by Dan Brown
I regretted overloading the kids, and I gave lighter assignments over the next few days, including a generous extra credit opportunity for memorizing twelve more lines of Langston Hughes's poetry. But I never indicated to the students that I thought I had screwed up. Almost all handed in the work, and the quality was surprisingly good.
I worked on memorizing my sixty-six kids’ names quickly; this went a long way. A week into the semester, when during a discussion I aimed my gaze at a reticent student and said, “What do you think, Sierra Divina Shaneequa Lee?” Sierra looked a little startled and then responded thoughtfully. She participated regularly for the rest of semester, and later told me that my remembering her name surprised her in a really positive way. I was glad for this; in my previous classes, I had felt the invisible cost of students’ alienation. For Sierra, a small gesture was enough to activate her participation and engagement; for others, I couldn't crack the code.
During my first year at P.S. 85, I had a small clutch of students led by my star, Sonandia, whom I could usually count on to participate, and responded by relying heavily on them to keep lessons alive. I later decided that those kids were likely to speak up and share with or without Mr. Brown at the front of the room. It was the less inclined students that I needed to coax out of their shells if I was going to be a truly successful teacher.
I sought to account for the quieter contingent by assigning a handful of presentations and group projects throughout the semester with checks to make sure each student participated. Under Jim's guidance, I fashioned a literary criticism project that involved groups of students becoming experts on a critical lens and then applying it to The Great Gatsby. Groups re-imagined Gatsby as a Hollywood film that emphasized their critical lens. The groups wrote a movie pitch and designed a poster to show their new vision, then presented to their peers, who had a hand in grading them. One group using the Freudian psychoanalytic lens transformed all of the characters into animals. Tom Buchanan was a grizzly bear; Meyer Wolfsheim's lupine likeness was self-evident.
Most days, the forty-five minute lesson whizzed by. The kids were reading closely and chomping on ideas in the texts. Our Langston Hughes poetry celebration featuring students’ original, Hughes-inspired works alongside the classics got ink in the school newspaper. Our culminating project involving in-character monologues based on To Kill a Mockingbird—inspired by a TC professor—was a hit. The assistant principal for the English department, Maggie O'Dowd, observed me twice and offered encouragement.
Jim helped me immeasurably through our daily conferences. During classes, he sat in the back of the room, let me run the show entirely, and composed longhand letters on a yellow notepad. His notes helped me focus on the nuts and bolts of good teaching. The gathered wisdom in his words leapt off the page. Some excerpts:
On your “Elements and Expectations of This Course” handout, I am especially impressed by your presentation of “original work” by trying first to understand the motivation for plagiarism. Yes, students get overwhelmed and some feel inadequate and yearn for the kind of recognition that becomes available through handing in “good writing” that they may be incapable of achieving on their own. Perhaps you could invite them to share their stress or anxiety with you in constructive ways—that's vital to establishing a sense of trust that I think will go a long way.
You gave out the Zora Neale Hurston reading and asked for a notebook response for HW. One of the systems I've developed is to set up a kind of form for students to label each entry in a unit as, for instance with the Harlem Renaissance, HH #1, HR #2, etc. (with dates). It's helped students to organize and it's helped me when evaluating notebooks. Consider adopting the system—it's up to you.
Good choice to have today available for students to express some of their anxiety about Locke's difficult text—it worked to just have students express their understanding and for others to hear these interpretations. It was almost therapeutic in a psychoanalytic sense for students to voice their anxiety as a way to dispel it.
I think your approach and the tone you've maintained about plagiarism are constant and fair. You seem honestly irritated by the circumstances of the four cases and baffled by the phenomenon, meanwhile making it clear and certain that you will not tolerate the act. It still might be interesting to explore the psychological aspect as further reinforcement. Not plagiarizing isn't just a rule (like so many in school), but a moral issue.
What made the activity for me was the reflection afterward—interesting insight into characters shared. Perhaps a follow-up activity might be for students to compose and construct monologues—not necessarily finding them—but composing them from what characters are reported saying or what thinking may be implied. This would also allow students (like Britney) to get deeper into the assignment and highlight their acting/speaking abilities.
Yes, it was teacher-led and traditional, but it was a very interesting “word talk.” Did you enjoy it? Because you seemed to be enjoying it and what I think the real value here (and what you convey) is the love of words. The only thing I would have done differently was being sure that everyone had a partner or made eye contact with a partner before letting them go. At least nine students seemed to be inactive or sat alone without sharing.
I felt like a success; in the final week of the school year, I had no idea that my biggest test at DeWitt Clinton still awaited me.
On June 12, my classes and I celebrated our last week together by watching the movie adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird. It was over ninety degrees for the third straight day and our classroom had no air conditioning, but the students were engrossed with Jem and Scout, characters to whom they'd become so close. I was proud that despite the conditions, we were still viewing this film and talking substantively about literature.
Meanwhile, the rest of DeWitt Clinton High School was in lackluster shape. A water fight on a stairwell led to a teacher slipping and falling. Fights were breaking out. Security guards indulged in stunningly unrestrained cursing sprees. A stroll down the hallway glancing into classrooms revealed bored kids spacing out, pacing around while teachers sat behind their desks, reading or fidgeting with a Blackberry. The school calendar had four days left before Regents exams, but really, the year was over. People were cashed out.
On the screen in my room, Miss Maudie was telling Jem, “There are some men in this world who were born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father's one of them.” I tore my gaze from the screen to look at the students, who were totally hooked in. Then there was a sudden pounding at the classroom door—BAM! BAM BAM!—and before I could reach the handle, a uniformed female security guard strode into our room. This had never happened before—an officer in the class. I decided to handle it, rather than invite Jim from the back of the room.
“Alright, we're taking the water. You, you, and you,” she yell-talked, pointing to Britney, Marielmer, and Yessica, three students who had bottles of water on their desks. “Give me the water.” Two older students I didn't know, holding large plastic lawn bags, had followed the officer into the room. It seemed that there was a small collection of plastic water bottles rolling around the bottoms of those giant bags. The two minions roved around the dark room, scooping up the girls’ water.
I was bewildered, and suddenly, sharply angry. We were sitting in stultifying heat—and this stranger (my protective switch flipped) wanted to take away the water? It made no sense. The kids were nonplussed, jarred out of the movie.
“Wait, wait, wait. What's going on?” I said.
But she and her flunkies just headed for the door. I followed them into the hall, closing the door behind me. By the time we reached the corridor I was furious, and ready to channel my inner Atticus Finch.
“Excuse me, but this doesn't seem right,” I said, my pulse skyrocketing.
“Water fight. Downstairs. A teacher slipped. We're confiscatin’ the waters. A direct order,” the officer mumbled.
One of the older students opened the lawn bag, and Officer
Gant—I read her nametag—tossed one of the bottles toward it. My Jedi reflex kicked in; I speared out my arm and caught it. Now that she held two bottles and I had one, the power struggle took on a new shape.
“Look, sir. I got a direct order. If you have a problem, you can tell the principal.”
No! I wasn't going to have these thirsty students’ water trashed, only to take it up with the bureaucracy later. Screw the direct order. This needed to be handled now. “I need to talk to your supervisor,” I said.
Gant didn't seem inclined to get into it with me. I was clearly steamed and she probably wasn't invested enough in her direct order to take on my livid protest. She clicked on her radio and called for Mr. Alvarez, the assistant principal whose sole charge was to run security. I heard staticky yelling on his end.
“He's coming up,” Gant said.
While we waited for Alvarez to arrive, something fortunate happened. Gant absently passed the two bottles in her hands to me. Maybe she was tired of holding them. Maybe now she counted herself out of the negotiation. Either way, the three bottles were now in my possession and Alvarez would have to physically wrest them from my death grip.
I was amped up. I again thought of Attitcus, advising his daughter: “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do… “
“Hey! What's going on? What's the problem here?! I gave a direct order!” Alvarez appeared at the far end of the hallway, hollering as he speed-walked towards us. “A direct order!” He reached us and scowled. “Who are you?”
“I'm Mr. Brown.”
“I don't know you.”
“I've been teaching this English 6 class all semester. I don't want these water bottles taken away. It's hot and the kids need them.”
“There was a water fight. An adult slipped and got hurt. A pregnant teacher. I put out an order all over the school. It's not just this class. It's a school-wide policy.”
“Okay, but these are honors students. They're not involved in any trouble. And we're like the only class on the hall still doing something.”
This was true. In the final week of classes, the un-air-conditioned rooms were stifling and in every window I passed, I glimpsed tableaux of glazed-out teachers and students resembling coach class passengers on a red-eye flight.
“Mr. Brown, I can't operate like this. The kids can't hold the bottles. If they need a drink, they can go out to the water fountain.”
“But that means they're missing class. Plus those water fountains are disgusting.”
He paused. Was I wearing him down? I know he couldn't disagree with me about the rust-encrusted fountains; they belonged in a dungeon. But then he took a deep breath and leaned in, inches from my sweaty face.
“I don't have time for this, Mr. Brown,” Alvarez said with renewed frustration. “I'm taking these water bottles. If you have a problem, you can talk to the principal after class.”
“No.” My cheeks were on fire. “Here's what's going to happen: I'm going back to my class with the waters, and if you have a problem with it, you can tell the principal. But this is over. Goodbye.”
I stormed back into the classroom and slammed the door behind me with unexpected violence. The sound was sudden and intense. All eyes fixed on me. A few kids applauded. The movie continued to play. Atticus was in the courtroom—in the arena.
Adrenaline rocketing through me, I delivered the three water bottles to their owners, then sat in the back next to Jim. He looked at me with a “What was that?” expression.
A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door. I went to it to find the school secretary.
“Are you Mr. Brown?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She paused, perplexed. “This is your class? We… don't have any record of you in the office.”
“I'm a student teacher,” I said under my breath. I hadn't disclosed this openly to my students, although the dots were available in plain sight for connecting. Down the hall to my right I heard a burst of exasperated laughter. It was Alvarez, listening in from a distance. He threw up his hands in mock amusement and walked off.
“Okay,” the secretary said. “I think the principal's going to want to speak to you.”
“Now?”
“No. We'll find you.” She walked away.
I watched the end of To Kill a Mockingbird with my students. When the bell rang, the students whose water I rescued thanked me, and everybody left.
My buzz from the confrontation subsided. I felt sure that I had done the right thing in protecting the kids from their drinking water being chucked, but I knew I was about to be dealt a consequence for my ethical stand.
Assistant Principal Maggie O'Dowd, who had supported me throughout the semester, met me in the hallway with a grave expression. “Dan, what happened? They want you out of the building now.”
Jim and I related what had occurred. I admitted it was wrong to have slammed the door and I agreed that I should have involved Jim from the start. Maggie seemed pessimistic. “I hear what you're saying, but I don't know if I can protect you on this. Alvarez wants you out of the building today. Let me talk to Terry [Theresa Harmon, the principal and see where things stand.”
While I waited for Ms. O'Dowd's return, I queried other English teachers if they'd been visited by security for bottled water disposal during the previous period. Only a couple, the ones who shared my hallway, had. I walked to another wing of the school and innocently asked a security guard if they were still confiscating bottled water.
“Nah,” he said, waving it off as if it were unimportant. I returned to the English department office.
Twenty minutes later, Ms. O'Dowd was back. “The only way for you to stay is to apologize to Alvarez and admit what you did was wrong. That's what we agreed on. If you do that, we can probably work something out. I set up a meeting at twelve with all of us, Mr. Alvarez, and Ms. Harmon in Gerry's office. I hope we can get this resolved then and there and that'll be it.”
The meeting was one hour away. I asked Jim what to do. He said he thought I had done the right thing, the Atticus thing, but he couldn't tell me what to do from here on. We had one week left of class and I really wanted to be there for that week. After the rapport I had built with my students, I couldn't imagine abruptly disappearing forever without warning. I had written my students a letter, not yet distributed, to bookend the semester and planned to ask them to reply for the final assignment of the year.
My courage in confronting Alvarez was partly artificial too. I was only a student teacher, unpaid and preparing to leave not just DeWitt Clinton, but all of New York City in just a few weeks. I knew what it was like to be a full-fledged teacher, on the payroll, relying on your salary, taking the long view with relationships with colleagues. My imminent departure emboldened me to burn my bridges in the name of taking a stand.
If I stood by my principles and went down in a blaze of self-sacrificial civil disobedience, maybe my students would be somehow inspired. Probably not. I'd be another teacher who vanished into the vacuum of the Bronx public school universe.
I really wanted to stay and finish what I'd started that semester. Still, the idea of abjectly apologizing to Alvarez felt so dirty and wrong.
I considered my position darkly. Was this dilemma a harbinger for the rest of my professional adult life? I had plenty of experience with compromise, but now I was essentially being forced to renounce what I wholly believed to be right. The institution held the power; I didn't. I had to conform to what it wanted—even if that entailed arbitrary, Gestapo-like confiscations—for the privilege of working with students and earning my daily bread. Well, maybe my daily bread wasn't a factor on this gig, but it certainly would be in all the ones to follow. Maybe this was why teachers aren't taking to the streets and screaming their heads off about how insane our sch
ools’ mechanized high-stakes testing culture has become; they need the jobs and they strategize on the promise of sticking around to fight another day.
Submission and conformity are necessary on many levels—where would we be if everyone treated traffic lights as optional?—but everyone has a breaking point. What is asking too much? Was it really too much for me to jot off a note to Mr. Alvarez, a letter that would instantly disappear into a bureaucratic void, addressed to a person I'd probably never see again?
I walked with Jim to Principal Harmon's office a few minutes before noon still unsure of what to do. Anticipating the worst, I'd left a note in the faculty lounge spelling out what had happened; writing it gave me a melodramatic by-the-time-you-read-this-I-will-be-gone feeling.
The principal's office had a large conference table, and when Jim and I were shown in, Ms. Harmon, Ms. O'Dowd, and another assistant principal, Mr. Jenkins, were there. The three administrators all looked to be in their fifties. Career educators. Alvarez wasn't in sight. We sat down.
When prompted, I recited what happened, and this time I opened with an apology for slamming the door. That prompted a round of nods from the tribunal. “I know that slamming the door was unprofessional. It was wrong. I am very sorry that I did that. But I do very much want to stay and finish out the year with my students. We've had a great semester. The water being taken away was disconcerting, especially the way it was done, without an announcement or clear rationale. I'd encouraged my students to bring water bottles to class so they could stay hydrated without leaving the lesson. I've very publicly brought a water bottle every day. I know that Mr. Alvarez has a tough job to do, securing the whole school, but this felt… off.” I felt like they were really hearing me, and I went for broke “And you know, we were finishing our study of To Kill a Mockingbird. I guess I was feeling all excited about Atticus… “
