High School

by Donna Schoenkopf

Last week I substituted at a local high school.

I love teaching high school.

The kids are just like ... well, kids. With a LOT of hormones. Bratty kids. Sweet kids. Scared kids. Confident kids. Quiet kids. LOUD KIDS!!

Every one of them is unique, of course. They get to you in their own special ways.

I spent three days at the school. I taught two days in one Special Ed class and one day in another.

It was hard and I loved it.

(I must state here that my dear and magnificent son, Jesse, who is no longer on this living earth, having died at the age of 21, was put in Special Ed in high school. He asked me later, in the pure agony of schizophrenia, why I had done that to him. I told him that the school said they thought he’d do better in those classes. I told him over and over and over that I was sorry. And that I would never do it again. To anyone. Nor would I flunk anyone. What a FUCKING STIGMA!!!

Don’t get me wrong. I think kids with special NEEDS—severe autism, physical problems, severe mental retardation—do need special classes. But Special Ed for learners who have disabilities like dyslexia or behavioral issues like hyperactivity should not be separated from their brethren. Every child in every single one of my classes in all the years I taught got along in his or her own and special way. They all learned to read. They all learned math. They all learned to share and hold their tempers ... mostly.)

Back to the story.

So I went to the local high school and signed in. The secretary is a truly lovely woman and is always glad to see me. She gave me a schedule and directions to the room. My assignment was to be with small classes and to help them with their packets of work that they had from other classes.

Hey. Sounded good to me!

I had six students the first hour.

(Names are changed to protect ... whomever.)

David

David had a low and melodious voice. He had acne. He was fit and trim. He already had his packet of work out when I entered the room. (I was a little late due to the late call to come in.) He was sitting by himself and working away. He was using a calculator.

He eventually asked me for some help. I was more than glad to help. I brought a desk/chair up next to his and we looked at the book. It was a lesson on transferring decimals into percentages. He was having a little trouble with the concept.

We stopped and talked about what exactly it was that we were trying to do. We went over the idea of what a decimal was and how to read it. It was like learning a language ... when you see 0.2, you read it as two tenths. When you see 0.35, you read it as thirty-five one hundredths. We got used to reading them. Then we talked about how percentages were all about parts of a hundred and how they were related to decimals.

We went on in this way and he was getting it and we were floating along and all of a sudden he asked me if I believed in God.

Well, it so happens that I don’t. And it’s not that I’m PROUD of being an atheist, but then, again, neither am I ashamed.

I also know that in this culture, in this state, virtually everyone believes in God. Oklahoma scores NUMBER THREE in that regard. Those of us who do not believe that there is a God, are considered the spawn of the Devil. Evil. Going STRAIGHT to Hell, and are going to try to corrupt those who are True Believers because Satan wants more souls, thank you very much.

I am the same person I always was. I used to believe in God. Enjoyed my “relationship” to Him and Mary and all the saints. I actually still love Jesus and his teachings and follow them to the best of my human ability. But God? Uh. No. Too much evidence against his existence. Unless you want to accept God as being cruel or, at best, uninterested in our human existences.

What to do? I looked David deeply in the eyes. He looked into mine.

And I lied.

I said, “I’m still making up my mind on that.”

David, in his wonderful, loving zeal, then began talking about God and how he never worries because God’s holding him in His hands and won’t let anything happen to him. (I thought of Jesse then. Unprotected from the ravages of schizophrenia. But I said nothing. Just smiled and nodded. I remembered how I used to believe that, too, until at the ripe old age of nine my dear daddy died and no matter how hard I prayed, and it was for YEARS, He never did raise him from the dead.)

I told David that I had had those beliefs, too, but when my son died, something happened to me.

He replied that his favorite song was “Temporary Home” and that we will be in a better place when we die. And then he told me of his uncle’s miraculous cure and his mother’s too.

(I had prayed constantly for my son. Why hadn’t God answered my prayers? What was I, chopped liver?)

He smiled so sweetly and purely. His voice so true and dear.

God bless him.

Kim

Kim is heavy. Kim’s teeth are discolored and crooked. Kim was sitting at a big table at the back of the room when I came in. She had a curling iron plugged into an outlet in the wall and was straightening her long dark blonde hair.

I have learned NOT to push my weight around with teenagers. They HATE it!!! THEY want to be the boss. THEY want to be in charge. They melt, however, when you compliment them on something. Anything. They crave validation. Usually physical looks are the most important to them.

So I said, “Wow. Your hair really looks great.”

She broke into a huge smile. “I’m getting ready for my school pictures at 9:05.”

“Well, you’re going to look really fine,” I said.

From that point on, we were best friends.

On the second day I decided to break out the Triominoes game that was in the closet. Seemed like a nice way to pass the time, as by now every student swore up and down that they did not have ANY work left to do. Honest to God.

So we all sat around the table and we dealt out the tiles. Kim didn’t play but she sat next to David who was. She turned out to be really adept at it. She would notice that David DID have a play when he said he’d pass. Pretty soon she was totally involved.

Conversation was easy and relaxed as we played. I asked them to tell me one thing about themselves and Kim said that she didn’t like any school subjects.

“Not even Art?”

“No.”

“Music?”

“No. NOTHING!”

“Well, you are really, really good at seeing patterns and relationships. And that’s an ability that is very rare. People like you are needed in jobs like inventing computer games and thinking about problems in patterns. And guess what? That’s all math. Yeah. I’m not kidding.”

We played some more. Then she looked at me and said, “Can I come stay here instead of going to my next class? You are a great teacher.”

And you are a great kid, Kim.

Tina

She is fifteen. She is beautiful. She has dark, smooth hair, flawless skin with a smattering of freckles across her nose. She is tall and lean. Her eyes are dark, her lashes long and thick.

Every boy in class is in love with her. They can’t keep their hands off her.

At first she doesn’t like me. She keeps to herself and her guys. When the students protest the first day that they have nothing, absolutely nothing left to do, I find some Uno cards and she and a couple of boys sit together, talking and not playing. They get pretty loud.

I go over to shush them a little and ask why they aren’t playing Uno. I ask if they know how. Tina says no. So I say, “How about you shuffle the cards and I’ll show you how to play.”

She smears the cards over the table top. I realize she can’t shuffle. She’s embarrassed. I just say, “Okay, let’s deal them.”

She takes handfuls of cards and plops them in front of the guys and herself. It’s her way of letting me know that she’s not going to do what I tell her. It also disguises the fact that she can’t shuffle.

I say, “Oh, that’s a boring game anyway. Here’s a better one.”

I pull some cards out, finding matches for them. Mix them up the way she did on the table. Lay them in four straight lines across the table and tell them the game is called “Concentration”.

“Now the idea is to find a match for the card you turn over. You get an extra turn if you get it right.”

Tina’s eyes gleam and an eager smile plays across her face. She likes this game. We begin. She makes a match on the first try. And what do you know? She beats everyone by a mile.

Now we are best friends.

The next day, during the Triominoes game, when I ask everyone to tell me something about themselves, she volunteers that she’s part black.

It’s a show-stopper of a statement. Everyone asks questions of her. Her dad is black, her mom is white. She’s from New Orleans.

I love her.

Day Two/ Last Period

The classroom is exquisitely furnished—cherry wood bookcases, cherry wood computer table, good posters on the walls. It’s fresh in here.

The lesson plan has a note from yesterday’s sub in it. It says that the students in this last period class have done NO WORK!

Hmmmmm.

The door opens and a male teacher in his late sixties tells me that he had them the day before and that they are a handful and if I need help, he’s right across the hall.

Thanks, I say. (But I know I’ll keep my business to myself.)

The students enter. There are eight boys and a girl. The lesson plan says they are to have a test, which is stapled and labeled in the folder. It’s a Pre Algebra test.

Hmmmmm.

I decide I’ll give them one of my show-stopper math ideas before we start. I am going to tell them about how math is actually a language. For instance,

“What per cent of sixty-four is sixteen?” can be written in math language as “? % X 64 = 16?”

I tell them how the first writing was math: l l l l l l l l . Just lines in clay to keep track of (for example) baskets of apples traded for loaves of bread.

They are vaguely interested. But mostly they are laughing and playing and driving the poor little girl to distraction. She asks to leave to do her test in another room.

I say, “Sure,” and hand her a test and she leaves, glumly.

The boys all rush to tell me that she’s never hardly ever, ever there anyway. She skips all the time.

It’s now a bunch of very big, boisterous, happy boys. Who don’t like substitute teachers. And who will do everything in their power to rattle me timbers.

I smile. I joke. I laugh. I play along. This just invigorates them. They are JOYOUS and THRILLED and really, really LOUD!!

There will be no test today, oh no. They will not allow that in THEIR classroom.

I hand out the test anyway.

A boy, tall, with a face that is extremely asymmetrical, one eye much lower than the other, looks at me and says, “Well, I might as well leave. I hate subs. And before I get into any trouble, I’ll just get out of here.”

And he gets up and walks out, with me calling after him, “Aw, c’mon, Frank, you know you’re having a good time in here.”

He doesn’t say a word. Just leaves.

I buzz the office, tell them what happened, and they say, “Oh, yeah. Frank.”

The other boys talk, laugh, turn on the overhead (without my permission) that lets you draw or play Battleship on it. I look at them.

They’ve won.

It’s one of my rare defeats.

Testosterone is a powerful force.

I go to the teacher’s desk in the back. I sit down. I don’t smile. They turn around and sneak looks at me.

“She’s mad, dude.”

“Yeah.”

Then they begin to quietly talk amongst themselves, or put their heads on the desk for napping purposes, or mess around with paper and pencils.

I write a note to the teacher, apologizing for not getting them to do their tests.

The bell rings.

They get up and file out, never looking back.

Whew.

It’s the end of the day.

I’m going home.

I certainly earned my money today.

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