Red Room Where the Writers Are

Issue/Publication: Unpublished

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It’s funny how things evolve. My original intent was to put out a ‘zine- a Xeroxed, self-published approach to the distribution of the written word. Every good punk rock boy and girl has a ‘zine, and, me being lazy during my short tenure as an official Punk Rocker®, I never really managed to get one out.  I always felt a gulf, an unfilled space in my soul, a feeling of an unchecked box. I decided despite advanced age, at least in punk-rock circles in which, like Logan’s Run, you are executed,-or at least excommunicated in the case of ‘punk’-, at 21, I’d do one anyway. I intended to put out a bonafide paper ‘zine, replete with a stenciled graffiti cover and DIY ethic.

 It went from this to a short tenure as a blog, which, like ‘zines, no one reads, to actual articles about my role as a public school teacher in Chicago, and, like all maturing endeavors, has nothing to do with the premise it started with. The one thing they all have in common, however, is how often I find myself engaged with mentally retarded people, or in the case of Governor Rod Blagojevich, only apparently retarded people (have you ever seen him jogging? I’d expound upon this, but I don’t want to offend any retarded people). I can only say that I could have never foreseen this, nor the impact it would have upon how I view the administration of the Chicago Public School system.

About three months ago, I was up on the El platform at Belmont waiting for the Red Line after school. It was still warm out, and there was this particularly diminutive older fellow who was moving in an impulsively wobbly way, careening back and forth on a fulcrum like the inflatable obelisk-shaped toys with the weighted bottoms of the late 1970’s. Weebles Wobble, but they Don’t Fall Down.  His wobbling made me sort of nervous, worried that he might impulsively jump on to the deadly Third Rail. When he turned around to face me,  I could see from his physical features that he was mentally retarded, exhibiting the sloping forehead and wide-set eyes. He wore magenta courdoroys that stopped short of his shoes about 8 inches, and held a Styrofoam cup of coffee, empty except for a residual sticky brown ring on the bottom, but he clung to it with the same reverence Linus exhibited towards his security blanket. He didn’t seem really sure where he was going this day. Actually, it seemed as if he didn’t really care, perhaps was spoilt for choice, as a train ride in any direction had so much going for it, and more power the man who has such a pleasant decision to make.  He had the air of a man who spent much of his day on public transit, knowing that no matter where he ended up, it would be good. But where to go now?

After wrestling with this for a minute, he turned to face me, and grinned- nay, beamed- with such sincerity and lack of inhibition, that I couldn’t help breaking into a broad watermelon slice. It was as if I was just the exact thing he wanted to see right then and there, that an already stellar day had earned its wings and was etched into a book called ‘perfect’, just because I was at the right place at the right time for him. Me. I felt oddly giddy, being the subject of such unbridled glee, and undeserving, because all I was doing was watching him on my way home. I did not expect at all to be drawn in to someone’s personal euphoria on the El ride home.

It embarrassed me because I couldn’t help grinning back, and it seemed taboo to have such a human interaction in a place where close quarters and sheer numbers require a deadening of sensitivity. I had to break his gaze. This didn’t bother him, though. He grinned like this at the next three people to walk even a little near his Zone, going out of his way to do so, I guess in a way that sort of startled people, because they, like me, found his enthusiasm a bit shocking, especially within such an impersonal social space that is public transit.  But this didn’t really seem to bother the guy. I think he was going to have a great time regardless.

The Red line pulled up and his indecision had finally come to a  head. He struggled with it, and elected to wait for greener pastures. The Brown Line was calling him. I looked back at him and he grinned all over again,  recognizing his ole’ buddy, his features contorted into a gleeful, conspiratorial shine, saying “Oh the times we did have, Eh? Weren’t those the Days?” I think I giggled, which must have charged him up, because as I stepped on the train he patted me firmly on the ass, like a football coach after a great play. I was so surprised that I missed a beat before I turned around to stare at this guy, all toothless grin. I don’t know if I’m making this up, but I’m pretty sure he was giving me the ‘right-on’ thumbs up as the train pulled away from the station.

 I’m not sure where or when he saw this behavior modeled, either, but he had some years on him, old enough to have watched Monday Night Football for years. I think about behavior and how it is modeled all the time- I’m a teacher, after all, and students are impressionable. By high school, though, there is no more singing of the “clean-up” song,  no more “When the hand goes up, the mouth goes shut” type of platitudes. It’s all in your actions and your attitude. Dishing out poor grades won’t get your tires slashed, but playing favorites will. Most of all, kids want to know that you like them, but with teenagers, this has to be shown subtly.  

What I was wondering, outside of where he picked this behavior up, was why no one told him it wasn’t OK- but a microsecond after I thought this, I figured it really was OK. It was an honest sentiment- he was pleased to see me and just expressed it in a way that he felt was fine, and really, it did cheer me up immensely. It’s rare, being male, that someone ever pats my ass, and the extra bonus is that if someone does, it means you’ve done something nice, rather than wore a short skirt.

    All of this to say that modeling behavior matters, and  often enough, in ways you don’t expect.

    I work in a big school. Not the largest in Chicago, but one of them. And, I think, one of the most interesting. We are multi-everything: multi-ethnic, multi-economic, multi-talented, in both respects of having many talents and no talents. I refrain from considering where I fall on that spectrum.

    One of the Public school policies is one of accommodation. We must accommodate all students, and, in theory, I think this is a good thing. Even in practice- I think the most successful teachers know that blanket rules are, or should be, guidelines. One must break rules to make accommodations, to state it as a rule.

    There is a young woman with Down Syndrome at our school. She has an older woman who leads her around during the day, a bit like a puppy.  I’m not sure what classes she attends, but her symptoms are pretty severe, insomuch as I’m sure her being in class is more of a formality, rather than an effort to make sure she is properly educated. She has trouble talking, as far as a generous vocabulary is concerned, and generally sticks to a few choice phrases that she picks up around campus.

    The woman who leads this young lady around, from what I’m told, is the mother of two other students in the school. I imagine that she either works at the school or is a rare owner of a generous heart, and does this job- a huge one- of her own accord. Classes being a formality for the girl, it is pretty much accepted that she will follow this woman wherever she needs to go- conferences with the principal, special-ed department meetings, discreet gossiping in the teachers lounge between classes- everywhere. This girl has access to conversations most teachers would kill to hear. And, because of her mental faculties- or perhaps an underestimation of them, as we shall soon see-  I’ve seen people talk above her head, as if she isn’t listening, as if she is completely incapable of picking anything up at all. I watch this woman with this girl every day, and smile and nod to them both as one does in an environment where one doesn’t know other people all that well.

     Which is why it surprised me when this woman spoke to me on the pedestrian mall, in between buildings and classes. Very deliberately, with exaggerated diction,  she said,

“Hello, How Are You Today.”

 To me. Completely unsolicited.

     I mean, I guess it was nice, but it seemed incongruous with normal workplace etiquette, at least as it applies in public schools. With so many people wandering around the place in such close proximity, it doesn’t make sense to try and be friends with everyone you walk by- far too many people, students and staff alike. It wasn’t until a few days later until I figured out why she gave such a pronounced salutation.

    Our school is such that we have two buildings, the freshman academy and the main building, with a pedestrian mall in between. If you teach both freshman and upperclassmen, you have to switch buildings between classes. About two days later, on the pedestrian mall, I found this woman saying to the girl, after an altercation with another teacher,

“You can’t say things like that! It’s not polite! Here, watch….”

She deliberately squared herself towards me, locked eyes, and said

“Hello, How Are You Today.”

It was a completely deadpan delivery. The other shoe dropped, and I realized that this was a “demonstrative” phrase- completely devoid of concern for my well- being, which is normal for workplace small talk- and completely not intended as a formal pleasantry, which was odd, considering she looked directly at me and said it so emphatically.

Unless, of course, you are trying to replace a more sinister phrase by example. I started wondering what it was that the Down Syndrome girl had picked up and was saying to everyone. Teenagers swear by the bucket-load, so much that even I had developed a filthy mouth in the short few years that I had been teaching. I imagined that she had started saying “Fuck You” or “Penis” or  “Ann Coulter” or something equally inappropriate.

As it turns out, something else was afoot here. CPS (Chicago Public Schools), in an era of teacher shortage, has done what many municipal school systems do when tax dollars run thin- they systematically fire teachers. I wish I didn’t understand the logic of this, but having taught past the three year benchmark- three years being the watershed of longevity, as half of all new teachers quit by this time- it seems painfully clear. It is more affordable to make teachers feel disenfranchised, as young teachers cost quite a bit less than experienced ones, and there is always a fresh crop of English majors who join Teach for America rather than work for $6.50/hour at the local bakery. They come in droves, enthusiastic and cheerful, and when they find the classroom and the beauracracy crushing, they either go back to grad school or become administrators.

The systematic firing is a perennial threat, designed to wear down those of us clinging on to the profession, accruing experience and increasingly close-to-reasonable salaries. Chicago has issued the dictate to fire not one, not two, but FOUR years in a row. Not a few teachers either- 1200 last year and 1000 this year, roughly 10% of its faculty each time.  And it is systematic- we get brought into meetings where, it is explained that, if we didn’t circle the correct CPS ‘Reading Initiative of the Month’ one of them being ‘Word Knowledge’- on our weekly lesson plans, than we could be fired. The irony is completely lost on administration that you can circle ‘Word Knowledge” on your lesson plans without actually knowing the words “Word” and “Knowledge”. This is a basis for firing teachers?

    I think we were all feeling a little desperate, on edge, wondering who knew what, where the axe was hovering, who would lose their job under what arbitrary circumstances. It’s political, certainly, and as much as I am pleased that we have a Black First Family, I’m dismayed that the CEO of Chicago made it to the White House. I’d like to share with you an email he sent to all teachers in the system, just before the axe came down the second year in a row:

“We made cuts everywhere, except in the classroom,” CPS Chief Executive Officer Arne Duncan said. “We cut first at the central office; we then worked hard to be more efficient and strategic in our school-based spending, and we’re taking as much as we can from our reserve fund. The only thing left to cut would have been teachers, and that’s absolutely the wrong thing to do.”

After two consecutive years of cutting teachers, and not a small amount of teachers, it is now the “…absolutely wrong thing to do.” It is absolutely wrong to anally rape your grandmother, but if I did it two years in a row, I’d feel at least a little shame putting out a press release about how:

A.)    That never happened,
 and
B.)    Imply how Special and Admirable I am for saying that it’s Wrong

    I was mulling over all of this when my question about the girl with Down Syndrome and her new inappropriate choice phrase was answered. The pair – the girl and her coach-was coming into the main building as I was leaving, and I holding the door open for them. This girl, the one privy to closed-door administrative meetings- looked approvingly at me and said, cheerfully,

“You’re fired!”

It is the tone, not the content, that we respond to. We assume no one is listening to things we don’t want them to hear, but they are- even more so than in our manufactured moments. Our guard is down when we are honest, and the prospect of vulnerability leads to denial.  But maybe, just maybe, we should be more careful about modeling our own behavior- everyone sees it, after all, and there lies the crux of the problem. As teachers, we monitor our behavior constantly, knowing full well that we are being watched. We think we do a great job, but we are human after all. Most people, when they discover we are teachers, say

“Oh, God, I just don’t have the patience for that, how do you do it?”

The answer is that you just do, and often enough, you fuck up. There is a measure of bottomless patience you have to exhibit when you talk a kid down from some awful behavior, and you do need to ‘draw from the reserve fund’, if you will. The problem is, it needs to be paid back, and this comes out in the lounge, on the carpool ride home, at happy hour Fridays. When you’ve spent your energy patiently explaining  to a kid why shrieking commentary about genitalia in the middle of class is counter productive- when you really want to give them the kick in the pants that their parents never treated them to, you become prone towards sarcasm. When you can’t display it in class, it comes out through other channels.

 It needs to be noted that the kind of things we say we’d like to do is mitigated by the fact that we know we never can. It’s the same reason horrible jokes are funny- it’s an extreme scenario that can only ever be stated, an impulse that you need to diffuse, lest it become a reality. When I related this story to my colleagues over Friday pints of bitter, I think it was the climate of the school, the scenario, and the cloud of paranoia  hovering over all of us that led another teacher to say,  

“You know what?”, thoughtfully drumming a tattoo on the bar table,

“You should have grabbed that girl by the shoulders, shook her down, and screamed,

‘WHOSE your SOURCE, BITCH?!?I know you’re holding out on me!!’”