“Of course, the girls owe their teacher an apology.”
“I’m sorry our actions caused Ms. Mahoney to fall,” said Michelle.
“I’m sorry, too,” said Diamonique, looking at the floor.
“All right, then, I want you two to shake hands.”
The girls shook hands in a way that seemed almost congratulatory.
Kaytee looked around the room in disbelief.
“Many of our beginning teachers struggle with classroom management when they first come here,” Mrs. Rawlins explained to the mothers, as if she were apologizing. Then she directed a mentorly smile toward Kaytee. “In my experience, a lesson that keeps students interested can stop problems even before they start!”
“That is true.” Michelle’s mother nodded as if she, too, had experience planning interesting lessons that stopped problems before they started.
“For real,” agreed Michelle, who had discarded the angelic smile. “Her lessons be boring sometimes.”
Kaytee’s heartbeat thumped in the bruise around her eye. Her jaw clamped itself shut, as if afraid of what might come out if she opened it. Then Mrs. Rawlins deposited the baby back into his mother’s arms and both girls back into Kaytee’s class, effective the Monday after Thanksgiving.
FACULTY ENGAGEMENT
THE PRE-HOLIDAY CROSS-DEPARTMENTAL Midyear-Assessment Data Chat (PHCDMADC for short) was conducted in the school’s media center, formerly known as the library, currently the home of Creepy Mechanical Santa. This was a life-sized, motion-sensitive dancing Santa Claus that Mrs. Reynolds-Washington had donated from her own collection of Christmas decorations. He greeted visitors by running jerkily in place and saying, “Ho-ho-ho! I hope you’ve been good this year!”
The years in the school’s supply room had been rough on Santa. He’d developed some programming glitches, one of which caused him to stop midsentence, give one jerky kick, and yell, “Ho!” Other times, he would jog cheerfully, red-cheeked and smiling, for several minutes on end.
When Hernan arrived for the PHCDMADC, Creepy Mechanical Santa was in the middle of some serious cardio. The media specialist was cutting out a laminated sign that said, STUDENTS, PLEASE STAY THREE FEET AWAY FROM SANTA AT ALL TIMES.
“Has he been doing that all day?” Hernan asked her.
“On and off. At lunch we had a whole line of kids doing the Santa dance like it was the Electric Slide. They got it down pretty good, but this thing is driving me crazy.”
Hernan offered a sympathetic smile. On the other side of the large room, he could see teachers gathered for the meeting. The tables farthest from Mr. Scamphers had all been filled. There were a few empty seats in the front, where Maybelline Galang was watching Mr. Scamphers expectantly. And there was one seat in the middle, next to Lena.
“If you’ll hurry up and take a seat, Mr. Hernandez,” said Mr. Scamphers, “we’re trying to get started here.”
“Sorry.” Hernan sat next to Lena.
“I think Santa just called me a ho,” Lena whispered.
Hernan nodded. “He can be very judgmental.”
Mr. Scamphers gave them a look that seemed meant to project authority but was a little heavy on the raised chin and flared nostrils. Hernan tried hard to think of something unfunny. He grabbed a meeting agenda from the table and squinted at it. Behind him, Creepy Mechanical Santa started jogging again. The whole group turned to see Mrs. Towner entering the room.
“Ho ho ho! Ho hooooooooooo…” The sound slowed to a groan as Creepy Mechanical Santa froze with one hand extended toward Mrs. Towner.
Hernan couldn’t help whispering, “You think Santa knows something about Mrs. Towner that we don’t?”
Lena let out a small snort of laughter. Then she pressed the back of her hand against her lips and stared into the distance as if she, too, was trying to think of something unfunny.
“Sorry I’m late,” said Mrs. Towner, taking a seat in the front and pulling out her data binder. Tiny bells adorned her shirt. They jingled as she turned around and loudly whispered, “Did y’all get my holiday e-mail?”
Lena wrote on her meeting agenda and slid it toward Hernan: Hey, I thought that e-mail was just for me!
“Me, too,” Hernan whispered, nodding sadly.
Mrs. Towner was one of many teachers who liked to visit electronic holiday love upon her colleagues. Each December, the inboxes of Brae Hill Valley ranneth over with a cornucopia of kittens dressed as reindeer, Bible verses in large, colorful fonts, and reminders that Jesus was the reason for the season. Mrs. Towner’s e-mails, especially, trended toward sentiments too personal for a group e-mail format: May God watch over you and your lovely family. I feel blessed to have you in my life. Even if I don’t say it every day, I love you.
“As I was saying,” said Mr. Scamphers, “data from the midyear assessments show that our students are weak on the compare-and-contrast standard. We’ll be giving students a review packet to complete over winter break.”
“In what way are these two things alike?” whispered Lena, moving her hand as if to fill out an imaginary packet. “In what way are they similar? What do they have in common?”
“What characteristics do they share?” added Hernan. They’d all received the same list of keywords, which they were supposed to work into their interactions with students.
Mr. Scamphers turned again toward the source of the whispering. “Mr. Hernandez, I don’t see your data binder.”
“Sorry,” said Hernan. “It’s in my classroom.”
Mr. Scamphers turned away with an icy look. “Well, I am happy to see that most of you brought your binders.”
“Oooh, you in trouble,” Lena murmured, in the voice teachers used to imitate students. “Didn’t you get today’s all-caps e-mail about bringing our data binders?”
Hernan shook his head. “Science-fair stuff keeps filling up my inbox.”
The citywide science-fair coordinator sent several updates a day to participating teachers, many of whom hit Reply All whenever they had questions. Then other participants hit Reply All to ask the original respondents to stop hitting Reply All, which drew angry responses from other people who hit Reply All to say they had planned to stay out of this, but this was getting ridiculous, and would everyone please stop hitting Reply All ?! These e-mails, combined with holiday greetings from colleagues and multiple forwards of posts from some supposedly inspiring history teacher’s blog, had filled all of Hernan’s available inbox space. This prompted automatic e-mails each hour from the system administrator, reminding him that his inbox was full. As a result, Hernan had been pruning his inbox after every class, sometimes deleting things he normally would have read. Apparently, this included Mr. Scamphers’s binder reminders.
“As an example to those of you who need it”—Mr. Scamphers glared at Hernan—“we’ll be looking at Ms. Galang’s data binder during this meeting.”
At this cue, Maybelline sprang into action, standing up and raising her binder so they could all see its plastic-encased pages. Then she passed it to Mr. Scamphers like a sacred scroll.
“For real?” Lena let out a long breath and studied something on the opposite side of the room.
As Mr. Scamphers cradled the open binder in his arms, something in his moustache caught Hernan’s eye. On closer inspection, the object turned out to be a large booger, which dangled ominously over the plastic sheet protectors.
“I did a few extra things, too.” Maybelline was addressing them slowly, as if they might need time to take notes. “I subdivided the names by standard. Then I color-coded the students’ names based on how they did on each specific standard.”
“This is beautiful, Ms. Galang, just beautiful,” said Mr. Scamphers. Then, turning to the unwashed horde of teachers who were not Maybelline Galang, he added, “This is an example of the sense of urgency I’d like to see from all of you regarding these binders.”
Maybelline confirmed this with a grave nod. Mr. Scamphers, perhaps because of his own sense of bi
nder-related urgency, had begun breathing heavily. This caused the moustache booger to flutter, its rhythm lining up perfectly with that of Creepy Mechanical Santa, who, for reasons known only to him, had resumed jogging.
Hernan looked around to see if anyone else had noticed the booger, but most of his colleagues were now thumbing through their own inferior data binders. Breyonna was looking at a bridal magazine in her lap. Kaytee was examining her eye in a makeup mirror. Lena, who was still trying hard not to look at Maybelline, was staring in rapt concentration at Creepy Mechanical Santa.
As a result, only Hernan saw the moment when the booger finally sprang loose from Mr. Scamphers’s moustache and landed on one of the sheet-protected, color-coded pages of Maybelline’s exemplary data binder. It would remain there, Hernan imagined, like a pressed flower, until another meeting prompted Maybelline to display it once again.
Which was why, by the time Mr. Scamphers replaced the binder on the table and looked up, Hernan was hurrying out the door of the media center, both hands over his mouth, laughing so hard tears streamed from his eyes.
“I hope you’ve been good this year,” called Creepy Mechanical Santa behind him.
THE CROSS-DISCIPLINARY COMPARE-AND-CONTRAST HOLIDAY REVIEW PACKET
THE LAST REVIEW packets had been tucked into book bags, the last bell had rung, and the school had emptied out for winter break. Dr. Barrios should have felt relieved.
Instead, he paced the newly empty hallways, filled with apprehension.
He and his wife had gone to the theater last night for a local preview of How the Status Quo Stole Christmas.
The trailers had been on TV for weeks. In them, Nick Wallabee knelt next to the desks of an enthralled Mexican girl and delighted African American boy while a caption flashed across the bottom of the screen: The status quo says Consuelo and Jamal don’t deserve an education. Who will stand up and say they do?
Cut to: Nick Wallabee striding through school hallways, Nick Wallabee speaking passionately into a microphone, Nick Wallabee standing outside the school administration building, the sun bathing him in a prophetic glow. Even in the trailers, the scene was uncomfortably familiar. And so maybe Dr. Barrios should have known exactly what he’d see in that movie theater. Maybe he even did.
But that didn’t mean he was prepared.
Sneaking looks at the audience around him, Dr. Barrios saw the expressions of the thousands who would soon be watching the movie throughout the country. Maybe millions. There were projections that the documentary’s success would rival some of the biggest hits in the inspiring-teacher genre, maybe even reaching the level of Show Me You Care and I’ll Show You My Homework.
Mr. Weber swore this was only because of the marketing budget provided by Global Schoolhouse Productions, but it wasn’t just that. Even Dr. Barrios had to admit the movie had a way of grabbing one by the emotional jugular vein and holding on tight. There was the scene, for example, in which Jamal helped his grandmother rise from her wheelchair, and then later the montage of Consuelo feeding and caring for a stray puppy, all to the soundtrack of a children’s choir singing “Wind Beneath My Wings.” By the end, when Nick Wallabee showed up at an elementary school to pass out books, the whole audience was sniffing back tears.
But the most famous moment of the film, the moment that would get picked up by TV shows and referenced endlessly, was when Nick Wallabee, standing in front of the school administration building, delivered his iconic lines to the principal of a failing school.
I’m expecting school leaders to stand up for student achievement, not just sit in the stands defending the status quo.
Dr. Barrios felt his wife’s smooth palm covering his hand in the darkness.
We’ve got too many students who can win on the football field but not in college and the workforce.
The audience knew what was coming and leaned toward the screen to receive it.
I ask you, Dr. Barrios: Are you a leader who will do whatever it takes to win for children? With that, Nick Wallabee strode away in his lean, tailored suit. Only the principal remained on-screen, heavy and uncomfortable and covering his face, his armpit gushing as if the very idea of believing in children activated his sweat glands.
The visual metaphor was unmistakable: transformational change vs. the status quo.
David vs. Goliath.
Compare and contrast.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 24
KAYTEE’S MOTHER WAS calling from the kitchen, but Kaytee stood where she was, glaring at her father. “See? That’s what I mean. Why does it matter what color they are?”
“Hey, I can’t help it if they were black.” Her father reclined in his chair, hands up as if to show the situation was out of his control. “If it was a group of white kids skipping in line, cursing, and throwing popcorn, I would have said white kids.”
“Would you have?”
Silence.
“I mean it. Do you really think you would mention their race if they were white?”
“Well”—Roy Mahoney’s eyelids drooped as if he were expressing something so obvious it didn’t take much energy—“it so happens they weren’t.”
It had seemed like a good idea, at the time, to suggest that her parents see How the Status Quo Stole Christmas; some of her father’s favorite rants were about worthless unionized bureaucrats in the public sector, which meant the film promised a small patch of common ground for table talk at Christmas Eve dinner. Maybe it would even help her parents understand why she was so passionate about educational inequity—or at least why she couldn’t stand Mr. Weber, with all his union rhetoric in the teachers’ lounge. How could Kaytee have known, when she made the recommendation, that they would end up at a theater with a group of black teenagers who happened to be behaving badly and that this would loom larger in Robin and Roy Mahoney’s memories than anything about the actual film?
Then again, this proved her point exactly. “See what I mean? Imagine living in a country where every time you do anything wrong, your race is mentioned. You can’t just be a kid at a movie theater making noise or skipping in line. You have to be the black kid. And rather than make any effort to understand your worldview, those in the majority just write off your whole culture as—”
“Kaytee! I said come help me carry this pie.”
Kaytee gave an exasperated sigh as she headed into the kitchen. Her mother handed her a freshly baked apple pie, along with a hard stare that said all she wanted was to have a nice holiday dinner with Kaytee; Kaytee’s brother, Kyle; and Aunt Susan and avoid another scene like the one at Thanksgiving, and was that too much to ask?
“Sorry,” Kaytee muttered. “I’m trying.”
“Try harder.”
Fine. She would try. Kaytee returned to the dining room and placed the pie on the table, smiling sweetly at everyone except her father. “Pie, anyone?”
But Roy, who had not been in the kitchen to receive his wife’s warning look, wasn’t done. “How about this: Maybe after a long week of rolling up my sleeves and breaking my back at work, I want to spend my hard-earned money on a movie and enjoy it. Maybe that’s my right. Or are people like me not allowed to have rights anymore?”
People like me, as her father used the term, were white men with white-collar jobs who used manual-labor imagery to demonstrate their work ethic. Roy Mahoney wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty or use a little elbow grease at the regional distribution-management job he’d earned with his own sweat. That was how he kept a roof over their heads in this meticulously exclusive suburb and how he put food on the table, the biggest threat to his ability to do so being the swarthy swarm of diverse “others” baying at the windows about their “rights.”
Kaytee was trying. She really was. But she couldn’t help herself. “Are you assuming they didn’t pay for their tickets with hard-earned money? Or is everyone automatically on welfare if they’re not a distribution manager for some meat company?” Then again, the meat-company thing was probably the wrong way to go. S
he already knew how that conversation went, and she wasn’t even a vegetarian anymore.
“Right—the meat company that paid for your college, so you could go work at a school where the kids punch the teachers in the eye.”
“Roy, please,” said Kaytee’s mother, who had materialized at the door of the kitchen. “We said after Thanksgiving that we weren’t going to bring up the eye again.”
But of course he would bring up the eye. Roy Mahoney could never understand what it was like on the front lines in the fight for educational equity. Kaytee had an urge to press the spot where her bruise had been, just to see if she could still feel the pain. Over Thanksgiving, when the bruise was still fresh and she’d had to explain it to her family, it had been a symbol of Mrs. Rawlins’s unfairness, but now it seemed like a battle scar. A medal of honor. From the trenches.
“Dinner was great, Mom!” The moral high ground had shifted to not ruining the holiday for her mother, and Kaytee was determined to occupy it, even under fire.
But she hadn’t counted on Aunt Susan joining in. “Kay, I just want to say I think what you’re doing is great. It’s like my charity work in church: even though you know a lot of these kids are hopeless, you’re still out there doing your best.”
“Thanks, Aunt Susan, but teaching isn’t charity work.”
“Yeah.” Kyle jumped in. “They pay her like three whole dollars an hour.”
“Mmm, good pie!” Kaytee refused to let her brother get to her today.
“Anyway,” Kaytee’s mother added, “it’s not like this is forever. She went to one of the best colleges in the country, for heaven’s sake.” She placed a placating hand on her husband’s arm. “The law-school recruitment letters are still coming in. These two years with TeachCorps are more like… a stepping-stone.”
Kaytee knew her mother was only trying to help. She knew she was about to make a scene. And yet she could not stop herself.
Adequate Yearly Progress Page 15
