The Great Expectations School (31 page)

Several times a day, a student asked me, “What book are we reading next?”

I had dreaded Balanced Literacy because of its time commitment, but the curriculum switch turned out to be the most academically beneficial change all year.

Mr. Randazzo delivered another new student to my room. “This is Clara Velez. She's going to be with you for the rest of the year.” Clara craned her head to stare at the ceiling.

“Does she speak English?” I asked.

“Oh yeah. She was with Fiore, but Catherine asked me to take her out. Just a personality conflict. They didn't mesh.”

I had a few characters I did not exactly mesh with either, but there was no point getting into that now. Think solutions! “I don't have a desk for her,” I said. “I guess she can sit at my desk.”

“Great,” Mr. Randazzo replied, already out the door.

At our next common prep meeting, Catherine Fiore gave me a rundown on Clara. “She does nothing. And she's a bitch. She needs to get left the hell back.”

Fiore's shortness ticked me off. She and Jeanne Solloway interacted with the other teachers with a sense of entitlement since they were ostensibly being groomed by the administration as the heirs apparent to the gifted Performing Arts Class. Rumors abounded that the veteran PAC teachers, Ms. Boswell and Ms. Berkowitz, were preparing to retire.

True to her reputation, Clara avoided schoolwork and irked classmates. She was a chronic finger-pointer, reigniting the blaze of 4-217 tattling. She had sticky fingers when it came to pencils and small change. At this point in the year, I didn't even get upset about
the petty conflicts anymore. Clara showed occasional bursts of empathy (an unsolicited apology letter for her “big mowth” to Gladys Ferraro), and I liked her. Maybe wishfully, I thought if I could have worked with her for the whole year, her attitude toward assignments might be different. Fiore had written her off in September.

When the Probable Holdover forms came around, Fiore directed me to write Clara's name, so there it went next to Eric, Marvin, jungle disco fan Christian, and Lakiya. I knew Lito's Test marks would be on the fringe of passing, but I wanted him to move up so badly that I kept his name off even the Potential Holdover list.

On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the Visual Arts Club was dessert after a long meal of overcooked cabbage. In the first week of April, we reviewed each kid's roll of pictures. Following that, I brought in several short films from my NYU days. The club members got a particular kick out of the ones where I appeared onscreen.

Jodi gave a story pitch for our P.S. 85 music video. “What if Mr. Brown is teaching the class and everybody's bored, but then he has to leave to do something, and right when he leaves, the whole class starts dancing?”

Everybody loved it. I had instant visions of a surreal choreographed number to Tiffany's version of “I Think We're Alone Now.” We honed the plot and drew up storyboards to include Mr. Brown's sudden exit resulting from a secret note delivered by Ms. Adler. After the students' celebratory dance, they sneak into the hall on a mission to find their missing teacher. Slinking down the corridor, the kids stumble onto Ms. Adler's mysterious note, crumpled outside the closed door of a classroom. Every kid looks on expectantly as Jodi unfolds the paper to find the words
“Teacher dance party NOW!”
Lilibeth cracks open the door, and all mouths drop in shock to find cavorting teachers who, suddenly caught, freeze as a record scratches to a halt. After a mutually mortified moment, Sonandia leaps dancing into the fray, breaking the ice and instigating an all-ages dance fiesta.

Shooting the movie went far worse than expected. We set two
April dates for filming and both were aborted because of club-member absences. I was also having a difficult time recruiting teachers to dance. Instead of making our movie, I showed the present participants how to work the camcorder and let them film each other in simple scenes that I arranged. Everyone clamored to hold the camera. Using the patch cable for video input, we immediately screened their work on the TV. Sonandia and Jennifer framed some especially interesting close-ups. I set a May 5 D-day for principal photography. Since I was headed to France for the Cannes Festival on May 7, this was the last chance to shoot and quick-edit something to submit for the midMay Region One Literacy Fair. I had promised Mrs. Boyd we would be ready.

I called Bernard's home to give a positive report about Bernard's behavioral progress following our parent-teacher conference. Mr. McCants thanked me for the news.

“Just one thing I need to ask you about, Mr. Brown. This boy Marvin. Bernard says that Marvin is instigating with him and trying to steal his things. I'm trying to teach Bernard not to fight, but he has to defend himself if this boy Marvin is really trying to hurt him. Have you seen any of this?”

“Yes. Marvin has… a lot of problems.”

“It sounds like he does. I feel bad for that boy, but Bernard has got to defend himself when it comes to it.”

I could not promise Mr. McCants that his son would be safe from thieves and instigators in my classroom. Every time I sent Marvin away, he always came floating back to 217. No one wanted anything to do with him, so he was my responsibility. This was not the first time a 4-217 parent had voiced a grievance about Marvin's behavior. What would Paul O'Neill do?

“I think if you wrote a letter to the school,” I said, “that could probably be an effective way to separate Bernard and Marvin. The school is very sensitive to parents who make their concerns known.”

Bernard came in the next morning with the letter, which I
forwarded to Mrs. Boyd. Within an hour, she called me to the hall, leaving Fran Baker to supervise 4-217.

“Mr. Brown, I have to wonder what exactly you're doing to manage your kids, specifically this Marvin, when I receive a letter like
this
from a parent!” She showed me Mr. McCants's page.

“Marvin Winslow's misbehavior is not my fault. He has severe,
severe
problems, and I have tried every avenue of discipline known to me to control him, but he continues to return to my room and continues to terrorize his classmates, mostly at lunch when I'm not there. And his mother assaulted Ms. Devereaux.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Mr. Brown. Nobody has
assaulted
Ms. Devereaux. It could be very detrimental to you and the school if you throw around loose words like that.”

I plowed forward. “Bernard's father voiced a legitimate complaint to me, so I encouraged him to voice it directly to you.”

Mrs. Boyd was shocked. “This letter was
your
idea?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Brown. I
cannot believe
you would do something so unprofessional. Do you have any idea what it means to be professional? When you tell”—she consulted the letter—“Bernard McCants's father to start writing letters, you are saying to him, ‘We can't take care of our own.' You undermine the entire school. You're going over Mr. Randazzo's head, which is rude and…
unprofessional.
Do you think Mr. Randazzo does nothing? Is that what you are implying in your actions?”

“No. Mr. Randazzo has been doing this for over thirty years, and I'm a rookie. What I am saying is that many people more experienced than me, including Ms. Guiterrez and Dr. Kirkpatrick, agree that Marvin should not be in a regular classroom. But he still is, intimidating and beating on kids and ruining the fourth grade.”

Mrs. Boyd delivered an oral treatise on professionalism and stormed away, warning me not to encourage parents to write letters. Marvin spent a couple weeks in a second-grade class before a bloody
punch-up with an eight-year-old spurred his inevitable return. Meanwhile, Bernard had a great two weeks.

The February English Language Arts Test might have been the be-all and end-all of life as we know it, but the May Math Test was not far behind. I officially put away my neglected math pacing calendar and cleared the schedule for a drab recipe of one part Balanced Literacy and four parts Test prep.

Like every other fourth-grade class in P.S. 85, we had a lot of catching up to do, particularly in probability, logic, time, geometry, and measurement. These conceptual surveys and mandatory Test-taking skill reviews were easy on me for their minimal preparation, but the monotony (despite my continuous insistence that this was fun
and
important) took a toll on everybody. One day without warning, I brushed my teeth in class and passed out toothbrushes and toothpaste, compliments of my family dentist in New Jersey. We discussed and wrote about dental hygiene, making for a snazzy bulletin board display. Then back to business. Including sporadic Mr. Lizard and claw-dancing time, I had approximately two days to cover measurement in mass, weight, length, volume, area, perimeter, diameter, radius, and conversions for English and metric systems. Two days for logic and probability questions. Two days for geometry with polygons, vertices, angles (acute, obtuse, right), and parallel and perpendicular lines.

After the frantic pre–ELA Test cram, all complaints about the futility of these crash courses were exhausted, and now the disgusted teachers and bored students just knew to deal with it, to limp to the finish line. My Paul O'Neill thinking failed me here for a way to spin this vortex into a positive experience.

At the monthly assembly, Mr. Randazzo called Maimouna Lugaru to receive the 4-217 Student of the Month award. Every month as the names were read, I watched Maimouna with her eyes shut tight,
praying in her auditorium seat that she would be a winner. When her name really was called, she made no noticeable reaction, dead-fishing me on a handshake and sauntering blankly to the front of the room.

After the Students of the Month were promised that their personalized certificates would be printed up and distributed in the future, Mr. Randazzo read the morning lineup scores for April. “I'm just going to read just the top five this month. For fourth grade, fifth place goes to 4-208!”

Ms. Fiore did not move. A tall boy retrieved the certificate from the podium.

“Fourth place, 4-220!”

Kelsie, my SFA poet buddy, accepted on behalf of Ms. Mulvehill's room.

“And third place, I can't believe it, goes to 4-217!”

“YES!” I screamed, plowing forward to grab the certificate myself. I pumped one fist and gnashed my teeth insanely. “YEAH!” The kids followed my lead, going bonkers in celebration. We spilled into the aisle, cheering and stalling the announcement of the rest of the winners.

“WE DID IT!”

B
ERNARD WAS ABSENT ON DAY
one of the huge Math Test, so I filled in a special absentee Scantron grid for him. He was absent again on days two and three.

“I think Bernard moved,” Eddie said.

Behaviorally, Bernard had made the most progress out of anyone in 4-217, but his foothold on the path was tenuous. In the winter, he had thrown punches as a reflex. With the March parent-teacher conference as a landmark, he was now making new and important efforts with self-control. I had helped keep his success streak going with a number of preemptive interventions when I spotted one of his personal warning signs: a certain facial expression or a specific tense movement he made with his hands.

I thought changing schools so late in the term was the worst thing that could happen to Bernard. Our fragile progress fractured, he would now have to deal with being the new kid, and he would do it with his fists. I wished his parents had mentioned something to me about the move, but I doubt I could have talked them into postponing it for seven weeks.

Bernard was the sixth student who had been with me in September who would finish the year in another class. I imagined the six—Asante, Verdad, Daniel, Deloris, Fausto, and Bernard—and felt helpless.

“Can I use Bernard's social studies book?” Cwasey asked. Several of our hardcover textbooks had taken a walk during the year, and
we no longer had a complete class set, which meant reviled book-sharing during some lessons.

Cwasey walked to Bernard's old desk and pulled out the book. As he reached in, Tayshaun tossed a crumpled paper ball at his back. Cwasey turned and shoved Tayshaun's desk, knocking it over.

“Cwasey!”

“What I did?”

“You did not have to knock over Tayshaun's desk!”

“I didn't do it,” Cwasey protested, his eyes pleading for me to believe him.

“I'll speak to you at lunch.”

Cwasey vehemently continued to claim innocence when I pulled him aside in the cafeteria. “I saw you with my eyes, Cwasey,” I said slowly, pointing at my eyeballs. “I know Tayshaun threw the paper at you, so you reacted. Just admit that you knocked over his desk.”

“I didn't do it,” Cwasey repeated with the same expression.

I spoke to Cwasey's mother and Mr. Schwesig about arranging some guidance sessions for him, but nothing happened. I quietly moved Cwasey into my mental category of habitual liars, right beside Marvin, Joseph, and Deloris.

Seresa came skipping over to me, a big smile on her face. “Mr. Brown! If everyone saw Cwasey do something and he still says he didn't do it, that's
ludicrous.
”

The administration tapped Fran Baker to “anchor” 4-217 for the eleven days I would be in France. Ms. Rosenberg, little Ms. Strong, and big Mrs. Little (the Test tutors) cleared their schedules to cycle in so that no fewer than two teachers would be in the room at all times. I got a kick out of the fact that four full-time teachers with over seventy collective years of teaching experience were deemed necessary to assume the responsibility that I was privileged to enjoy every day alone.

In the middle of the week, Mrs. Boyd made another visit to my room with sharp criticism about my bulletin boards and threats about my future at P.S. 85. After thoroughly ripping my professionalism, she changed gears and wanted to chat about movies, offering to introduce me to the monthly book-order lady, who was the mother of an award-winning filmmaker and NYU alumnus.