The Classic Crusade of Corbin Cobbs

by Michael Ciardi

When I returned to the classroom, my students’ eyes tracked me as if I had a funny sign posted to my back. The difference in this case, of course, was that no one had an urge to ridicule me. Even Orlando managed to withhold an untimely outburst, although I sensed his bottom lip quivering like a censored reflex. At the moment, I had no stamina to resume with my earlier discussion. Situations like this called for a free-writing exercise, and I hoped the kids at least tolerated the change of pace. This wasn’t the first time in recent weeks where I suspended direct instruction for what the kids invariably referred to as “busy work.” But since this was a class designed around the writing process, my plan wasn’t entirely out of the ordinary.

  Because my legs still trembled in the aftermath of my latest episode, I immediately sought refuge behind my desk in the chair. Inevitably, a few students refused to write without a specific task in mind. By example, Orlando typically neglected to finish an assignment unless I intended to verify his contribution with a grade. But in this course specifically, I often wanted the students’ motivation to come from intrinsic sources, and any promised external reward automatically removed that impetus.

  “What do we got to write about, Mr. Cobbs?” Orlando asked, but his tone suggested that he had no interest in truly understanding my methods.

  “It’s called a free-write, dummy,” Sierra whispered in Orlando’s general direction. I offered an alternative explanation that was far less berating to the boy’s ears.

  “The whole idea is that you pick the topic, Orlando,” I said. “My only guideline is that you write at least one page by the end of the period.”

  Orlando tapped the dull point of his pencil on the desktop with the rapidity of a jackhammer before saying, “I get it. This is another assignment that you’re not going to grade, right, Mr. Cobbs?”

  “It’s not about the grade all the time, Orlando,” I replied.

  “Maybe to you it isn’t,” Orlando countered, “but we don’t have any other reason to do this stuff.” I tried to ignore the repetitiveness of Orlando’s obnoxious habit with his pencil, but my headache only intensified as I sat and watched him. “If you ain’t gonna even bother grading what I write, I might as well sit here and do nothin’,” he continued. To emphasize his defiance, he slapped his pencil down and pushed his journal to one side of the desktop.

  When I was a much younger and greener teacher, I might’ve reprimanded Orlando’s insubordination. But too much time had elapsed for me to become ensnared by the bait he cast under my nose. I certainly didn’t intend on becoming the worm wriggling on the end of his hook. Therefore, I simply shrugged my shoulders and remained unresponsive to the matter. Sometimes silence was more deafening to a rabble-rouser’s ears than an outright shouting match. I sensed Orlando squirming in his seat as the other students donned their creative caps and started to write.

  After several minutes passed, it became obvious to everyone in the room that Orlando was the only student not in compliance with my instructions. Kids generally loathed situations where they felt isolated, and Orlando naturally tried to persuade others to participate in his protest. Once he failed to lure any potential rebels to his side, he set out on a kamikaze mission to sabotage the lesson.

  “This whole class is stupid,” he blurted out. “Whoever heard of doing schoolwork and not getting a grade for it?” I don’t know if Orlando expected an answer to his rhetorical question, but I was well equipped to give him one.

  “The point of writing creatively,” I explained, “is that you learn to hone your skills because of a genuine love for the process. By removing the pressure and incentive of a grade, I know that my students are writing for the experience rather than the obligation.”

  Orlando wasn’t easily convinced, and I anticipated this from someone who was already infuriated by a different situation entirely. “I still ain’t doin’ it unless you put a grade on it,” he griped.

  “That’s your choice,” I told him. “I’m not going to force you to do something you don’t want to.” I then shifted Orlando’s attention on his classmates, who appeared somewhat engaged in their own writing. “Look, the rest of the class doesn’t seem to be having a problem.”

  “Big deal,” Orlando muttered. “They’re like trained seals.”

  “Why don’t you try picking up your pencil for a few minutes and see what you come up with? You might even surprise yourself,” I suggested.

  Orlando looked somewhat amused by my proposition as he clutched his pencil in his hands and deliberately dropped it onto the floor in the middle of the aisle. A few students near him giggled, but Lenore failed to find any humor in his behavior. In an unprecedented outburst, she let her feelings fly forth like an arrow straight into Orlando’s face.

  “Just stop acting like an idiot and do the work,” Lenore chided him. “Why do you have to make a big deal about it every time Mr. Cobbs gives us an assignment?”

  An eerie hush suddenly enveloped the classroom, and my amazement with Lenore’s outspokenness loomed larger now. The fact that this normally introverted girl had already voiced her opinions earlier in the period still astonished me. Orlando’s mouth hung open like a broken drawer as he pivoted in his desk to confront his unlikely assailant. To her credit, Lenore didn’t attempt to hide her face, but instead stared back at him without flinching.

  “Did you say something?” Orlando asked glibly. Lenore nodded her head a single time and adjusted the sleeves on her sweater. Of course Orlando couldn’t let his rebuke from another student go unchallenged, even if it came from a waif-like girl who had no ability to harm him. “Why don’t you just keep your mouth zipped like you always do?”

  “I’m just trying to do my work,” said Lenore in response. “I can’t concentrate if you keep complaining.”

  “Hey, I’m not complaining,” he said. “But even if I was, it shouldn’t matter to you. Look at it this way, I don’t go shouting you out in class every time I notice a new cigarette burn on your arms.”

  This accusation induced several distressed sighs from the students, while simultaneously causing Lenore to yank her sweater’s sleeves over her wrists. I knew nothing of Lenore’s history in this regard, but I couldn’t pretend that I hadn’t noticed her decision to avoid wearing short-sleeved shirts in class regardless of the room’s temperature. My primary concern now, however, was to address Orlando’s rather insensitive remark.

  “I don’t think that’s very funny, Orlando,” I scolded him. “And neither does the rest of the class.”

  “Good, Mr. Cobbs,” he retaliated, “’cause I ain’t trying to be funny. Just tell Lenore to roll up her sleeves if you don’t believe me. She’s got more burn marks on her arms than a paper ashtray.”

  “Just cut the crap, Orlando,” Sierra vehemently interjected.

  “Yo, Sierra, why don’t you go stick your head in an oven like that creepy poet you’re always telling us about,” Orlando barked back at her.

  “You’re such an asshole, Orlando,” Sierra returned. “If I was Mona, I would cheat on you, too.”

  “Cut it out,” Kirk intervened, while turning directly toward Orlando. “Everyone just please stop the bickering.”

  “Hey, I don’t know why everyone is jumping down my throat,” said Orlando, shrugging his shoulders ingenuously. He then pointed in Lenore’s direction and affirmed, “She’s the one who started with me.”

  My students had come to recognize that I rarely lost my patience with insolent kids, or at least that’s what I projected to them whenever possible. In truth, I had a varied range of emotions that sometimes overwhelmed my actions. Once inside the classroom, however, I learned to channel my frustrations in other ways, which often caused me to appear aloof from an onlooker’s perspective. In this case, I sensed the students’ eyes once again fixating on me for a remedy. I sometimes wondered what the educational gurus would’ve theorized in a real-life situation such as this. Since I didn’t have time to enact any high-minded pedagogy, I resorted to a strategy that worked for
my father for nearly thirty years.

  “Orlando, if you don’t shut your mouth this instant, you’re going to rue the day that you came into this world.”

  At least my remark prompted the class to come to an abrupt standstill. To suggest that it was quiet would’ve been a flagrant mockery of my effectiveness. Had a bird flown into my classroom at this moment, we could’ve all distinguished the sound of its feathers fluttering to the floor. Still, despite my brief victory, I knew that the situation hadn’t been quelled entirely. Orlando leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms in a posture that foreshadowed his enmity.

  “You know, Mr. Cobbs,” he fumed, “I don’t like it when teachers play favorites. I never pegged you as being that way, but I’ve been wrong about a lot of people lately.”

  “This isn’t about my favorites, Orlando. The way I see it, you’re the only one in here refusing to do the assignment. I gave you an option to leave at the beginning of class, but you chose to stay. So why not use the time productively?”

  “Hey, I got bad news for you,” he snickered. “The only reason I signed up for this dumb course was because all the other easy classes were filled. So I sort of got stuck in here with you, just like a lot of us.”

  “If you want to make this a personal issue,” I returned, “why don’t you stick around after class and we can discuss why you become so angry every time someone asks you to do anything.”

  “I ain’t like this in my other classes,” he insisted. “Ask anybody. I got no problems in math, science, and even history. It’s just your class that I don’t do nothin’.”

  “So now your substandard work ethic is my fault?”

  “Just forget it, Mr. Cobbs. You’ll get all huffy if I tell you what I really think.”

  “Try me.”

  Orlando narrowed his eyes as if squinting into intense sunlight. He looked as though he was holding back a bit, but suddenly found the courage to spew his venom like a vexed cobra. “I don’t think you really spend much time reading the stuff we write anyway. So if you’re not gonna read it, why should we write it?”

  “You really think I don’t read any of your papers?”

  “Yeah,” he muttered, “and I’m not the only one who says so either.”

  I glanced at the other students, who lowered their heads sheepishly and scrawled lines of phantom prose into their journals. In a moment of awkwardness I uttered to the class, “I’m sorry if any of you feel that way. But I really do read all of your writing.”

  A trace of despondency must’ve been evident in my voice. “Don’t listen to him, Mr. Cobbs,” said Lenore. “We all don’t think like Orlando.” I nodded submissively and bowed my head as if I had some business to attend to on my desktop. Even with our gazes temporarily disconnected, I sensed Orlando still watching me with a self-satisfied expression. I couldn’t summon the energy to further refute his statement, and a part of my conscience may have even felt he wasn’t entirely inaccurate. I remembered a time many years ago when I spent hours every night pining over my students’ work. Was it even fair for me to expect their best effort when I no longer demanded the same rigor for myself?

  Before the period ended, I informed the class to complete their writing assignment for homework. At this point, if anyone was still listening to me, they did so in quiet resentment rather than respect. I gathered that they were disappointed by my unwillingness or inability to neutralize Orlando’s assertion. As much as I once strove to project an aura of infallibility to those who sat before me, I now realized the futility of this façade. I had grown weary of posturing as a saint, and increasingly fed up with feigning my amazement in regard to student mediocrity. A climate of apathy was always present in the halls of Ravendale High School, lingering in the hot zones like a pandemic. There wasn’t any immunity to a contagion such as this. Teachers, administrators, clerical personnel, and security staff were all subjected to the viral effects of impassiveness. It was only a matter of time before this disease incubated into venues of reality.

  Chapter 32

  10:25 A.M.