Adequate Yearly Progress

by Roxanna Elden

  It was about the admissions process.

  To attend the Demographics Don’t Determine Destiny charter network, families had to sign a strict discipline agreement: Students would dress in uniform every day. They would redo unsatisfactory homework. They would angle their bodies in the prescribed eager-to-learn posture in their seats, visually tracking teachers’ movements like seagulls eyeing a sandwich. These requirements alone deterred the authority-challenging, the energy-draining, the test-score-lowering, and the special-education-requiring.

  But there was more. In a move that was either ingenious or infuriating, depending on where one stood, families had to sign these agreements—and complete the rest of the complicated admissions process—before the first day of school. This meant that while Destiny could “counsel out” problematic students at any time, district schools could never, under any circumstances, send midyear transfers to Destiny. Hernan tried not to let such baggage influence his reaction to new students, however. They all deserved a fresh start.

  He pointed Angel toward what he hoped would be a welcoming lab group.

  As he walked toward his newly assigned seat, Angel retrieved a handful of orange chips from a bag he was holding and shoveled them into his mouth.

  “Angel,” said Hernan, “I don’t allow food in this class. Please put those away.”

  Angel shoved the bag in his pocket at an unconvincing angle. Within minutes of arriving at his lab table, he’d taken it back out and placed it on the chair next to him, fully displaying the name of the product and its dubious health claims. Due to concerns about childhood obesity, the school was no longer allowed to stock regular Reetos products in the vending machines. They were, however, allowed to sell (BAKED!) Reetos, which contained all the same chemicals at nine fewer calories per bag.

  Hernan made another round of the classroom, silently picking up the bag of chips as he passed Angel.

  Angel looked up. “Hey, man, those are mine.”

  “No eating in my classroom.”

  “I wasn’t even eating them. I just had nowhere else to put them.”

  “You’re holding two in your hand right now.”

  Angel sulked in silence for a while. Then he looked up, his expression taking on a puppy-dog quality. “Can I please get them back if I participate?”

  “If you want to, you can come get them at the end of the day. It will give us a chance to talk.”

  Angel drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, as if to show this was the very limit of patience that could be expected of him. It was unlikely that he would come back for the chips. Nothing dissuaded teenagers like a mandatory heart-to-heart conversation with a concerned adult.

  Hernan was about to check on the next lab group when the classroom door opened again, revealing another visitor, this one slightly too old to be a new student. He wore a suit and carried a backpack, and he informed Hernan that he was observing classes at the school.

  “Student teacher?” Hernan guessed.

  “Oh, no, ha-ha. I’m from TransformationalChangeAdvocacyConsultingPartners. We’re just making sure everyone’s following today’s Research-Based Best Practice That Works.”

  Hernan was glad he’d checked his e-mail that morning and had taken time to copy the newest thing-to-write-on-the-board of the day. In its entirety. Above the day’s Curriculum Standard of the Day, in comically large letters, he’d added:

  RESEARCH-BASED BEST PRACTICE THAT WORKS™

  ALL STUDENTS ON TASK, ALL THE TIME™

  The visitor walked to the back corner of the room and took a seat behind Angel, who Hernan hoped would hold it together as the class finished the activity. He restrained himself from looking nervously toward the corner. But there was no sign of a commotion, and when the bell rang, both newcomers slipped out along with the rest of the class.

  Alone in the room, Hernan turned to his plants. He’d planted this year’s hopeful crop of bluebonnets less than a month ago. Their sprouts were just beginning to inch upward, leaves spreading to gather sunlight. Not that this was a guarantee of anything: Bluebonnets were the state flower and could be found in front of every hotel and government building in Texas, but they were really only adapted to the sandy soil in the eastern part of the state. To grow anywhere else, they required well-timed watering and optimal seed-soil contact. Even then, some of the seeds took years to germinate. Some never sprouted at all. But that didn’t mean they weren’t worth planting.

  As Hernan bent to water the base of the closest plant, something caught his eye. It had an irregular shape and was a fluorescent orange color Hernan was pretty sure didn’t exist in nature. He bent closer, tilting the pot for further inspection, until finally he identified the substance: a wet glob of partially chewed (BAKED!) Reetos.

  COMPLETE ANSWERS COMPLETELY ADDRESS THE QUESTION™

  THE PARENT CONTACT number in Yesenia’s records did not work. Or, more accurately, it did work but led to Yesenia’s own cell-phone voice mail, which was a full minute of Yesenia’s voice saying, “Hello? Hello? I can’t hear you. Talk louder!” followed by laughter, followed by Yesenia’s voice saying, “Nah, I’m just fucking with y’all. Leave a message.”

  This left no one with whom Kaytee could discuss the tremendous potential that might be unleashed if Yesenia ever returned to class. What Kaytee never discussed, even with herself, was that she sometimes felt relieved when the morning bell rang and Yesenia’s seat remained empty. She’d caught herself thinking that Yesenia, when she did show up, used much of her potential to make Jonathan Rodriguez yell.

  Not that Jonathan needed much provoking: even without Yesenia around, he communicated in animated student sign language with anyone who would participate, then started whispering, then sometimes forgot he was whispering and burst into full-volume conversation. But above all, he interrupted. Off-topic commentary flew out of him like sparks from a live wire. Kaytee’s reprimands led to arguments, which took up even more class time. She had tried everything she could think of but still spent each day bracing for the inevitable moment when Jonathan would break whatever hold she’d gained on the class’s attention.

  This week, with some trepidation, she’d moved his seat to the front corner of the room, separated from the rest of the class by Brian Bingle. She hoped it was a good decision. Brian, with his tattooed forearm and clenched jaw, had turned out not to be a behavior problem after all. On the contrary, he came in each day, directed his intimidating gaze at the board, turned in his completed work at the end of class, and pushed in his chair before leaving. The angry look from the beginning of the year had settled into seriousness, intensifying back to anger only when other students disrupted a lesson. Now, as Jonathan waved his arms to catch the eye of a kid in the middle of the room, something menacing flashed in Brian’s expression.

  “Okay!” Kaytee forced herself to sound cheerful. “Let’s go back to discussing our bell-ringer activity. If you could make one change to improve this school, what would it be?”

  Brian raised his hand. Kaytee was about to call on him when Milagros Almaguer, who was usually silent, said, “The food.”

  “Good job, Milagros! But remember: the Research-Based Best Practice of the Day is that you’re supposed to use the wording from the question.”

  Milagros looked dejected.

  “That’s just a reminder to everyone.” Kaytee gave Milagros what she hoped was an apologetic look as she gestured toward the day’s Best Practice on the board. The Best Practices were supposed to make students more ready for college, and Kaytee definitely wanted her students to be ready for college. Also, she’d heard a consultant was coming around to check on them. “So, for example, if I ask what change you could make to improve the school, your answer might start with, One change I would make to improve this school would be…”

  Milagros stared down at her notebook.

  “Do you want to try again, Milagros?”

  Milagros shook her head.

  “But the food is nasty here,” interjec
ted Jonathan. “I found a fingernail in my burger the other day.”

  Kaytee decided to ignore him. “Milagros, we’ll come back to you, okay? Who else wants to share their answer? If you could make one change to make this school better, what would it be?”

  “Actually, I think it might have been a whole finger.”

  There was some laughter at this, and Kaytee drew in her breath to respond, bracing for an argument.

  But then Brian said, “Enough.” He spoke softly, but there was a warning note in his voice.

  Jonathan, without directly acknowledging Brian, settled quietly back into his seat. Kaytee felt herself relax.

  Brian raised his hand.

  “Yes, Brian?”

  “One change that would make the school better would be to stop letting people skip in the cafeteria line.”

  Kaytee gave him her best there are no wrong answers in here smile, though she’d been hoping for an answer that was… bigger. She wanted students to address the systemic racism and low teacher expectations that were holding them back. Not the food. Not the lunch line.

  “The thing is that no one stops people from skipping, so no one can get lunch unless they skip the line,” said Brian. “And if nobody says anything about that, then how anybody supposed to respect the other rules?”

  Other students nodded.

  Kaytee tried again to conceal her disappointment. “That’s an excellent start, Brian, and good job using the wording from the question in your answer! But let’s try to think of something that would really improve educational equity, and maybe even society as a whole, in a really fundamental—”

  “I always cut in line,” Jonathan said. “How I’m gonna get lunch otherwise?”

  Kaytee was considering how to handle the interruption when Brian whipped his head around. “Shut the fuck up, Jonathan. Ain’t nobody trying to hear your mouth all the time.”

  Katyee’s intestines contracted. Brian had told Jonathan to be quiet earlier, but he hadn’t cursed, hadn’t sounded so angry or ready to fight. She knew now that she’d made the wrong decision. She should never have moved Jonathan next to Brian, and now it was too late. Whatever happened next would be her fault.

  Outside the door, she could hear the rumble of adult voices. She recognized one of them as belonging to Mr. Scamphers, which meant the other voice was probably the consultant. They were coming into her classroom now, of all moments.

  Kaytee held her breath.

  The door opened.

  She forced herself to smile as the consultant walked into the room, holding an iPad. Mr. Scamphers followed him, clipboard in hand. They were both taking notes. She squeezed the marker in her hand, bracing for an explosion.

  But there was no explosion.

  Instead, something wonderful happened.

  Jonathan Rodriguez shut up.

  THE MYSTERY HISTORY TEACHER

  www.teachcorps.blogs.com/mystery-history-teacher

  From the Classroom to the World

  Today, we worked our way toward a meaningful discussion about what students would do to improve their school. (During an observation, no less!) At first, they focused on surface-level details, like the food and the lunch line, but eventually I was able to guide them to think about more big-picture solutions, like having a truly representative student council or a way for students to share feedback about their teachers. I’ve always believed my students can grow up to change the world. It’s good to see that, finally, they are starting to believe this about themselves.

  COMMENTS

  DanceGurl11 I just wanted to say you’re blog is very inspirational. It reminds me of my favorite movie, Show Me You Care and I’ll Show You My Homework. More teachers should be like you, instead of giving up on there students. Maybe you should write a book or a movie about you’re experience so you can inspire more teachers to be great like you!!

  NumberOneTeacher I, like you, am one of the few outstanding educators who believe all children can succeed. I recently sat down with a child in my class who reads below grade level and said, “You are so smart! Why are you reading below grade level?” He told me I was the first teacher who ever told him he was smart! Can you imagine? There truly should be more teachers like us in this world.

  44 more comments on this post

  Even before she’d installed the spam-blocking program, Kaytee had never gotten more than ten comments on her blog before. But now, as she finished writing about the day’s events from her couch, she looked at her previous post and found there were almost fifty.

  Why? she wondered.

  She typed the name of her blog into Google, shocked at how many references turned up. Apparently, the post she’d written after happy hour had caught the attention of the woman whose memoir about her four years of teaching had inspired the movie Show Me You Care and I’ll Show You My Homework. Now an international motivational speaker, she had linked to Kaytee’s post from her own blog, and the comments had been rolling in ever since. They made Kaytee feel as if she were floating. The movie had been one of her biggest inspirations to join TeachCorps. Only later had she noticed that the teacher in the movie had only one class.

  But now, as she read the growing thread that compared her to the movie’s star, Kaytee thought she understood even that. After all, if she were making a movie, she’d want it to be about her first class of the day. There was Brian, who looked tough but was really interested in learning. Then there was Jonathan, whose behavior was improving, at least most days. And Milagros, hopefully, would overcome her embarrassment and participate again. Then again, Milagros was so quiet she would probably be more of an extra than a main character. Maybe Kaytee would even track down Yesenia, who was perhaps pregnant and working some menial job, waiting for a teacher to talk her into giving school another try.

  Yes, the movie would definitely have to be about first period. It certainly couldn’t be about her perpetually bored third period. No one wanted to watch a movie of kids falling asleep on their arms. The problems in her other classes, too, were mostly things like careless spelling and half-done homework that wouldn’t transfer well to the big screen.

  And then there was seventh period, the class that filled Kaytee with increasing dread as the end of each day approached. The students in seventh period weren’t as loud as the ones in first period, but they were so negative, so mean. Just the thought of them propelled Kaytee into the kitchen. She opened another cheesecake-flavored yogurt that, even in her most optimistic mood, she had to admit didn’t taste like cheesecake at all.

  RAISE THE LOVE OF LEARNING (LOL) FACTOR™

  “I JUST WANTED to know what this consultant is supposed to be looking for, exactly.” Maybelline had rushed to Mr. Scamphers’s office as soon as the bell rang.

  “The consultant.” Mr. Scamphers’s moustache lifted into a sneer.

  “He barely even looked at my data binder.”

  “Mr. Barrios has me showing that kid around like some type of tour guide.”

  “And then he made me do this cheer with the class, like, when I said, The equation, they had to say, must balance. We had to practice it until they were all saying it at the same time.” She hoped she wouldn’t have to demonstrate. It had been humiliating enough the first time around.

  But Mr. Scamphers was looking off in another direction. “He probably thinks he’s going to be a principal before I am.”

  “Sorry, what’s that?”

  Mr. Scamphers turned back to her. “You know what we have in common, Ms. Galang?”

  Maybelline primed herself for another compliment, perhaps on her organizational skills, or how quickly she got things done. She really was quite organized and quick at getting things done.

  But Mr. Scamphers was on a new subject. “You and me, we’re the wrong color to make it in a school system like this. I mean, you’re Chinese—”

  “I’m Filipina.”

  “Well, you know what I mean. You have the ethnic last name, at least. But a white guy like me? Forget it.
”

  This conversation was less encouraging than Maybelline had expected.

  “My whole career, they say, Jump, and I say, How high? They want multiculturalism? I say, Olé! They want to make Mr. Barrios the principal? I say, Fine. I’ll wait.”

  Maybelline noticed, for the first time, that Mr. Scamphers never said Dr. Barrios. It was always Mr. Or just plain Barrios.

  “Well, I’m done waiting. Next time I get the chance, I’m going to start acting like the principal.”

  “It seems like a good principal would check everyone’s data binders.” She was relieved to find a way back into the conversation. “And write up anyone who hasn’t—”

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” said Mr. Scamphers, though he seemed to be talking mainly to himself now. “I am not about to answer to some kid. With a backpack.”

  “Yes. I noticed the backpack, too.”

  The assistant principal looked at her, blinking, as if he’d forgotten she was there.

  The hallway back to her classroom was plastered with homecoming-game flyers. They flapped into Maybelline’s field of vision like fans of an opposing team. The conversation with Mr. Scamphers was supposed to have been reassuring. Instead, it had turned into… something else, with that vaguely disturbing reference to her last name, and then the talk about the consultant’s backpack. Why the backpack bothered Mr. Scamphers so much was unclear.