A Terrible Beauty: What Teachers Know but Seldom Tell outside the Staff Room

by Dave St. John

“My name’s Mr. O’Connel, Lyle. If you don’t want to write it, you’ll say it.” He swiveled slowly around. “Mr. O’Connel…Is she?”

  “She is.” This he found incredibly funny. “What’s she here for?” he asked, guileless as a child.

  “She’s here to see if I’m doing a good job.” He turned to face her once more, mouth twisted into a crooked smile, and Solange was relieved they were not alone.

  “Then if we screw around, you get in trouble, huh, Mr. O’Connel?”

  “If you’re not busy and quiet when the bell rings, you’ll be down in the office, and you’ll miss it if I do. Wouldn’t that be a shame? Now, turn around, please, Lyle.”

  Lyle swiveled around slowly. “Aw, no way I’d want to miss that.”

  The bell rang and after a couple reminders, they settled down to work, looking up every so of ten to see if he was watching. He was, so they went back to work. The tension in the room was palpable, a presence, like sitting on the lid of an overheated pressure cooker. She’d never been in a classroom like it. The boys made it obvious they would rather be anywhere else. They said it with their postures, their faces, their entire bodies.

  Too tense to sit, she peeked over their shoulders at their papers.

  Slumped down in their desks, they wrote in an indecipherable scribble. Although they had just begun, their papers were somehow already wrinkled and torn. Determined to fail, they left nothing to chance. Glaring up at her as she passed, they dared her to criticize.

  She could feel the hostility in their eyes. They radiated animus the way a bulb gave off light.

  A big boy with eyes set too close together set down his pencil and leaned back in his chair, looking around the room for something to interest him. From the way he held his face, she guessed he must be learning disabled. O’Connel went over and pointed out what he had missed; with a disappointed groan, he went back to work.

  Lyle threw a crumpled paper overhead where it bounced off the board next to O’Connel, and he continued taking roll without looking up. “No basket. Pick it up, Lyle.”

  “It wasn’t me!”

  “No big deal,” O’Connel said. “Just pick it up, and go back to work.”

  “I didn’t throw it, and I ain’t picking it up,” Lyle said, arms crossed.

  She had seen him throw it with her own eyes, but his performance made her doubt herself. He was that good.

  Sounding bored, O’Connel sighed. “That’s open defiance, Lyle. I’m going to have to send you down to the office.” He wrote up a referral and set it in front of Lyle on the desk. His manner told her this was how the game was played. It was nothing to get excited about.

  “Go on down to the office and tell Mr. Parnell your sad story of persecution. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Lyle got up to leave, and as he passed by O’Connel, he leaned close, hissing something vilely obscene.

  O’Connel slammed him up against the wall hard enough to rattle the glass in the cabinets. Tennis shoes just off the floor, the boy hung, mouth agape with fear and surprise, the only sound rain against the windows.

  “You know what they do to teachers who touch students, Lyle?” O’Connel said, voice quiet, deadly calm. “They fire them.” Lyle said nothing. “You know something else, Lyle? If they were paying me a hundred times what they are, it wouldn’t be worth letting you say that to me. Say it again, and they can have the job. I’ll put you right through this wall. You got that, Lyle?”

  Lyle got it.

  O’Connel set him down, keeping him pressed to the wall. “Now go on down and tell the counselor you want out of my class. And, Lyle, when you pass me in the hall, don’t smile. I might think you thought this was funny.” O’Connell him go, and he went out, slamming the door, screaming obscenities as he went.

  O’Connel sat at his desk and seemed to calm himself. The class worked silently in the book the rest of the period while O’Connel graded papers. No one had to be reminded to work, to be quiet, to finish the assignment. The tension was gone.

  It was a different class.

  That was it—she had all she needed. He had just hung himself. It was exactly what she wanted, exactly what she needed.

  She had won.

  Then why was she disappointed? Looking over what she had written, she realized how much she had been shaken by it. Laying hands on a student was grounds for dismissal. Period. She frowned. Then why, at least on a gut level, had she been glad he’d done it? And why had the class worked so annoyingly well the rest of the period? Violence wasn’t the answer, she knew that, but, then, what was? Just how much crap did we expect teachers to take? When at last the bell sounded, they filed out, voices hushed.

  O’Connel got up to stretch, wiping his face with both hands. “Guess I blew it.”

  “That’s quite a class,” she said.

  He stood at the windows, looking out. “Not five will ever graduate. We’re just warehousing them, keeping them off the streets, collecting our twenty-five bucks a head every day they warm the chair. They don’t learn anything, but the sad part is, nobody anywhere near them does either. They’re together in math class, but the rest of the time they’re out there mixed in with everybody else. Most read at about a third grade level. Some have failed every class since sixth grade, yet here they are until they’re twenty-one.”

  “Okay,” she said, “so where do we put them? They’re at risk. They need whatever help we can give.”

  “Spare me, will you? At risk? They’re at risk? Those kids aren’t at risk, we’ve lost them. It’s everybody else who’s at risk—from them. I mean, what, a super teacher’s going to bring them back? Not me, I can’t do it.” The bell rang. Kids drifted in.

  From the first, Solange could feel this class was different. Chelsea took roll as the tardy bell rang. Moses read the answers to Tuesday’s assignment. No scowls or backward baseball caps here. Geometry would make them a group that was on its way, if not to college, at least to graduation.

  O’Connel assigned the class an investigation to determine whether two triangles with side-angle-side, and angle-side-side congruence were always themselves congruent. Solange watched, fascinated, as they split into small groups, and began working.

  When a student asked O’Connel for help, he didn’t give the answer. Instead he asked a question that allowed the student to find the answer for himself Classic Socratic method—he made it work for him. Not stilted. Not put on. He made it seem the most natural thing in the world to answer one question with another. His students weren’t merely doing calculations, they were discovering theorems for themselves. He didn’t dole out knowledge—he described the problem and simply got out of the way. It was teaching at its best—teacher as facilitator, students as active participants in their own growth.

  Suddenly her breast flooded with emotion—she understood him, now, she was sure of it. Like men and women in schools all over the country, he did the best he could with what he had. Day upon day. Year upon year. In schools where going along to get along was called cooperation, conformity passed for consensus, and independent thought, heresy. In schools where in any confrontation the student stood to lose nothing, the teacher, everything. In a society that paid garbage collectors better. In a country where ten states paid a welfare mother with two children more than a new teacher—they kept on.

  Respected by no one, they took the blame when students dropped out. When students stayed in school only to graduate knowing nothing, they were to blame for that, too. Low grades, declining test scores, cheating—the teacher’s fault. Increased teen pregnancy, moral decline, increased violence—the same.

  Alone in the middle. Attacked by ineffective parents who couldn’t control their own kids, left out to dry by administrators covering their behinds, given the impossible task of making schools all things to all people—still they kept on. Coming back every day to teach those who wanted to learn, no matter how few. Did they want to be paid well? Yes, they did. And shouldn’t they be?

  What right had she to judge them—w
hat right had anyone?

  Suddenly he was there beside her. “You want to see something interesting?”

  “What about your class?”

  “Chelsea’s in charge. They’ll be okay for ten minutes. Come see this.” He led her two doors down the hall and into a classroom where more than fifty ninth graders pretended to listen to a student presentation.

  The teachers—there were two—waved as they came in.

  Five students stood in front of the group, a map of Venice beside them. One of these struggled to read the paper he held. Reading slowly, he stumbled over nearly every word, making it impossible to follow along.

  When at last he finished, O’Connel leaned close to whisper in her ear. “This is where the latest manifestation of outcome based education—Oregon’s 21st Century Schools Program—meets the real world— CIM—Certificate of Initial Mastery. All freshmen have to give presentations of independent study projects to meet the benchmarks outlined in the bill, you know that. Well, I thought you might like to see what it’s really like.” Another of the group took over and began reading what was obviously verbatim from an encyclopedia article. Solange turned to find the two teachers watching as if nothing were amiss, as if the boy’s speech, report, whatever it was, were not obvious plagiarism.

  “All the research,” O’Connel said quietly, “usually gets done on the copy machine.” His recital complete, the group sat. The class applauded without enthusiasm, and the two teachers rose to pass out papers.

  O’Connel showed her one. “This form is what everyone else is doing while they’re supposed to be listening. Teachers, kids, everyone evaluates. It’s very democratic.” Only positive comments were listed on the evaluation form.

  No possibility of failure. There was no box to check for copied from a book.

  O’Connel got up and she followed him out, shutting the door quietly behind them.

  “Not pretty is it?” She frowned, doubt gnawing the pit of her stomach. She had read the bill. She had written the grant that allowed Elk River the honor of being one of the first schools in Oregon to implement it.

  But she was ashamed to realize this was the first time she had actually visited a classroom to see how the objectives translated into daily grind. This was one of the most vaunted education restructuring bills in the country? “It can’t always be like this.”

  He wanted to reach out, take her arms, force her to see. Instead he took a deep breath. “Why not? Because you don’t want it to be? C’mon, I’ll show you a class doing research.” In the computer lab more than fifty Macs lined the walls. A woman across the room chatted with an aide at her desk. With her eyes, she asked if they needed help. O’Connel shook his head, smiled and she went back to her conversation.

  “Here’s the tech. lab you administrators brag so much about the fast lane of the information superhighway. Let’s see what kind of research they’re doing today, shall we?” They walked behind students, who, seeing their approach, either covered screens with their hands or with the press of a key, blanked them out. Two boys were busily using the movements of their mice to erase a blue screen as a pencil eraser would erase a poster sized paper of solid color in a bogglingly mindless entertainment.

  Mouth agape, Solange watched them in fascination. At last she concluded that they were racing to see who could erase his screen first.

  Numb, she followed O’Connel where he stood behind Paul, who had somehow not noticed them. A photo of a man with a nose ring glared out at them, middle finger raised in salute.

  “You see that screen?”

  “It’s a chat shop, isn’t it?” Paul, hearing them, instantly brought up text.

  O’Connel nodded. “What you researching, there, Paul?”

  “Oh, just something on popular culture for history, Mr. O’Connel.”

  “Uh, huh.” They moved on.

  “Look around the room, that’s mostly what you’ll see—if you’re fast enough.” He pointed to a sign saying ‘No Internet’ and smiled.

  “So, here we’ve got kids, fourteen, fifteen-years-old cruising out there in an adult world with absolutely no supervision. You know the stuff that’s out there, and you saw the way they hid what they were doing. Draw your own conclusions. The same thing’s happening every day all over the country. Our tax dollars at work for a better America.” They went out. “Why are they allowed to do that?”

  “They’re not, you saw the sign. We’re very strict in this district.

  The kids have to promise not to, and get their parents to sign a permission slip promising they won’t access any inappropriate material.

  And we also have them under constant supervision of an adult.” He blew air. “As usual, it’s all a joke. The kids are going to do what they want to do.”

  Dismayed by what she saw and heard, Solange sought desperately for a reply. “What about the chips, the programs that are supposed to filter out the garbage?”

  He looked at her like she was nuts. “Ever tried to keep a kid from getting what he wanted out of a computer? if they want it, they’ll get it. You remember all the claims about how computers and the information superhighway are going to rescue education? That’s it, that’s the revolution back there. I think Paul’s snapshot summed it up pretty well, don’t you?” She followed, afraid of what might come next.

  Just how bad was it—and did she really want to know? “Where now?”

  “More research.” In the library, they found three classes, more than sixty students with three teachers. The librarian met them as they came in, face pinched in an anxious smile. “Ms. Gonsalvas, what can I do for you?” Solange instantly disliked this woman with her counterfeit smile.

  “Nothing at the moment, thank you, I’m here to observe.”

  “Well,” she said, hands pressed together as if in prayer, “today we are doing research for CIM.” Impatient with her wheedling, Solange cut her off— “Thank you, I’ll show myself around.” Listening, watching, feeling, she sized up the room, ear cocked like a mechanic listening to a slipping transmission. Seeing her coming, kids cut animated conversations short. Others suddenly found a convenient book irresistible, only to discard it as she passed. Each teacher snapped to as she passed, rushing to help or put a student back on task. They had little effect.

  Someone else might have been fooled—she was not. of the sixty ninth graders in the library, perhaps a dozen worked. Their insouciance thick as cane syrup, the rest passed time. Having seen all she needed to, she led the way out into the hall, where, once alone, she confronted him. “It’s this way everyday?” O’Connel stopped a girl with short dark hair as she passed on her way into the library.

  “Megan, got a minute?” She laughed. “Boy, do I.”

  “This is Ms. Gonsalvas, the assistant superintendent. She’d like to hear what you think about CIM.” Megan smiled, intelligent eyes wary. “She does, huh?” She took her chin in a nervous hand.

  “I do if you want to tell me,” Solange said.

  “Okay, well, I moved here a month ago from Roseburg, and there they had the kids grouped according to ability. Here they’re all just thrown in together, and the work’s so easy that the smart people just spend all their time goofing around.” She ran a long finger along the line of her jaw in a habitual gesture. “If you want to know, I think it’s a joke. The only reason we’re doing it is so the school can get a lot of money for being the first school in the state with CIM.

  Nobody learns anything. The teachers don’t even know what they’re doing. Last year, they blew it so bad they had to start over from scratch.” She backed away in the direction of the library. “I don’t know if you wanted to hear that, but— “

  “Yes, I did,” Solange said, “and, Megan, thanks for telling me the truth.” She looked at O’Connel. “It’s about time I heard it.” They backtracked to his room. There, frustration boiling up inside her, she turned on him. “So why doesn’t anyone say anything? if it’s not working, we need to know.”

  “What are th
ey going to say, I can’t do the job? I’m sorry, but I think the latest law to come down from Salem’s a load of horse manure? This is the profession where people are hired for the enthusiasm they can muster for the latest nonsense to afflict the system, remember.

  Integrate the curriculum? Sure! Great idea! Teaching the science and math of ancient Egypt because they’re studying the pyramids in history? Heavens, why didn’t we think of it before?” He hesitated, hand on the doorknob. “In the real world, people who tell emperors they’re in their skivvies don’t get a pat on the back—they get lynched.” He went inside, leaving her in the hall alone.

  She shut her eyes, pressing the heels of her hands hard against her temples.

  It was too much, too fast. There was much needed fixing. That she knew, but she couldn’t fix it all—not here, not today. If she lost her job she never would. She was here for Hugh, for herself— for one reason only—to save their jobs.

  She wouldn’t forget that.

  She couldn’t.

  • • •

  She came in as they were just putting their books away.

  “Okay, if you want to join us at the Thanksgiving feast tomorrow, I’ll need your two dollars,” O’Connel said.

  The bell rang and they were again left alone.

  Not talking, not wanting to, he set out chess games, eyes drawn to the hills and steel gray sky beyond. It was cold—cold enough to snow. He’d have to tarp the boat tonight.

  “Today we spend lunch with the chess team. You remember Paul, the guy in the tech. lab?”

  “Yeah,” she said, “he’s the guy who’s always reading?”

  “That’s him, smart kid.”

  “Genius?”

  “Bright, but no genius. He just looks like a genius here. Put him in Eugene or Portland and he’d be maybe in the top third if he worked for it. He’ll be in in a minute. The tournament is really between him and Armando. Nobody else can touch them. When they came in here two months ago, neither one knew how to play. I only have to show them a tactic once; the next time they use it against me. What about you, you play?” She nodded.