Going to Compton turned out not to be so bad, after all.
In the past, I would frequently received calls to take an assignment at Longfellow Elementary, but I usually avoided those assignments, so prejudiced was I about getting hurt. As fewer assignments appeared for me to choose, I resigned myself to taking whatever was available.
Longfellow Elementary was not that bad, at all. A school with one of the largest playgrounds I had ever seen, the school was locating in a single-home community that reminded me of some nicer areas of Torrance, CA. Homeowners in the area seemed unusual to me.
Parents were lined up in their cars to drop off their kids at the school. The whole scene was calm and serene, nothing like the gang-bang culture that I had witnessed on the nightly news. Of course, this was the day time, and no gangs would even think of stepping outside and risk getting arrested.
Longfellow Elementary, like a lot of schools in Los Angeles County, needed repair all over. Old buildings, broken asphalt all over. The grass was green but wild. Most of the students were well-behaved types, and the administration was touting the rising test scores in the school. Like many public elementary schools, this one was invested in the "Character Counts" program.
Yet that school was like many other schools that I had visited in the South Bay. Kids lined up when the bell rang to signal the end of recess. Teachers would come out and bring them into class, making sure that they were calm and ready. The classroom doors were lined with pictures, the school had a nice mascot -- although I can't recall the creature that represented the school.
At any rate, I was called to cover for a County Class, a small cohort of "emotionally disturbed" students. Three students, fourth and fifth graders. They were pretty calm in the morning, but as the day wore on, one of the students, Javier, turned out to be a very troubled student. He had a brain disorder, one that caused him severe short-term memory less coupled with poor impulse control -- these two important details I did not hear about until later that day. He was also hard of hearing, so that meant that an independent agency provide a sign-reader and interpreter for the child. To say the least, Javier was called to overcome a number of issues.
The other kid that I remember was pretty easy going. He liked coming to school, he liked working.
During recess, he would throw the basketball so that other kids could not make their own shots. This was not acceptable. The interpreter had to get my attention, since I was trying to help the other students who want to play on someone else's court. Javier started throwing a terrible fit, tossing the ball into the air and threatening to hit anyone who got in his way.
I was ready to send the kid home, he was so rebellious and insolent. Only when the school psychologist arrived did I get all the information that I needed on Javier. He had his dad, his Mom was out of the picture, and Dad was doing a terrible job of keeping his kid in line. After a few minutes with Javier, after she explained everything to me, Javier calmed down.
Then Ms K. arrived. She was the biggest, blackest woman I have ever met. She was all kinds of everything, and she had remembered from my earlier days working for another autism teacher in Torrance, CA. She was so thrilled to see me, that she called me her "white angel from Compton." She had always been the bubbly type, and that day was no exception for me.
The first sign-language interpreter left for the day, and another lady showed up. She was more experienced with helping Javier, which eased the uneasy transition for that day, since every other staff member in that classroom was a temp.
The rest of the day went pretty well, actually. The site support staff, the paraeducators, were great people, well-informed, calm, cool, and collected. The only real issue, strangely enough, was that this was the one time that I was covering a site, and all the other staff members were also substitutes. Still, the staff from next door stopped by once just to make sure everything was OK. Better than expected, the full-time teacher provided thorough lesson plans to see me and the rest of the classroom staff through the day.
Lunch time was nice, too. Ms. K. had prepared barbecue chicken and had baked a cake. We all got to enjoy a nice meal that day. She even had left-overs for the kids. Ms. K. liked to bribe kids with candies and money, too, but more on that later.
That day, the students and I studied hurricanes, created a brochure for individuals so that they knew what they needed to do in case of a natural disaster. They worked on reading and math packets, too, rudimentary stuff, but the project on hurricanes was the most interesting.
The last half hour of class, the three students played computer games -- a reward for Javier because he behaved himself after his tirade during recess.
At the end of the day, Javier could boast that he had done very well. But then Ms. K. showed up with candies and money for the other two students. She was in the habit of giving them money and candies if they took care of extra assignments and projects for her throughout the week. When Javier saw that they were getting something while he was left out, he just flew into a rage, threw his desk on the ground, and shouted: "I'm going to shoot her!" He lost his cool just like that, and it was just terrible. The whole day was shot, just like that.
Ms. K. showed up once again and sought to placate the student. "OK, I'll give you a quarter for now. But next week, you owe me a favor!"
I could not believe that she was about to appease this kid. This was insanity. I pleaded with Ms. K.
"You can't do this. He threw a fit just like that, and he's been warned already!"
"I understand, but he is emotionally disturbed and there will be nothing but trouble if we do not take care of this right now."
"Ms. K, this is the angel talking! Don't do it!" But there was no talking to Ms. K. The other paraed on site appreciated the point that I was trying to make. The whole affair disgusted me. I understood that the kid was struggling with serious emotional issues, but paying for a kid to calm down was so unnatural, antithetical to the best interests of the long-term well-being of a young person.
That day was the beginning of the end for me. If this was the treatment that students were going to get, if they were going to get away with everything, that what was the point of being a teacher? I was really dismayed by this growing dynamic: teachers and staff who were pandering to children instead of giving them the resolute consistency and discipline that they needed, regardless of whatever physical or mental problems they had.
Still, I enjoyed the day up to that point at Longfellow Elementary, and I was glad that the only real problems which I faced had nothing to do with gang-banging or people getting shot.
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