler. I’d had to stop at the office and let the director of the center know before I had hurried to work, now running late.
My sadness about Trailer Park Babysitters is that once upon a time, they wanted to do this important work, to watch over tiny people with big eyes and developing minds and infinite futures. And then, they got overwhelmed – because so many of us need them, to care for our kids without being paid enough to really care…for so many kids….alone.
It’s a system in crisis, from preschool to senior year, if kids make it that far. Struggling families find the system wasn’t designed for us, smart hardworking single parents with brilliant mouthy kids, or grandparents raising grandbabies on Social Security incomes and the best stories they can come up with about why Mom or Dad aren’t around, or parents with legal histories that limit their options to re-enter a society that will never let them believe their debt is paid.
American public education has needed emergency responders as much as teachers. So schools have brought in school resource officers, cops who park their squad cars at the curb and try to build trust even as gangs and drugs slither through the hallways. School shootings bring frantic parents to their knees. Schools give offices to psychologists. They practice emergency lockdown procedures.
Into this combat zone arrive Americorps, Teach For America, and programs like the Denver Fellows. The typical candidate is a young, idealistic recent college grad ready for a teaching career. But the Fellows will also bring you on if you are a retiree, or someone making a midlife career change. That’s right – the Fellows take people like me, one carefully-crafted resume away from what bears all the hallmarks of a midlife crisis.
But with years of emergency response training.
Trailer Park Babysitter did not fare better as Lunchroom Monitor. She sat facing outward on the bench of one of the lunch tables, hollering and pointing at kids across the room. Our third fellow, Shakespeare’s own Juliet come to life as a young woman named Chloe, took a deep breath, and then, eyes widening, pantomimed to me to quickly put my fingers in my ears, as Lunchroom Monitor’s critical, sarcastic voice finally gave way to the repeated blasts of her shrill silver coach’s whistle, echoing and deafening in the lunchroom.
“WHAT – DID – I – SAY!?! THAT – WOMAN – IS – TALKING – TO – YOU!!! YOU – WILL – LISTEN – WHEN – SHE – TALKS – TO – YOU!!!”
To be clear, I wasn’t the one talking to any of the students. I had stationed myself quietly at the exit doors, corralling midsize stragglers and escapees; the kids at this lunch were in fourth and fifth grades. A “para,” the paraprofessional staff who help throughout the school, had been attempting to talk with one of the boys being pointed at; he was having a hard time hearing her over the roar as she tried to get his attention.
Now we all looked up in simultaneous consternation. The lunchroom quickly decided Lunchroom Monitor’s screaming could be interpreted as, “FREEFORALL!!!”
Lunchroom Monitor upped the ante by demanding the boy do something – which the boy of course refused to do.
“GO TELL THE OFFICE!” she screamed – at me.
I assume I looked puzzled. Or startled. “Tell the office…?”
“TELL THEM CARLOS NEEDS A FIRST RESPONDER NOW!”
Oh how I agreed. I nodded and stepped through the open exit doors. But just then, she saw an experienced-looking teacher passing those doors in the hall.
“HEY!! HEYYY!! COME HERE!!!” she screamed at the teacher. The teacher immediately frowned and walked into the storm. “HE CALLED ME ‘YOUR HIGHNESS!’ HE SAID, ‘YES YOUR HIGHNESS!’” The teacher got between them and had Lunch Monitor step back, sit down.
The teacher turned to Chloe and me. “Would one of you go to the office?”
I went to complete my office mission.
“Hi,” I said to the secretary.
“Hi…,” she said, not sure if maybe she might recognize me.
“I was on lunch duty, and I’m supposed to tell you, ‘Carlos needs a first responder’? I’m not sure–”
“Carlos Menendez? All right.”
I shrugged, open hands half-lifted, having no idea if that was the right Carlos, and returned down the hall to the lunchroom as a woman who must have been the First Responder strode past me. She met up with Carlos, the teacher from the hall, and the para, as Lunch Monitor slowly retreated out the side door. The Shakespearean tempest blew itself out. I had just met Miranda, like Prospero’s daughter in that play. If Prospero had raised her in a trailer park.
Enter Commanding Teacher. With the simple words, “Hey! My crew!” half the heads in the lunchroom swiveled immediately in her direction.
“Not okay! Line – up. Now!”
And they did. She led them out the exit to her classroom.
I heaved a sigh of relief. Chloe walked back over to my side.
“Did she really yell “HEY! HEY!” at that teacher?” I rehashed.
“At the Dean of Students,” she corrected me, eyebrows arched.