Am I Mo Imus? Sub Teaching in NYC public schools...
(From the archives--Saturday, May 19, 2007)
One of my most recent writing mentors, Marcelle Clements, a brilliant author and journalist who can think, speak and make me laugh as she scans her shelves and puts her finger on books for me to read, gave me advice that I find myself repeating often. It’s my last gut check before I consider folding and leaving the writing table. "It's not a matter of whether or not you have the talent," she said. "It's a matter of how long you can withstand the humiliation."
Today, it was as if the police hooked up the hoses to the fire hydrants and sprayed me with it. One more time.
As a writer living the dream, humiliation comes in two forms: First, the rejection letters and emails that make the dating game seem like a ride on a gondola. Second, disgrace often accompanies any part-time and meaningless job you have to take in order to make ends meet while you spend hours every day honing your craft, half of which you spend wondering how the hell you ever convinced yourself that you could do this, eat and remain sane.
One of the dead-end jobs my sister told me not to take occurred last spring, when I took a waitressing job at an Irish pub. Within three weekends, I got canned.
Check that for a moment (and post a comment if you want the details of the waitressing gig). For now, let me digress. Recently I was hanging out with my friend Hugh, a loyal, bright and entertaining former student-athlete at Northwestern. Hugh and I were talking about a guy who might work on the short of my movie. I told Hugh about an offensive, inappropriate and just plain stupid remark this guy on staff made to me, which was along the lines of “You are crazy to think you can do any of this, sweetie.”
Hugh said, “Mo, ass-can that clown."
Going back to my waitressing job, as my manger advised that maybe it wasn’t the place for me, I had myself believing I quit, ruling out the possibility that I got fired. How the hell would a hard-working Maureen Holohan--a tall Irish girl with freckles and red hair, who was often found smiling in the front room with my set of new teeth, in a pub where you could throw food on the table and no one would care--how would she get fired? I had asked my boss for the proof of my flaws: “Am I not hitting the tables hard enough? Is my timing off? Do I need better wrist action when I pour?" Despite my pathetic plea—a request I made through clenched teeth—I was the one feeling as if I got more than fired.
I got ass-canned.
Since ripping off my apron and vowing to never wear it again, I've taken gigs writing cover letters and marketing brochures, and have held those jobs. I babysit. I give basketball lessons. Yet the hardest job I've ever had in my life begins anywhere from 5:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. After going to bed anywhere around 3 a.m., I hear the vibration of my cell phone against my desk, and I leap toward the light. I groan a hello, and hear my friend, the Sub Finder, an automated phone system.
"Hello," she says in a pleasant computer voice. "This is the Sub Finder for the New York City Department of Public Education. We have a job available. Please enter your access ID."
Bleary eyed, I punch in my six digits, mistype, do it again, and listen to my location for the day. I beg to hear LaGuardia, a heavenly school filled with kind, driven, passionate students who adore the arts and don't treat sub teachers like pinatas. But I know that their secretary always calls directly when she needs a sub, so I sit and wait, and on my scale of 1 to 10, one being the worst, 10 the best, I hope for a school I’ve taught in and ranked around a 4-7. If it falls above a 4, I know I can bring my computer and not worry about kids accidentally throwing it around the room like a football. As an Upper West Sider, I don't mind teaching up in Harlem, and sometimes enjoy it, except that the train ride can sometimes be longer than I'd prefer, especially when Ms. Sub Finder says you have all of 25 minutes to make it in on time. I usually roll out of bed and resist my urge to put on a sports bra, force myself to put on the more professional one with cups, grab a shirt and a pair of pants, and hope they match. I pull back my hair and wrap it in a frizzy pony tail, put my feet in shoes chosen on the basis that, by wearing them, I can move if I need to grab a kid or run from one. These are shoes I need to be in when I work at the closest and most convenient school, the notorious Public High School X.
Prior to my first day of walking through security, I had heard about the tumultuous, and in some instances, violent reputation of Public School X, yet I was not entering unfamiliar territory. In addition to my two years of full-time teaching experience in a private middle school, during my junior year in college, I did a 10-week internship teaching 10th grade English at a Chicago Public High School. I've also played ball or chased down stories in some of the poorest housing projects in the nation. One story I reported from the police station within one of the most dangerous high-rises in Chicago. As I walked down the sidewalk to the entranceway, a gauntlet of sorts—police officers stationed at the unit told me they used to run to and from their cars during gang wars—never in my life have I felt so many hard, suspicious eyes on me. Walking through the metal detectors is par for the current state of inner city education; however, walking through X’s first floor, occupied by of one of the city’s regional security units, a nest of dozen's of officials and police officers, made me feel as though I was going into a prison.
With copies of my resume in hand, I listened to the security officer’s advice and walked from school to school, as Public School X is now broken down into five schools instead of one dangerously enormous one. The first principal I ran into wanted me to stay for a two-hour student presentation as a way “to get to know her students,” and I thought, not unless you pay me. Then she said to me, “You do know that we call sub teachers stunt doubles.” I asked why. “Nobody respects you and it’s dangerous.”
I led her to believe that I would stop back, and willingly sit and listen to get some insight on the intricacies of the inner-city child, who, apparently for some reason, along with an alarming and increasing number of suburban and parochial kids, seem to have a difficult time adhering to what should be a bipartisan educational philosophy: Be prepared, sit down, shut up, and do what your told.
When I reached another school with an inspirational name, and said I was interested in sub teaching, a man in a suit looked at me and said, “What do you teach?” I told him English. “When can you start?” I said now. He glanced at my resume, handed it off to the secretary, told me about an emergency leave situation by a 9th grade English teacher. “Can you fill in for one to three weeks?” I said yes. “Be back tomorrow at 8 a.m.”
For the next two-and-a-half weeks I had the pleasure of teaching 9th grade English. Anywhere from 15-30 kids showed up per class, attendance seemed to range anywhere from 40 percent on a good day, 80 percent if the kids really wanted to put you through hell. My classroom, though filled with posters shouting excellent advice for English class, had an ancient chalkboard, no windows and thin partitions separating me from the social studies teacher next door. The kids came in sloppy—loud, frustrated, out of control, cussing, junk food in hand, clothes hanging off them, bags dragged behind. Some of them cheered at the thought of having a sub. Others made odd computer or animal noises over my voice when I spoke. When I raised my voice, they laughed in my face, and spewed at me: “Who the fuck do you think you are?...Don’t mother fucking talk to me like that…You don’t know who you’re talking to.”
I quickly learned that I had to adjust my game because raising my voice and acting tough and firm was creating a series of avalanches. I finally got the kids to start reading the play I had dug out of my purse when no lesson had been provided. Thirty minutes before my first class, I asked the principal if I could put together lesson for the controversial “Take Me Out,” a story about a baseball player who announces he’s gay, and tie it in to that week’s announcement about John Amachi, a former NBA player, being the first former NBA player to publicly admit his homosexuality. The principal agreed, enthusiastically. It didn’t hurt that he was gay.
The play caused an immediate uproar amongst most of the kids. I was told by another teacher that minority students, especially what he said were the more religious Latinas, have a tougher time with issues of homosexuality, and he advised that I need to carefully monitor what I said and did. Irritated, I told him that aside from there being no biblical proof that Jesus would condemn a homosexual, if English teachers can read stories about murder, rape, theft and greed, then they should certainly be allowed to teach a lesson about sexuality, diversity and tolerance, which might speak directly to at least an estimated 10 percent of the class. He warned me again. After two days, I noted that the play was a problem only for kids who bitched and moaned about hating school, teachers, homework—by students who refuse to read, sit up straight, take out a pen or do anything that remotely resembled learning. I offered a part of the lead to one student, who looked around and said, “I’m not being no gay guy. Fuck that shit.”
I told the same student that he would be a natural in the role of Shane Mungitt, an ignorant bigot who takes his anger out on the mound (and ends up killing a batter).
He scoffed at me, put his head down on his desk, and fell asleep.
Finally having gotten half the kids under control, the door banged open. I told the kids to keep reading as I quietly and calmly approached a girl and her friend, who wandered in with a bag of chips and a soda, 20 minutes late, licking their fingers. As they wandered around the room, smiling and brushing up against a few boys, I said, “Please take a seat.” One glared at me and said, “Why you gotta shit on me?” I replied, “I did not say or do anything that involved shitting, but I did say, politely and calmly, ‘Please take a seat.’”
“Fuck school,” said the tall, freckled boy in the front row. His phrase of the day, and possibly his life, came out of his mouth at least 10 times at the beginning of class. I started ignoring him around the fifth time, refusing to look at his smiling face and ask him to stop again. We made it through the class, although for most of it, the kids were so loud while we were reading a play that I could not hear the cast. At the end of the class, the classroom emptied and I told myself that I might have to compromise at this point in my life, and marry the last guy who proposed to me: Alaji, a 5’2” Arab oil tycoon from Yemen. He said I could call him Al.
Then I turned around, looked at the board and saw the words, “Fuck school.”
I’m going to give Public School X a rating of 2 on a scale of one to ten. Two indicates the twenty-percent of students whose eyes occasionally get pissed at others around them when they’re trying to learn. They stand a shot and might make it in the real world. The rest will someday find out that they will be forced to comply, an unlikely concept given their reckless and fearless behavior habits just a few years shy of days when they’ll be asked to follow orders. Or they will opt to survive by any means necessary.
And as much as people want to say that all kids treat sub teacher’s like dirt and do not work when they’re under their supervision, I heard the social studies teacher in the room next to me. He was a kind, firm, bright white man, who had a model voice—he never screamed or yelled, he remained steady and in loyal to his job—and I still could hear the kids talking over him. Teachers at Public School X are as heroic, in a class only behind doctors and nurses, and fire fighters, police officers and military figures. Whenever other teachers heard my class getting out of control, they ran across the hallway, entered and did what they could to put out some of the fires. Kids often turned and cursed them out, and even mocked the principal as he stood right in front of them. One girl told the police officers who walked in, upon my desperate request, to go fuck themselves. Through it all, the teachers, living on the front-line everyday, knowing the odds are stacked against them, did not relent.
It makes me sick to read articles on teachers being accountable for the success of their students. I would love for politicians to walk into a school disguised as a sub teacher and try and deal with students like Pancake, a 300 lb. white kid with a red mohigan and wire-rimmed glasses. The class roster revealed that his formal name is Robert, but he said he would only answer to Pancake. For 12 out of my 15 days teaching his class, if he came to class, he never once took out a pen or pencil or followed along in an entire lesson plan I made up due to a teacher’s emergency leave. When I spoke to him, trying to get him on board, he told me to leave him the fuck alone; he laughed at me, ignored me, blurted out noises. Between classes, I tried befriending him, strategically hoping to make him an ally by talking about football. He blew smoke about how he was going to leave this shitty school and go play football for a team up in Harlem, where he lives. We bonded and left the afternoon on a positive note, until the next day when Pancake, like most unpredictable and moody teenagers, turned into a tornado of emotional distress and misery.
One of the greatest highlights during my first long teaching gig was when Pancake got into trouble at home, or possibly with a potential football coach, and he had to have a sheet signed by his teacher every day, with notes on his performance. He eagerly approached me at the end of class, and surprisingly, for the first time in weeks, he actually had a pencil. He extended it to me, smiled, kept telling me how great he was in class, and asked me to sign it. I said I would, I did, and then I told him that I needed him to do me a favor during tomorrow’s class. He begged me to tell him. I refused.
Pancake showed up the next day, asking me what’s up, so I put him to work building an inner square of chairs for students who would be reading Much Ado About Nothing. I told Pancake how intelligent I knew he was, and how much I needed a smart, confident student like him to play the role of Benedict, a savvy, smooth bachelor, not wiling to give up his freedom or money to any woman. I told him how important it was for him to be cocky and arrogant when he clashes with Beatrice, a sassy feminist who refuses to be used as property by men. He shrugged, sat down, and jumped right into the part. During one moment during class, it was so quiet and tranquil, and almost everyone was either reading or following along. Then as the language grew more dense, I had the cast pause as I summarized the lines and broke down the story. “What we have going on here is Beatrice fighting the tradition of girls and women being forced into marriages to increase her father’s wealth and power, and build a stronger family legacy. Beatrice knows of the struggles women have with powerlessness and boredom. And what do women do when they’re bored?
“Masturbate,” Pancake said.
I’m not exactly sure if Pancake was sure as to whether this answer was a thought that passed through his mind or a statement that came out of his mouth in a low voice that only the inner square of characters, and myself, heard. Thrilled that one of my most difficult students finally listened to me and participated in a class discussion, I said enthusiastically, “Thank you, Pancake.”
Unfortunately things weren’t so funny when I went in to teach last Thursday. The good news is that when most of X’s 9th graders see me and hear me say hello, they respond with brief eye contact, a glare, a smile, a “Hey, you’re back” or a “Hi, Ms. H.” I do my best to foster a positive interaction with the kids, which requires a calm demeanor and a call for entertainment on occasion. One time I did basketball tricks in front of the entire class. This won their respect for all of seven minutes. Another time I told them stories about my dog in Israel, named Itchy. I told the boys about how I beat Kevin Garnett in a game of HORSE.
Some of the 10th graders had heard about the basketball-playing crazy white lady teacher, and went a little easier on me. Then I had two classes of 9th graders who knew me, and relatively speaking, we all got along. Maybe six out of 15-18 kids per class did the work. I did a decent job of protecting the kids who cared about their upcoming state math exam, walking through the problems, working them out on the board. Considering it was May, the weather was heating up, there are no windows, and most of the students would do far better in some vocational work with a paycheck than trying to sit still and listen to an adult, we did okay.
Until the dreaded 6th period.
I had been warned.
And I was letting much slide for a while, calmly requesting for the hyper boys to put their butts in seats. But the boys wandered around, yelling, jumping, climbing on the shelf under the TV. Girls came in late. One boy who was not in the class came in and said he needed to talk to a student. Now. I said no. Both students had their meeting anyway. I tried to stop it, couldn’t, so I put my foot down and gave them another 30 seconds. Surprisingly, they finished what seemed to be a conversation about sex and a girlfriend, and after giving each other five, they parted ways.
Another group formed as I was talking with three boys in the front row, asking where they were from. One was from Africa, and the others were from Mexico. I told them that I had guessed they were foreign kids because the foreign kids, in my experience, are much more controlled and respectful of adults than your typical American punks, most of whom were running around, sleeping, complaining, and talking to others like we were at a School for the Deaf. I told the boys and one girl, who was the American exception, how much I appreciated their kindness and cooperation.
Meanwhile, the boys in the back were moving toward the door, and I was saying, please, please, boys, stay away from the door. The boys started talking in Spanish during my next request, laughing at me, prompting me to say, “Cut the Spanish crap and get away from the door, please.”
An pimple-faced punk with a no-good smile yelled, “Did you hear what she said? She’s a racist! You gotta problem with Spanish people? How many people here are Spanish?”
All eyes and ears were on me for the first time, and all the boys were now away from the door, one step closer to the seats.
“You know I didn’t mean it that way,” I said.
The ring leader ran up in front of the room, and screamed, “It’s like me saying, ‘All white women love to suck dick.’”
As I told the student that I ought to write him up, one teacher appeared in the trap door, saying, “It’s so loud in here I cannot teach my class.”
I apologized. The kids all screamed that I was a racist. I told the other teacher I had things totally under control. Behind me the kids were saying, ““Fuck you…You think we’re going to listen to you?...Fuck that shit….You’re ugly.”
He told them to cut it out, they did, he left, they continued.
I began my case: “It is rude to intentionally speak in a second language—
“It’s our first language!”
“Excuse me. It’s rude to speak in a language that is not the first language of the country you are in and when you are doing it to—
“Fuck that.”
“Seriously, if I had a problem with Latinos or Spanish-speaking people,” I said, “do you think I’d be a sub teacher in New York City public schools?”
Within a minute, another teacher, Ms. G, opened the door and in true Public School X teacher form, her muscles were tight, her eyes intense, as she was ready to take down any student who stood in my way of controlling the class. I rolled my eyes at her, knowing the tide was coming in again. One girl had run to get her, saying I was a racist, and she wanted to know what was happening. The kids spewed out the “Spanish crap line” and if the principal were in the building, and not on jury duty, I wondered if he would have been standing with her.
Ms. G settled down the students and said, “As a Spanish-speaking person, I do not take offense to what has been said, and all I will say is that we must rise above.” Just as I thought she was bringing in the ACLU, she accused the kids of looking for an excuse to get out of their work and told them they needed to stop.
I made it through the class, and thought all was said and done until I found myself face-to-face with bug eyes, a huge Afro and leper-like skin. It was the kid who was sitting on the TV cart, despite my numerous requests for him to get off of it before he knocked the TV over and blamed me. His response: “I’m not paying for nothing, bitch.”
This time he told me that I was a “good-for-nothing low-life not even worth ten dollars.”
I said thank you and goodbye.
When the last student left, I closed the door, stood in the silence and said somebody please ass-can me now.
