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In a 1989 article in CCC, Richard Murphy points to the need for teachers to tell stories about themselves and their students. Although these anecdotes can never replace carefully controlled research, cannot even be considered "case studies" in a rigidly scientific sense, they are nevertheless important parts of what he terms "teacher knowledge." Their function in our profession is at once to crystallize our experience and provide us a sense of the intrinsic value of our efforts as teachers.
Teachers have always told these stories, of course, in faculty lounges, in talks with parents and friends. Their central importance to us is reflected in the growing number that have appeared in the professional literature in recent years, particularly since the advent of local professional journals and anthologies from writing projects that have encouraged teachers to publish the records of their teaching experiences.
Our stories are the means by which we seek to validate ourselves and our profession in the eyes of the world. That function is evident when the stories are of successful classroom strategies or of successful encounters with particularly memorable students. But even when the stories tell of apparent failure, they seem to carry with them a sense that the effort to shape young minds is noble and the pain of the teller a sign of worthiness.
What follows is a sampling of three such teacher stories demonstrating a range in emotion from delight that a carefully chosen remark could apparently turn around the attitude of a hostile student to despair that no amount of well-intentioned advice could save the lives of two students fated for disaster by their adolescent impetuousness. The names of the students have been changed to protect them from unintended embarrassment. The stories themselves are part of a teacher success story because they are the product of my own graduate course in composition theory and practice. I cannot claim credit for the quality of these student/teachers' writing nor for the powerful emotional responses these stories evoke, but I can at least say that I made it possible by the assignment I gave my students for their stories to be recorded and their voices to be heard.
The alarm rang, and I pushed the snooze button, a wonderful invention for procrastination. Rationalizing that the sooner I started, the sooner I'd finish, I got up, got dressed, drank some juice, etc., etc., and left for South Florence High.
As a student, I used to think that teachers had it easy. They had all of the control, could do what they wanted when they wanted. How misinformed I was. One really has to sit on the other side of the desk to understand the constant nervousness. Today, however, I was especially nervous, not because it was the first day of school, but because the name Kanika Johnson was on my sixth period roll. Didn't God think that one year of this hell was enough penance for those "everybody does it" college sins? Why her, of all students? This girl had made my only eleventh grade American Literature class miserable. She humiliated me in front of everyone by making me show my very worst side. As if her constant talking and playing weren't enough, she often became indignant toward me, accusing me of racism on more than one occasion. and I may have been temporarily prejudiced--because of her. Nothing worked with her, and nothing worked with that entire class as a whole. Those students had been cheated and so had I. Even if I were lucky enough to get four other terrific classes, I could not bear another year dealing with her.
I walked briskly to the teacher-entrance of the school, greeting others pleasantly, and made my way to room 123. I had plenty of time to review my classroom guidelines and prepare a brief personal introduction before the bells began to ring. Soon, familiar faces appeared briefly in the doorway and excited "hellos" echoed the halls. No, the students weren't nervous at all; they had it made!
The periods passed quickly with no distinguishing one from another. They began with the signing of schedule cards, continued with introductions and questions and answers about what my class and I were all about. So far, so good.
When the bell for sixth period rang, my mind went blank as if I were getting ready to take a final exam. I could not remember what I had said first in the other classes. and then I noticed that Nika (that's her nickname) was sitting in the second seat on the third row from the door. That is the seat that I, as a student, always chose. It's a conservative one, not the "goody-goody" place in the front nor the troublemaker spot in the back. After fumbling for a moment, I welcomed the students to my class: "Hi. I hope that y'all have had a good first day. and I know that you've been looking forward to English all day long. The first thing that I want to do is sign your schedules. Then I'll let you introduce yourselves to me." I signed the cards and listened to the names and interests of my students. I told a little about myself and my expectations, encouraging the students to look forward to what we would be doing and especially to their senior year. In going over the class requirements, I said, ". . . BUT we will have fun, right, Nika?" A huge smile came over Nika's face as if she too had released some awful load from her shoulder. She felt like an "insider" because I had recognized her, out of all the students. I won't forget that smile because it stayed on her face all year, and we did have fun. Nika and I have kept in touch since her graduation a year ago. Remembering her reminds me that students are human too. They play and talk and get angry and get nervous, and then they grow up and do the same, always waiting for someone to recognize them and love them anyway.
We were deep into the genre of short stories by now. I had assigned several stories already, each to be read first at home, so that all would be prepared for discussion the next day. Often these class discussions would lead to journal entries or questions for longer compositions. Emily rarely volunteered a comment in our discussions. Her journal entries were extremely short and vague. For instance, she would write: "This story was pretty good" or "I didn't like the ending." Even when I wrote comments asking her to explain her opinions, or, in compositions, to give specific examples from the story to support her remarks, all seemed to no end. Her responses remained vague and inconsequential.
It was on a Friday in late September when I first noted a change in Emily. We had finished discussing Malamud's "A Summer's Reading." There was quite some time left in the class period, so I told the class I would read for them a short story which was a particular favorite of mine. I told them to clear their desks and, if they chose, to put their heads down and just listen. I read "A White Heron" by Sarah Orne Jewett. When I had finished, the class was unusually quiet, especially for five minutes before the Friday bell. No, they were not asleep, for I could see they were thinking: picturing and pondering the story. Finally, Emily spoke: "I wish I was Sylvia." All turned to listen to her, but by now our time was just about up. I told all to respond to the story in their journals over the weekend and we would continue our discussion on Monday. With that, the bell rang. I hated to let Emily go without hearing her thoughts. I stopped her on the way out and told her I found her statement very interesting. I asked her if she would like to tell me a little more about her feelings before she left. She told me she wanted to be Sylvia because she lived in a beautiful place, a summer-place, with woods and ocean and animals. "She lived there with her grandmother and, NO, she wasn't lonely. She had the animals as her friends. and she didn't let them down either! She was loyal to them—she really cared about them." Emily continued excitedly: "She didn't let that guy with the gun fool her into listening to him and convincing her to tell him where the heron loved, so he could just kill it, like he had all the other birds—to stuff like some trophy!" Emily went on: "That guy and his gun need to go back to the city where they belong, to a place of violence and meanness. They don't belong in a peaceful place like Sylvia's woods. I'm glad the story ended that way," she concluded. "I was afraid it wouldn't."
With that she turned to go. When she reached the door, she turned to me and said that she'd really like it if I would read more stories aloud in class. I told her I would. She smiled and she was gone. I stood there stunned, realizing that Emily had just summed up some of the major literary themes of the story. She did understand, she did care about literature, she was capable of expressing her thoughts, her insights, and quite articulately at that!
On Monday, we discussed journal entries with the class. Emily wanted to be the first to share hers. She told all that she had said that Friday, plus more: she talked about values and morals and courage. The class responded enthusiastically to all she had to say. She seemed to glow.
A pattern seemed to develop after that. Whenever students were asked to read at home, Emily continued to be reluctant to participate in class discussions. Also, her grades on comprehension tests and quizzes were very low. Yet, whenever I read aloud in class, Emily produced excellent results. I knew Emily was not in the LD program. I went to the guidance office to find some answers. and I did. Emily had no actual learning disability in reading. (She was, however, enrolled in the remedial reading program.) But yes, Emily did have problems. She had been taken from her biological parents at the age of eight. Up until that time, she had been repeatedly abused— physically, mentally, and sexually. Her parents had moved from city to city for years to avoid creditors and the law. Emily had never been registered in any elementary school during this fugitive time. She never possessed such a thing as a book, never heard such a thing as a story. The law finally caught up with the couple—but for Emily it was almost too late. She was desperately thin and her growth apparently stunted. She was extremely withdrawn. She was put into an orphanage for a while and then went to live with a foster family who saw that she received the physical, psychological, and educational help she so needed. After two years, she was adopted by another couple.
Emily had learned to read and was constantly improving. But, for her, reading was still a tremendous chore. She had lost those vital years of language development. I worked with Emily that year—we read together and discussed much, for hours after school. She became a very special person to me. Her grades and her abilities continued to improve tremendously. Emily was a very bright girl—she just needed a way to let other people know that.
That was to be the last year I'd read with Emily. Her adoptive parents divorced that summer. Emily chose to live with her mother, who was moving to another state. Again, Emily's life would be torn. I cried when she told me she was leaving. She hugged me, and with that miraculously Pollyanna-like smile, simply said, "Just remember woodlands and summertime and friends like me are forever."
God bless you, Emily. I hope and pray your story, too, will have the ending you want—a peaceful, happy ending in a world like Sylvia's.
The perversity I experience, then, comes when my students choose not to heed my advice. Even knowing that some teenagers have to learn life lessons on their own, I still resent their foolishness, their naivete. I am sure that, on more than one occasion, I have even secretly wished things would go wrong for them just so they would eventually recall that I did, indeed, tell them so.
A little over four years ago, I had just finished teaching the spring semester of junior rhetoric at a parochial school in Danville, Illinois. Final exams for my juniors and seniors were graded, the scores put into the computer. It had been a challenging year. As that May wore on and summer vacation loomed ahead, even my juniors began suffering from senioritis. Apathy was rampant; half finished or hurriedly completed essays seemed the rule rather than the exception. With greater frequency, I found myself putting lesson plans aside to spend the whole hour lecturing on responsibility, wasted human potential, pride in one's work, and how much worse life would be if they were Welsh miners toiling in the stooped-over, poisoned blackness of coal dust by torchlight (a favorite analogy of mine). I am sure that the rolled eyes, bowed, prayerful heads, and tight lips were reflections of how much they appreciated my sermons. Yet, even while putting them through another installment, I was demonstrating my own brand of love. I cared for them desperately. I just wanted them to seize their days. If they could only open their eyes like I had at their age.
After commencement exercises, a party was held. Newly graduated seniors and next year's batch attended. It was chaperoned: the aunt of one of the senior girls. It was also catered: food and kegs. It was not a school-sponsored activity. It had only been a year before that a senior had died in an alcohol-related car accident, his eighteen-year-old head severed from his body. There had been a momentary lull in excessive drinking, but then it was back to business as usual. and it seemed business as usual this night, too.
A little after midnight, two former juniors of mine—Kyle, an honor student and outstanding baseball player, and Bob, a class clown with a real heart if not always a lot of common sense—left the party and went to a nearby friend's house to rouse him out of bed and invite him to the gathering. Kyle was sober; Bob was intoxicated. Once inside their friend's bedroom, Bob went into the closet and pulled out a rifle, toying with it, making exploding sounds with his mouth like some child playing cops and robbers. Both Kyle and the gun's owner told him repeatedly to put it away, but Bob wouldn't listen. While handling the rifle, Bob had unknowingly put in the clip; when the other two boys again protested, Bob aimed the weapon and fired, sending a bullet into Kyle's chest. The gun's owner ran out of the room to call for help but, while on the stairway, he heard Bob yell out in remorse, "I'm just going to kill myself!" He then turned the rifle on himself. In a matter of seconds, two boys, two sons, two brothers, two students lay on the floor bleeding to death. Bob died en route to the hospital. Kyle died three days later, ironically, during the funeral mass for Bob.
The day after the shooting, stunned students, faculty members, and priests gathered at the high school to cry, pray, seek comfort, and ask "Why?" There was a lot of hugging, a lot of red eyes, an occasional nervous laugh as people began to reminisce. There was also a great deal of anger. I held my students and stroked their foreheads and hair as I had done so often when my own children would awake in the middle of the night from a bad dream. and through it all, I was mad as hell.
Dammit! Dammit! Dammit! I thought. Why couldn't they have taken all the talk about drinking a little more seriously? Why couldn't they have acted with more responsibility? This tragedy did not have to happen. I knew it would, though. Maybe not to these boys—why these boys?—but to someone. All it takes is a momentary lapse of judgment, a little letting down of one's guard, and bodies can get holes in them while all smiling stops. I wanted to rush to the center of the mourners and demand that they pledge this type of waste would never happen again.
Of course, it was not the time. and maybe there never will be a time. Some people say that it is "God's will." Others curse. Some call it fate. Some quote the old song: "Only the good die young." I wanted to find the moral. Like the English teacher, like the anal retentive control freak, I wanted to summarize the main points, discuss the theme, and find the relevancy to our own lives. But I was silent. The next year, as two seats were disturbingly empty, we tried to talk. It was never a popular subject. By that time the drinking which had drastically leveled off had begun again. Business as usual, I guess.
A week after the tragedy, while cleaning out some old student folders, I came across two values clarification activities—one Kyle's, the other Bob's. Earlier in the year, my juniors had projected into the future, drawing a timeline to indicate, among other benchmarks, a possible date of death. Kyle and Bob would both die in the 2040's according to their papers. Attached to each of these first sheets was one other: an obituary, self-generated.
"Why do we have to do this? It is kind of creepy," Bob had protested, the voice as clear in that empty classroom as when he had first complained.
"Because I want you to think about how you are going to spend what time you have left. None of us knows how long we have."
"Well, just remember, if you go out into the parking lot after school and get hit by a bus, I told you so."
I wanted to say it again. To his ghost—and Kyle's—and to all their grieving classmates. But there was no delight in this terrible lesson, no satisfaction. Only stillness as I tossed their papers into the trash can.