Chapter 8

Teaching the Invisibles

By Jack Seeker

Chapter 8

My First Classes

 Or no amount of training can prepare a man for the presidency 

or being left alone with twenty-eight teenagers

Conventional wisdom holds that the most important factor in learning is teacher quality. I wholeheartedly disagree. The number one factor is a calm personal life and a nurturing family. One bump in the road, be it divorce, moving, physical or emotional abuse, neglect and learning shuts down. With an adverse childhood, a student can go to Andover, Groton or Choate and still not succeed. In fact, since the 70s, federal government loans and grants have made it possible for anyone to attend college. You would think that would make college attendance skyrocket. It hasn’t. It’s remained rock steady. Mitigating factors like poor health, depression, and lack of family support and expectations and lack of any relative who has gone on to higher education, seem to be the factors that have firmly planted college numbers in place. College enrollment does inch up during recessions, but not in the numbers you’d expect given the extra earning potential that a degree bestows.  

So to the exclusion of everything else, we’ve decided the skill of the teacher is the number one determinate…funny how focusing on teachers alone comes with the lowest price tag. As a people we really don’t want to do what it takes to educate all children. We don’t want to address all the problems preventing children from the underclasses from learning. What we definitely want to do is pursue the American Dream, the house in the suburbs with the white picket fence; only now that quaint abode has morphed into a McMansion with more bathrooms than occupants. 

So let’s go find the best teachers possible even though more and more nonunion charter schools are lowering pay, nothing like reducing salary levels to attract the best talent.  Some of the ways to find better people is to require proof a teacher has indeed increased test scores. Something that is affected by the students you happen to get or whether the testing measurements themselves have been dumbed down. Some schools go as far as using personality and character trait tests. One is from Gallup Polling who, what else, polled teachers judged the best, as to their attitudes and predilections. It’s pretty similar to retail employee tests that ask what you would do if you caught a coworker stealing. CPS briefly used a “What would you do in this situation?” test until it prevented principals from hiring the candidates they thought highly of. Also calling the test a “survey” and not letting out it was really a hiring test didn’t help either. 

So how do you predict which teachers will work out? You don’t. You puts your money down and takes your chances, exactly the same way anyone does when they hire a new employee or brings up a new pitcher from the Minors. You just don’t know until you know. However, hiring experienced teachers is a different matter. You go with word of mouth the same way you choose a mechanic or a dentist. But nothing is foolproof. Many suburban schools avoid hiring city teachers because they believe the “tainted” city instructors won’t understand their students ignoring the fact that if you can handle the toughest teaching assignments you should be able to do even better with the easier ones. 

To lower salary costs, City schools are hiring inexperienced teachers right out of college and hoping they’ll succeed. This opens the door to increased teacher turnover and the kids keep getting inexperienced teachers even when Teach for America isn’t purposely putting them into the schools.  

Now, let’s get on with our day. 

High school starts at 7:45 or 8:00 a.m., an unpleasant time for adults, an agonizing time for teenagers. Kids thirteen and under need nine to ten hours of sleep for growth, but while teens need the same amount, they start getting tired two hours later. I’m conjecturing there’s an evolutionary reason for this circadian shift. After cave dwelling parents hit the bear skins exhausted, the budding young were still wide awake to continue the species. 

My first period was full of nodding heads and half-lidded eyes. Desks should have coasters for all the coffee and Red Bulls brought in. And while my first period class was asleep, it was also half empty. It didn’t fill up until half an hour after I had started, resulting in half a course for half the class. 

But come to think of it, all the classes were only half a course. I discovered that when I asked my students to read a five-page, large-type short story for homework. The next day only three kids had read it, forcing me to have the rest of them read it right there in front of me, which meant a one day lesson now took two days, and that turned the year into half a year. And the one day to read the story in class frequently took two days because we’d have to read it out loud, most of them were not going to read the story to themselves. Needless to say, books on tape were very popular with English teachers, and they were only loaned out to the colleagues you trusted since each teacher had to buy their own.   

It was the same thing with any and all homework assigned. System wide, every student save a trickle, had just spent grades 1 through 8 not doing homework and had passed just fine. Leaving embittered high school teachers mystified as to what was going on in the grade schools, and left us saying, “We’re supposed to change and reform everything we’re doing. So what in God’s name are they doing in the grade schools?”  

But we knew what they were doing. Flunk ‘em and you’d have a lot of 6th graders with a car parked out in the lot with baby sits in back. I actually got nervous about how many students I was flunking, so I asked an older colleague if there was such a thing as flunking too many students.

“Well,” he began, “It’s all unofficial, but that’s not saying there isn’t a policy on it. How many are you flunking now?”

“About 20% in each class.”

“Yeah, that’s about right. I wouldn’t go over that though.” 

Getting back to the way too early start time, the argument against it is there will be no time for after school sports, even though every basketball player is told not to neglect his studies because very, very few make it to the NBA. 

The second counter argument adamantly states that if grade school and high schools started at the same later time, there wouldn’t be enough buses to go around. It’s a perennial obstacle that’ll continue until someone in authority in says, “Let me get this straight….we can send a man to the….”

So next time you hear your mayor and federal government deploring the school’s poor performances, remember they don’t give a shit about a schedule that aids, not retards, learning. But because it’s the schools, the bat shit craziness doesn’t end there. Standardized tests used for measuring student progress, and even the ACT, begin at eight a.m. 

The moment had arrived. I walked into my very first class on my very first day. It felt like bringing home my first child from the hospital, when both parents come home, look at their baby, and go, “Okay, now what?”  

But don’t get the idea I was in the school building. I was out in the “mobiles,” the small trailer park of “temporary” RV like buildings in back. There could have been jet skis and ATV’s parked nearby and they wouldn’t have been out of place. I walked in and looked around at the accommodations, and they were nice, air conditioning, new desks and floors. Just the fact there wasn’t any gang graffiti on the walls really spruced the place up. 

I put my papers on the lectern and they promptly slide off to the floor. The edge molding at the bottom was gone and even I knew better than to ask it to be fixed. I could bring my own 1x1 strip and nail it on before the requisition form was filled out. 

I gathered up my papers and found the attendance sheet with the student pictures on it. I was putting into action a bit of advice I had just received. “Use the pictures so you can call them by name. You’ll be surprised how using their names stops ‘em right in their tracks.” 

It sounded valid, only that it takes eleven seconds to match the photo and name to the kid; eleven seconds of bumbling silence that made me look like it was my first day of teaching, and I was using my age and grayish hair to pass as a grizzled veteran who doesn’t take shit from anyone, you hear me, mister?

The class was a supplementary one in reading and writing skills in addition to their regular English Literature class.  The text book was the gold standard for grammar, or so I thought because my edition, from decades ago, is beyond excellent. But the new edition I opened up is beyond terrible. 

The practice exercises are slap dash, like the writers and editors hardly had time to come up with them. A fellow teacher told me he once worked for the publisher, and he said what I suspected was true. To decrease costs, some books nowadays are slapped together in the least amount of time as possible. It was like trying to teach with a Ford Pinto. 

I soldiered on with this poor equipment, and started in on commas, a wise and lucky choice. If you want the kids to absorb anything, the first six weeks is when they will pay attention, not for a good grade, but because they, like the teachers needed a change of pace from relaxing every day during the summer. The period flew by, and I was on my way to the third floor of the main building that was overfilled by at least 1000 students.  The jammed halls came to a standstill at every stairway and intersection. 

It was fine though. Everyone queued up politely when needed and “pardon me’s” were commonplace. 

Actually, it was about as orderly as New York in a blackout. Foot traffic moved at a New Delhi pace. Big groups blocked halls for a relaxed chat. Getting to class, or letting anyone else get to class, was not a pressing issue.  

I got to my new room a few seconds late and started taking attendance. Sounds routine, but not in this school. The principal had stressed the week before how important attendance was because it could be used as legal proof if the student was committing a crime at that time and tried to use being in school as an alibi.  The revealing part was how this was situation normal. Any other non-city room full of teachers would have been going, “What!”  

While calling attendance, the same arrogant fucks that were blocking everyone in the hall, meandered in five minutes tardy (a word you’ll never hear again after high school), greeted their friends in class and then asked me if I had called their names. Suppressing my anger, I inquired where they were. They just shrugged and said they were with friends. 

“That’s for lunch time and after school, guys. I just came from the mobiles, and I got here on time,” I gently said.

One of the late comers shot back, “That’s because you don’t have any friends.” The rest of the class thought this was the height of quick witted humor. 

My anger was soon replaced with disbelief. There was nothing I could do about tardies. The Dean of Discipline, the one “who had our back,” quickly gave me the protocol. 

“After five tardies, students get a detention.” 

“But students collect detentions like parking tickets around here.”

Well, if they don’t serve ‘em they get a Saturday detention for every one they miss.” 

“Alright, I’ll try it.” 

Before the report card pickup and open house that fall, it was announced that students who set up chairs in the gym for the visiting parents would be given “amnesty” for their accumulated detentions. Yup, nothing like firm consequences. 

A resourceful social studies teacher clued me in. She closes and locks the door after the bell rings and leaves the late ones out there. The kids bang on the door and the security guards come over. “When the guards tell me that late students have to be admitted, I tell them I was going to write them up anyway for something else and that I want them to go to the Dean. By the time the Dean gets through the paper work, class is almost over.” 

I couldn’t wait to do it, but the Dean got hip, and teachers were told that had to admit them to class. According to the official board discipline code Article 4, section 13, no child could be denied instruction because of misbehavior short of guns and drugs. 

This nifty little bill of rights quickly hamstrung any discipline I hoped to apply. A kid would disrupt, I’d call a security guard to take the kid to the dean, and the kid was back in his chair grinning at me five minutes later. The kids who wanted to learn looked bewildered. The trouble makers looked animated.

In each class I had five to six students who did their classwork and homework. It was these kids that kept me going. I couldn’t let their education be stolen, and before I finally learned how to deal with the disrupters, I frequently lost my temper out of sheer frustration. If I tried to get to the end of lesson, the dicks in class blocked me at every turn. I’d be ready to throw in the towel until I saw the five kids trying to do the lesson. I tried taking the five learners up to the front and teach them. The back of the room became a Greyhound bus station. I told the loudest ones to go out into the hall and wait for me and then leave them hanging there. That worked until they realized their energy level dropped off without an audience and started banging on the door.  And the security guard that was never around when you needed him whisked them back in the room because he couldn’t stand the noise. 

I finally came up with a tactic that worked -- funny how the brain protects itself. I started needling the misbehavers into swearing at me. I’d keep at it until a kid lost his temper, and called me a motherfucker.  I could then quote that–verbatim–on the discipline report, and lo and behold the kid didn’t come back for once. (One teacher, who did the same thing, told me when a security guard did bring a kid who had sworn right back, he asked the guard if he just talked to students that called him a motherfucker. The guard took the kid away.) I had my first survival method, and ironically, a vocabulary lesson the kids paid attention to.  

“It’s a slave term,” I said. “The plantation owner had children with their slaves so the rest of the slaves called the master an m-f-er, which he was. Make sense? Even worse, the master than proceeded to sell his own children. Frederick Douglas, who we’re reading next, is a prime example. His plantation owner dad sold him off to one place, and then Frederick’s mother to the auction house. The father wouldn’t even keep them together. Now that’s an m-f-er!” 

In my first week I set my demeanor at hard-ass and started calling attendance and eyeballing each kid like I could read their moral character just by looking at them. But as I called the names, I had this creepy feeling I was not just being watched, but intently studied. Every time I made a move sixty eyes were tracking me the same way a leopard watches a new born zebra. I suddenly realized they were the grizzled veterans.  Their high school navigation and radar skills were fresh, mine were thirty years old.   

The repeated coworker advice was, “Don’t be nice until Christmas or they’ll run all over you and it’ll be too late to do anything about it.” It worked like shit. I was gruff and they were model citizens. I was racked with guilt. So I became friendly as they sat in class for two and half months observing, comparing notes, throwing out trial balloons of recalcitrance and quickly retreating if I became stern. They were the carnivorous raptors in “Jurassic Park”, adjusting and readjusting their hunting methods so they could come in for the final kill. 

And the kill was psychological torture in repeatedly small enough doses so I couldn’t write them up. I felt like I was in a North Korean prison camp and didn’t think I was going to last until January. They were palpably sensing my pain, and it pleased them. It was nothing personal against me. They were just doing their job–waiting for the teacher to crack. 

I did ask them why it was happening. They looked at me with disbelief. This was way too common knowledge not to divulge it. 

“Of course we were well-behaved. We didn’t know you.” I have to admit they were cute. They also weren’t going to stop. 

We were in a vicious cycle. I provoked them into doing the classwork they didn’t want to do. So they provoked me back until I deduced the spot where they were the most vulnerable. After that it was only a matter of putting a Vulcan grip on it. When I announced my new class discipline rule I knew I had a winner. 

“There have been too many disruptions in this class and they’re keeping us from getting our work day. It’s not fair to me and more importantly, it’s not fair to the students in here who want to get the most out of class. So in the future, starting today, I will be recording when you are, individually, infringing on the rest of the class. I’ve got a separate notebook here with your names already in it so I have a record of it.”

 “Now, because I’m a nice guy,” I sadistically continued, “I’m going to give you two chances before I call your parents.” They couldn’t hide their “tell”. Their faces turned white. “Get three infractions and I call your parents in for a conference. Think of it as three strikes and you’re out. I imagine your parents would rather not come in and miss a half day of work, so we can all go over what you’re doing wrong in class. Any questions?” 

“What if our parents can’t make it in?”

“If that’s the case, the Dean has told me you’re not allowed back in class until they do. You’ll sit in the Dean’s office until they can come in and I can meet with them.”

That sealed it. They had no way out. Before when I sent a knucklehead down to the Dean’s, it was a badge of honor for the kid. He was cool enough to show everyone he wasn’t going to put up with the teacher’s shit. But….tell the whole class I was going to call his “Mom”, and now the kid was a tyke again back in fifth grade suffering what no teenager can bear, embarrassment. This and the fact that they knew what was going to happen if one of their parents missed work. I like to think of this little method as the waterboarding of classroom management. 

I had a few kids who got two strikes, but it was close enough to the end of the semester that I could take them out into the hall for a one-on-one and magnanimously refrain from giving them the third strike. I was now one of those teachers who could control a class with the merest arch of an eyebrow. 

There is only one other approach as effective, “The Sunday Morning Call.” 

The teacher of this rugged tactic explained it this way. “Say I have a student call me a motherfucker on Friday. (Any hurled profanity will do, but when teachers retell their horror stories the students somehow always wind up calling them a motherfucker.) I write the kid up of course and send him to the Dean. You have to, you can’t let something like that go. But then, to make sure it never happens again, I make the ‘call’. Bright and early Sunday morning, say around 8:30 I call the home. Good morning! Is this Mr. Gonzalez? Mr. Gonzalez, this is Mr. Smith your son’s English teacher at God Help Us High School.  Did you know, Juan, called me a motherfucker this last Friday in class? The next thing you know he’ll have me hang on and then I’ll hear all sorts of yelling from the dad and then the kid. It’s fantastic. And you can sure as hell bet that kid will never call you a motherfucker again!”  

A Rush of Random Memories Flying at Me Every Which Way

“Can I hand in my paper late? Can I use the washroom? I need to go see my counselor. I left my backpack in my last class, can I go and get it? Are we watching a movie today? It’s my friend’s lunch, is it alright if she can stay here? Can I move my seat? It’s too cold by the window…” 

After a while I learn to say sit down, I’ll get to you in a minute. I shake the sensory overload off and have them all sit down and calmly take care of each request. Then it’s my turn to start asking why a student hasn’t turned in their work, why another has been absent three days this week, why another has come into class ten minutes late, why another has a bruise on her neck, why another is so angry today…  

A teacher here can never spend too much time trying to meet the needs of children whose needs aren’t being met, so we remind each other not to burn out trying to do it, and tell ourselves there’s only so much we can do when we speak of the kids that fell through the cracks on us. 

One of the sweetest girls I ever had, who worked her heart out each day, didn’t turn in one assignment, not even the little ones we did that were due at the end of class. Toward the end of the semester, a special education teacher asked what her grades were in my freshmen English class. 

“I didn’t know she was special ed,” I said.

“She’s not. She should be, so I’m keeping an eye on her.”

“Oh, god, that’s great. I don’t know what’s going on with her. She won’t turn anything in,” I told him. 

“Yeah, well, she’s doing that in all her classes. If she turned in the stuff she’s holding on to, will you look at it and give her a passing grade?”

“Holding on to? You mean she’s done the work and won’t hand it in?”

“I think so. She probably has all of it. Some of it may not be finished, but she’s started it. She probably has a bad case of OCD. Everything she does isn’t as perfect as she wants it to be. I finally convinced her to just give me whatever she has.” 

“Are you going to get her some help?”

“That’s what I’m in the process of doing. The problem is she doesn’t have a learning disability, so they may not assign me to her.”

“Wow, of course. Not being able to complete any work isn’t a disability.”

“I’ll do something to get her put with me.” 

I got a pile of her work and went through the bits and pieces and at each point where she stopped I could sense the prison she had locked herself into. Almost every piece of work would have been right if she just kept going a bit more. I gave her a B to let her know she did good work and that getting an A was possible. If I went by points and points off for lateness she would have been in bad shape. It was just a big, big blessing this special ed teacher had made time for a student he didn’t have to. Kids in her situation frequently act out angrily, pretending they don’t give a shit about the class and mask the problem they’re so ashamed of. She didn’t. She was just a sweet girl that wanted to do the work but couldn’t. It’s memories like this that make me shudder when I see the Board of Ed not hiring the more experienced teachers like this special ed teacher so they can avoid paying higher salaries.  

Another memory: On my very first day of school I literally bumped into a girl that was anger personified. I needed to straighten something out pronto in a very crowded attendance office. It was so packed I couldn’t pull rank and cut to the front of the line. So I’m queued with cradling my notebooks with my elbows protruding behind me. I backed up to let someone through and stepped into a girl who was only inches behind me. 

“YOU HIT ME IN THE TIT!”

“Excuse me,” I said in a low voice, hoping she’d match my volume.

“YEAH, BUT YOU HIT ME IN THE TIT!” 

“I know, I said excuse me.” 

“THAT DON’T MATTER, YOU HIT ME IN THE TIT!” 

An attendance person comes over. “Shaniqua, why don’t you come over here?” 

“YEAH BUT HE HIT ME IN THE TIT.” 

“It’s okay, just come over here, I can help you right now….”

What in God’s name. The first thing your limbic system does is start yelling over and over  SHUT THE FUCK UP. Something like this happens and all the racial slurs you’ve heard your relatives say very earnestly come spurting out of your long term memory. Jeezus Christ, so this is what they were talking about.  

Shiniqua had to be an unadulterated, single-mother-raised, straight from the ghetto black girl. I learn later this is an example of these kids being in “survival mode.” Somebody gets in your space you let ‘em have it. If you don’t, you’re signaling you won’t defend yourself. Fights started all the time over “mean mugging,” a few dirty looks from someone and fists started flying. Plus, when you have someone in life touching your tit who’s not supposed to be touching your tits, you’re going to holler like hell accident or no accident. 

So I became a racist, right? Nope, sorry, I grew up in the 60s and racism was one of the mistakes our parents made that needed correcting. My dead relatives got it wrong. Race never had anything to do with it. Remember the anachronistic Victorian double standard I mentioned that is now maladaptive? How many of us parked ideas like that in our memory garage and then promptly lost the exit ticket? Well, racial divisions are one of those conceptual outlooks that are now severely outdated. 

Here’s the new paradigm is economic status. It’s the people above you or below you in income that we can’t stand. When Martin Luther King Day is celebrated, the man on the street thinks King is the civil rights guy. But Dr. King moved on to the real cause of discrimination, economic enslavement, and that means 99% of us. King was shot on a strike for higher wages, not to integrate blacks into the Daughters of the American Revolution. The full-time black garbage men in Memphis were making $2 a day and living on welfare and food stamps. And since most of us are one layoff or serious illness from the same lifestyle, Martin was marching for just those people’s rights.  

If you want to predict how a student will do in school, just find out their parents’ household income. I know, some poor kids work hard, and make something of themselves, but I said, “A vast majority”, not the sliver that beats the odds. 

I tried helping my students with the real discrimination they’d face, classism, by correcting their speech. 

If one of them said, “I seen that movie.” I told them to say, “I have seen that movie, or I’ve seen that movie, too.”

If another asked if she could go to the bathroom right quick, I told to say, “May I go to the bathroom quickly?” 

When they asked what difference any of this made, I replied that people would immediately know how much education they have and how much money they make. They didn’t believe me, so I told them how a coworker I had was made fun of because he spoke like this from time to time. It didn’t have to be often I assured them. Some of them got it, others weren’t there yet, but either way I’d bet money they’d remember it when this inevitable prejudice happened later on in their lives. 

As the year went on I began using, or as corporate middle managers and educational drones like to say, “implementing”, an added discipline technique, the time honored private talk. I usually did it when a boy called me “Joe” or “Dude”. Out the room we went for my “I’ll tell you what I tell my kids” talk. 

“When an adult comes into the room” I’d begin, “You stand up, address them as sir or ma’am, introduce yourself and ask them how they are today. And you know what? It takes ten seconds and that adult is immediately your best friend. You need help with something, you need them to cut you a break, they’ll be there for you. You disrespect them, you’re out of luck.”

Now, if a teacher or an adult in authority needs to set you back on the right track and you believe you’ve made a mistake, you man-up, admit your mistake, apologize and move on. The adult can continue to trust you and surprisingly will have even more respect for you.”

Then I add the face saving, “I did the same stuff you’re doing right now when I was your age. Probably worse. Luckily I had adults in my life care enough about me to help me along this way. If they didn’t care, they wouldn’t have gone through all the effort to guide me. Any questions?” 

I never had this talk fail me once. It got to a point where I really enjoyed it. And it got to the point where the kids I had talked to this way would address me as “Sir” the rest of the class, tell others to call me “Sir” and later would say hello to me in the halls and still call me sir. One young lad called me “Sir” the rest of the year. Why does it work so well? The student and I form a bond, he starts feeling good about himself, he earns approval, he knows someone is caring about him personally and not just trying to get him to quiet down in class, and the discipline makes him feel safer. 

Either way, I love doing it because I feel like I’m paying back all the scoutmasters who did it for me. I mean, at one point, they even took the time to show us how to tuck in our uniform shorts so they’d stay tucked in. It takes a lot to raise a child. You just don’t plunk them in a class and hope for the best. 

But regardless of all the daily hubbub, or even if they liked you or not, after the first month in any class, the kids knew if you cared. They knew if you were busting your ass or not, and were appreciative if you kept after them to do the work. Pull out a worksheet too many times and they wrote you off.  Worse yet, don’t hand back work, or grade with a check, check plus, or check minus instead of points, and you soon found out you’ve broken the code of every high school student everywhere, the credo of “No points. No do.” And just as they knew what kind of teacher you were going to be for the rest of the year, I could tell what grade each kid was going to get after the first week. 

But even if you have your classes purring like a kitten, there’s one more deadly sin that can be committed–not listening to your students. We’ve all had teachers who’ve dismissed us out of hand. It can be an opinion, a complaint or a question, and the teacher disagrees with it and cuts off any kind of rebuttal. It’s a form of disrespect on a very personal level. Needless to say, those teachers don’t have students stop in for a visit after graduation. 

In fact, not listening was the number one complaint. High school students are only too forthcoming about their opinions of teachers, and if the offending teacher’s name comes up, it’s a public lynching as each of the abused recounts his verbal mugging. The group will have no intention of stopping until I say what will probably be etched on my tombstone, “Alright, I need to move on.” They calm down, but nobody’s letting go of their grudge ‘til the first reunion. 

It’s a mistake adults do to kids all the time without any idea they’re doing it. I’m unnaturally aware of it because, well, that’s how everyone was raised in the early 60s. So whenever a grievance did come up, I would immediately give the petitioner all the due rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. 

When a student wanted to be heard, I halted class. The aggrieved kid would whine out his beef, and I’d ask questions to make sure I understood everything. I then asked the student to persuade me in a paragraph. 

“State your argument then give three reasons why it’s right. If I don’t agree with you, address my argument with your logical reasons. But I want to hear why I’m wrong, not your personal feelings about the matter. Maybe I’ll agree with you and do it your way. Maybe we compromise. Or if I’m not convinced, evaluate your options. Do you try doing it my way? Do you revise your opinion? Do you put it on hold? Do you march down to the principal’s office? Call your parents? Discuss it more with me after class? This is how adults hopefully do this. Little kids whine. You’re too big for that.” 

You could feel the temperature in the room drop five degrees. All the other kids had a look on their faces that said, “Cool, I can talk to this guy. He’s a little wordy and time consuming, but we can talk.” And as it turned out, the students knowing they wouldn’t be dismissed out of hand, piped right up with their complaints which were almost always legitimate. I’d compromise with them right away. They had just proffered a reasonable argument, a life-long skill they’ll use more than most of the data we’re trying to drill into them.  

With that said, the most fun I had with my students’ free speech was where else? studying the US Constitution. At progress report time half way through the semester, one girl complained about my grading system, and the rest of the class joined her. The damn thing turned into a Norman Rockwell town hall meeting. How was I going to resolve this one? And resolve it right on the spot I might add. There was no, I’ll bet back to you, if I was going to have any credibility. 

“Wow,” I said, “Here we are studying the Constitutional Convention and you guys are looking at me like I’m some kind of king. It’s your class after all. Why don’t we reach a compromise? So….what you’re saying is that here you are doing the class work and homework, getting points on them, but in the end most your grade is based on the final. 

“Right.” What’s the point of doing that work if it doesn’t even count? I think our homework grades should count just as much as our test grades.”  

The rest of the class, even the kids who up until that point never uttered a word, backed her up with a chorus of “yeah, yeah,” which now sounded like “hear, hear” at Questions to the Prime Minister. 

“Alright. That’s more than fair. I’ve been treating your worksheets, quizzes and homework as preparation for the tests. The grades you get on those should tell you where you need to study more for the next test. I assign more value to your test grades because that shows whether you know the material or not. 85% of your final grade is your tests, and 15% is your other work.” 

The student petitioner responded, “That’s a whole lot more than my other teachers count tests. This isn’t a college class. It’s a high school class. Homework is supposed to count for more than test points.” 

She got me. I do veer to college class structure more than high school. I felt guilty, so I went a little over board in my concessions.

“Okay. Tell me if this is a good idea. I’ll figure up your homework grades and your test grades separately, and I’ll take the higher of the two for your final grade.” 

Uh, oh. Now I did it. There were smiles all around alright. But the pit in my stomach was fleeting. Those actually doing the homework got good test scores anyway. The rest of them did no homework and therefore got lousy test grades. So nothing really changed–except for a big surprise at progress report card time. 

In my other four classes when progress reports were ready to go out, I got besieged and beseeched by students wanting to know what they got. I couldn’t start class until I they knew. So I walked into American History ready for it. I waited. Nothing happened. I started class. Class ended. They left. Holy Shit. They were keeping track of their grades and knew for once what they getting. Grading by consensus was a great teachable moment, a fine expression when not used with adults. 

There was one student in this history class though upon whose future I did most positively affect. One was the only junior among the sophomores, so he not only had the brain development to understand the high concepts better, (history, should be taught in junior and senior year for this reason) but also had a recording device memory. If he heard something in the beginning of the year, you could ask test him on it at the end of the year and he’d get it right. He was so good that with one short answer question he added material I had put in my lecture as a side note, material from my college class I didn’t expect anyone to know. 

 “So,” I said to him after the test, “You get straight A’s in history and social studies, right?” 

“No, I usually flunk them.”

“Hey, good joke.” 

“No, I do. The teachers didn’t explain how it all connects. You show that and so it all makes sense. The other classes were just a blob of stuff to know and I couldn’t remember it.” 

Well, I thought, maybe my raisings of expectations and rigorous instruction weren’t so bad after all. Or…the other teachers were coaches treating their history classes as their day job. 

I checked how he was doing in his other classes. He had a more than just a few low grades, and I think I understand why. When you can remember everything said in class, doing all the ten-point assignments is too painful. Having a class with just a midterm, a paper and a final? That would be too much preparation for college. Even the AP classes had all those dopey little “activities”. 

One Flew Over the History Class

American history is by far my favorite subject. It was my major and what I now read as a pastime. Unfortunately, this class started with one large debit that took six months to pay off. The class began six weeks into the school year. The students came from four different overloaded classes, and I suspected most of them were the “unwanted”. 

A week in the carping started up. 

“We didn’t do this in our old class. We wrote notes on the whole chapter.” 

“We did worksheets or questions at the end of the chapter.”

“We read the chapters out loud.” 

“Really? What boring ways to learn,” I reacted. 

It took all of four months for the students to settle in, and as time went on, the class broke into two sections, the back rows taking up oxygen, and the front rows enjoying the class. I battled with the back rows for involvement, and then I went with a pedagogical no-no, I taught to the front rows. I did pull in the back rows with get-up-out-of-your-seat activities they grudging walked through, but they remained sore I was cutting into their socializing. I told them, “Look, this is more fun than sitting through another of my scintillating discussions. They went sullen knowing I was right; it almost meant they’d drag-ass through the activity. 

But wait there’s more! Adding to this obstacle course was the noisy Chinese restaurant in the room. The teacher whose room it was the rest of the day had a little office and a lunch room area sequestered in the back behind some folding walls. Smells of takeout meals and classic rock wafted through the room. It was the work of Sharon, the OCD afflicted teacher, and because it was “her room” she had made sure to mark her territory by squatting and pissing in all four corners. 

Of course, it was well within my rights to ask her and her entourage to leave, and I could have complained to the Principal, but I knew it would have turned into being bad mouthed by her for the rest of the year, not that it wasn’t happening already, but I didn’t want to see it escalate to ungodly levels. I was sure she and an assistant principal were critiquing me every week. They were taking a Type 75 class together, and besides the usual bullshit education topics, my shortcomings were bound to be on their syllabus. Type 75 classes are a requirement to becoming a principal or a dean of discipline. It’s a great avenue for people who don’t like teaching. (Sharon eventually took over as head of the English department and after a few weeks of her running it, nobody attended anymore.)  

Without a doubt, Sharon’s toxicity qualified for Superfund cleanup. Walk into her classroom and each kid was bent over filling out worksheet after worksheet. Walk in there and you’d see her beaming with pride at her well run class. If there was a peep, the perpetrator was immediately shamed and ridiculed before being sent to her buddy the assistant principal, and another student was broken, or another special ed kid disappeared and flunked out. 

As I said before, I devote my time to teaching thinking. History dates and events can be Googled. But what the facts mean in context cannot. So invariably my classes contained raucous activities and discussions, methods that had Sharon constantly in a lather. But this is CPS where worksheet-silence and no bad deed goes unrewarded, which is exactly why our principal one afternoon came walking into my class thinking Sharon’s class would be a safe haven for his visitors. 

He walked in with two reporters, the head of the local federal district of education, and the Chicago Board of Education Vice President. (The federal district guy may have been past puberty.) As the self-important crowd came in, the principal announced they were there to determine whether the school’s privately funded program of teaching manners and respect (the ICCA Program) was paying off.

Are my students more polite? they asked. Do they feel it helps them to succeed? and so on. Three kids started rattling off all responses they wanted to hear into the radio reporter’s microphone. They also asked what they were learning in class. Oh boy. But quick as whistle the kids chirped up about the film on women’s suffrage, “Iron Jawed Angels”. Then off they left to walk into another cherry picked class. 

I asked the principal later why he came into my class. I knew I wasn’t on the safe-to-visit list. He thought it was Sharon’s scared-quiet class. But when he walked by and looked in on my class it was well behaved enough to chance it. “Well, I said, “We dodged another bullet.” He didn’t laugh.  

And so the months moved on. We studied the Constitution and they took a multiple choice test on it. If the kids didn’t pass, they didn’t graduate. Those not passing had to keep taking the test until they did. Ninety-five percent of the class passed the test, the same one they had taken in eighth grade. 

But during the test, one black girl, Shawna finished her test early and proceeded to stick an iPod in her ear, start singing loudly and dance around the room. I flipped out. I couldn’t even give a test in peace. I called to the 300-pound security guard at the end of the hall. He waddled over in fifteen minutes later and came in with five other kids he was hanging out with, and those kids began greeting their friends in class. I took the girl shoveled the guard and entourage out of the room. After class Miss OCD snidely told me of the free-for-all cheating going on when I was out in the hall. 

“You stopped them, right?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not my class.”

After this I begged an assistant principal for help with the anger dumping girl. The African American assistant principal volunteered to take the girl whenever she was acting up. She would counsel her and make sure she got her work done. 

In a rare moment of help from Sharon, she told me the same girl was no problem whatsoever ever in her class. It’s me then I thought, my whiteness, and my maleness anointed me as the prefect vessel to receive her rage over her abusive background, what every therapist calls transference. 

Shawna visited the assistant principal at least three times a week, and I became acquainted with how CPS ensures your good deeds tarnish your record. I received my punishment one morning while half awake. 

“Hi, how’s Shawna doing?” I asked the Assistant Principal. 

“Not too well. She was pretty upset the other day.”

“Jeez, what happened?” 

“Someone called her a nigger.”

“Who called her that?”

“You did.”

Christ Almighty, now I was a racist and that meant immediate firing. No suspension. No due process, and a little blurb in the Sun Times featuring my head shot and captioned with: Mr. Seeker (shown above), dismissed for calling student the n-word. 

Recalling why Shawna said I called her a nigger wasn’t hard. She had asked me if I thought she was a nigger a few days ago. 

“No,” I told her, “I don’t think you are.” 

“Ohhh, so other people are niggers.” 

“No, I don’t think anyone is. Look, why don’t you go down to the assistant principal’s office?”

The AP had race baited me and I was pissed. But she sure had good reasons to verbally filet me. During the 70s she was assigned to this school because more black administers were needed up North, and like Jackie Robinson, I’m sure she got her share of shit. Now she was out to set the old white man straight. 

To say my history class was running amok is being too kind. And I added to the mess. The head of the history department had given me a federal Department of Education lesson plan to teach the Constitution. The packet was on John Locke. It must be fine I thought, it’s from experts. So off I went, step by step into the complicated Lockian underpinnings of our government. The class was clueless. Later when I gave the whole mess to another teacher, she shook her head and said maybe I should be teaching college. No, I said, maybe the federal government should be teaching college. 

It was my first and last history class. I was hired to teach English because there weren’t any openings in history because students only needed two years of it, and it ain’t on the ACT. Additionally, most history teachers get so old in the job they’re eye witnesses to what they’re teaching. Vietnam? I was there. Woodstock? Yup. But let me tell you about Kennedy’s assassination first. 

Most high school history teachers are not only old, they’re also avid Fox News watchers, so far right they make Ronald Reagan look like Lenin. The classes are “America can do no wrong” from its founding to today. Not exactly conducive to independent thinking. 

By now I’m sure you’ve noticed my slight leaning to the Left, and I readily admit it. I would characterize myself aligned with the New Deal, but then again so were Eisenhower and Nixon for all practical purposes. But I made every effort to present all sides of an event. One time we were discussing current topics and George W. Bush in particular. The whole class was anti-Bush, as were their parents. They were also anti-Republican Party. So on the board I listed the general platforms of both parties. When the kids saw the Republican list of keeping more of what you make, self-responsibility, support for business, strong on defense, anti-abortion, etc. they went, “Hey, wait a minute, I’m for that stuff too.” 

I at least was presenting both sides, but I doubted if the rest of the far right in the department made any attempt at balance. I could imagine them in class saying, “Well yes, the slavery thing was bad. But they did get civilization out of the deal.” In all fairness I knew I couldn’t totally get rid of my progressive leaning, especially during the progressive era. I justified it by telling myself they’re constantly bombarded by the counter arguments every day. 

So I was sure to point out the graft and corruption during our country’s life.  After covering numerous instances of it, one fifteen-year-old saw me after class. 

“I don’t get it. I wouldn’t take bribes if I was in their place. I mean, I’ve got everything I want. Why do they need all that money?”

My heart bounced. I had thought the same thing at his age. “Well, you’re fine now. But if you get married think of all the dough you’ll need. You’ll want a big house to be comfortable in and to let people know that, yes, you’re a success. You’ll want your kids to have college educations at good schools. You’ll want nice vacations, nice cars, and you’ll have a furnace, windows and roof that will all need replacing….”

I could see the wheels turning as he tried to see through the opaque window of his upcoming adulthood. 

But enough about the teachers screwing around and doing whatever the fuck they wanted. There were many faculty members doing a great job and going pretty much unnoticed. There was one special ed teacher that you could have sworn was some kind of healer, and she did it like it was just part of her job.  

Prior to teaching Leena was an architect working for a high pressure firm. But sixty to seventy hours a week doesn’t leave much time for a family, something that would never happen in her home country of Pakistan. She was also seriously contemplating going back there so she could leave the insanity of our worker bee culture. 

She solved a problem with a freshman I had tried to help but made the mistake of thinking my opinion would matter. He had been in my freshman English Literature class and had a habit of attending class twice a week. I’d give him three days of missing assignments and he’d turn them in the next day sans mistakes, and he was insanely designated special ed.  

I went to the annual review of his Individual Education Plan, IEP. The head of the special ed department asked what I recommended for him as his mainstream teacher. 

 “I’d put him in all honors classes,” I stated. 

“Well, that’s not going to happen. He’s special ed.”

“Well,” I said, “He’s purposely missing two days a week because he’s bored. He aces everything I give him, and he wrote the best essay on the final I gave for all of my classes.”

“Like I said, he’s special ed.”

Alright, I can take a hint. Next year Leena was assigned to him. I doubt very much the special ed department guy had noted I recommended honors classes for him. She must have noticed his intelligence just by talking with him. She tested him and he scored in the nineties in everything except for math. There his score was “off the charts”. Turned out he didn’t know English when he first came here. 

There was also a sad but funny case where she intervened. She caught a special ed malingerer. In fourth grade he fell down on all fours and started barking at the teacher. Who didn’t want to bark at their teachers? They’re always barking at their students. Diagnosed as special ed, he soon discovered he didn’t have to do any work from there on out. As long as he showed up, he was guaranteed a C. God only knows if he was able to catch up.

She switched from special ed to her true love of graphic design so she could use her architectural design background. Her class won a city wide graphics contest, and she was turning the whole department into a top program. But she lost her classes because the head of the department now wanted to take them over now that they had become something. The front office told Leena she could have her old job back in special ed. Last I heard she was looking for a school that wouldn’t waste her talents.

Out of Town Relatives Make Surprise Visits, Why Don’t Principals?

They could if they wanted. But their class observations are announced a week ahead of time, only which day of that week is the unannounced part. The routine is the same; the principal would oh so gingerly open the door and mince his way to the back of the room where he judiciously tallied good teaching practices and poor ones. What he sees is what you got as an evaluation. Of course there are a myriad of tangibles he won’t have time to take into account, such as your tests, lesson plans, assignments and grading system. You’re supposed to have all that out on your desk knowing full well it’ll never get looked at. All that mattered was that fifteen minute witnessing. What was going on the prior week or even the day before is of no concern. 

But what of it? Everything about teaching is intangible. Everybody knows it, so empirical type forms are designed to make you think there’s hard evidence. A principal could evaluate the patron saint of children, and if he didn’t like her, she had better start praying to the saint of lost causes. 

Ensuring quality was a lot different at the ad agencies I worked. Every job I wrote was first read and edited and frequently radically changed or killed outright by a creative director. The surviving copy was then sent over to the account executives who put their thumb prints on it. Then it went to the client’s marketing executive who put his handprints all over it. Finally it went up to the CEO, if it was a big enough campaign, for his approval, and it was not unheard of to find out the idea was killed simply because the his wife didn’t like it. So in my first year of teaching I was like what the hell, does anyone care how I’m teaching 125 young adults? It seemed the only way to get a little attention was to come in drunk or start playing with yourself in front of the class.  

When I did get my first observation, an assistant principal popped in and started taking notes. Suddenly the kids quieted down and started answering my questions as correctly and thoughtfully as they could. I was calling students by their surnames back then, so it was “Mr. Hernandez, do think Odysseus was in a hurry to get back home?” It was a thing of beauty. My kids were letting me conduct class like the New York Philharmonic.  

The principal especially liked that the back of the room was wallpapered with student Iliad poster projects. When I saw him peering at them, I casually retold my class if they wanted to raise their grade on their posters they could see me about what they needed to correct. I had already told them that, and it’s one of my favorite ways to grade projects. Plus it’s the way the world works as in, “Nope, it’s not there yet. Change this and add that and we’ll see if it’s good enough to lick the bowl.”

The principal liked the idea too and that was all he said. They never come up and start gushing about something. Nor do they share the methods they like with the other teachers. They don’t have the time.  

“Well,” I said to him on his way out, “This isn’t really an objective evaluation when the kids know what you’re doing and they’re going to bat for me.” 

“Oh, you’d be surprised. I’ve seen classes turn on the teacher when they see me in the room. It’s like they’re trying to get a new teacher.” 

I wound up getting an “exemplary” on the hung posters. When I mentioned it to other teachers to see if it was that unusual, they treated me even more like the bullshitter I normally am. So I was pretty proud of my first review. I even got a satisfactory on “dresses appropriately”. 

Of course your observer never sees when something all-together special happens in a class. It’d be impossible really, since everyone in the room stiffens up like frozen fish as soon as he walks in. But on that day, had he come into my eighth period instead of my fourth, he would have seen Christie Ann present her Odyssey poster to the class and he, like I was, would have been blown away.  

She did something extremely unusual. Right in the middle of what she thought would be her personal Odyssey she came to halt. She planned on stopping on her path and helping others achieve their goals! The student had taught the teacher. She had added a spiritual law of the universe, one she learned from her Baptist church, and one I use time to time in my spiritual growth. Christie Anne had already helped a fellow human being. 

But back to where I was, the following day after my observation I asked the kids that had suddenly become the equivalent of a Yale law class what was up. 

“Oh, we knew why he was here. He was watching you not us.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. You didn’t have to be on your best behavior. You were afraid of getting tossed out, right?”

“No, we don’t want another teacher.”

“Oh, because you might get someone even worse.”

“No, we like you. You’re a good teacher.”

“Wow, thanks.”

And I believe they meant it. I didn’t give them a heads up that an observation was coming. And even if I had, since when did a teenager like being told what to do? Their ego stroke carried me through the rest of the year even though they were my most talkative class and never did get quieter than a bus station.

The pretty girl who had said, “We like you,” was one of the harder working students in class and I tried to spend extra time with her. I didn’t do it because of her flattery. She said I was a good teacher not a likeable guy that let her slack off. 

I got her as a sophomore next year in my reading and writing class and was eager to keep helping her. But when she came in the first week of class she seemed distracted and was sporting a new hairstyle, contacts and heavy makeup. Okay, I though, she’s a sophomore. She’s discovered boys. Two weeks later she told me she was going to Mexico for a while. 

“Really? That sounds great. I wish I had two countries and two cultures to live in. Do you have a good school to go to down there?”

“I’m not going there for school.”

“Is there a family emergency? Your dad lost his job?”

“No, I’m pregnant.”

Dammit. I was getting the feeling that even if these kids knew about contraception, they didn’t know how to go about getting it. 

She had the baby. She came back six months later and wasn’t in my class anymore. I talked to her once and her shame was palpable. She was around another a month before she went back. 

The assistant principal who had observed me was pretty competent and had enough classroom time to know what he was talking about. However, another assistant principal was about as useful as makeup on a nun. His lengthy three years of teaching experience didn’t serve him well evaluating any teacher. 

“Yeah, how do like the way that works,” the head of the English department told me. “I’ve got thirteen years of experience and the guy with three years is telling me what I can do better.” 

You had to give this AP credit though–he could bullshit his way through anything.  Granted, a pretty easy task when it comes to education. When you questioned him on one of his mistaken opinions he was like a repairman coming up with all sorts of crap so he wouldn’t have to redo his sloppy job. 

You could always count on him to tell how he used to give his students “comma certificates” before he let them use commas. “The kids loved ’em. Used to put ’em on the refrigerator at home.” 

I wanted to say, “Really? At home? Not the mini fridges in their locker, the ones they keep their twelve packs in?” 

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