Teaching the Invisibles: Chap. 1

Former Teacher Writes Book about What it's Really Like to Teach in Chicago

Second City Teachers is publishing a series of chapters from the book Teaching the Invisibles by former high school teacher Peter Nerad. It is a raw, funny, cynical and truthful account of what it is like to teach in the rough and tumble Chicago public schools. We begin with Chapter 1:

Teaching the Invisibles

A personal account of what really goes on in our inner city high schools

 Chapter 1

 

Going from alarming tragedy—to sheer stupidity—to skepticism—to verifying the heartbreaking occurrence—to numbness—to questioning the meaning of life.

And that was just Monday

 

Teaching in an inner city school or for that matter just walking around in one is to suddenly be an eyewitness to the rape of Nanking.  Your sense of common decency and basic respect for others will be assaulted at least a dozen times, and you’ll quickly discover that even the wittiest of gallows humor won’t prevent the emotional draining at the end of the day.

But sometimes I got hit with a tragedy so devastating it was like being tasered with your back turned. In the beginning of the year, a counselor gave me a head’s up that a sixteen-year-old student would be coming late because she was dropping her child off at daycare. It wasn’t ideal, but getting her caught up on what she missed wasn’t a problem because I soon saw she was serious about class and really a neat kid.

From what I could learn, she had two kids already, and surprisingly was very honest about being a lesbian. She came late quite a bit, but she’d also dig into the work and get it done. The class was a forty-six minute period of writing, reading, and grammar skills in addition to their regular literature class. A good idea since the average reading scores of our incoming freshman were at a fifth or sixth grade level.  

Brittany was a year older than the rest of the class and her extra maturity helped her discuss topics intelligently as well as thoroughly. One of the best times was when we were reading a story about a teenage mother, and she started sharing exactly what it was like. I figured it was a good warning seeing how the school’s “Mother’s Club” wasn’t an adjunct to the PTA but pre- and postnatal care for teenage mothers.

I remember her saying, “What it’s like? Are you kidding? My childhood is gone. I don’t have time for anything else except school and child care. I don’t hang out with friends.  I don’t have any time for myself.…”

When I tried sharing this moment with some coworkers in the lunch room, and believe me, when these moments happen you want to savor them, one of the young female teachers, of which there is always preponderance, immediately launched into a revealing discussion she had. In relating to other teachers in the school, although you barely saw them, you quickly realize everyone is not only competing with one another, they’re also running a continual public relations campaign that always ends up the same way, they’re all God’s gift to teaching. They’ve been around long enough to know that the “weak sister” teacher is the one the principal will go after when money gets cut or the board wants to know if the principal is firing the “bad” teachers. But most of the time it’s usually just a “hey, you’re not the only great teacher at the table here, mister.”

Brittany’s candor made our discussions much more interesting because the kids could definitely relate to what she was saying. The whole class liked her, which made her feel so at ease she began showing us her baby pictures and taking the students around her under her wing and helping them when they got stuck on an assignment. In the parlance of class management, she was a leader.

It was my favorite class of the day, and I suspect everyone else’s in there, and it was due to the luck of having not only Brittany, but also five smart and diligent kids whose energy rubbed off on the whole class.  Even the one student who was disruptive soon got reassigned to a special education class where she belonged.

But all of these factors wouldn’t have mattered a rat’s intestine if they’re had been thirty students instead of the twenty-two I had. Hit thirty and you hit the law of “critical mass”. Now there’ll be the proverbial “gang of six” that will feed of each other and fuck it up no matter how fun and entertaining you make it. Each one thinks they’re comically brilliant, and even after you separate them, put them in the front row, boot them from class several times, they’ll lay low like out-of-town mafia enforcers after a hit, until the coast is clear and they can begin again. 

But this small class was so cohesive I could even get them to do grammar exercises, the wolf bane of every adolescent. Even when I told them we were about to do it their groans were polite.

And oops, I almost I forgot. The students were on the same level of ability. I could teach and the smart kids wouldn’t get bored and the below level kids wouldn’t get frustrated and lost. And because there were only three special ed students who weren’t all that below a regular level, I could spend more time with them, and by the end of the year I could see a real leap up in their skills.

A class like this is unheard of. The usual class of any subject has a wide assortment of reading and writing levels stretching from sixth grade to sophomore competencies, with a smattering of special ed students, ESL kids, (ESL stands for English as a second language. Education loves acronyms more than the military.) a few ADHD kids and maybe an autistic. I even had one undiagnosed gifted boy who knew the class material better than I did.

This all begs the question as to why they don’t test the students beforehand and then form classes according to academic levels. That way whatever the teacher is doing actually helps everyone. Colleges do this. You take your English and Math tests at the start and then sign up for the right class. In the case of high school, the kids wouldn’t even know which class grouping they were in.

Only honors classes have everyone at the same level, so these classes can zip along and get something done, especially because honors students will do homework, and students that don’t get bounced down to regular classes.  For all practical purposes though, honors classes in Chicago are really a regular class anywhere else. But what time an honors class started was important. Fifty percent of the first period honors classes are flunking because they can’t get there on time.

Okay…a very round-about way of saying the class was a love fest. So much so that we used to meditate about once a week for twenty minutes at the start of class to help everyone concentrate better. (Once when I was getting frustrated, the kids told me, “Mr. Seeker, you better meditate.”)

But there was no way to prepare for the morning Brittany, the young mother, knocked at the door of the classroom in tears. She motioned me into the hall for privacy.  

“You broke up with someone, right?” I asked right away.

“No, Mr. Seeker, my baby died last night.”

“What!”

“My baby died last night.”

“Oh my God.  Look, go right down to the counseling office. Somebody can help you there.”

“I just came from there. They said they were all busy and that I should come back around noon.”

“Jesus Christ. Stay here for a minute. I’ll get a security guard to watch the room and we’ll go down there.”

She wasn’t lying. Liars go into profound detail to convince the listener. She never did. Her baby died. She came to school because she had nowhere else to go and her friends were here to support here. She went to the funeral. No details. The truth comes without them.

When I was student teaching, a teacher remarked one day that he had an old Irish aunt that told him God never gave a person more than they could handle. He used to believe that until he started working in that school. “Some of the stuff these kids go though nobody could handle.”

Now if this was a movie, the self-sacrificing, I’m-going-to-raise-holy-hell teacher would enter the counseling office and would raise holy hell. At the funeral there’d be a shot of the baby’s coffin and the weeping teen mother, but the teacher would be the main focus at the funeral helping everyone cope.

But this was real life. I took her down to the counseling office and explained the situation to the shocked secretary who told her somebody would see her right away. I was drained. I talked to more experienced teachers. They wondered if it was really the truth. I started wondering myself. I barely knew any of them. I only saw them in the classroom.

The baby, I learned, was her second child and lived with the father. He had come into town for a visit.  The baby was on a motel bed surrounded with pillows and had turned over and suffocated. 

I later started to understand how much assistance the school could provide in social services when I attended a state funded presentation for recognizing mental illness in teenagers. Great. This is good. After going over symptoms and other information, the major surprise being that adolescents with depression, unlike adults, actually get more energetic and begin acting out, I asked where we referred students for help.

“Well, unless they have insurance, the wait for the few county and city centers is several months, maybe more,” the speaker said.

“Couldn’t the student commit suicide by then?”

“Well, hopefully, they’ll get help before that happens.”

And how many students need some kind of therapeutic help? I learned the answer in a teacher’s workshop on essay writing. I merely asked during the session about good ways to have students write about their personal experiences, a common enough assignment. He answered adamantly, “Oh God no. Don’t do that. You’d have to refer the whole class to the school’s social worker.”

Chapter end note:  

My first class of the day was a likeable bunch too….when they were there. First period started at 7:50 am, usually there were only five out twenty on time. I called the fifteen homes of the habitually tardy. Twelve phones were disconnected, the other three didn’t have answering machines.    

Every year out of my five classes, I would have a charming class, two likable ones, one disengaged one, and one dreaded, “snake bit” group where they didn’t like me and I didn’t like them. In there, they hit me every day with hostile teenage comments and contempt, and I made little disparaging comments in return, I hate to say. The antagonistic class leaders dragged the rest of class down until I finally accepted it would be a long, painful journey.

 

You can order the book on Amazon Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Invisibles-Jack-Seeker-ebook/dp/B00C8GBB98