Signs of Life

by Natalie Taylor

  • • •

  By the end of September, my eleventh-graders have finished The Great Gatsby. Or at least they were supposed to. I would be naive to think that all of them read it start to finish. But no matter how much they have or have not read, every student can participate in today’s activity. At the beginning of the hour the white board instructs students to pick up the sheet of paper at the front of the room. Once the bell rings and everyone is seated, I tell students to quietly read the ten sentences on the sheet of paper. After reading the sheet they slowly look up from their desks. I tell them to silently go through each sentence and write one of two words beneath each phrase: agree or disagree. Do not explain your answer, do not say “both,” do not look at what your neighbor wrote, just write one or the other. Students start to smile. They always like activities where they don’t have to explain themselves in writing. Over the next two minutes students sit quietly and write in their answers. The statements are bold expressions that either directly relate to the text of Gatsby or a major theme: “Daisy should have left Tom for Gatsby,” “Money makes life easier,” “Rich people get away with more than people who are not rich.” The most popular statement that always gets a rise out of teenagers is, “If someone cheats on you, it’s okay to cheat on them.”

  On one side of the room there is a large sign that says AGREE. On the other side of the room there is a sign that says DISAGREE. Once students have their answers listed, I instruct them to stand up with their sheets. I explain that I will read a sentence out loud and they will walk to either side of the room. Once everyone is where they want to be, we discuss. The reason we move around is so that we can get a visual idea of the opinions of others; even if you do not participate in the discussion, we still know where you stand.

  The activity works well. It isn’t difficult to get teenagers to discuss such absolutes. The statement that intrigues me most is the one that reads “It is possible to reinvent yourself.” The class is sincerely split on this statement. Immediately hands go up. Identity is a big deal to teenagers. Despite the fact that few of them have actually discovered who they really are, teenagers are incredibly astute when it comes to identifying “phonies,” a term that all of them know from reading Catcher in the Rye last year.

  We start off on the agree side. Lori Bingham goes first.

  “People change,” she says confidently. “I know a lot of people who I was close with in middle school and now we’re not friends anymore. Sometimes people change for the better, sometimes for the worse.”

  I call on Scott Sanders next. I know for a fact that he didn’t finish the book, but I call on him so he can participate in at least one discussion. “I got really bad grades in middle school,” he says. “And then when I got to high school I just decided that grades were important. I’m a completely different student than I was in middle school.” I nod, trying not too hard to reveal my own opinion. A few more people speak on the agree side. It is obvious that like most of us, everyone claims that they have changed dramatically since middle school. I remind them that middle school is perhaps the most difficult stage of growing up and most of us are happy to shed that skin once we hit ninth grade. But then I ask them to push the statement a little further.

  “But is wearing different clothes and getting your braces taken off a reinvention of yourself? Does that really change you? Can you ever really change?”

  We bring the disagree side in. Morgan Palinksi is the first to speak. “You can never change who you are. I mean, you can dye your hair and change your clothes, but you can never really get rid of the person inside.” Rachel Bearsley agrees. “It’s not that you aren’t changing when you grow up. Obviously we’re all different than we were in the first grade. We’re just discovering more of ourselves as we get older.” Quite reflective for a sixteen-year-old, I think to myself.

  We talk about the characters from the book for a while. Several students remark that no one is able to really move from one social sphere to another. None of the characters are able to change their identity.

  “So what about us? What about Fitzgerald? What does he think?”

  The conversation is interesting. The class has all sorts of different opinions and of course some students immediately bring up extremes. What about a prisoner who murdered someone when they were young? Have they changed after twenty-five years of being in jail? Can they shake the cloak of a murderer? Eventually we get back to us, everyday normal students. Can we change? Do people ever change?

  Driving home from school, I think about Gatsby, Tom, Daisy, my students, and me. Can I reinvent myself? Before Josh died, I was the follower. He made all the decisions. He planned vacations, picked out paint colors, made plans for the weekend, figured out what we were having for dinner. He drove. He said yes or no to big purchases. He packed the car. He disciplined the dogs. I joked that when we built our dream house, he would plan the entire house. Blueprints to doorknobs, he would pick out everything and I would like whatever he picked out. He was the pack leader. But now he’s gone and I have the dogs and the baby and the house and the bank accounts and now I have to drive the car. Can I successfully reinvent myself to be the pack leader or will I just bumble around unsuccessfully?

  It’s safe to say that none of us will be the same now that we have lived through the death of Josh. Right now I firmly believe I will never be as happy as I was. I will never exude that carefree smile I see on my face in my wedding pictures. Life will never look as bright, not simply because he’s not here, but also because I now know that things aren’t always fair in the world. But will I change? Will any of us change? Four months later, after vowing to live life differently, I wonder how much staying power those grief-stricken resolutions have. In the days following the funeral, Chris told Ashley that it was his job to make sure that the baby and I are always taken care of. But he’s back in Denver hunting elk and sometimes forgets to return my phone calls. Deedee said she was finally going to start on the much-needed renovations of her house—Josh had always wanted her to fix it up. Months later she hasn’t mentioned it again. I said I would never take a moment for granted. I would never get annoyed with stupid things like traffic or waiting in long lines at the post office, but I have gone back on those promises over and over. I said I would never reject an invitation to celebrate something, but months later I am already complaining about upcoming weddings and showers. So have we changed? Can I still change?

  One of the few times I started crying uncontrollably in public was when I was at the checkout at Home Depot. I had to order carpeting for my bedroom and Mike, the carpet guy, had just asked me all these questions about my carpeting. What type of carpet pad did I want? Did I want the single layer or the water-resistant? Did I want the Stainmaster finish? Was I going to carpet the closet? Did I want a silver or gold runner? What day did I want it installed? Every time Mike looked up for an answer, my voice got shakier and shakier. “I don’t know!” I wanted to scream. “I don’t know! My husband knows! My husband is supposed to be here right now! Stop asking me! I don’t know!” By the time I got to the checkout counter, I was sobbing.

  Can I do this? No, says Mike the carpet guy, you picked all the wrong answers. That gold runner is going to look ridiculous. No, says Louise, you’ll never be able to walk us. Can I reinvent myself? I want to be able to. But what if I can’t?

  I want to be able to handle all of this. I want my dogs to respect me and listen to me when we go out for walks. I want my son to see me as a strong matriarch. Years from now I want him to say, “When I was growing up, you didn’t mess with my mom.” But can this happen? Can I be this person that I have never been before?

  The Great Gatsby ends with “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Previous to this year I always asked myself, why does Fitzgerald use the word we, as if this is something we all do? This isn’t something we all do. Not everyone wants to go back in time. Not everyone sees only the past as the happiest times of his or her
life. And the word we almost sounds like it’s Fitzgerald talking and not really the narrator at all.

  When I read this now I know what he’s talking about. This is my life. This line is my whole life, right now at this moment. A boat against the current of time. I know full well that I should be going in one direction, but subconsciously my mind is in the other. I come home from work, another day on the calendar, but all I can think about are the days of months before. I sit in the driver’s seat and all I can think about is what my life was like when I was in the passenger’s seat. I can’t reinvent myself if all I want to do is go back. Unlike Gatsby, I know I can’t repeat the past. But like the Stewarts, like Ashley, like Suzanne, like Gatsby, like so many other people, today, all I want to do is go back.

  october

  There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.

  —RALPH WALDO EMERSON, NATURE

  today in my ninth-grade English class we are practicing how to make an outline. I thought I would be on maternity leave by the time we got to the nonfiction unit, but here I am, nine months plus, getting my kids started on how to read informational texts and take quality notes. Because everyone is researching something different, I give them a sample set of notes that we can all use as a class. We read through the sample notes and talk about what common themes we see throughout the research. We have to think of three categories and we have to use ten facts from the notes for our outline.

  The sample notes happen to be about how and why teens succeed (and don’t succeed) in high school. These notes discuss how to be a successful high school student. In one part the researcher found an article about what holds students back from achievement. There are several lines about how low-income students are statistically low achievers because they get to school with a lower vocabulary than their higher-achieving, higher-income peers. Now let me remind you, it is eight o’clock in the morning. Hands usually don’t go up this early. But this morning something has struck a chord in a few students.

  “First of all,” I ask, forcing the class to be active readers, “what does it mean to come from a ‘low-income’ home?” Easy question, but I ask to make sure we are all on the same page. Matt Davis raises his hand. Matt did his summer reading project on a book called The Cheat, where a group of students try to cheat on a standardized test. During his presentation he said he did relate to the book because when he was in the second grade he cheated on a spelling test. He said that he used to think that all kids who wore glasses were smart, so he copied off of a kid who wore glasses. He got every word wrong. That was the last time he cheated.

  “ ‘Low income’ means that the parents don’t make a lot of money. It means that they can’t afford certain things.” I nod. If we had more time, I would press his answer. I would ask, what does a lot of money get you, what things can a low-income person not afford that a high-income person can afford? But we don’t go there for now.

  “So,” I ask, “these students who come from families who don’t make a lot of money, they have lower vocabularies. Why do they have lower vocabularies? What do income and vocabulary have in common?”

  Slowly we get to the part about how if neither parent is home, especially when children are building their vocabularies, it is difficult to acquire a large vocabulary. I tell them about all of the baby books I’ve read that say you’re supposed to read to your baby as early as when he is in the womb. Once he comes home, you should talk to him in complete sentences, not baby talk. They think this is funny and interesting.

  As a class we interpret the data and eventually the goal is for us to create an outline. But suddenly the class isn’t interested in the outline. They want to go back to the part of the article that asserted that low-income students are not as likely to be high achievers. The same boys (and I don’t know why, but they’re all boys) continue to raise their hands and ask questions and tell me why the article is wrong. Just because your family doesn’t make a lot of money doesn’t mean you can’t do well in school. To them, one thing has nothing to do with the other.

  Daniel Stevenson is a short, slender African American boy with large glasses and a backpack that takes up half his body. He is a vocal student and has no missing assignments. His hand goes up as I attempt to move on to the next set of data.

  “Wait a minute, Mrs. Taylor. Are you trying to say that just because the parents don’t make a lot of money, the kid doesn’t do well in school?”

  “Daniel, that is a great question. But let me remind you, I’m not saying anything. I’m reading the data from the article just like you are. The data suggest that students from low-income homes have a lower vocabulary, which hurts them when they get to school. You seem to have a different opinion.”

  “Well, I’m just saying vocabulary is one thing, but what if that student works really hard in his classes? Why can’t he be successful then?”

  “Mrs. Taylor.” Matt Davis’s hand goes up before I can address Daniel’s question. Matt always likes to tell me when his hand is up. Matt’s mother e-mails me once a week to check on his progress.

  I call on Matt. “So what this article is saying is that if we come from a low-income home, we’re already doomed from the beginning.”

  “Do you think that’s what it is saying?” I ask.

  “Well, I don’t think it’s right, but that’s what it says.” He throws his hand toward the overhead screen.

  “But let me ask you this. This is a statistic. What does that mean anyway? What do we need to take into account when we look at a statistic?”

  Several hands go up. The usual look of apathy has escaped their tired eyes. How interesting, I think to myself.

  I call on Julia Scott. She is very bright and can usually articulate ideas that the rest of the class struggles with. And we haven’t heard from a girl in a while.

  “It doesn’t mean that that’s what will happen to everyone. It just means that this author studied a group of low-income students and high-income students and that the low-income students had a harder time being successful in school.”

  Daniel Stevenson’s hand goes up again. He starts talking before I can call on him.

  “What if you only have one parent? Then your family income is automatically lower than families with two parents.” He smiles a little as he says this. He wants to be discreet in asking the question, but if there is one thing that ninth-graders are completely incapable of, it is being discreet. I know that Daniel lives with his mother. His father is out of the picture, though I don’t know why. Adam Dolman, who sits two rows in front of Daniel, lost his father two years ago when he was in the seventh grade; his mom told me about it at Meet the Teacher Night a few weeks ago. I am certain that there are other students in the room who come from truly single-parent homes. Not where there is a mom during the week and a dad during the weekend—although those students struggle for different reasons. But Daniel is certainly not the only boy in the room who is raised or will be raised exclusively by one parent.

  I put the lid back on my overhead marker and stand up from the stool.

  “Daniel, that’s a great question. I think the answer is not so much to get an answer but to rethink the nature of our questions about statistics.” I cross my arms and take a moment to think about how I want to say this.

  “First of all, the short answer to Daniel’s question is yes. It’s obvious. If you have one parent working and taking care of children, then there is less money than if there were two people—in most cases at least. And think of how this could affect these budding vocabularies. If only one parent works, then clearly he or she can’t stay at home, so the child has to have some sort of alternative supervision, whether it is day care, a grandparent, or someone else. So arguably, these children who come from single-parent homes where the single parent doesn’t make a lot of money might have quite a difficult time in school. Statistically the odds of them being high achievers is slim.” I wait a moment and look at the audie
nce. Daniel’s hand goes up again. I know what he’s thinking. Adam Dolman gives me a perplexed stare. I motion for Daniel to put his hand down and I continue.

  “But I’m going to be a single mom. My house will only have one income also. I don’t know if my son and I will qualify as a low-income family, but I don’t really care what we qualify as. And to be honest with you, I don’t really care what the statistics say. I know that statistically things are not exactly in our favor. But because I am aware of the statistics, that means I will be even more conscious of how I raise him. We’ll read a lot together in the evenings when I get home from work. I’ll make sure he doesn’t become a vegetable in front of the television and that he doesn’t get addicted to video games. In the summer we’ll spend a lot of time outdoors. I know that other parents won’t have to work as hard as I will because there are two of them. And I know that he may not have it easy because he won’t have a dad around. But that doesn’t scare me and it certainly does not make me believe that my son will be a low achiever. I think statistics are just that—statistics. Numbers that represent a study that someone performed on a group of people. But they certainly are not my destiny, nor are they yours. So if you come from a low-income house and you look at this article and it makes you mad or it makes you think that you are going to prove it wrong, that’s good. That’s amazing, actually. That means that you are already a step ahead of the game and that you probably will be a high achiever, despite what this article says about you. Because, remember, it’s not even talking about you, it’s talking about people like you. Only you can decide what you’re going to do.”

  The room is quiet. For the first time all year I think every single ninth-grader in this room just heard what I said.