"I started out like you, too, but I found there's nothing you can do, so you may as well give up. Just wait till you've been here as long as I You work yourself to the bone, and no thanks from anyone. The more you do, the more they expect of you, and it's the same in other schools, believe me. Here at least we have Sadie Finch and a couple of Aides to help, but no one really cares, and they just pile more and more on you. I've got no blackboard and they never fixed my radiator, and they stuck me with three preparations and Remedial Reading, and with the Late Room and the Junior Scholastics; and they made me volunteer to be Faculty Advisor to The Clarion, and I have to travel from the 3rd to the 5th floor with my varicose veins. In 23 years I've never been a minute late; I'm always the first to hand in reportsask Finchand I never complain; I just do my work, though everyone knows I have the worst homeroom kids in the school, and it takes all my energy just to keep them quietbefore I even start teaching!"
"If they're restless," Henrietta said, "I kid them out of it. It doesn't matter how much they learn as long as they enjoy coming to school; at least, they're exposed to learning. And they know they're free to discuss anything with mesex, anything. The kids feel I'm one of them; I'm pretty hep for an old maid."
"It's nothing to joke about," said Mary. "We make everything too easy for them. They're so used to sugar-coating, they come to me with no idea about how to study or what a sentence is. How can they learn a foreign language if they don't even know their own?"
"The ones that want to, learn," Henrietta said. "Take Bobthe best English student in the school. Writes like a dreamwon the interscholastic essay contesthandsome, polite, a joy in the classroom. I don't have to teach him to parse sentences."
"Because I did," said Mary.
It's your kind of newfangled pussy-footing and side-stepping that makes them illiterates. With me they get a solid foundation, the disciplines of learning. In my class they don't get away with hot air discussions and exchanging their opinions and describing their experiences. What opinions can they have? What have they experienced? What do they know? That's an affront! They learn what I know!"
"Trouble is," Paul smiled his most charming smile, "a teacher has to be so many things at the same time: actor, policeman, scholar, jailer, parent, inspector, referee, friend, psychiatrist, accountant, judge and jury, guide and mentor, wielder of minds, keeper of records, and grand master of the Delaney Book."
"Perhaps you have a rhyme for this?" Mary inquired politely.
"Certainly," said Paul, striking a pose. "Listen:
"Very amusing," said Mary. "This kind of thing must keep you busy; no wonder you're never here the 1st period. Who punches you inGilbert and Sullivan?"
But he had made his point, and when the bell rang, they were smiling.
Poor Evelyn Lazarunwept, unsung, and lost in the bickering. Her death haunts me; I keep thinkingif only I'd been able to hear her cry for help! But we may not touch wounds
Evelyn is only one girl I happen to know about because she happened to be in my homeroom and because she happened to be traced and found. What of the countless others who drop out, disappear, or wrestle alone in the dark? Paul says that I make too much of it; that what she probably wanted to talk to me about was a change of locker or an extra-credit slip. But that isn't the pointthat isn't the point at all.
Are we paid only to teach sentence structure, keep order and assign those books that are available in the Book Room?
Yet here is Henrietta, smacking her lips with spinsterish lasciviousness over her star pupil, Bob; and here is Paul, mocking the technicolor daydreams of little Alice; and here am I, jousting with McHabe for the soul of Ferone. I am still determined to reach him. He has been as insolent and wary as ever, refusing to see me after school, sauntering into class, toothpick in mouth, hands in pockets, daring me to what? Prove something. Finally he did agree to have a talk with me. "You sure that's what you want? OK, you call the shots!" But before we could meet, he was suspended from school for two weeks for carrying a switch-blade knife. Suspension, you see, is a form of punishment that puts a kid out of our control for a specified period, to roam the streets and join the gangs.
When I tried to tell McHabe that it would have been more valuable to let Ferone keep his appointment with me than to kick him out, he let me have it:
"When you're in the system as long as I" (They all say that!) "you'll realize it isn't understanding they need. I understand them all rightthey're no good. It's discipline they need. They sure don't get it at home. We've got to show them who's boss. We've got to teach them by punishing them, each time, a hundred times, so they know we mean business. If not for us, they'll get it in the neck sooner or later from a cop or a judge or their boss, if they're lucky enough to land a job. They don't know right from wrong, they don't know their ass fromI beg your pardon. You're young and pretty and they flatter you and you swallow it, playing phonograph records, encouraging them to gripe in your suggestion box, having heart to heart talks. A lot of good it does. Sure, we've got to win their respect, but through fear. That's all they understand. They've got to toe the line, or they'll make mincemeat out of us. You ever seen their homes, some of them? You ever been in juvenile court? Hear them talk about us amongst themselves? These kids are bad. They've got to be taught law and order, and we're the ones to teach them. We're stuck with them, and they've got to stick out their time, and they better behave themselves or else. All you people who shoot off ideasyou just try to run this school your way for one day, you'll have a riot in every room. I'm telling you this for your own good, you've got a lot to learn."
I probably do.
I'm going to be observed by Bester this week. He was nice enough to warn me. I plan to teach an adverbial clause or a poem by Frost.
I didn't mean for this letter to be so longbut I am confused and troubled, and you are interested enough to listen. There are times when I feel I don't belong here. Perhaps I should be teaching at Willowdale. Perhaps I should give up teaching altogether. Or perhaps I should find myself a nice young man, one who talks in prose, and settle down, as the saying goes. You seem to have found the answer.
But I don't want to give up without trying. I think the kids deserve a better deal than they're getting. So do the teachers.
I might be able to reach them through their parents; we're having Open School Day in a couple of weeks. Wish me luckand give Jim and the baby an extra kiss today.
Love,
Syl
P.S. Did you know that the State Department has started a course in elementary composition for its officers, who cannot understand each other's memoranda?
S.
27. Clarification of Status
BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
TO: Miss S. Barrett
Calvin Coolidge High School
New York, N.Y.