Learn Me Good

by John Pearson

  This morning, we had barely begun to go over our Problem of the Day when Mark Peter started moaning loudly that he couldn’t sit near Francine because they had been in a fight. They sit five seats apart from each other! But he threw a hissy fit like he was being forced to share a carousel pony with her. I haven’t witnessed a tantrum that bad since I had the cubicle next to Harold Dungan, who would try to beat his computer into submission whenever it didn’t please him. That was especially fun whenever I was answering an applications phone call and I had to try to explain the sudden stream of obscenities and impact sounds in the background. “Please excuse me, Mr. Potential Customer, while I ask my cubicle neighbor to kindly shout the fouk up.”

  Later, Mark Peter started complaining that the girl who sits right next to him, Sally, was bothering him. Which was funny because Sally never bothers anyone. She doesn’t talk much; in fact, she hardly ever does much of anything. MP’s complaints were bogus, and he proved this by asking if he could be moved next to Thomson. Yeah, like I’m going to put THOSE two together. Why don’t I just throw together some gasoline and a few matches while I’m at it?

  Perhaps MP sensed a fellow bully in Thomson, but he has yet to even learn his real name. All morning, he kept whispering, “Thomas! Thomas!” trying to get his buddy’s attention. Thomson acknowledged these attempts by glaring at MP and shushing him loudly.

  Tomorrow is a designated staff development day (get your mind out of the gutter), so there will be no school. Because of this, today basically became Friday, and we gave our usual battery of tests. The first test that I gave today had twelve word problems and an accompanying bubble sheet for answers. Not two minutes after beginning the test, Mark Peter raised his hand and told me he was finished. I looked at his papers. He had twelve bubbles filled in on his answer sheet, and absolutely nothing written on the question sheet except for his name. When I asked him to show his work, he casually informed me that they had done this stuff at his old school, and this was how they did it. I told him that I like to see HOW he got his answers and asked him again to show his work. Not one minute later, I saw him pulling out some paper to draw a picture. I realize now that this probably IS about as much work as I can expect to see from him.

  Later, I gave a test over shapes, which has been our topic for the week. The questions were nearly all of the variety, “Which of these shapes is a triangle?” with four pictures to choose from as answers. We are talking E-Z, as far as tests go. Yet MP kept calling me over to ask what the problems said. He couldn’t read these simple questions, yet he finished that first test — the one with all the tough word problems — in two minutes flat! I’m pretty sure that buzzing I feel in the back of my head is my Spidey-Sense going nuclear.

  About halfway through that second test, the office buzzed me over the loudspeaker and asked that I send MP down there. When he came back a few minutes later, he grabbed up his backpack and stormed out. I went outside and tried to call him back, but to no avail. I later found out that he had been sent home because of yesterday’s fight.

  Something tells me that Mark Peter is going to keep me on my toes. Or quite possibly, he’s going to keep me on Excedrin.

  Later,

  Ro Lades

  Date: Tuesday, October 14, 2003

  To: Fred Bommerson

  From: Jack Woodson

  Subject: You’re a little big for the third grade, aren’t you?

  Hey bud, If you are really plotting a chart of all of my “Bad Data Points,” then you are a bigger nerd than I ever imagined. Somehow I doubt that you’ll end up with anything remotely resembling a normal curve or a six-sigma shift. And yes, I know that I have kids leaving and new kids popping up to replace them, but please tell Tom Winter to stop referring to my class as “A big whack-a-mole game.”

  By the way, due to the behavior problems in my class, I have abandoned the five-table model for my desks. Now I’ve got rows and columns, with one desk by itself in the center of the room. That special seat of honor belongs to Mark Peter in the morning and Marvin in the afternoon.

  I had an observer in class this morning, but it wasn’t another teacher or administrator. It was a child’s parent. More specifically, it was Alex’s father. He was the one who had a video camera on the first day of school and filmed his son for a few minutes. Thankfully, he was sans camera today. It was nerve-wracking enough just to have someone in there watching me, I didn’t need the extra pressure of wondering if it would be watched at home during family celebrations. “Happy Birthday, Gramma, now fast forward to the part where Mr. Woodson sneezes! Pause it!!”

  Actually, Alex’s dad is pretty cool, and I didn’t mind having him there. He is taking a class himself, at a community college, I think, and it doesn’t begin until 9:30. So this may become a somewhat regular weekly occurrence.

  I told him that he could come in and sit in the recliner at the back of the room. We did our usual morning routine — Problem of the Day, singing our 2’s and 3’s songs, Minute Math — and then we did a little reading out of the science books. I noticed that whenever I called on Alex to work a problem at the overhead or read from the book, his father sat forward a bit in his chair and nodded his head sagely. Alex, meanwhile, seemed to make a point of pretending that his dad was not there.

  Our guest left a little after nine, when the class took a restroom break. He thanked me profusely and said he really enjoyed it. When we got back from the bathroom, we returned to our normal routine, and the beatings resumed. Just kidding.

  That trip to the bathrooms also reinforced my impression that my kids are a bunch of rubberneckers. You see that plenty out on the highway, where drivers slow down so they can crane around and get a good look at an accident, or a parked police car, or a blade of grass. It slows everybody else down, and it’s incredibly annoying. Well, I’ve seen the same thing with children walking in line. Either they all slow down to see what’s happening in a classroom as we pass, or one or two kids don’t pay attention to where they’re going and wind up walking right into the person in front of them.

  I need to carry around a walkie-talkie so I can report to the office when this happens.

  “This is chopper 3, we got a six-child pile-up at the fountain in the fourth grade hallway. It’s blocking traffic in both directions. And there is water everywhere...”

  Chest-beating to simulate helicopter blades is optional.

  This week’s topic is measurement, so when we got back, we talked about inches, feet, centimeters, and the like. I may as well be speaking a foreign language or trying to explain the zeroth law of thermodynamics. Most of these kids think a pencil is measured in feet and a school bus is a few centimeters long. At least that makes me feel better about Jessica’s guesstimate from the beginning of the year. Maybe I should ask her how long she is and see if she says two or three inches.

  Talk to you later,

  Desi Meter

  Date: Thursday, October 16, 2003

  To: Fred Bommerson

  From: Jack Woodson

  Subject: I gots mad parenting skillz

  Hey dude, Just FYI, certain visitors to the classroom are acceptable — students’ parents, visiting administrators, weird ladies hawking sensuous spectacles — and some are definitely NOT welcome. Tell Larry that he may not drop by and sleep off a hangover in the La-Z-Boy at the back of my room. That’s what the space under his desk is for!

  Speaking of sleep, I am ready to crash. Not due to alcohol, though. Today was one of the longest days ever! I had morning duty (watching over the kids on the playground before school starts) and then we had parent-teacher conferences tonight, so I was at the school from 7:00 AM until 8:30 PM!!

  From what I’ve heard from other teachers, conference night usually follows a pattern — the parents that you really want (or need!) to talk to DON’T show up, while the good kids’ folks DO show up. And our night lived up to that for the most part. As partners, Mrs. Swanson and I conferenced together, and we had scheduled conferences with the pa
rents of Esteban, Sa’tun, Nathan, and Jessica, none of whom showed up. It was certainly nice to see Ariel, Christy, and Juan and their parents (all 3 unscheduled), but Kelly and I really have no issues with those kids, they are great. We had plenty of nice things to say about them. We also spoke with Sandra’s mom and Sofia’s mother, mainly emphasizing the importance of reading whenever they can for practice. They are both struggling academically, but both are good kids and pose no behavior problems.

  Speaking of behavior problems, Marvin’s mom DID show up, and that was good. Kelly and I had a nice long chat with her. I showed her Marvin’s forged signature from last week and, as was expected, she confirmed that she had never seen that paper. She is very supportive, but kind of at her wit’s end over what to do with Marvin. I know the feeling. Marvin is supposedly on medication for the ADHD, but I don’t remember what his mom said he is taking. Whatever it is — Adderall, Ritalin, Percocet, Cheez-wiz, or Pepto Bismol — it ain’t workin’!

  The highlight of the night, however, was when Chassity’s mother arrived. Chassity is a new student to 3E, she joined the class about two weeks ago. She’s not really bad, but she doesn’t put much effort into class work, and already her grades are really poor, especially in reading.

  When her mom first walked into my portable, my initial thought was that she was a student. She couldn’t have been five feet tall, kind of squat like a fire-plug, and she was wearing a navy sweater and a plaid skirt — it looked like a school uniform.

  We started the conference by telling her that we were concerned about Chassity because her reading level is way behind, she rarely does her homework, and she plays in class. Immediately, it became obvious that this lady was not really paying attention to what we were saying; everything she told us was designed to impress us with her parenting skills. She started telling us how important reading is to her and how she has always tried to instill that value in her children. At one point, she made this statement, and I quote:

  “I reads all the time! I reads while I drives!”

  Yeah, that’s not really something I needed to know, thank you kindly! I can just picture her driving down I-75, Herman Melville in one hand, steering wheel in the other (hopefully!), yelling “Calls me Ishmaels!!”

  Before she left, she made one other mind-numbing proclamation. Earlier that day, in Mrs. Swanson’s class, Chassity had been caught writing a note to one of the other girls. The gist of the note was basically “You’re a witch. Who’s a witch? You are, you witch.” And on, and on. Only she didn’t use the word “witch,” instead preferring a more socially unacceptable rhyming word. Kelly and I had joked about the fact that nearly all of the words in the note were misspelled EXCEPT for that one word.

  Well, when her mother saw the note tonight, she stared at it for a few moments before finally declaring, “Oh, so she wants to be cussing now. Well, I can tell you one thing. If she wants to be using this word, I will make darn sure she knows how to SPELL this word. I’ll have her write this word over and over till she gets sick of it.”

  And the whole rest of the conference with Chassity’s mother is a blur. I just couldn’t concentrate due to one overwhelming question that kept running through my mind —

  Lady, how exactly do YOU spell the B-word??? Later,

  Fargin Icehole

  Date: Tuesday, October 21, 2003

  To: Fred Bommerson

  From: Jack Woodson

  Subject: Nom de Plume

  Hey F- Bomm, Thank you so much for all of your creative spellings AND for going above and beyond the call of duty by not limiting yourself to the B-word! I’m just glad I didn’t check my email at the school today. Sheesh.

  And tell Larry to stop saying that my kids have a lot in common with the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. Otherwise, I’m going to have to come up there and kick him right in the Emerald City.

  Big news today: Mrs. Andrews told me that Lucifer continues to exhibit, shall we say, atypical behavior. She often lays on her back with her legs up in the air like a dead cockroach and won’t respond to anything. That’s Lucifer’s behavior, not Mrs. Andrews’. I guess the electroshock therapy hasn’t produced any results. Oh wait, we haven’t tried that yet. Never mind. Mrs. Andrews also told me that one day last week, she heard Lucifer humming at her desk and singing, “I hate Mr. Woodson... I hate Mr. Woodson.”

  There’s truly nothing more rewarding than knowing you’ve made an impact in the life of a child.

  Back to more mundane pursuits. Have you ever thought about going by your middle name? I mean using your middle name on a regular basis — to introduce yourself, sign your checks, order commemorative plates over the Internet, etc. I found out today that a couple of kids in my class have been doing just that. Using their middle names, I mean. Not ordering commemorative plates.

  At lunchtime, Plakton was having trouble punching his ID number into the little computer in the cafeteria. Finally the lunch lady called up a menu on the screen that had all of the 3F kids’ names, so that she could manually choose his. I looked over her shoulder, searching for Plakton’s name, but I couldn’t find it. Finally I noticed his LAST name, but instead of “Plakton,” the first name was “Jobediah.” When I read this name out loud, Plakton informed me that Jobediah is his REAL name, but that he goes by Plakton, his middle name. I asked why he doesn’t use his first name, and he turned up his nose and commented, “I don’t like that name. It’s kind of weird.”

  Sure, makes sense. I mean, why suffer the burden of a name like Jobediah when you’ve got Plakton sitting right there, ready to suit up?!?

  Later, as we were getting ready to go to music class, déjà vu struck. Chita came up and asked me if I would start calling her Maria. Chita is the little sweetheart who asked me on the first day of class if I was tall enough to see the top of a refrigerator. It turns out that Chita is HER middle name, and she wants to start going by her first name again.

  This reminds me of one time last year, during my student-teaching (in Mrs. Andrew’s class, coincidentally), when I discovered that this kid we had been calling “Trip Douglas” was really named Dwayne Edmundson. It came as a shock to me, because he signed all his papers “Trip,” and everyone called him “Trip,” so I had just foolishly assumed that his name was “Trip.” It wasn’t until we got the official materials on the day of the TAKS test, and saw this new name on the class list, that we realized he had been using a made-up soap opera name all along. Apparently, he was really dissatisfied with his given name, because whenever I called him Dwayne after that, he got pouty and would moan, “Don’t call me that! I hate that name!”

  I only wish I had known to tell him, “Hey, it could be worse. You could have been named Jobediah.”

  See ya later,

  Montgomery

  Date: Friday, October 24, 2003

  To: Fred Bommerson

  From: Jack Woodson

  Subject: Greetings and Salutations

  Hey dude, I received emails from Nancy and Tiffany saying that you pulled off quite a feat this week. Getting a product through the Release to Production paperwork in record time! You’ll have to let me know how you got such a quick sign-off from Dick Lorenzo, the resident Quality (Reduction) Engineer. But congrats! Or, as my kids write all over their own papers — “Good jod!”

  I had another one of those moments today where a child did something so shocking that it was almost funny. It should come as no surprise to find out that Marvin was the child involved.

  Since today is Friday, we spent most of our day taking tests. The kids were spaced out around the room (in a physical sense, I mean, not mentally — although there are a few I wonder about), quietly working. After recess, a loud banging noise began, like someone was pounding on the side of our portable with a hammer. I went to the door and stuck my head outside, and there was a guy there, pounding on the side of our portable with a hammer! Actually, he was replacing some missing shingles on the underside, but making a huge racket. I told him that the kids were testing
, and asked if he could come back in about an hour.

  So he came back around 2 o’clock. By this time, the kids were all finished with testing, and we were cleaning up the room and getting ready to go to computer class. I started calling the kids by section to pack up their backpacks and get in line.

  Marvin was one of the first in line, and when he saw the maintenance man outside, he called out, “Hello, asshole!” Good ol’ friendly Marvin, he probably said it with a wave and a smile. I don’t know, because I didn’t actually see or hear him do it. I was still inside the main room with the sections I hadn’t called yet. What actually may be even funnier (or more shocking?) is the way I found out about it.

  I learned what had happened from Maria. She’s the adorable little doll, standing about three-and-a-half feet tall, who used to go by her middle name, Chita. The last section was getting their backpacks together, when Maria, who had been right behind Marvin in line, came marching up to me and said, “Mr. Woodson, Marvin said ‘Hello, asshole,’ in a low voice.”

  Now most kids, when tattling, will say, “He said a bad word,” or “She cussed at me.” Not Maria. She flat out quoted him.

  Of course, Marvin had watched Maria with growing trepidation as she approached me, and I think that everyone in the room heard what she said. When I called Marvin back into the room and asked if he had indeed said it, the water-works had already started, and he cried, “I didn’t mean to!” I asked, “Let’s be clear — you didn’t SAY it, or you didn’t MEAN to say it?”

  “I didn’t MEAN to,” he sniffled.

  “How do you say something like that without meaning to?” I asked him.

  He answered, “I don’t know...I said hello, and the other part just popped out!”

  Great, so now in addition to severe ADHD, he’s got Turret’s Syndrome, too?!?

  The moral of the story, of course, is that if you cuss out an adult, you have to stay in during computer class and answer questions out of the science book. Just like with the “shout the fouk up” incident, I had Marvin write down what he had said and why. Here is Marvin’s scribbling: