blossom

We're three lines in to the conversation when I realize what she's saying. This is not, as it happens, a rarity, and not only because I'm slow on the uptake: spend enough time talking to the not-quite-proficient and you, too, will someday find yourself two nods and an "uh huh" in before it becomes clear that the Target bag stashed on top of the back book shelf is not full of supplies for her speech but instead a gift. 


"Is it for me?" I ask, certain, almost, of the answer. 


She nods twice, quickly, eyes dancing: "My brother and I made it last night." 


Our smiles reflect each other as I thank her sincerely and mouth, "I love it," because I do.  It is the best of all possible gifts; if it weren't mine, I'd envy the owner, but it is, and I am so pleased.  I love it because she made it, because she's excited to give it to me, and because it's beautiful. And I love what this winter branch adorned with dozens of red paper flowers represents. 


When the time comes, once lunch is past and we've learned both how to juggle and how to bathe a baby, I move my new bouquet to the table up front, and without bidding she approaches to make her first-ever presentation as an English-speaking student, a demonstration of the paper folding she learned as a girl in Vietnam. She is ready, having practiced, having followed all instructions, but I cannot overstate the resolve it took for her to ignore her palpitations and stand before her classmates and speak loud enough and clear, but today she did it. Today, she bloomed. 

curriculum

"You mean people make computer viruses?" he asks, his open expression unmistakably sincere.  He's been listening to some conversation about the perils of Limewire, and once again I'm reminded that common knowledge isn't always. A boy seemingly tech savvy somehow believes that a plague of the internet is generated by nature: it's a virus, after all. It's one part language learner, I think, and one part innocence of the ways of the world. Ignorance, by definition. 

My theory is that these kids lose, maybe never develop, the expectation that the world make sense. They spend such a chunk of their formative years surrounded by seems-to-them gibberish that instead of being inspired to analyze they accept everything and question nothing. Education should be the solution, and maybe it is, but meanwhile they believe that eating pork will transmit H1N1 and Saddam Hussein sent the jets to the Twin Towers. 


Perhaps they're more American than they know.

Meanwhile, I rig up lessons to fill-in the blanks. The textbook reading on Yellow Fever becomes a compare-contrast assignment with Swine Flu so I can stand at the front  of the room and say, "If you learn nothing else today, remember this. . . ."

the senior

It's just some Thursday in the dregs of February. A day after day after day.  But then she sits down and asks to talk, and it becomes something else. 

She starts in the middle of the discussion, right where we left off last time we plotted her strategy. She is inclined to believe that she is destined for a lifetime of taking orders for sweet and sour chicken, and she does have reason to think so.  The restaurant is the be all and end for her parents, and for good reason: it is their income, their hope, their come-to-America story. 

I am not going to call it a dream

As she launches into her doubts, any twinge of been-there, done-that evaporates in the suddenly serious atmosphere.  On another day in this same spot we'd pasted together a delicate framework of if-this, maybe-that intended to bridge the gap between her college hopes and her parents' expectations. If she went part-time, if just took English. . .we'd hoped the mutual benefit would be a toe-hold. 

Alas. 

Alas they are steadfast. They are intent. Whether out of belief or need they have offered up a steady stream of reasons why she could not, should not go to the community college she's mapped out.  They tell the girl who's breezing through pre-calc that she's not smart enough to try. They tell the best writer I have that her English is not sufficient. They tell her there's no point, no hope, that she cannot work, that she'd be taking a job from an American. They tell her-- and this is the crux-- that if she were to go it'd be doubly expensive because then they'd have to pay a worker. 

"I understand," I say a thousand times.  


And then I tell her what I know about her smarts and her potential. I tell her why I know she can do it, and despite all truths about Asians and eye contact she looks at me directly when I say, "I am not wrong. I believe in you."  


My heart breaks when she says I'm the only person who does. "You and me," I remind her. "That's two." 


As we sit huddled across the corner of the desk, we acknowledge all realities and my encouragement is tempered except for my urging to have faith. What she wants is possible, eventually, if she does not concede the dream. I make no promises to this girl I met in August except to be there for her long past her May graduation. I give her my phone numbers and addresses. She takes the card and cries.

Four

"Is that a lot of work for you?"

Is my pause perceptible?  It's not as if everything I have to do and juggle and reconfigure to fit four new students into into my more-or-less program flashed before my eyes. Instead I'm stuck mid-cringe, wedged between, "You have no idea what I do," and, "I have no idea how I'm going to do it." 

It is typical to have a new kid or two in January, at the more-or-less beginning of the semester. I know better to assume my schedule is fixed. But four? FOUR? I don't even have the desks. Let alone an all-beginner class to slip them into (none of them speak English) for even one of their eight yet-to-be-filled schedule blocks.  Wait, times four? Thirty-two. Thirty-two classes to schedule, though twelve or sixteen of them will be with me. With me in a room six or eight or twelve other kids who are doing two or three other things: nobody else will be starting at Lesson One.  Here's where my I'll-think-about-it-later starts to kick in, and oh, how later will be full of fodder.

At least I have books now, at least I have some software, at least I have some help on alternate days. At least I started to file and organize in December-- really. At least I have a day off before the new normal makes its debut. It will not be impossible, probably. But yes, my dear colleague, it's gonna be work.

closure

Hand on the doorknob, eyes down the hall: "Thanks for everything, Ms. P."

I nod, and we exchange see-ya-laters; this isn't goodbye but it is, so far, his second attempt to walk out that door. He had feared I'd try to celebrate him, so I didn't. He feared I'd try to give him something-- it's become a tradition-- so I refrained, calling him back only to hand him my card. His departure then, just like his graduation, an all-paperwork transaction with no pomp or circumstance or party. Maybe in May, maybe if he keeps his promise to me to walk through the ceremony.

I've told him (without basis) that his parents will appreciate it, that he'll someday be glad to have done it (perhaps), that two hours out of his life is not too much to give those of us who want the payoff and the photo memento (in other words, me). It's silly, I suppose. It's not like one cap-and-gown afternoon will trump nearly seven years (he was a sixth grader), but after all the laughs and the drama, the near-misses, close calls, and successes, the questions, the answers, the education in all senses, I'll take whatever closure I can get.

For now that boils down to a not-quite-casual doorway exchange and the choked-up feeling I got when he left.

Joke of the Day, Except It's Not A Joke Edition

So the teacher e-mails the guidance counselor to confirm the origin of the new new kid.

"You said he's from Colombia. Is that right?"

"No, Hades," she types out just like that. H-a-d-e-s.

I pick up the phone.

"Hades?"

"Yeah, Hades."

(Insert pause full of furious brainstorming.)

"HAITI?!?"

She agrees that the kid is from Haiti. I, ladies and gentlemen, am the one in Hell.

P-T

I always work it in.

These four words are part of any initial exchange I have at my daughter's school: "I'm a teacher, too." As in, "So I know what you mean," as in, "I can relate," as in, "Don't try to pull one over on me." Except for the many for which I make an exception, I'm not a great respecter of teachers, at least without proof. Mostly it's the off-putting attitude that seems bundled with their certificates, that vague, "You're not, but I am." So my claim is some reverse psychology playing field leveler; it's likely all in my head, but I don't care. It can't hurt.

Tonight, meaningless mission accomplished, I immediately turned parent as I listened to the trio who spend near as much time with the girl as I. I smiled as I digested the praises that were sung by the Comm Arts teacher who really does seem to appreciate her. And then I laughed-- though not in disagreement-- at the former cheerleader who proclaimed the girl, "an eccentric young woman" (quirky had already been taken). "What a nice way to put it," I said, meaning, "is that the best you can do?" as I pictured what opinion I'd be putting a front on if I trotted that phrase out to a parent. It's an experience, being on the other side.

As I left I was satisfied that these strangers know my child well enough and will do all right by her; in my mind, it's mostly up to her. Of course, a glowing academic report makes it easier to assume that they'll do no harm and might help her. Flattery works even on skeptical me.

multi

Today's one of those days when I look up from correcting the Portuguese spelling (not that I know uma palavra of Portuguese) in a letter home to a family who doesn't realize that the location of their new apartment will require the deeply SPED son to change schools while talking to a graduate who has stopped by discuss his moral turpitude immigration problem and college applications while putting together a Spring schedule for the Vietnamese newcomer who is terrified of change while supervising make-up work for the kid who is suddenly failing my Civics class while explaining the Industrial Revolution and nativism and the need to keep trying to a girl whose history teacher has just told her she's not worth her time and she might as well quit while trying to get ready for my next class while loaning lunch money while making a note to check with the clinic about the ringworm and the pinkeye and the teenage miscarriage while my lunch grows cold and it occurs to me: there must be an easier way.

a glimmer

The calvary has arrived in the form of a girl born during my first quarter of college. Impossibly, this means she is a fully degreed grad student nearly as old as the newlywed me, and not, say, a sixth grader who wandered down the wrong hall. She is yet another English major taken hold by the late realization that after all she wants to teach; it is the circle of work life complete in its best interview clothes.

Given that hers must be the most temporary and ill-paying of part-time jobs in a school, she is wondrously qualified-- meaning, she wants it. She is motivated in that twenty-two year-old way, full of fragile confidence. So my job-- assisted is far more labor intensive than do-it-myself-- is to help her help me. Then, theoretically, we both win. It might, I daresay, work.

At the end of day 1.5 I felt nearly accomplished. Kids got taught, lessons got planned, papers got graded and entered, paperwork got dispatched instead of shuffled and piled. Kids were engaged just a little bit more. I suppose that, minimally, that is my job description; these activities are not unusual. But for the first time in a while I left without any mental accounting of who got gypped or ignored or put off. We may have actually done all we needed to do.

What's different? It doesn't hurt to have a witness, but it's more a chance to breathe and focus, to dump the I-don't-have-time-for-this and do my job-- every other day until December.

with a smile and a wave

At first he was the kicker, the punchline to my stats. Every time I rattled off my inflated roster of old timers plus freshmen plus transfers, I'd segue from the total to the tally of special needs and conclude with a flourish: "Plus the mute kid!" As in, "What am I supposed to do about that?!"

Not much, it turns out.

This morning he turned up with his aunt and heretofore unknown brother and checked out for San Diego, where he'll live with his mom. Five signatures later, his problems are no longer mine; my day is that much less complicated. I'm disappointed, frankly. Oh, I do feel the relief of one less prep to my day, but mostly, I'm sad to see him go, sad for progress interrupted.

Not that I am the answer, not that I knew what to do, really, but it felt like we were figuring it out. After a few false starts, I had found English work that seemed to be on his level; I learned that in Civics, he liked the maps. I slapped my forehead when he sneaked into Scrabble and spelled out, "hola" to a girl. I talked to him as any other kid. Maybe that's all it was. But he was listening, lately, doing what I asked, learning, maybe, or at least learning to trust me. Or perhaps he was just counting the days. His is one story I don't ever expect to hear; I only hope that someday, he tells it.

the goal

Leaned back, feet flip-flopped apart, too big for his chair, elbow propped on the desk behind, he looks ready for something, something not school: I badger him into position, back into my boundaries. It's a habit, though questionably productive.

A month into school-- already a month-- and we're still figuring each other out. I do, however, know his secret, not that it would take a super sleuth. When a kid snatches his notebook up to his chest and then "reads" a story far more elaborate than could be contained in few penciled phrases, well. I am a professional. And he is a talker, an aspiring charmer, all quick-moving defense and constant, one-step ahead strategy. It would seem less effort to learn how to write. And read, maybe, though I'm not yet sure how much is can't and how much is doesn't. His scores are fine and his homework's complete and his friends, I'm sure, are willing.

Sometime soon we need to talk outside of my grand central classroom so I can introduce our goal for the year: enough progress that he can be as proud of himself on paper as he is on the ballfield. If I were his coach, it might be easier to prove myself to not be the opposition, but, if he ever stops giggling at the notion of a girl who loves football-- I'll take whatever in--perhaps we'll gain some ground.

the mutual admiration society

It's a last-minute catch-up before he crosses the border, the last time we'll see each other, unless it's not. It's a handshake and a hug and a quick accounting of what's next and what's going on. He tells me, "School, always school," when I ask of his intentions, and he lays out his indefinite yet solid plans: maybe Cancun, for work and university, not sun, maybe Tijuana, which makes me cringe. He acknowledges my qualms, agrees that it's not a good place, but, "You gotta go where the opportunity is."

I love this kid. His attitude is the standard by which I judge all others: despite his realism, he is undaunted. When he says, "life is what you make it," I believe.

So it makes me smile when he excuses my messy desk as "just busy," when he flatters by asking how I do "so many good things." It touches me when he says he's glad to know me, that "[one] doesn't meet many people like you." Likewise, Fernando, I'm sure.

I know that I'm not half the woman he thinks I am, let alone the teacher, but when he leaves, I feel as if I could be.

to reiterate

I think I'll make a sign, or better yet a series. Paper the hallway down to my door with a Burma Shave shout-out no one would get.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at.

Every single one of you has something to offer.

And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is.

That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

--President Barack Obama

I read those words and remember why I work in a school.

I read, from the same speech, a straight-talk encouragement that every teenager should hear, and I say, "Amen."

"But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future."

That's the "controversial" "propaganda" I cannot share with my students. How did it come to this?

the lunatic fringe

So it turns out that if I were to stream the duly-elected President's Back-to-School speech into my classroom next week I would be eligible for the same suspension as the teacher who played NWA's "Fuck Tha Police" to her class without permission. Both, I'm told, are in the same category--get this: potentially objectionable--and thus students or their parents must have the choice to opt-out. Stay in school? What socialist propaganda!

I cannot believe there's an audience for this, or that we give them the power. Do you think he wants to quit yet, to give up trying to govern the wingnuts and those who pander to them? I'd walk away myself, except they pay for my health care.

.

Miss M

I am both tickled and mortified (in a long-ago, distant way) as I sit in the center of an unfamiliar classroom and try to lose my oh-my-goodness expression as the oh so young woman in her I'm-a-grown-up suit begins to address us parents with a shaking voice.

I have so been there. Not quite in my element, not quite making any impression save, "Wow, you sure look young!" As I said, it's been a while. Now the kids who were my first 7th grade students are some ridiculous age-- twelve plus eighteen, or so I figure: potential colleagues, more-or-less peers. My memories of that time are as vague as something near half a life ago should be: I can see a few faces, recall a few names, feel the dread that curly-haired kid in 4th hour inspired. My strongest recollection of that gig, save the paltry paycheck, is that when it ended I gave all my materials away.

Did I think I'd never again be a teacher? Was I just running from junior high? Though it seems a key life decision, I can't remember the timing or my intent. It's true, however, that after turning down a high school job the next fall I didn't reclaim the big desk until nine years, four states, a dozen jobs, and a master's degree later. Perhaps by then I was ready. I was certainly no longer the same girl I saw peeking over her notes at me tonight.

of all people

And there she is again.

The rules haven't changed but the secretary has, and thus a girl two years removed from my class stands framed in the doorway as I wait for what's-wrong-with-this-picture to register. Civics interrupted again.

"What are you doing here?" may be my first words, but she ignores any lack of welcome and claims a once-accustomed seat as I focus on my class. Until I realize what she's saying, where she's been, what it may mean.

"Now, wait," I say, my hands spread in a gesture meant to focus the attention of this presumed distraction. "Who did you talk to? What did he say?" And twenty more questions, give or take a dozen, that try to transform into truth her account of a friend's supposed enrollment in a community college the law has officially made off-limits to the paperwork-challenged. It doesn't add up in the way her stories never do.

But while I see the holes and feel the doubt, I have no choice but to believe, or at least hope, or at least make a wishful effort because so much depends for so many: a way into college is the grail. Recognizing my frustration with her something's-missing tale, she offers me her phone to hear the first-hand story, and I take it, despite the audience, intent on trying to understand the unofficial reality. For a few minutes I interrogate some nameless stranger, and his less-embellished account rings true. In his version, nobody says, "If you don't have a social security number, that's no problem," and yet he seems to have a Spring schedule. But as the call drops I still have only the vaguest hunch about how he slipped in and some guesses about how he'll be thwarted, or if. It's inconclusive. Her attempt to attend will be the test.

I rush through the boilerplate: "I hope this works out for you. That would be a good thing." I slow down and enunciate as if scolding a beginner: "I need to know exactly who you talk to, what they say, and what you do. You have to tell me what happens." Her nod reflects none of my urgency. I push my card into her hand and picture it lost or discarded as she claims she'll text me about going to college. We'll see if it comes to that.

the introduction

"My grandfather's name was Melvin,too."

His response, after a pause, is a surprised, "Really? That's cool," and I've a hunch that his hesitation was some unspoken variation of, "Was he from Puerto Rico?" Either that or he was just double-checking: his English is just on the verge. I affirm that he is, then, the second Melvin I've ever met, and I tell him that makes me happy because it does. I rarely have opportunity to say that name aloud; repeating it now almost feels like a talisman, and I'm pleased by the feeling it conjures.

But mostly I'm pleased for the student who has been but a name on a list to finally be coming to life. I've anticipated the arrival of this freshman class in a steeling-myself-way for months: they outnumber my sophomore through senior roster combined, they have a laundry list of special needs and issues, they've mostly been in a middle school program I call, for cause, Lord of the Flies. But, as always, "they" don't really exist, despite their preceding reputation. Instead of a group to confront I've got indivduals to meet and figure out how to teach; as they appear, I remember. So far there's this not-really-a-namesake whose helpfulnes is so-far endearing, an unfocused, outsize Junior; a Dominican ballplayer (football, too) who carries himself with that self-assured, big league ease at the age of 15; the smirking boy who will not speak. There is, heaven help her, a fourteen year-old gonna-be teen mother and her possible polar opposite, a wanna-be doctor who's been out of Ho Chi Minh City less than a week. There are dozens more, counting both the old and the new, and much learning to be done on both sides of my desk.

messages

"You must feel great. Good for you!"

"I do. Thanks! Now what are you going to do about school?"

His text had arrived out of the blue, as always. Always unexpected, never unwelcome, his notes always bring a smile and a question. "Slow night at work? Bored at home? Alone?" I can't help but wonder what prompts him to punch in an unpunctuated, "how are you," from two rivers away, but I never ask, and, sometimes, it's obvious.

But at first it's just the mandatory, "Not much," in response to my, "What's new?" so I tell him 160 characters of my can-you-believe it marathon story, and he tells me of 10 miles in Chicago and a 5K run for cancer, but the tone is too used-to, too don't-anymore. "Can't" doesn't suit him, so I pull out a reminder as tired as it is true:

"If I can do this, you can do anything," though the converse is equally true. More.

Later, he breaks what is likely an insignificant silence with college questions he's asked before. He has credits, hard-earned before the law changed again; to continue, he must pony up his trust along with inflated tuition in a different state, at a different school. I offer to make a few calls, to ask the tricky questions about ID and residence just to make sure. I tell him, "I know some people. It's no problem," and his, "yes, please," sounds relieved, though perhaps I am projecting.

By rights, he should be tired. He must be. He is. By now, he should have thrown his hands up and conceded. He won't. But by rights, he is wary. Skepticism keeps him safer, but all of it's so wearing. And yet wavering between determination and doubt, he once more sends me a message. How else could I reply?

goes without saying

Commencement concludes and the graduates spill out. Family portraits line the sidewalk, convened by cell phone and tip-toed scans of the crowd. As I make my last-chance circuit, I'm glad to recognize sister, mother, not-exactly-stepdad around my now-former student with an aunt behind the lens. 

We do-si-do, snap pictures and pose, and I reach for the mother's hand.  She nods through my congratulations and says, "She told me you're a very very nice teacher." And the hesitation in my pleased reply is part polite and part unspoken, "You do speak English!" interfering with my words. She never has, in front of me, before.  

In short, present-tense sentences that I could understand in Spanish, I tell her that I think the world of her daughter and that we'll be in touch.  It's not the time or place for much more than that, though there's plenty more that I could have said and been glad for her to understand. Maybe now there will be another time.  Perhaps before the younger sister graduates I'll remember to thank the woman for the tamales!  

The Real World

"I got my Passport!" she beams as she walks in the door.

 I don't detect that capital p, don't remember the jargon, so my, "Did you!" is especially emphatic and pleased, befitting a paperwork miracle.  To her, it doesn't seem out of line.

With a flourish, she hands it over, and at once I remember. "Passport" is the name of the tech school portfolio; I keep my mistake to myself, glad not to have sullied her moment. I page through the vinyl binder, genuinely impressed:

"Look at everything you know how to do!" I say as I look up to meet her smile. Her certificate is backed by a pages-long checklist of the nursing skills she has mastered; it's a real guarantee, spelled-out and explicit, for anyone looking to hire. 

But that was yesterday.

 "Hi," she says flatly, as she walks in the door. 

When I ask how she is, she claims to be fine as she slings her bag on the desk, but as her shoulders fall she admits:

"I'm a little disappointed." And then she explains her understatement. Today, on the last day of her hospital rotation, she had been working with a supervisor. A supervisor who offered her a job. 

"Go get your CNA, and I'll hire you," she'd said. "You'll have a job before you graduate." 

Except she won't, not there. Not with "not valid for employment" printed across the front of her card.  

There's so much to say but we've already said it, in this place but in other times. 

"If it weren't for my dad," she trails off, emotion, as always in check.  She knows how to endure. The father in question has been absent for years; his whereabouts are unknown. But once upon a time time he was in the States, legally, and he had applied to be a resident. The one adult in her life who has done her wrong may be her only way to make things right.  The world is often cruel. 

We sit on opposite sides of the desk, our helpless grimaces as mirrors.