“He hasn’t turned in a completed assignment all quarter in math,” Karl said. “Mama says he said he turned them in, though.” He held up his hands. “Gee, guess I lost them all?” Sid scratched his head. “Anybody see a pattern here?” O’Connel closed his grade book. “What are we doing here, making ourselves feel better? This jerk circle doesn’t change one thing. We may be fooling ourselves with all these meetings, but we’re sure as hell not kidding them. The kids know what’s going on, and it’s nothing for them to worry about. Kids see the bottom line…is anything going to happen if I do this, or not. And I’m not talking about fifteen minutes detention a week later.”
“I see nothing wrong with our detention system,” Karen said.
“To a kid, a consequence happens now, not at some remote time in the future. Now, right now! When a puppy wets the carpet, you don’t wait a week to swat it. We’re not willing to give kids consequences unpleasant enough and soon enough for them to understand.”
Karen shook her head. “I just don’t see what you’re getting at. We’ve got assertive discipline guidelines in place that work just fine.”
“What about the kid last week who wandered into the safe and walked out with a thousand dollars of student council money? Three days suspension? Three days? That’s what grand theft gets you now? You think we’re not sending a message with that? “This kid’s a legend around school now, it’s like he’s Billy the Kid. Remember the eighth grader last year who robbed a bank and kidnapped a teller? Eighth grader— if the courts hadn’t stepped in, he’d still be in school, I have no doubt.”
“If you’re talking about corporal punishment, I can tell you that I’m glad we’re no longer living in the bad old days,” Karen said.
“You don’t swat a dog that bites people,” O’Connel said. “You get rid of them. Are we so afraid of losing five percent of the kids that we’re willing to let them take the other ninety-five with them?” He pointed at Parnell. “You know, one of these days, these parents, the same ones who let their kids get away with this crap, are going to figure out that they can sue the district for a million dollars when their kids graduate and still can’t read. I’m surprised no one’s thought of it yet. It’ll happen, wait and see.”
“Hey,” said Lott, “maybe I’ll go to law school.” Parnell, who’d been listening to all this while fiddling with his pencil, shook his head. “C’mon, Dai, I’m tired of always being the heavy in this dime novel.” He spread his hands. “You’re no virgin. You know how it works. Before I can move for an expulsion hearing, the superintendent wants every base covered. We send the kid to the psychologist and they almost always come back with a section 504 disability.” He laughed, rubbing his eyes wearily. “My favorite’s O.D.D. Oppositional Defiant Disorder. It basically means he has the tendency to tell you to go screw yourself” Parnell stabbed the air with a finger. “Gotcha! Now he’s special ed—can’t be expelled. Beautiful, ain’t it? The serpent swallows its tail. Now we get to sit down and write him an Individualized Educational Program.” He threw up his hands and smiled. “Guess that shows us, huh? “I just sat in on a meeting last week for one kid whose parents insisted we give him the right to get up and walk out of class whenever he feels like he might get in trouble. This is written in his IEP, now. He made a big show of walking out of class five times yesterday.” He held up five fingers. “Five times! You think that kid doesn’t have our number? “Some of these kids—” He shook his head, disgust plain on his face. “If you knew the things they went through— Sometimes I just want to grab parents and tell them— ‘Hey, you know what? You shouldn’t even have kids.’ But, you know, you’ve got to be political, so I just suggest counseling.”
Karen shook her head. “I don’t know what all that has to do with the students we’re discussing, but we have a responsibility to all the children here,” she said, facing O’Connel, “no matter what difficulties they may have.”
He’d had enough of her save-the-world garbage. In the end it didn’t save anybody. “Oh, no,” he said, “not me.”
Condescension was her specialty. “Oh yes, you.”
“Sorry, babe.” He wasn’t taking it, not this time. “You take responsibility for the horses’ asses! Anytime you want to come on up and show me how to teach, you go right ahead.”
She shook a finger at him. “You are responsible for teaching everyone in your class, Mr. O’Connel, every single student.”
He hunched his shoulders. “Oh, I get tingly all over when you do that. Come on, preach at me some more.” O’Connel slammed his fist down on the desk, making her jump. “You know who I care about? The kids who get ignored. The ones who sit so quietly you never learn their names. The kids who do everything we ask of them. The ones nobody pays any attention to because they’re too busy hammering on the kids who won’t shut up.
“The regular kids, the ones who fall between gifted and special ed. The little girl in the back who never says boo, just sits and watches you with those big baby blues while you make an ass of yourself every day playing ring around the goddamn rosy with the jerks. That’s who I’m responsible for. It’s about time somebody was.” He looked around the circle. “Can’t you see it? That five percent’s turned us into babysitters. We’ve had to dumb it down so much that the normal kids never have to push themselves, and the really bright ones like Armando are bored out of their gourds. And why? Just to keep these losers in school an extra year or two before they drop out? Just to collect a few shekels a day?” Disgusted, he stood. “Standards… of achievement… of behavior.” His voice fell to a throaty growl. “What happened to them? What happened to us?”
• • •
Chest heaving, Solange caught him on the second floor landing. “You really should carry around a soap box.”
“So they tell me.” He stepped over a girl seated on the steep stairs. “We got a lot solved, didn’t we?”
She caught his arm. “You don’t solve this stuff in one day.”
He took her aside as three boys tore past and, cornering her on the landing, moved in close. So close he could hear her breathing, smell her. “Yeah, you’re right, but what I just realized a couple years ago is that with this system, we don’t solve anything—not ever.”
Mouth open, she looked as if she were afraid of him. “What do you mean?”
He wanted to take her by her shoulders and shake her, push her hard up against the wall and make her see, make her see it all. He wanted to do more than that. “It keeps us so busy chasing our tails we don’t realize how nothing ever really changes.”
The bell jangled, loud in the confines of the stairwell, and she jumped, unpainted mouth opening.
Backing away, he took a deep breath, waiting for his heart to slow. “And you know what? It works. It works damned well.”
• • •
Upstairs at his room, two young women waited.
Seeing them, O’Connel smiled. “But today’s going to be a good day. I want you to meet somebody.” Maria was a cute nineteen-year-old with a nice figure. She took Solange’s hand in a cool, firm grip. Salina was twenty, with wavy black hair, dark eyes, and a dimpled smile. Solange liked both of them immediately, but was curious why they were here.
When the tardy bell rang, O’Connel told the eighth graders he had two Elk River graduates there to speak to them.
Maria got comfortable on the edge of the lab table.
“Some of you may remember me,” she said introducing the two of them. “I always wanted to go to college. Even when I was here, sitting where you are now. But my mother and father are more traditional.
In our culture, a girl doesn’t go to college—she has babies.” She smiled, apologetically. “They thought I would change my mind and want to get married. Well, my brother dropped out of school by the 10th grade, but me—I wouldn’t give up. My parents told me I couldn’t do it, that I should quit, but the more they said, the more stubborn I got. I worked hard, and when they made fun of my dream, it just made me mad
and I worked even harder.” A painful tightening in her throat, Solange watched from the back of the room. She’d never told anyone how hard it had been for her to get where she was.
“I watched my friends in high school get pregnant and drop out. I saw husbands, boyfriends get drunk and blacken their eyes. I tried to tell them they could have better, but they wouldn’t listen.” She sighed, smiled ruefully. “So, I did what I had to do—I graduated with a 4.0 and won a four-year scholarship to UCLA. I’m going to study law.” Maria was an attractive girl. No sour grapes here.
Anna raised her hand with a smile that lit up the room. “Are there cute guys at college?” Salina’s cheeks dimpled. “Sure there are, but dating comes after studying.” Salina put a hand to her breast. “I’ve worked hard to get where I am, I’m here to graduate, not to get married. There’ll be time for that later. I’m going to be a doctor. That takes a long time, a lot of work. It won’t be easy.” Solange looked out over those in the room and wondered which had such strength. Why had these two chosen the path less traveled? For Solange, a few special teachers had made all the difference.
A handful out of many, they had seen something in her she hadn’t seen herself. She knew now that for Maria and Salina, O’Connel had been one of these, and in that instant saw him differently.
Her time nearly up, Maria made a last impassioned appeal.
“You’ve got to want it, want it bad, and if you do—if you want it bad enough—you can have it. No one on Earth can stop you then.
I mean it, no one can stand in my way.” Anna spoke up again. “What should we do now, if we want to go to college?”
“Listen.” Salina said it with passion. “Listen to what your teachers like Mr. O’Connel are trying to teach you. Do your homework and study as hard as you can.” The bell sounded, and when the class had gone, the two said goodbye, taking O’Connel unawares with a hug that seemed to embarrass him.
“Two very impressive young women.” Solange said when they had gone. “I don’t think I was that mature at twenty-five.”
“One thing I know—I wouldn’t want to get between them and what they want.”
She smiled at him. “I guess we can’t be doing too bad a job if we can turn out two like that.”
“I wonder how much of what they are is because of us, and how much in spite of us?” He shook his head. “I can’t take credit for them.”
She stood, stretching her legs, smiled a skeptical smile. How could he say that? “You don’t think you had any effect on them? Not even a little?”
“Ah, if I knew how to do that, I’d write a book.”
She watched his face, newfound affinity welling up in her. “But, you know, all it takes is to light a spark. I’m not sure we ever know where we make the greatest effect. It’s like we spend our days tossing corked bottles into the outgoing tide. The chances are pretty good we’ll never see any of them again. But just because we never hear back doesn’t mean no one got them. We couldn’t help but have some effect, don’t you think? Probably the last place we’d ever expect.” He smiled, seeing her point. “Now that I think you’re right about.” The class filled once again, this time for Basic Math. Today the boys laid their hats on the counter without being asked, going quietly to their seats, where they played math bingo until twenty minutes into the class, when they were called down to the cafeteria for an assembly.
“Another fund raiser,” he said. “You remember what they were like. We have two a year, now.” They met Aurora, Sid and Karl at the cafeteria door.
Sid looked outside at the rain, falling now heavier than ever.
“Anybody think it’ll rain?”
“Here we go again with the fund raisers,” Karl said.
Aurora clapped hands. “Whoopee!” The stage was filled with toys, prizes, flashing lights. A man with a guitar sang La Bamba at the top of his amplified voice. Song over, he launched his pitch.
“Hey, guys, how would you like to win this Kewpie doll, or this troll?” Screaming themselves hoarse, three hundred kids indicated they would like it very much indeed.
“Sell only one box, and he’s yours! But— sell five boxes, and you’ll win this cassette player!” This was more like it.
“Sell ten boxes, and you win this giant stuffed panda!” They went wild with joy.
“And sell twenty, and you get this mountain bike!” Sid closed the doors, shutting in the noise.
Karl groaned. “Is this stuff getting worse, or is it just me?”
“This guy’s good,” Sid said. “He’s got them whipped into a frenzy; and he hasn’t even gotten to the big prizes, yet.” Aurora shook her head. “What I want to know is, what the hell has any of this got to do with school?” Sid bent his knee, grabbing his sneaker in a runner’s stretch.
“Oh, relax, Helvey, just think about those almond bars. You’re the one who makes these sales a success! Hey, you know, if you bought a whole box at once, I’ll bet they’d give you a Kewpie, too.” Aurora gave Sid a shove and he tipped, catching himself Solange looked to see they were alone in the hall. “If I were superintendent, we wouldn’t be doing this.” Karl spoke up— “Well, you’ve got my vote.”
“It’s the wrong thing done for all the right reasons,” Solange said.
“Now, when he gets done with them,” Aurora said, “we get to take them back to class and learn them something.”
“Yeah,” O’Connel raised his voice to be heard over the screaming.
“They should be nice and calm.”
“Who plans these things in the middle of the day?” Karl said.
Solange laughed. “Someone who’s never been in a classroom.” O’Connel headed for the stairs. “I’m going up. Send mine when he’s done calming them down.” Aurora clicked her tongue. “I’m telling.”
“Who you gonna tell?” Sid pointed. “The boss is right here.” In his room, O’Connel plugged in the tea kettle.
Drawn by the windows, Solange looked out. Her car was free, snow gone, melted by warm rain. Wednesday—it would be over soon.
There was shouting in the hall. O’Connel went to the door.
“Jesus, they can’t be coming back already, can they? I thought we’d at least have time for tea.” In the hall, a group of boys wearing football jerseys surrounded Frank. He wasn’t smiling now.
Solange started forward but O’Connel held out an arm to stop her. They hadn’t been seen. He motioned her quiet.
“I don’t want to fight, all right?” Frank said, trying to walk away.
A much bigger boy with a shaved head pushed him back against the wall. It was her old friend, Wagner.
“You pushed me, didn’t you, you little faggot?” Wagner said.
“Yeah, I pushed you. One of these fools tripped me.” He tried again to walk around the bigger boy. “Sorry about that, catch you later.” For the second time, he was shoved back against the wall hard enough to hurt and Solange winced.
“C’mon you little faggot, hit me!” What was he waiting for? “Are you going to stop this, or am I?” She whispered close behind him, annoyed that he did nothing.
He shook his head, held up a finger.
“I told you, baldy, I ain’t fighting you,” Frank said.
The larger boy prodded Frank in the chest with a thick finger.
Now O’Connel moved between them, sending Wagner and the others to the office.
Frank came down with them. “Say there, Mr. O’Connel, I guess it was pretty lucky you came along just then. Another second and he would have been hurting pretty bad. There’s just one thing.”
“What’s that?” O’Connel said.
Frank scratched his head. “I couldn’t seem to remember what to do next.”
• • •
O’Connel shut the door of Parnell’s office after them.
“I saw what happened with Frank and Wagner.” Parnell went on writing. “I’ll take care of it.” Embarrassed by their intrusion, Solange wanted to leave, but stayed where she was. After all, she
reminded herself— she was there to observe.
Parnell looked up. “Oh, hello, Miss Gonsalvas. Was there something else you needed? Because if not, Dai, I’m kind of busy here.”
“Too busy to hear what happened?” He set down his pen. “District policy’s clear. When two students are involved in a fight, they’re both sent home. There’s no need for a big investigation. Am I right, Miss Gonsalvas?”
“That’s right, but—”
“Look,” O’Connel said, “I know Frank’s no angel, but I saw him try to walk away from this one. Why should that get him suspended?” Parnell leaned back in his chair, fingers woven behind his head.
“Those are the rules, Dai. If you’re not happy with them, talk to the board. From what I hear, you’ll get your chance tomorrow night.”
“So, let me see if I understand. Half your football team corner Frank in the upper hall during break, try to get him to fight Wagner, a kid who outweighs him by fifty pounds, Frank tries to walk away, gets poked, slammed into the wall, doesn’t hit back, then gets suspended for it. That about it?” The buzzer sounded the end of the break. Parnell glanced at his watch, rocking back in his chair. “Don’t you have a class to teach? Or do you do that any more?”
O’Connel stood looking at him, jaw working. Suddenly Solange was afraid of him, of what he might do.
He went slack, laughed, shaking his head with disgust. “Ah, what’s the use?”
He went out and Solange stayed, shutting the door after him. She was on thin ice here, she would have to be careful. “This can’t be what the board intended, Dean.”
“Miss Gonsalvas, I don’t have any idea what the board intended. I do know what they approved.” He patted a binder on his desk. “And that’s what I go by.”
“But, in this case, I mean, my God, it’s not fair.”
“Miss Gonsalvas, I’ve been here twenty-eight years; in two more I retire. How many you have in, five?” He cocked his thumb over his shoulder. “You see that paddle up there? We used to call that the board of education. I don’t care how tough they were—and we’ve had some tough ones—when I swatted them, they had tears in their eyes. They passed a law that says I can’t use it anymore, so it sits up there collecting dust.” He shook his head, looking like an old cowboy in need of a place to spit. “Was it a panacea? Hell, no. Oh, a few kids I only had to use it on once. Straightened them right out. For others, it didn’t do a damn thing. It was just another trick in the bag, is all.” He shrugged, his wrinkled mouth sour. “Now we talk. It’s no different—some get the message, and some don’t. Same as always.
A Terrible Beauty: What Teachers Know but Seldom Tell outside the Staff Room Page 13
