from Chapter One: The First Day of School

As I write the day’s objective on the board THE STUDENT WILL UNDERSTAND THE COMPONENTS OF A NARRATIVE WORK OF FICTION I become dimly aware of a stir behind me, a stir that grows into a commotion so fast that I have yet to react. As I hear the words, “You gonna make me eat it? You gonna make me eat it?” I pivot to see the girl whose name I do not know, as she never answered roll call, writhing on the floor. She has one hand woven into the hair of the only white girl in the class, also on the floor. She seems intent upon pulling up the girl’s head to better angle the other hand’s delivery of a wadded piece of paper into her mouth. And she keeps screaming that refrain, “You gonna make me eat it? You gonna make me eat it?” as she stuffs said paper into the other girl’s face.

This, the first day of my teaching career.

I’ve never seen a fight nor any physical altercation in my life beyond Italians wildly gesticulating at one another in the heart of Naples traffic over a fender bender. And I’ve never seen girls behave this way at all. Even so, I’m not a small woman and I work out at the gym, so I decide I can separate them without much trouble.

I realize that since I am the teacher in the room, that’s my job. This comes as a surprise in that fraction of a second all this reels through my head. I’ve never been in charge of anything, really. The Men’s Department at Hecht Company didn’t quite have the same feel. After all, no one ever started banging someone’s head among the dress shirts. But I’d always had trouble with confrontations, particularly emotional ones. I remember this thirty-something woman whose full-time job was at Hecht’s pigeonholing me in a frontal, albeit verbal attack one day, and feeling completely baffled and flustered, rendered mute by her ferocity. I never knew what caused her fervor, but I avoided her for the rest of that summer. And I certainly wouldn’t countenance stopping the shoplifters who cruised K Street’s Miss Harper in D.C. Scary people, they! I’d just run to my manager and point, “Someone’s cleaning off that rack!” and pick up the phone to call the police.

That’s how I handle confrontations.

So this first little classroom test I’m thinking I’m doomed to fail.

One of the funny things about being a teacher is the process by which you learn to be in charge. It’s not something that’s a part of your student teaching training, nor part of your education courses. It’s one of those on-the-job, do-or-die things, that experiential development that for me, started in that moment Period 3 when I should have been introducing the first piece of literature we’d read in sophomore English. I hadn’t even gotten the terms on the board.

Instead, I was going to have to act like I was unafraid. Act like I could stop this craziness before someone got hurt. Act like I was in charge.

My first teaching revelation: Everyone in the room watches your every move. They’re sizing you up. They want to see what you’re going to do, how you handle yourself.  And they are ready to bear witness in a very public way to whatever happens there. Everyone will know what I say and do in the next few moments. Luckily, I had no understanding of this at that moment, but even before kids had cellphones and youtube posting options, they banded together to witness against the teacher. It’s really an exceptionally lopsided dynamic. It’s a wonder we ever win.

You see, I am the only stranger in the room.

Everyone else knows everything about everyone else. Have, since preschool.

Not me.

So I don’t know I’m about to tackle Elana Long* (remember, she’d remained mute at roll call), nor that she has an extensive history of violent and exceptionally erratic behavior. So abnormal that by October she would be institutionalized, information I was given much later by a colleague. They all knew. I found it surprising when three students approached me before the bell even rang, before I’d even managed to fail at my attempt take roll because half the class stonewalled what should have been a simple exercise, wanting to be switched out of class. “You don’t know who’s in here, Miss!” they’d said. And though I assured them with a brave, “I’m sure this will be a great class”, the truth is, I’m quite baffled. As I contemplate how to separate my female wrestlers, however, I begin to understand.

There’s an interesting disconnect that occurs inside a teacher’s head. On the one hand, you are offering the standard phrases:  Everyone take a seat. Settle down. Quiet, please. As I call your names, please correct my pronunciation, and tell me if you prefer a nickname, so that I get it right.  I have probably used that exact set of phrases close to 200 times since that first day.

On the other hand, there’s a constant interior monologue running, a response to what goes on in the room. You’re trying to puzzle out what’s happening, why, and what strategy will massage the class back in the direction you need. In this moment it becomes Why is no one answering roll? Am I supposed to guess who is who? Am I in Blackboard Jungleland? Holy Jesus! I’m never going to get today’s lesson started! And at some point I just decide not to worry about the fact that I don’t even know who is or isn’t in the room, and roll with it, right into my lesson.  Thus, the choice to turn my back on the class and start writing the objective on the board.

Clearly, this does not turn out to be the best choice I ever made. Student teaching hadn’t been like this at all. Of course, that job followed several months of an experienced teacher setting up the class for me. All I had to do there was keep the ball rolling.

Here, I have to establish a community all on my own . . . beginning with pulling Elana Long off of a physically overmatched Betsy Ponds.

I had to act, and act quickly . . .

*Every incident and person described in Becoming Mrs. L is real and accurate, according to this writer’s best recollection of each event. In order to protect their identities, the names of all schools, staff and students have been changed, including the author’s. Becoming Mrs. L is not about one specific place or time or person or incident, but about the real challenges every teacher meets in the course of a career.

Discussion Topic: Although my 1976 story ends well, I learn some hard lessons in my first year. My classroom management skills are lacking and my rosters are packed with students no one else will teach. My classroom changes from one period to the next. My students are misplaced, and no remediation or materials exist for them. The only place I feel competent, my ability to teach the material, swamps me in an overwhelming paperload. And to conquer all that, I might have to deal with violent outbursts. How I handle that bares the scariest revelation of all: I just morphed into a role model, and the social lessons I teach are more powerful than any English skills.

Today, we are losing a generation of new teachers for many of these reasons. What can we do to keep them and help them thrive, even when these circumstances remain?