by Jose Moreno
****
The next morning, he was going to deliver his first class. At 6:30am, an administrator—who looked at Barón with awe being the only teen-ager to teach a class for other teen-agers—came to his cell and introduced himself. The administrator explained briefly what he was going to do in the classroom—He was able to provide for Barón the instructions that he had received directly from the agency. The Administrator mentioned all the rules of the school that were required to be followed in order for anyone to remain teaching the class—he clearly stated that Barón had to follow the rules like the other teachers at the jail.
After talking with the administrator, Barón took a shower, put his uniform on, grabbed his bag, and headed to the dining room that was on the fourth floor: It was a place for adults only; however, given the special circumstances, he was allowed to eat with the other jail personnel—Barón was feeling strange looks from all the adults during the nine minutes he spent there. There was no need for blood monitors given that all food from that place was approved by the state. He ate as quickly as possible and climbed up the stairs to the 5 floor where his classroom was.
He had to go to room 546. It was 7:10 when he arrived there: There was an old man with a gun that was going to be the security guard there for the rest of the year. After they introduced each other, Barón examined the classroom: There was an old green board and white chalk; there were seven rows of student desks lined up where each row contained five desks; all the desks were facing the old green board. Under each of the student desks, there were books and notebooks with the names of the students. Next to the green board, there was an old damaged metal desk that contained a big, old fashion, book which contained all the lessons that Barón had to cover for the rest of the year. On top of the desk, there was something called “A roster” where all the students’ names appeared, their personal information such as date of birth, cognitive problems, arrest records, etc.; however, he was not responsible for making sure they were present in the classroom because they were escorted in groups to the classrooms by other armed guards. Barón quickly reviewed the lesson that he was going to cover. Then, he grabbed the chalk, looked at it for a second and smiled—it was another old fashion object he had seen only in movies. He wrote his name and the objective for the day according to the lesson plan book: The objective was to teach the importance of quantum mechanics in the study of atomic structures. Finally, he just waited for the remaining three minutes for his students to arrive.
In those three minutes, Barón’s began to feel nervous due to all the questions that were going through his mind: “What if I do not meet the goals? What if the students are too slow? What if a student tries to beat me up?” Barón wisely rationalized that it was better to wait for the students in order make an informed judgment rather than exasperate with questions. Then, he began anxiously walking around the deteriorated classroom with his hands behind his back and looking at the smudgy, tiled floor.
Exactly at 7:30am, it was the time to start the class and a guard knocked on the door. The door was opened by the reticent old classroom guard who was going to be also an assistant for the class. Then, one by one, the students came in the class with their hands behind their backs making no eye contact with anyone. Barón was satisfied to observe order. He felt optimistic that things were going to be fine by watching how “all the students automatically followed the same routine as if they were in the Military,” he thought. Once all the dusty seats were filled in, the guard that escorted the inmates to the classroom closed the old fashion door. The students were uncomfortably very silent. Barón hypocritically smiled. Now, it was time for Barón to address the class:
“Hello. My name is Barón Cortez. I would like to say that I expect good behavior from all of you. I have two rules: Be respectful and be ready. It is my first time teaching this class to students. I am really glad to be able to teach science and math for this quarter. Are there any questions?”
Then, someone from the back raised his hand and asked, “You are not a student? You are going to be teaching us?”
“That is correct.”
Everyone looked at each other for a few seconds and then they all burst with laughter. The same student that raised his hand said, “You are not going to teach crap to us!” They all kept making derogatory statements and laughing out loud. The class was out of control.
Barón’s smile was quickly erased. Rationalizing, Barón’s first thought was that it was surreal for him to be teaching the class. Watching all those students laugh made him feel disgusted about teaching in jail. While they all laughed and called him “baby wipe,” he thought that it was ironic that he wanted to change the world by avoiding technology and now he was a metaphorical prisoner of his own wishes in a nightmare. In Barón’s poetic imagination, “the technology fairy was giving him a lesson”. The student laughter reception had signaled Barón that teaching them was not going to be easy.
In this way, surviving as a teacher was primordial to Barón and quickly thought that it would be better to deal with the situation. Barón had already set in his mind to survive as a teacher and be out of prison as soon as possible. He was not going to let them take him down. He had to do what he had to do.
Barón observed carefully the behavior of all those noisy students. With a mean look on his face, Barón was thinking, while they were making derisive comments, that he had to make sure first that “all of them identify themselves with him”; after all, Barón and the students were at the prison for committing a crime. Barón thought that it would be better to make personal connection with the students before trying to teach the subject itself.
Barón, calmly and loudly, said, “I need silence.” Everyone remained silent waiting for more information that might amuse them. Then, Barón continued, “I know that you were not expecting to find someone who is your age to be a teacher; however, I am going to be your instructor. Before I continue, wouldn’t you like to hear how I ended up here?”
Some student answered, “No!”
“Do not answer the question! It is just rhetorical!” Barón said loud. Immediately after that he said, “I would like to explain and you all are going to listen.”
Then, Barón proceeded to explain how he ended up in jail—the students were listening attentively feeling that it was better than doing math or science. First, Barón explained that he wanted to form a functio- guerilla with other students—He explained that the other members of the functio- guerilla were non-libidinous like him—and he expounded upon his philosophy about functiomatons. Then, he described how he stole WIFs from the hospital and how they were left in their rooms so that they had time to go to the north of California. Every student was amused by the story of how Barón, Mary, Carl, and Martin were not caught right away by school agents by setting up projection screens in front of the ODFs in their respective rooms—the story became every inmate’s dream. Then, he excited everyone with the details about the trip in his brother’s land vehicle and how they were lucky to have evaded a check point. Of course, just with the intention of maintaining the attention of the students, he had to mention the illegal Mexican donuts that his brother gave them as a small celebration for their freedom. Finally, he explained how they met Nicholas in the woods and how later that night they were caught –Barón omitted the details about the technology that was supposed to be secret; It was part of the deal that Barón had to maintain with the agency if he wanted to be out of jail in two years. In this way, Barón’s narration successfully broke down the collective defiance that the students displayed towards him just because he was as young as they were and those students were able to see him, while he narrated the story, as just another student.
Barón’s enthusiasm came back as he was narrating. Smiling again, he was observing, while he passionately narrated, how the students were attentively listening to every detail: They were all looking at him, silent, like statues. Their attention made him remember those times when he gave out speeches at the Proud Zer
os Club. But, not only was he enthusiastic about the behavior of the students but also about unloading all the states of mind that he had gone through at the woods in just one day: Joy, excitement, bewilderment, sadness, anger, anxiety, and many other. Occasionally, he used poetic language to express details which the students did not understand. During his narration, he hoped that every minute of every day in that classroom, the students looked as focused as they were while Barón was delivering a piece of his soul.
However, Barón’s narration kept controlled of the class just while he was narrating. As soon as he finished, some students, without raising their hands to speak, made comments about Barón’s narration.
One of the students said, “Are you non-libidinous? How boring….”
Barón tried to respond appropriately knowing that it was not something that was openly accepted by most students during 2054. He simply said, “We are what we are, right?”
Another student said, “I think it is stupid that you are against functiomatons…I just do not like using them for school, but I like to use functiomatons for fun stuff”
It seemed to Barón that the latter comment was the popular view by all the students in the classroom: Students implied in a variety of ways many of the uses they gave to functiomatons in their daily lives; however, no student openly said that they used functiomatons for academic purposes. Then, students began to talk to one another about the pastimes they used to do at their homes instead of paying attention to Barón.
Barón was amazed at how easy it was for those students to become distracted. He had not observed how others, aside from Carl, Martin, and Mary, learned. At that moment, he felt as if he had discovered a new species of animals. It was interesting for him to realize that the focused attention that he took for granted by observing his close friends was not universal—it was the beginning of Barón’s education. But, rather than feeling disappointed, the inmates short attention span inspired him to quest for ways to grab their attention again. If he had maintained their attention focused for several minutes with a thorough narration, he could do it again, he thought.
Barón said to all of them, “Ok… it is time to begin the class.” He simply ignored their noise level; –Also, the old guard was ignoring the situation sleeping on the chair— He grabbed the chalk and carefully drew on the board a representation of a lithium atom with energy levels. First, he created a representation of the nucleus by drawing together 6 small circles, 3 inches in diameter, and filling in 3 of them with chalk. In order to show his great art skills, he made sure to make an outstanding drawing with the primitive materials he had at hand. Then, he made two circles that enclosed the nucleus, drew two dots in the one closest to the nucleus, and one dot on the outer one. From the point of view of Barón, it was a master piece.
Barón was feeling excited about his artistry when a heavy notebook was thrown towards the board changing his frame of mind. The sound produced by the collision made Barón and the old guard startle—the old guard woke up, quickly stood up, cleaned the humidity on his right cheek, and maintained his right hand next to his gun. Barón turned around furious and screamed at them, “who threw the book?”But, no one was saying anything.
Barón had never been so angry before. He could not believe that anyone could do such a stupid action just for amusement. In his head, he wanted to know who had done the bestial action so that he could slap the students face; however, it was just a cathartic thought that he knew he could not carry out—the latter was one of the prohibitions told to Barón by the administrator; only guards could deal with defiant students physically. His blood pressure was high and his face was red. He began walking from one side of the classroom to the other looking at the students with piercing eyes. “Tell me who did it!” said Barón again. Then, Barón looked at the board remembering a portion of the trajectory that he was able to notice with his peripheral vision and figured out the direction the book had been thrown. He then looked at one student in the hypothetical path of the thrown book and asked, “Was it you?” There was no response to the question: just a look of complicity.
Seeing that Barón had lost his temper, the students waited to be amused by whatever Barón wanted to say in that frame of mind. As it was customary in that prison, the inmates committed to make the life of any new, innocent, tender teacher miserable by any means, like wolfs around a deer. There was no practical point in upsetting any teacher other than for the sake of it. After all, school was not something that they all aspired to finish—the great majority of students had just given up from the idea of learning anything; in the late 1900’s lingo, the great majority students were “burnt out”. They were in prison precisely because they were committed to resist school learning.
Barón, frowning, with a red face and flared nostrils, was looking at every one of them, getting ready to say something given that they were expecting him to speak up his mind. With an angry tone of voice, but in a low volume of voice, trying to calm down, Barón said, “I have never been so upset in my life.” Then, he paused and began to walk around the classroom in order to make sure that everyone paid attention to the speech he was getting ready to give out. Then, he continued his speech looking at everyone, “I believe that you are all victims of the system. If you all had grown in an old fashion technology free environment you would not be here. I understand that that sucks for you all.”
As soon Barón said the latter, they all lost control cheering up Barón’s words expressing their acceptance of Barón’s interpretation. Some were clapping and screaming in a deliberate deep voice, “Yeah!” Others were making high pitch, cheerleader noises. A few of them, stood up, jumped and clapped. It was a pandemonium.
Feeling again with the ability to control the class, Barón screamed loud and with a deep voice, “Silence!” They all stopped what they were doing and waited for him again to say something. Barón continued:
“Listen! We are in an environment that does not allow us to be what we should be: human beings. I tried to run to the woods with a group of friends just two days ago and a failed. Now, I am here with you. You and I should find a way to fight the system.” Barón waited for any form of response from the students.
This time, the students just clapped for a few seconds. Given the clarity in the words of Barón and the sincerity that he projected, the students were emotionally moved by the speech and felt unnecessary to disrupt the positive frame of mind that Barón’s speech had inspired in them. At that moment, the students believed that Barón was the instructor that they needed in order to make school learning possible for them in the technological environment where they had developed their stubborn attitudes. Barón’s speech was being an effective way to maintain order in the classroom.
Barón continued after they stopped clapping, “What can we do? We are in prison and we can only comply with the system. There is one thing we can do: We can try to get out of here.”
On student sarcastically screamed, “Yeah! Let’s do a jail break.” causing the class to momentarily laugh.
Barón continued, “No, we cannot and we are not going to break out. We can try to get out of here by legal means. What do I mean by that? I mean let’s try to learn and get the hell out of here.”
Those words did not excite the students as much. Most of the students scuffed and signaled with their hands indicating that it was not possible to accomplish what Barón had just said; it was impossible for most of them to believe that they were going to graduate from high school given their history of constant failure. Although Barón had given them hope because he was not a typical teacher, Barón last statement slammed reality on their faces. Cynically, one student responded, “If we learn something.” The comment made most of the class chuckle and indicated Barón that they felt there was no remedy for their lack of academic virtue.
Barón felt necessary to start the class in order to give them the feeling that it was possible to learn: rather than lecturing on their potential, he thought it would be better to
demonstrate their potential. In this way, having already drawn a lithium atom on the board and noticing that their attentions had not declined, he looked at the board and he dared to say, “Well, let’s see about your ability…who can tell me what is at the board?”
One student responded, “That’s an atom…It’s a lithium atom”
Barón was excited with the response: someone had learned something. He responded, “Very well it is a lithium atom! I knew that you had learned something.”
But, most of the students were not convinced about Barón’s motivational words. Specially, those students who had no idea what they were looking at. To them, it seemed just like a bunch of circles put together with a few dots. Even those students that knew what the drawing meant were skeptical about knowing what had been drawn on the board: They knew that what mattered for graduation was the score they were going obtain on their standardized exams and nothing else. Many of them, in the past, had had the feeling of learning, but they found out that their performance, according to standardized exams, was not satisfactory.
Barón added, “For those of you who do not know what this is, I am going to tell you that it is an atom. It is the smallest particle…” and he kept talking about the atom in order to pave the way to the subject of quantum mechanics. While he was speaking, he kept in mind Mr. Einstein, trying not to sound too much like him. Also, he kept having flashbacks about the times when he spoke with his grandfather about the way teachers acted when his grandfather was in high school: He said that teachers were respected when they were able to relate a difficult subject to students that were not willing to learn. In this way, Barón kept talking and observing the reaction of the students while he talked; often he asked questions to check if they were following along just like Mr. Einstein did; whenever the majority of students were lost, he tried to come up with the simplest examples he could think of.
Unfortunately, he kept lecturing and the students seemed more and more bored. Some of them were starting to close their eyes. Some of them, especially the ones on the back, were talking to one another about topics completely unrelated to the class. Other students seemed to be looking at the board but their minds were not in the classroom. The worse was that two students on the back began to use inappropriate language out loud, getting the attention of all the students as a result:
“Why are you looking this way?”
“I can look any where I want.”
“Well, you cannot look this way.”
“Why don’t you make me?”
Then, one of those argumentative students stood up, hit the other student on the face with his fist, making the student fall from his student desk. The old guard ran towards the violent student, who was still standing up, and held the student’s elbows from behind in order to prevent another act of violence. The student did not like that guard behind him and screamed at the guard, “Let me go! Let me go child molester!” pulling himself forward while the guard kept pulling backwards. Inadvertently, in a split second, the student mule kicks the guard in the stomach, making the old guard release the student and grab his own belly. The guard dropped to the floor and squirmed. The student turned around, looked at the guard on the floor, and said, “You see what you got for messing with me!” while he was standing with a defiant body posture.
Barón, not being sure what to do, looked at the vitriolic student and screamed at him, “Why did you have to do such a stupid thing!”
The student screamed back at Barón, “Do not scream at me you piece of crap!”
Barón became furious, walked towards the student and said to him, “Do not make this worse and just sit down.” He walked towards the guard and asked, “Are you OK?”
Gasping for air, he responded, “They are going to be here soon…”
Then, Barón walked towards the student that was hit, who was seating on the floor squeezing his cheek with tears in his eyes, and asked, “Are you OK?”
With a voice that sounded like he was about to cry, the student responded, “Yeah…I am OK”
Barón looked at all the students that were standing up watching the guard on the floor and said with a firm tone of voice, “Every one seat down!”
Immediately, everyone sat down in their corresponding seats. As soon as they sat down, they began to mutter to one another their recollection about what they had witnessed; they tried to be as accurate as possible so that they could tell an interesting bellicose story to the other students in jail whenever they had to tell the story—They did not see acts of violence too often in jail. Many of them, from their seats and in small groups, were re-enacting what they had seen by moving their hands, recreating what they recalled. Meanwhile, Barón was trying to help the guard stand up. Although the students were being cooperative with Barón at that moment by remaining in their seats, their minds were absorbed with the entertaining spectacle that they had witnessed.
Then, the door opened up quickly and a tall, muscular security guard entered the room screaming at Barón, “What happened? Who did this!” then, he walked towards the old guard who was hunched over in the corner. Briefly, the muscular guard talked with the old guard in a volume of voice that was too low for anyone to hear. Then, the muscular guard walked towards Barón and, on his face, the guard screamed at him, “I want you to tell me right now who did this!”
Barón could not believe the muscular guard was screaming at him. Barón considered the act unprofessional; However, Barón understood that he was just another inmate from the prison. Trying not to seem exasperated, he responded, “That guy right there hit that student and the guard,” Pointing towards the student who was seating quietly in his chair, frowning and with a mean look in his eyes.
The muscular guard walked towards the student, grabbed him by the neck with his right hand, pulled him up from his chair and said to him, “Now, you are going to pay for it!” The student was in pain and screaming by the amazing strength that the muscular guard had in just one hand. Once the student was on his two feet, the muscular guard, in a snap of fingers, passed his arm around the student’s neck and pulled the students head down in order to make the student bend his torso. In that position, the muscular guard took that student towards the door screaming, “If you do something stupid and going to squeeze your neck so hard that you are going to pass out!” The door was opened. He walked out of the room with that student; he was crying out loud from the excruciating pain.
Meanwhile, the old guard had walked towards his chair in the front and Barón had walked towards the board in order to continue with the class. Thinking that it was appropriate to continue with the class, he said to everyone timidly, “Ok…let that be a lesson to all of you who want to be violent…. Now, let’s continue with the class…” Then, Barón just continued talking about quantum mechanics and the atom in the same way he had been doing before the fight; he believed that, as soon as he began to lecture, they were going to immediately focus and leave the incident behind.
However, one minute after Barón started to speak to the class, one student said repeatedly, “No class, No class, No class…” in a low voice. It was a student sitting in the front, looking at his desk, smiling mischievously. He was instigating.
Barón stopped his lecture and turned his eyes towards the disruptive student and said, “Excuse me?”
Then, another student began to do the same, “No class, No class, No class…”
Then, a third student joined the second. Then, a fourth joined. In a few seconds, the whole class was saying out loud, “No class, No class, No class!” With both fists, they were all drumming on their desks in perfect periodic synchronization. No particular student could be blamed. Responsibility was collective.
The old guard stood up from his chair and said, “Shut up or you are going to have class detention!” His face was red and he was pointing at them with his gun. Afraid of them, the gun was shaking.
They all stopped chanting and began to giggle with a feeling of power over Barón—they knew the
guard was not going to fire one shot out of that gun. Then, they all became quiet again in order to wait for Barón to speak again so that they could do the next obnoxious deed.
Barón said to everyone, “Yes…if you disrupt my lecture you will be in serious trouble.” Then, he continued his lecture watching every student and trying to predict who was going to disrupt next. Sporadically, after having talked about quantum mechanics and the atom for a few seconds, he abruptly used to stop talking and quickly turned around. Also, occasionally, he used to ask questions to students to check for understanding, keeping an eye on those students who had a cynical smile tattooed on their faces.
Amazingly, he was able to lecture for several minutes without interruption, which made Barón believe that things were going to be fine from now on. However, it was just façade. As soon as he was going to ask the students to take their notebooks out from under their desks so that they could start their class work, lights went off—one student had short circuited the power source that was not too far from him with a long, thin, hard piece of plastic that helped carry a small metal wire to the holes of the power source. It was so dark that it was impossible to see anything. All the students began to scream and throw objects around. One notebook hit Barón in the head. After seventeen seconds of darkness, the lights turned on again and the room was trashed with pages from the books and notebooks. All the students were laughing and clapping for their slight feeling of success. Barón’s body was tense trying to restrain his hands from slapping every one of the students. He saw no humans but only animals with the ability to plan their attacks. Barón finally realized that he had to take drastic measures in order to make sure he continued teaching.
