Word Dancer Two

A teacher's memoir from the 1994-1995 school year written from a daily journal.

Two
September 1994 Continues

 

 

The official school day starts with a warning. A bell rings to tell students that the bell signaling the passing period will sound soon. After the second bell rings, students have six minutes to make it to class on time. Then there is the bell that signals class has started. Teachers are supposed to close the doors and lock out all tardy students. Most teacher’s do and a few don’t. At the end of the thirty minute lunch, the same procedure is repeated. There are always complaints from students that thirty minutes isn’t enough time, but the idea is to limit the amount of time the students have to get into fights.

 

The reason behind the warning bell that another warning bell will ring is because so many students don’t move. The first bell basically says start to think about getting to class before the real warning bell rings. I thought it was stupid. On the other hand, six campus police officer, three vice principals and a principal weren’t enough bodies to cover every square foot of the campus to flush the students out that didn’t want to be in class.

 

“Mr. Lofthouse, they don’t give us enough time to make it to class,” someone always complained. “It isn’t fair.”

 

I also thought it wasn’t fair my first day. Soon after I started teaching at the high school, I debunked this myth. I walked out to the farthest corner of the campus and stood in the football stadium before first period. I waited for the bell that signals the passing period*not the first warning bell. I walked at a fast pace. I didn’t run. I made it to my classroom with a minute to spare. On the way, I saw clumps of students standing around talking.

 

“Mr. Lofthouse, where have you been,” several voices scolded. “You’re going to make us tardy.”

 

I unlocked the door and held it open. “No one is tardy until I’m in the room.” I stood aside and the students poured in. The tardy bell rang. The last two students entered. I started to close the door.

 

“Wait!” a voice yelled. I saw one of the regular tardy students running down the hall about a hundred feet away. Most of the classrooms in sight had the doors closed and locked. Only a few teacher’s didn’t cooperate with the tardy policy. I smiled, stepped inside the classroom and closed the door.

 

A moment later a furious student was pounding and kicking the door. She cursed and screamed and the pounding didn’t let up. I called security on the intercom and within a few minutes silence returned. Either campus security had picked the tardy kid up or the tardy kid had taken off. Later, this kid would claim she wasn’t tardy. She’d accuse me of closing the door in her face before the tardy bell rang. That’s was I did everything on time and by the numbers. If I made exceptions, I might have doubts.

 

After I finished taking role while the class worked on the sponge activity, a brief assignment designed to keep kids busy on something useful and academic, I opened the door to see if anyone was waiting outside with a tardy slip. No tardy slip, no entry. The girl that pounded on the door wasn’t there. I’d have to squeeze in a phone call to report her. She’d probably decided to go hide someplace and cut class to avoid a detention. For sure, she would show up tomorrow with a written excuse from her parent. It had happened before. Eventually, I managed to get the mother on the phone. She said she didn’t like her daughter staying after school.

 

“Why do you always smile when someone gets in trouble?” one of my nicer students asked.

 

“Simple. It isn’t me getting in trouble,” I answered, “and justice is served. There is a reason we have standards like the tardy policy. If we didn’t, anarchy would rule. No one would be safe. You could get raped or killed in your living room and nothing would happen to the criminal.”

 

“You’re sick.”

 

“Possibly. However, I would never call you sick. After all, it takes one to know one.” Several students laughed. “Now, let’s correct the sponge activity.”

 

The overhead was displaying a grammatically incorrect sentence on the white board. Students were to copy the incorrect sentence and edit it. After they corrected the sentence, they copied it properly below the edited version. I walked around the room making sure most of the students were done.

 

Returning to the overhead, I put up the answer. The students checked their work and made further corrections. Sometimes the sponge activity was sentence combining where students took two or more sentences or phrases and combined them into one.

 

There are usually nineteen bells each day before seventh period ends. That’s why I hate bells. By the time I finished thirty years, I’d listened to more than one hundred thousand of them.

 

* * * *

 

Mr. Gold, the new guy on campus and one of three vice principals, stepped up to the podium to talk. His primary responsibility was discipline. The new VP always got stuck with discipline. After the students quieted down, he said, “I worked in another school district last year.” His voice filled the gymnasium. A thousand students crowded the bleachers. There would be three responsibility assemblies. There wasn’t enough room in the gym to accommodate the entire student body. The school was built for sixteen hundred students. There were more than three thousand enrolled.

 

Mr. Gold continued, “I went to four funerals of students who died because of drive-bys. I had to stop going because I couldn’t handle the grief. I knew the students that died. I was their teacher. I liked them.

“My goal is to see that as many of you live to graduate as possible, but statistics in this country are grim for ninth graders. Statistics say that half of you won’t stay in school to reach graduation. I want to do whatever I can to see that change. That means I’m going to get rid of anybody that wants to get high on drugs and alcohol or sell them to anyone else. That also means I’m going to be tough on gang bangers and gang hangers.”

 

A moan went up in the crowded bleachers. Mr. Gold waited until silence returned.

I girl’s hand shot up and waved for attention. Mr. Gold walked out from behind the podium. The girl stood up. She was a thin blond. “What’s a gang hanger?” she said.

“I’m glad you asked,” he replied. “Gang hangers are those students, usually ninth graders, that hang around gangs because they want to belong, to get jumped in.”

 

Part of the initiation for most gangs is to kick and beat the crap out of new recruits. The newbies get jumped to prove they can take it.

 

* * * *

 

“Did the advisor at La Puente High School take any of the journalism students to JEA regional, state or national competitions?” I asked.

 

“I don’t even know what that is?” the new recruit said. She was a junior transferring in from another high school.

 

I explained that JEA was the Journalism Education Association. They sponsored academic writing competitions for high school journalism students. “Was La Puente’s school paper a class or an after school activity?”

 

“It was a class,” she said.

 

The counselor had scheduled this new student into journalism without consulting me. Her reason was that the girl had been on another school’s student newspaper. That didn’t mean she could write or make deadlines.

 

This girl would drop the class two weeks later. It turned out that she couldn’t write a simple essay.

 

There are two basic kinds of teachers if you rule out those that have burned out and turned crazy. Those that required students to earn grades and those that passed everyone to boost self esteem. I knew of one teacher that finished grading each quarter in the time it took to write down the grades. The first student was given an A and the second student a B. The third student on the roster earned another A and so on. This same teacher never wrote a referral and some of my problem students, like the LaTanya type, were moved from my class to his at the parent’s insistence. The La Tanya types quickly found out who the easiest teachers were and did everything they could to get out of classes like mine where working for an education was required.