When I would get calls to go all over Los Angeles County, to cover classes, I usually avoided the assignments in Compton. I had read and heard enough drama to stay away as long as I could.
When I finally buckled under the limitation of fewer assignments as the year was progressing, I decided to take my chances and go to the schools in Compton.
All in all, I did not have one bad experience. I went to Chester Adult School, Longfellow Elementary, and then the school in Rosewood.
The Rosewood school was really nice. I liked working with the teacher in that class, although originally I did not anticipate meeting him, since presumably I was taking his place for the day.
At about ten o'clock he showed up. He was a big, burly type, one of the special teachers who worked for Los Angeles County Office of Education. I think that the requested another teacher mostly to help him move boxes and goods into the classroom -- he had just moved from another classroom.
He had one eighteen-year old daughter who was studying in med school. He worked with emotionally disturbed youth, two boys and one girl were in the class. That might not seem like much, but emotionally disturbed students, individuals who struggle with all kinds of mental health issues, can be a dangerous handful. The drama which I had endure at Hawthorne High School was enough to drive me crazy.
They are crazy kids, but not because they were born that way, and this teacher in Compton understood that very well. With his two teachers aides, he made the most of a difficult situation, one in which he found himself moved every year from once classroom to the next.
I liked the school that I was working in that day. It was cold and grassy, something like an elite campus. The region was not a hard part of Los Angeles, but one of the unincorporated areas, Rosewood, I think it was. It was a very cold day, very breezy. Like many sites that I had visited, I did not know where to go when I got there. I had to ask for directions just to get to the main office, and even then no one there could tell me where to go!
Finally, one of the security staff radioed for the janitor, who then let me in the room. Only later would I discover that the only reason why I could find the roome without a hassle is that the teacher had just moved into the classroom. Most of the administrators
The teacher, Mr. M, whom I was covering for that day, he showed up late for some reason, then when he arrived, it was clear that he needed my help for something else. He had just moved from another classroom at Davis Middle School. He told me that the County had moved his class every year for the past three years. Bureaucracies engage in these shenanigans all the time, moving teachers from one classroom to the next, giving teachers the most difficult students, refusing to offer them any supplies or support from year to year. No one is aware of these political games, which all but ruin education for the students, who end up a pawn in the chess game of public school politics.
Still, the Mr. M was an upbeat type, and his aides were easy going people. He was like a father to these kids, he had no problem confronting students when they were getting on each other's names. When one of the girls started calling one of the boys stupid names, he just nipped the whole exchange in the bud. He was also not afraid to challenge students when they wanted to whine. He was the last word, and he made sure that every student did not forget it.
When he first showed up, he did not say one word to me. I thought that he was kind of rude, but I learned to get used to that kind of cold treatment, since most substitutes do not really put any thought or effort into their work, and most staff are prejudiced to believe that the sub will just sit their and suck air. I was not one of those substitutes, and we all got along very well together.
Back to the students. One of the boys was a sixth-grader, a small type, no hair on his head, but did not have a menacing spirit about him. Two of the girls where somewhat chatty, but when the staff told either one of them to stand in the back of the room, they would start to cry. They knew how to behave. I am sure that those kids were used to all kinds of abuse, but the teacher made sure that they felt safe, that no one would do anything to harm them. Then there was another boy, seventh grader, who did not cause a lot of trouble.
The "new" class was a bare sort of place, a little smaller than the previous classroom that the teacher and his staff had used. Still, it was clean, although most of their books, supplies, and paraphenalia were still boxed up. That's when I stepped in.
For the first few hours, though, the teacher had to spend time helping the students get settled into the class. I just sat and read during that time, as I usually did in other classes. All I did, when I was not reading, was go over whatever work was assigned to them.
It was a quiet day, a day where I saw how with the right teacher, a classroom becomes another family, the kind of set-up that more students need, since so many of youth today come from broken or bankrupted homes.
Since that day was an early dismissal day, the students got to leave, I had to stay, and Mr. M. told me about his class and about his family. I never worked as hard as I did in that class -- not teaching, of course, but moving boxes and stacking books on empty shelves and sorting through maps and taking home extra folders that the teacher no longer needed.
With the right teacher, and a small enrollment, students can excel. To find such an arrangment in Compton was suprising and gratifying, teaching me that I should never judge a city by its press.
No comments:
Post a Comment