Commencement

by Lawrence Cherry

“Lord, help me to get through this day. Show me how to help these children learn what they need to know. Open our hearts and minds to your will and your wisdom. Help me to love my enemies. Keep my footsteps in a straight path and let not iniquity have dominion over me.”

  Tamiko prayed quickly before the start of the morning bell. Just as she finished she heard a knock at her classroom door. When she looked up, she could see Rosalyn Steele peeking her head in.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting you.”

  “No, not at all. Is there something you needed?” Tamiko asked straining to be civil. She knew it wasn’t right as a Christian, but she absolutely despised Rosalyn Steele.

  “No. There are some schedule changes you need to know about. I’m coming in to your class to see the literacy block during periods 2 and 3 and Miranda is going to cover you 4th period so we can debrief.”

  “Okay. I just wish I had been told about this in advance. I thought I had a prep second period. I was hoping to use that time for assessments.” Tamiko tried not to sound as annoyed as she felt.

  “I know it’s short notice, I didn’t even know until I got in this morning and read the daily bulletin.”

  “But I read the daily bulletin when I got in. I didn’t see that on there.”

  “They made changes on it. That’s why I came up to tell you before you went to pick the kids up.”

  “Just what I need.” Tamiko thought to herself trying not to get angry. In the past few weeks it seemed that she and Steele had been working together so much it seemed like they were team teaching. For Tamiko, that wasn’t a good thing.

  “I guess I’ll just have to make it work. Thanks for letting me know.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I had things that I had planned for my own class that I have to scrap now.”

  “I understand. If you don’t mind, I have to go and pick up my class, so we can be ready for you when you come”, said Tamiko trying to end the conversation.

  “Of course.”

  Tamiko and Steele walked out of the class together but took opposite stairwells to the lunchroom where the children lined up for school everyday. As Tamiko walked down, she wished she had not taken her father’s advice to stay. Every day for the past couple of weeks there was always some new issue. First, they had her spend a lot of time shadowing Steele, which meant that Tamiko didn’t have a lot of time to spend with her own class. Then she got a notice from Nettlenerves about how her bulletin boards were not updated. Tamiko would’ve had time to update them with new work, had she had time with her own students! Then one morning when Tamiko came into school, she found that Booker, Steele, and Fontaine had come into her classroom and totally changed the room around! Apparently they had issues with the learning environment and felt that the way Tamiko had things set up was not conducive to the children’s learning. To add insult to injury, they made her room into what was practically a carbon copy of Steele’s. It was just sick. Now there were these random “drive by” observations, probably done just so that they could catch her off guard and find something to complain about and/or write her up about. There were days when Tamiko thought she would lose her sanity. Today seemed like it was going to be one of those days. All she could do was think about Jesus and how what he suffered on the cross was way worse than having your class constantly audited. Tamiko stopped off at the office to look at the daily bulletin again, to see if she would get an extra prep to conduct assessments. Of course not. Her only prep was 4th period and she had to spend that debriefing with Steele and planning next steps.

  When Tamiko reached the table where her class was, she did her best to put the upcoming observation out of her mind and greet her students with her beautiful smile.

  “Miss Bynum, I make dis for you!” chimed little Syreeta as she handed her a beautifully colored picture of Snow White.”

  “Oh, Thank You! It’s beautiful! And look at how neat it is! I know you probably worked very hard on this.”

  “I make her brown! Now she look pretty like you!”

  This did not escape Tamiko’s attention. The things that the children said would sometimes touch her heart. They were the only bright spot in her day here.

  “I’m going to hang this up on my desk where everyone can see it. I love it!”

  After a few minutes the school aides began to call the classes upstairs.

  “1-purple, Staircase A, 2-blue Staircase B!” Miss Jackson called out.

  “1-pink, Staircase A!”

  Tamiko signaled to her students to stand and line up, which they did in an orderly fashion. Tamiko led them out of the cafeteria and to the staircase where they waited for another class to clear the stairway. Then she led them the rest of the way to their classroom. Once they were outside the classroom door…

  “Good morning, 1-Pink!”

  “Good morning, Miss Bynum!” they greeted in chorus.

  “When you go in, you’re going to unpack and put your homework in the bins. Take out your take classroom library books, and those of you who have jobs are going to do them. When everyone is done, we’ll meet on the carpet for morning meeting. Today’s greeting is high fives.”

  The children entered the classroom, girls first, each one giving Tamiko a high five before they went inside. When Tamiko had finished greeting the girls, the boys went in, each one giving Tamiko a high five.

  Tamiko quickly changed the centers board and got all the guided reading materials ready. She took out the book she was going to be using for her Word Study lesson and put it on the easel. This time they were going to be reading ‘The Drippy Dinner Drippers’ by Joy Cowley, and the students had already read the story together twice before. As she was trying to get everything together, she was interrupted by some conflict amongst her students about jobs.

  “Miss Bynum! Jinelle keeps trying to do my job!” exclaimed Anthony.

  “Cause you takin’ too long!” Jinelle complained.

  “Anthony does have a point, Jinelle. After all, he is the pencil sharpener”, reasoned Tamiko.

  “But I’m the helper, and I’m supposed to help”, pleaded Jinelle.

  “Sweetheart, you’re the teacher’s helper, not the student’s helper. Let Anthony do his job. O.K.”

  “But he’s just playing around, and he’s trying to make all the pencils little with the sharpener. Look!” said Jinelle showing Tamiko a pencil that was about an inch and a half long.

  “Oh, is that right?”

  Anthony just shrugged his shoulders.

  “Anthony, if you’re not going to be responsible, I won’t have any choice but to fire you and give your job to someone else. Understand? No more whittling the pencils to stubs.”

  “What’s ‘whittling’ mean?”

  “It means to wear down by cutting or shaving. That’s what the pencil sharpener does to the pencils”, explained Tamiko.

  “Oh.”

  After settling the conflict, Tamiko used her tambourine to signal that morning meeting was about to start and took her place on the chair between the easel and the morning meeting board. All the children scurried to their places on the rug. The morning meeting was just a set of routines in which children reviewed basic mathematics and literacy concepts as they went through the calendar, named the days of the week, updated a weather graph, counted the number of children present, counted the days of school in various ways, and finally, solved a morning message math equation. When the meeting was over, the bell rang signaling the end of period 1 and the beginning of period 2. Steele came prowling in and took a seat at one of the student tables just as Tamiko was leading the children in a transition activity so they wouldn’t have to sit on the rug for such a long stretch of time, making them restless. They were doing the alphabet dance to a song that used melody and dance to help children remember basic letter/sound relationships. When the movement activity was over, Tamiko went right into the word study lesson using the shared reading book. Tamiko explained to the students that sometime
s words will have a Y at the end that could sound like an e and gave an example with the word “happy”. Then she asked the students to read the book again with her and check and see if they could find any words with the same kind of y ending. She read the story with the students and on a separate piece of chart paper she neatly wrote down the words the found. When they were done, she challenged them to find words with the y-ending in their reading, and sent the students off to read books that were in their book baggies, but not before she gave each of them two sticky notes to write down any special words they found.

  When the students went off to read, Tamiko set the timer for 20 minutes so there would be enough time to have a “share” or a period of time in which students would talk about what y words they found in their books. While the class was reading, she went around to confer with various students taking notes as she read with each one. Steele followed her around taking her own notes, but it didn’t faze Tamiko anymore. She knew Steele wouldn’t approve of anything anyway. Soon the timer’s alarm sounded. Tamiko called the students back to the rug and the students shared what they found and attached the sticky notes to the board. There were a few cases in which students found a word that ended with y that had a different sound like the words fly and try, and she explained that while these words ended with y, they didn’t have the e sound they were looking for, and that she would keep sticky notes for another lesson when they looked for words that had these kinds of y-endings.

  After the Reading Worskshop session, Tamiko began the guided reading/literacy centers activities with a strategy lesson on taking words apart when reading. For this she used a short poem that she had written on chart paper about a chicken that didn’t want to come out of an egg. Although Tamiko hadn’t planned on it, one of the tricky words was a word with a y-ending. When she asked the students to help her take it apart, one of them yelled out,

  “It has a y at the end that sounds like an e.”

  It made Tamiko feel good that someone had gotten the idea from the lesson. Once the strategy lesson was over she sent the children to their respective literacy centers. In the first rotation, she would meet with her lowest group for guided reading, while the high achieving children engaged in a making words activity in which the students who could use the letter tiles at the center to make the most words got a prize. At another table her second lowest group played sight word bingo, and at another table the intermediates worked on making words using word families. On the second rotation, Tamiko met with her second lowest group for guided reading, while her lowest group visited the classroom library, the highest group practiced with their old guided reading books, and the intermediates browsed through the extra large sized Shared Reading books on the rug. Then the final bell sounded signaling the end of the third period, and yet another ordeal had been passed. After Tamiko had the children clean up their centers, she gathered them on the rug for another movement activity while she waited for Miranda the social studies teacher to arrive. In the midst of the transition, Steele stalked away unnoticed. After the activity was over, Miranda still hadn’t showed up, so Tamiko played the “Quiet Game” with the students. In the quiet game, the students tried to stay as quiet as they could for as long as they could. Anyone who talked or laughed, or who deliberately tried to make other students laugh, was out. This game could never last more than a minute or two, which was all Tamiko needed before Miranda finally arrived. Then Tamiko headed upstairs to the dreaded meeting room.

  When she got there, Steele was sitting at the conference table reviewing her notes. She didn’t even notice when Tamiko came into the room.

  “Sorry I’m a little late”, Tamiko said to get her attention. “Miranda had some trouble with her supply cart in the elevator.”

  “It’s okay. I guess it’s just you and me today, the rest of the team is at a network meeting.”

  “I guess it’s a busy day.”

  “I won’t keep you long. I really think you’re teaching is developing. That was a great lesson with the y endings for word study. I liked the way you had them search for it in the Shared Reading, which modeled and was connected to what they were doing during their independent reading.”

  “Thanks”, said Tamiko flatly. She couldn’t be very enthusiastic, especially since she knew that the bad part was coming up.

  “I also think that your conference notes are much more detailed and give a better picture of what the children are doing. I like the checklist that you’re using.”

  “At your suggestion, of course.”

  “Of course. And I also think your centers were more differentiated than previously, but…”

  “But there’s still something wrong”, said Tamiko, her voice quivering a little.

  “Tamiko, I hope that you don’t think that these observations, or at least my observations are about picking on you.”

  “To be honest, it does feel that way”, Tamiko found herself blurting out.

  “Tamiko, I’m going to give it to you straight, no chaser. I know that a lot of you young girls today get your heads juiced up in the Ed schools, and a lot of these principals get caught up with gimmicks that look like good teaching, but are really nothing but fluff. No one is born a good teacher. Good teachers are made through patience, reflective practice, and perseverance. You are getting better and you will get better still, but it takes time and thoughtful reflection. Your motivation needs to be what’s best for these children and not being a hotshot teacher. It’s not about you.”

  “Still, I wonder why I am the only teacher that’s being singled out for this intensive professional development.”

  “Tamiko, I know that there’s a lot of politics that go along with this job. But you can’t allow that to suck you under. I won’t lie to you. Some people have singled you out for failure, but not me. I think this can be an opportunity for you to turn it around. You are turning it around. I only want to help you.”

  Tamiko couldn’t believe what she was hearing. How could this woman who was a racist, be trying to help her? Tamiko couldn’t help but be suspicious of her offer.

  “I don’t know. I just wonder if you’ll say this to me now, and then say something else to someone else behind closed doors.”

  “I totally understand where that is coming from. I know there’s a rumor mill here. I’ll just tell you this, you can only believe half of what you see and none of what you hear. I’ve had my character dragged through the mud in all sorts of ways. I’ve been called a racist, and on the other hand I’ve been called a bleeding heart liberal, I’ve been called cold, calculating, evil, and have been blamed for every bad thing that’s happened to this school, but none of that fazes me. I know who I am. All I care about is if the children are learning and growing.”

  Tamiko couldn’t believe the woman’s candor. It forced her to re­evaluate everything she had been through the past few weeks.

  “So what is it that you think I need to work on now?”

  “You still need to work on differentiating instruction for your students. Now this is something even the best of us have a hard time doing. I’m going to a workshop on Saturday afternoon that covers a lot of issues on this topic. They had it last year, but it wasn’t an open workshop. This year it is because there’s been such a great demand for it. I think you should sign up for it. They have a lot of good ideas and they give you free copies, lesson plans and other stuff you can use in the classroom.”

  “It does sound interesting.”

  “Good. I’ll e-mail you the information.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m not going to keep you any longer Tamiko. You’ve got 25 minutes left to the period. If you want you can go back upstairs and work on testing your kids. I’ve got a writing celebration to prepare for myself.”

  “Thanks. I’ll do that. And good luck with your writing celebration.”

  “And Good luck with your assessments.”

  Tamiko was almost floored by the exchange that just took pla
ce. It seemed that things weren’t as they appeared to be. The ‘racist’ Rosalyn Steele seemed to be trying to help Tamiko, an African-American woman. It just seemed too weird to be true. Tamiko couldn’t believe that she had so misjudged this woman and as a result misinterpreted all of her past actions. “This must be the hand of God”, Tamiko thought to herself as she made her way back to her classroom. Tamiko didn’t know what God had in store for her in this new relationship with Rosalyn Steele, but she was very curious to find out.

  Forty-One