I wrote this well over a year ago, before the start of the COVID pandemic, to try to convey a sense of the craziness and utter chaos that can so easily envelop a class, even when you have two relatively experienced teachers in the room. Looking back over it now, and having experienced 15 months of soulless drudgery, I will take this kind of day any time over Zoom classes and even over in-person instruction with masks, plexiglass, and other restrictions. It’s not even close.
Give me the madness again. Please.
The bell rings for the end of lunch and the start of 5th period, which means it's time for one of my co-taught freshman English classes.
Having taught upper level classes for the vast majority of my career, this past three years of co-teaching has been, as they say, a real eye opener and no mistake. About half of the students in this class have some kind of legally required academic accommodations, yet it is a college prep class, so my co-teacher and I are constantly trying to balance rigor with accessibility. This particular class has a number of students who are particularly challenging to manage. One, who when I asked him to put his phone away launched into a string of obscenities, called me a passive aggressive asshole ("Well, you can be passive aggressive," said one student afterwards) and stormed out of the classroom, has thankfully been moved to a different program.
Nonetheless, my co-teacher and I generally tend to laugh a lot in the class. The kids are funny, good-humored, and generally fine, but the potential for complete degeneration and chaos is never too far below the surface.
We usually start Mondays with Power Writing, eight minutes of sustained writing. It's a nice routine and an easy way to get class started first thing in the week. Today, for the first 4 or 5 minutes, all is calm. Simon, who has severe ADHD and who is so work averse that he will take 5 minutes to extract a notebook and pencil from his backpack and do anything in his power to leave class to go to the bathroom or the nurse, is not in class, but otherwise things seem fairly normal.
5 minutes into class, Simon walks in, accompanied by the school nurse. She beckons us outside. "He is not going to make it through today," she says. "He didn't take his meds."
He’s not going to make it. What on earth does that mean? It sounds so...ominous.
Simon goes to his desk; he is almost vibrating with barely suppressed energy. The nurse has given him a sticky note with his plan for the next two hours. Go to English. Stay in English. Ask for a pass to the APs office…. And so on. I ask Simon three times to take out his notebook and start working. He starts tapping his feet. Loudly. Brittany, the girl who should have done honors English and has probably regretted her decision ever since, loudly asks Simon to stop tapping. He stops.
I look up. Barry, a student with autism who frequently plays the Russian national anthem loudly on his phone and who once dramatically and loudly called out, "Satan!" in the middle of class, is squinting, chin on his hands, looking as if he wants to sneeze. I look at him, eyebrows quizzically raised. He continues to squint. My co-teacher barely suppresses a giggle. The whole class eventually notices me looking at him, at which point he loudly apologizes, saying that he only got 3 hours' sleep last night. General hilarity ensues while I go over to Barry and reassure him that all is good. We are not reading Lord of the Flies today so he won't be making eye contact with his buddy Gary (I call him "Big G." ) and giggling at every word or phrase that might possibly be construed as sexual. So I am already counting my blessings.
I hear a jangling noise. Simon has started to shake some keys, bizarrely attached to a strap of his backpack. I take them from him and zip them inside a compartment in his backpack, my patience starting to fray. I am 90% sure that Simon is doing this for attention, and it's working. No-one is writing now. Simon starts making a clicking sound with his tongue.
I am determined not to just send him down to the APs office. I can't be bothered to go through all the steps necessary to refer him (exhaust all “Tier One” options, call home, fill out a form) and I am pretty sure sitting in the APs office is exactly what he wants to do and I am determined not to let him have his way. It's petty and small-minded, I know, but I have to get some kind of victory from these interactions.
So I send Simon outside. I ask him to wait out there, and as the door closes he slips the strap with the keys on it into the gap so that when the door shuts, there are his keys, jingling on the end of a strap in the classroom. At this point, my co-teacher isn’t even pretending to put on her “we are not amused” face; I know that she finds this absolutely hilarious. I pick up a chair, take it outside, come back, pick up a desk and start moving towards the door with that, too. The students, realizing what I am doing, burst into applause. Simon isn’t exactly Mr. Popular. There isn't the slightest attempt at even a pretense at doing work.
As I open the door, hauling the cumbersome desk, I almost walk straight into an occupational therapist, who wants to know if "it's a good time" to pull Gary out for some OT. "No, it is jolly well not a good time to take him!" ...is what I want to say, but I don't. Instead, I place the desk and chair in the corridor, tell Simon to sit down and ask the therapist if she wants to go in and get Gary, or if she wants me to get him for her. She looks at me, looks at Simon--he grins, maniacally--and glances warily into the classroom, where everyone is watching the three of us outside. She can’t be older than 23 and she could easily pass for 16. I know that she has no intention of going into the classroom. It might as well be a lions’ den. I ask Gary to join us outside, and despite the fact that he has had this school-provided service once a week for several years, he looks both clueless and terrified as they depart.
I give Simon his work, tell him he can tap and jangle all he wants now, turn on my heel, and, leaving him in the corridor, stalk back into the classroom.
You have probably realized what happens next, and a split second later, so do I. Too late.
Sure enough, almost immediately, a deafening racket emanates from the corridor. Simon is not just tapping; he is stamping. I try to ignore it, but all the kids can hear it. I tell them not to worry, that he'll get bored soon, but the stamping on the concrete floor echoes down the corridor.
The phone rings. This is my and my co-teacher's trigger point. We are constantly told that instructional time is valuable and that we are to make the most of all our class time. Obviously, this class period so far has been the epitome of quality instruction. Needless interruptions, then, are very annoying indeed, so I pick up the phone and tell the speaker that no, you cannot speak to my co-teacher because she's, you know, TEACHING. (I told you I was passive-aggressive.) Actually, she’s at the back of the classroom, trying to refocus students while simultaneously trying not to laugh out loud at Simon’s antics.
Within a minute there's a knock at the door. Now, I really want to throw something, and it is everything I can do to maintain a professional demeanour as I leave my co-teacher to deal with the rapidly unraveling class. I open the door. A yellow-jacketed campus supervisor is standing there, a severe look on her face. Simon sits to the side, puppy-like in his mingled satisfaction and expectancy at what might happen next.
“We’re getting complaints from other teachers about the noise,” says the supervisor. At that point, I remember Simon’s sticky note from the nurse. Ask for a pass to the AP’s office.
But that's exactly what he wants, I remember. I can't give in now. You'd think that this would be the cue for a titanic struggle between expediency and pride. Not any more: my pride is shredded. Simon has broken me.
“You know what,” I venture, “can you take Simon down to the AP’s office for me?”
The supervisor looks doubtful, but she nods her assent.
As Simon packs up his things, I breathe a sigh of relief, turn to go back into the classroom, and almost collide with Barry, who is standing uncomfortably close behind me, backpack clutched to his chest.
“Uh, I’m leaving,” he blurts out. I look over his shoulder into the classroom, where there is loud hum of laughter, comments, and conversation. It’s not exactly the quiet, structured environment Barry needs, and he does have an "anytime pass" to his case manager’s classroom, which basically functions as a homeroom for him.
“Sure,” I reply. “That sounds…”
But Barry has already fled.
Our much-vaunted Power Writing is in tatters; most of the students have written a couple of lines at most. I catch my co-teacher’s eye and we both agree: wrap it up and move on. It’s over.
Charlie, another one of those really smart but generally underperforming kids, is sitting at the back with a smile lighting up his face. I want to apologize to him, to the class, for what has just transpired. Instead, he turns to my co-teacher, who is standing nearby.
“I love this class,” he says. “It’s just like a TV show.”
Two teachers, 28 years of experience between us, and this is what we have been reduced to: entertainment. Luckily, I have recently learned that my ego and even my dignity are not the most important things when it comes to teaching.
But these are the days we remember. And fondly, too.
These are also the days our students remember. I recently got an email from Brittany, the student who probably should have been in an honors class. I had asked her how distance learning was going and she wrote this: I would do anything to go back to a day in your class, even with Barry's AirPods he wouldn't ever take out, and Simon’s constant pencil tapping. I miss the class environment so much.
We reach students in the weirdest ways, I guess, and it’s one of the great mysteries of teaching: you never know how or when you’re going to impact a student, and quite often, it’s in a very unexpected or unintentional way.
In August, my co-teacher and I will start our 5th year together. After the hell of distance learning, we are both ready for more chaos, laughter, and quality material for our TV show.
