Old Age and Treachery...

...the saying says, beat youth and enthusiasm every time. I don't know the precise moment at which I turned evil, but ever since I did that saying has made more sense every day. Yet the other day I was unsettled by something that threatened my core beliefs.

My daughter's very close with her 11-year-old cousin, and has been all her life. Now she also has a 16-month-old cousin who everyone dotes on. Sometimes, though, on very important occasions, the older children need time to themselves. Such occasions, like the purchase of a new video game, require total concentration. They can no longer afford to applaud, or even be amused when the child points and says, "Dog." It doesn't even matter whether or not he correctly identifies a dog, and correcting him if he didn't is utterly out of the question. So they pick him up and bring him to the kitchen, where the adults are drinking coffee.

Now my wife is not nearly as evil as I am. But observing the kids turning the little one away, who could resist the temptation to turn him around and urge him to play with the older kids? Certainly, he'd rather be with them than us anytime. So this dance went on for a few rounds, with the confused toddler going back and forth, until my 11-year-old nephew decided it had gone on long enough, and threw down the gauntlet.

He came right into the kitchen, and did not say a word to any of us, having determined (correctly) that we were now the enemy and that further negotiation would be a waste of energy and valuable video-game time. He picked up the child's chair and plunked it directly in front of the TV.

Then he strapped the child into the chair, gave him a bottle of juice, and an unconnected video-game control. He and my daughter played the video game, the 16-month old sat contentedly thinking he was playing too, and this battle was over.

But the war continues.

The Best

I really hope some teachers disagree with me, but I think the best thing to teach is ESL.

The kids really, really need to learn what you offer immediately (if not sooner), and in most cases you see very rapid progress. Some of my colleagues hate to teach beginners, but I love it. There's nothing quite like watching kids go from mute to conversational in a matter of months. There's nothing like watching them open up.

I have one girl who's been here a very short time, and who sadly got dumped into my regents prep class. She's very small, and she sits next to a guy who looks like a professional boxer. Oddly, she hits him all the time. I tell her to stop, but she says, "No, in China, hit means love." I don't know about that, but the guy who sits next to her clearly enjoys her attention.

The other day, he didn't show up. I said, "Sandra, did you finally kill Raymond?"

"No," she answered, "Not yet."

It's a little morbid, I guess, but it's a remarkable response from someone so new.

Last week I was out one day. My beginners questioned me closely to find out if I was cutting. They didn't believe me when I told them I saw a doctor. As it happened, I had a medical note, which I pulled out of my pocket and showed them. For a moment there was silence.

Then a girl who rarely speaks raised her hand and asked, "Do you want us to sign it?"

I couldn't stop laughing. It's remarkable to hear wit bordering on sarcasm from a kid who barely spoke a few months ago.

Do you love your subject as much as I love mine? I hope you do.

Why?

Revisiting Steinbeck

One novel that gets taught a lot is The Pearl by John Steinbeck. It's a very simple story about man vs. the establishment, and sadly, man does not win.

On an essay yesterday, though, at least half a dozen kids explained to me that the protagonist, Kino, was a hero since he managed to save his family in the end.

"But the baby dies," I told one kid. The kid was shocked.

"But I read it twice, Mister."

"I'm sorry to tell you, then, that you didn't understand it either time," I replied.

Later on, a girl in another class told me the same thing. She not only read the book, but she saw the movie too, and in the end, the baby was still alive.

"Then it was a terrible movie," I told her.

Later, the girl told me that her former English teacher had read much of the book aloud to the class. When the teacher tired of doing this, she simply showed the film. It's so much easier than actually making kids read, I suppose. And then the girl explained that they never got to the end of the book.

I'm not really happy with a teacher who presents half of an American classic and then opts for the movie version. It's particularly egregious since this movie, which I've neither seen nor heard of, apparently plops a Disney ending onto the story. It's even worse considering how very, very short the story is.

This reminds me of those people who take Beethoven and tack on a disco beat. They belong in jail. And don't get me started on Demi Moore and what she did to The Scarlet Letter...

The Maven

Wally could help you with just about anything. When Mr. Housepoor's boiler stopped working, the guy from the oil company terrified him. He said the boiler was dangerous, and might blow up the entire block any moment. It wasn't safe for a second in that house, and the only thing Mr. Housepoor could do, if he valued the health of his family and community, was to buy a new boiler for ten thousand dollars.

Wally came over Mr. Housepoor's house with a tool kit, fiddled with the converted coal boiler for ten minutes, and it lasted another fifteen years, right up to the point where he sold it. The person he sold it to, unacquainted with Wally, quickly bought a ten-thousand dollar boiler in order to save humanity and the world as we know it.

Do you want a dog? Papers say you have to pay thousands for certain dogs, but Wally, who knew someone, could get it for you at a fraction of the price. Do you have a problem with your car that the mechanic wants an arm and a leg to fix? Wally will invite you to his house, where he'll fix it for you free. And if you had anything he couldn't fix, he knew someone who could.

But that wasn't Wally's main talent. His best talent was teaching math to kids who couldn't seem to learn it from anyone else. "You don't know anything," he would tell them, "so we'll start from the beginning."

Kids would rave about him. "I sat there in math class for years, and never understood anything. I copied notebooks full of math, and none of it ever made sense. But there in his class, I'm doing it, and I know what I'm doing." I honestly wished I'd had him for high school math.

Now he's retired. He looked at the 2005 contract, decided the job would never be the same, and put in his papers. I miss him a lot. He knew everything, and I've yet to encounter his like.

English is Yours!

It's a mystery to most of us when exactly we master a second language. I speak Spanish after having studied it for years and lived in Mexico, but I have no idea exactly when I got a handle on it. I remember I could talk before I understood. My daughter, on the other hand, always understood it perfectly but didn't speak it for years.

Yesterday I spoke with the parent of a special-needs child who speaks English as a second language. She told me she was afraid to speak for many years and used to hide behind her husband. When she went to school she had him check her papers. After the second year he told her she didn't need his help. By the third year he told her she wrote better than he did, and she agreed.

But she still wouldn't talk. Not in public anyway.

She studied and studied everything she could find that affected her child. And once, when she went to a school conference, she began reading a report about her son that she disagreed with completely. She asked her husband to say something, but he didn't understand the report at all. There was no choice but to learn English right there and then.

So she drew herself up, opened her mouth, and objected. She objected specifically to many things in the report, and gave her opinions precisely, clearly, and in some detail. Something she said made the speech therapist cry. By the time she was finished, everyone in the room was quiet.

On the way home, she told her husband, "I can speak English. I could say whatever I want. And everyone understood me. Not only that, but they were afraid of me."

She was delighted. And the next week, when her child had a new and better speech therapist, she was even more delighted. Apparently, once she opened her mouth in English there was no closing it again, and she's been a big fan of English ever since.

As am I.

Tough Love

A lot of teachers in my school are now required to give lessons about HIV infection. There is a script, apparently, that they are supposed to follow, and there are supposed to be Q and A or dancing or skits or something. These are absolutely the best and only ways to teach the materials so there must be no variation whatsoever. Still, some of my colleagues have their own spin on it.

One teacher, a volunteer fireman, claims he can sum it up very neatly in a single sentence. Every year, he has to go to training sessions and learn about infectious materials. He says, "If it's wet, and it isn't yours, don't touch it." That might work.

Another of my colleagues has broken the concept into four distinct steps. First, she says, is abstinence. Don't have sex, you won't get diseases, and you won't get pregnant either. That's the best approach, she tells the kids.

However, if kids can't follow step one, they have to go to step two. Use protection. Latex condoms are very effective and certainly decrease the possibility of STDs. Don't even think about having sex, but if you do, don't even think about going without one of these time-tested devices.

Now if kids can't follow steps one and two, there is a third route. If they've gotten this far, they could be infected, pregnant or both. Kids at this stage need to speak to someone. It could be their parents, or a counselor, or a psychologist. But they're going to need to speak to someone for sure. Serious problems require serious treatment.

If they fail steps one, two, and three, however, there's only one thing left to do. They need to find appropriate methods to commit suicide, as there is no hope for them whatsoever.

And that's it. I'm sorry if you expected one of these, but no matter how hard we try, we can't always oblige.

Parent-Teacher Conferences

Ever since I began teaching, I've gone to meetings, received memos, and been offered countless tidbits of wisdom about how to deal with open school night. Usually, they're horrifying, and I imagine the parents will arrive heavily armed to threaten our lives. Or perhaps they'll simply kill us all and be done with it. However, even when I taught special ed., that sort of thing never happened.

As an ESL teacher, I don't get that many parents. Perhaps they're worried we can't find a translator. At the table next to mine a woman was explaining to my colleague that she was pushing her son, who'd been here for six months, to become a pharmacist. Therefore, it was absolutely imperative that he score 2100 on the SATs. My colleague kept trying to tell her that perhaps first, he ought to try passing ESL 2 with an 80 rather than a 75.

I had a very different conflict. A very good beginning student of mine arrived with her mom and her brother, who appeared all of six years old. He spoke English very well.

"I'm Charles!" he declared.

I greeted him, and he informed me he had a card, which he proceeded to remove from his hat so I could examine it. It had a lot of Chinese writing on it and I didn't understand it at all, but I told Charles I thought it was a great card. He then happily replaced it in his hat, and put the hat back on his head.

I told the mom that her daughter was doing great work and getting excellent grades, and that she ought to try to practice English more outside of class. I then made the egregious error of suggesting she practice with her little brother.

Charles was livid. "I'm not a little brother!"

Drawing on all the skills I had acquired from all the memos and meetings, I corrected myself. "Maybe you could practice English with your big brother," I said. Charles beamed, and the looming catastrophe was averted.

But it was a slow night indeed. One of my colleagues suggested that she had interviewed five parents, and that any teacher who'd reached this milestone could go home. It took me some time, but I hit the mark. Being a responsible pedagogue, I queried my supervisor about this rule. She said that I needed at least seven, and suggested further that if I did not reach that lofty goal, I'd have to stay in the building all night.

It was rapidly approaching closing time, and this posed a problem for me. Thinking fast, I asked a colleague if she'd lend me two of hers. "Sure," she said. But when I told my supervisor, she said borrowed parents were two for one, and that I needed two more. Fortunately, I was able to borrow them from someone else at the last minute.

But she says next year I'm gonna owe her.

When You're Having Fun...

...time moves quickly. Here is some real-time video of the clock in my
classroom (This is real, believe it or not). No waiting for the bell to
ring for my kids, because they're watching this clock--and due to my
incredible progressive teaching methods, you can see for yourself how
quickly time passes:

The Arts in Mr.Bloomberg's New York

There are certain disadvantages to being in an improvised classroom. I mean, sure, there's no place else in the building to put kids, so you have to eye every nook and cranny in the building to see where best to cram them in. After all, even though the building's well over 250% capacity, they continue to pour in on a daily basis.

So when you suddenly hear tango music in the middle of a class period, you probably shouldn't be surprised. There you are, blabbing on about some essay the kids need to write, and the music comes on, accompanied by a loud voice:

And ONE and two and three and four and ONE and two and three and four...

And you look outside and there are a bunch of kids in gym uniforms doing the tango. So you try to ignore it, but the kids in your closetlike classroom are restless (as kids tend to be), and they want to know what's going on.

And ONE and two and three and four and ONE and two and three and four...

And what can you say, really? In some ways, this is an improvement. After all, last week you found twenty-five kids out there playing with balls claiming their teacher had sent them. At least this time, they're with their teacher. I mean, you know she's there because you hear her distinctly from each and every spot in the room.

And ONE and two and three and four and ONE and two and three and four...

So do you really want to go out there and hassle the teacher? After all, this hallway was her domain before they renamed the closet a classroom. And you're the invader, really. So who are you to tell the gym teacher not to stick a boom box right outside your door? Haven't you been complaining, along with the entire union, that there's too much focus on English and math? I mean, here are a bunch of kids learning the tango, and you ought to be applauding their efforts.

One day maybe there'll be classrooms. But meanwhile there's music, and dance, right out in the hall, and how dare you raise your voice in protest? After all, it's not like anyone would hear you above all that music and shouting anyway.

Lessons Learned at Meetings

"...and the principal has asked that we cut down on lateness. As you know, lateness is bad, and we don't like it when kids come late. Therefore, we've decided to make an all-out effort to make them come on time. So basically, what we're aiming for is less lateness, and more on-time arrivals to class. Any questions?"

Now that's your cue to sit down and shut up. After all, you have 170 papers to grade, and next period is hall patrol, and then you have two more classes, and after that, hopefully, you have a life to attend to. But noooooo. The new teacher, who hasn't yet heard this speech forty or fifty times, requires clarification:

"What if the kid is only late once in a while?"

"Well, that's an interesting question, Mr. Wetbehindtheears."

In fact, it's not an interesting question at all, and now all of us have to listen to a fifteen-minute lecture about the infinite varieties and ramifications of lateness, and there are far too few of us to inconspicuously start grading papers. And after the explanation, another question.

"Well, what if I were to devise some sort of reward system? In the class I took last night, we were discussing the possibility of creating class money, and rewarding students with it, and keeping a record on my home computer, and assigning extra credit, and giving test points, and then, perhaps offering other rewards and incentives, so that blah blah blah blah...."

"Why thank you Mr. Wetbehindtheears, and I think this would be an excellent opportunity for intervisitation. Mr. Educator, would you like to visit Mr. Wetbehindtheears' class and report back to us?"

"Excuse me," I say, only partly feigning nausea, and running from the room. "I'm not feeling all that well."

Kids are rarely late to my class. They know there will be consequences. That's it. I don't need any time-consuming or elaborate system.

And what teachers need to know is this--don't ask questions at department meetings. It just makes them longer, and we all have better things to do. Perhaps there are worthwhile meetings out there somewhere, but 99% of the meetings I've been to have been time-wasters.

If you have a problem, find teachers who've solved it, and ask how they did it. If the administrators running your meeting are still pondering the fine points of lateness after thirty years in the system, it's unlikely they have any worthwhile answers to offer, and just as unlikely they'll listen to or remember any valid responses.

For better or worse, it's the job of administrators to waste time holding pointless meetings. Teachers have more important things to do.

How Long Does It Take to Make a Phone Call?

I've spent years assembling a network of multilingual helpers. I speak Spanish well enough to call parents myself, but as far as other languages, I'm pretty much useless. Still, everything was fine, because I knew teachers and paras who spoke every language I'd ever need. I helped them with Spanish speakers, and they helped me with everyone else.

My foreign-born students knew I'd call at the drop of a hat, and they treaded carefully to avoid problems with me. They certainly didn't want any problems to follow them home.

But in one fell swoop, our school has destroyed my support system. Someone in administration got the bright idea to start paying people to make calls. So there are now designated callers for various languages. Only I don't trust just anyone to make calls for me. Even worse, one of the callers told me to fill out a form, and that he'd get to it within 48 hours.

Now I don't know about you, but if I have a problem, I don't want to wait 48 hours. I want to deal with it right now. In fact, as a parent, if my child had a problem, I absolutely wouldn't want to wait 48 hours. I'd find that completely unacceptable, and I'd visit the school to express my displeasure.

But now Miss X., my favorite translator, says go to Mr. Y., because he gets paid to make those phone calls. Sadly, I trust Miss X. much more than Mr. Y. I've been waiting 24 hours for Mr. Y. to make that call, and I guess I'll have to wait 24 more.

It's nice of the school to consider us. But my students and I were far better off when I did things myself. How can I persuade Ms. X. to reconsider?

Calling Linda

Mr. Greenberg was having a rough week. His class of 42 was going to stay a class of 42, and worse, his classroom didn't really fit 42. Kids were sitting almost in one another's laps. There were no rows, there was no semicircle, just a bunch of kids sitting well within copying distance, and how on earth was he ever going to give a test? What about the kids on the windowsill with unobstructed views of ten or twelve papers?

Even worse, Linda, who sat right in front of him, had the biggest mouth he'd ever heard, and broadcasted her opinions on everything on a more or less constant basis. He'd tried talking with her, he'd tried having others talk to her, and now he was desperately trying to contact her home. But she'd insisted she didn't have a home phone, and said since her mother was a teacher, he couldn't reach her at work either.

Mr. Greenberg checked the computer, which led him to a non-working number. He went to the medical office and checked her emergency numbers. Two didn't work, and one led him to a Chinese speaker. Mr. Greenberg doubted anyone in her home spoke Chinese.

The next day, Linda once again said her mom was a teacher, and a much better one than Mr. Greenberg to boot. Mr. Greenberg smiled, said it was probably true, and asked which school Linda's mom taught at. To his surprise, she told him.

"But you'll never get her on the phone," she added.

Mr. Greenberg decided to try anyway. He looked up the number, asked to speak to Linda's mom, and somehow wound up connected with the principal's office. He told the principal of his problem, and asked to please have Linda's mom contact him. The principal said he'd do that.

The next morning, as Mr. Greenberg was preparing for class, Linda's mom came, asked if he was Mr. Greenberg, and proceeded to let him know how things were.

"Don't you ever, EVER call my school again!" she warned.

Mr. Greenberg considered asking for her phone number. Then he got another idea.

"If Linda acts out in class today, I will call your school today. If she acts out tomorrow, I will call tomorrow. Every day she acts out, I will call your school. Thank you for coming."

To Mr. Greenberg's surprise, she walked out quietly. That day, Linda behaved well in his class. The next day, she behaved well yet again. On the third day, Mr. Greenberg discovered Linda had transferred to another school.

It Came from New Jersey

It lurked about, inconspicuous to the naked eye, anonymous, incognito, waiting for precisely the right time. It waited, like a crocodile, until it found the perfect moment to pounce. There is was, looking like every other car on the parkway, when suddenly it found its moment. It pulled out of the right lane, got ahead of me, and drove slowly. I mean really slowly, slower than its former companions in the right lane.

After a while, I realized what its plan was. It planned to keep right on driving slowly. I determined a course of action--I would speed up and pass it on the left. So I changed lanes, sped up, and lo and behold, it started going as fast as I was. I was trapped. What could I do? I got back behind it. Why not? It was keeping a reasonable pace. But then--ohmygosh--it slowed down again.

Fortunately, I was near my exit, so I decided to put up with it for a little while. But it took the same exit I did, went up the ramp, got to the green light, and stopped. Right there at the green light. I tried to pass it, but just as I did, it moved. It made a left turn, one that I was going to make, but I went straight, even though it took me out of my way.

I'm safe, for now. But beware. It's still out there.

7 Things About Me

Dr. Pezz asked me to write this. I tried to pawn it off on co-blogger reality-based educator, but he screamed at me, made vague allusions to committing violence against my person, and, most egregiously, demanded an immediate and substantial raise. As I'd pegged him for a communist, this was very disappointing indeed. So here goes:

1. I'm fanatical about bluegrass music.

2. As a result, I will go anywhere, do anything, to play fiddle with good bluegrass bands, and money (or abject lack of it) is no object.

3. As a result of that, I spend an awful lot of time hanging around with redneck banjo players, and studiously avoid any and all discussion of politics or education. In any case, many banjo players believe all education begins and ends with Earl Scruggs (and if you don't know who he is, shame on you).

4. I spent several months in Switzerland as a backup musician for the daughter of a very famous writer. Regrettably, she never became nearly as famous. She recorded a song I wrote, promised to pay me money for it, and never did. Perhaps she pegged me for a communist (There's a lot of that going around).

5. I started out licensed as a high school English teacher. But NYC, after one semester as an English teacher, assigned me to teach music, math, special education, and music again. Then they made me teach ESL, which I loved. I've since become certified to teach ESL and Spanish.

6. I'm good with classroom control. As a result, a former supervisor told me she was going to remove me from ESL and make me teach all Spanish 1 classes, since the Spanish teacher couldn't control them. If I refused, she promised she'd give me a schedule that would preclude my second job as a college instructor. I got a UFT transfer to another school (Sorry folks, but we gave them away in 05). When my next supervisor, who I adored, asked me to please teach a Spanish class because the other teacher couldn't control it, I said "Sure."

7. We adopted a little girl from Colombia. Although we stupidly did it ourselves, without lawyers, or help, or knowing what we were doing, it's turned out to have been the best thing we've ever done. I'd recommend it to anyone and everyone.

I will not assign anyone else to write this, as RBE now has me too frightened. But if anyone wishes to do so, please be my guest.

And if you've never heard Earl Scruggs, for goodness' sake, watch this:

It's Not All Test Scores

In my first year, my first school, my first semester, one of my students presented me with the sort of decision they don't discuss in education classes. He took what appeared to be a switchblade out of his pocket and showed it to me.

"What do you think about this?" he asked.

I pondered two options: running away, or saying something.

"Please don't bring your toys to school," I told the kid.

He opened the object, a comb popped out, and he began to arrange his hair.

In retrospect, things could have worked out quite a bit worse than they did. Also, I don't think I even confiscated the object, which I'd certainly do nowadays.

What would you have done?

Are You the Bad Guy?

A recurring issue in my classroom has been standards, and why must I use them. This has proven inconvenient for not only certain students, but certain members of the administration as well. For example, though I'm certified to teach Spanish, I've only done so once. My AP determined that the Spanish teacher was throwing too many kids out of the period one Spanish class, and turned it over to me. I never threw anyone out.

Still, half the class didn't show up, and half who did failed to do any work. Consequently, only 25% of the kids passed, and I was never asked to teach Spanish again (which was fine with me, actually). It turned out the teacher who'd thrown too many kids out was passing almost everyone, and was therefore better suited for the job after all.

Closer to what I'm actually hired to do, I often teach beginning ESL. I really like the challenge of pulling language out of the reluctant throats of newcomers, and I will do or say virtually anything to do so. In my school, kids get three periods of instruction at this level--two with me, covering grammar and speaking, and one with Ms. Laconic, covering reading and writing. Last year, these classes began as level two in the fall, and became level three in the spring. For some reason, though, they were promoted or retained based solely on Ms. Laconic's grades.

In Maria's class of 34 kids, I passed 68% of the students. In my morning class of 14, I passed everyone except two kids who showed up in April and were hopelessly behind (I gave them grades of "NC", so they didn't count as failures. This may not have been necessary if the sole level two class had not already contained 36 kids).

I asked Ms. Laconic how Maria, a student who never cracked the 25% barrier on any of my tests, who regularly spoke Spanish in my class (a no-no, along with every language that isn't English), who never did homework (copying doesn't count), who was "absent" over thirty times in my class (and over 40 in Ms. Laconic's) managed to pass. "She drew a really beautiful picture," Ms. Laconic informed me.

I took Maria to my office (outside the trailer door) and asked her how she passed Ms. Laconic's class. "In her class you can copy," she told me.

Well, that explains it, I guess. I can only hope Maria isn't unfortunate enough to get a bad guy teacher like me again.

Thanks to Schoolgal

Lucky Day

Today is 7/7/07, and my daughter says it's the luckiest day of the century. I'm therefore soliciting good luck stories, and feel free to add one. I know this isn't the best of them, but here it is:

A few years back, our beloved oil burner took a turn for the worse. The barrel cracked, I think. Our trusty oil burner guy came over, hummed a few rounds of taps, and told us only to use heat in extreme emergencies.

Now at this time, Con Edison was running a fantastic special. If you'd convert to natural gas (99% of which, they say, comes from the good ol' USA), they'd give you a free oil burner. All you had to do was pay some guy three thousand bucks to install it (or maybe eight thousand bucks, depending upon which guy you happened to select).

Now for this price, the guy would also remove your oil tank and your oil burner. Having just filled the tank, to the tune of over three hundred bucks, this broke my heart to some extent, but I sucked it up and dealt with it. The problem, the salvage guy(sent by the Con Ed guy) assured us, was the oil in the tank was dirty, so we'd have to pay him a hundred and fifty clams to remove it. It was a big job, but he'd make the sacrifice, and do it for us.

But a friend of ours came over and said, "This is above ground, and the oil can only get dirty underground." Then he drained the tank, brought the oil to his house, filled his tank, and gave us two hundred and fifty bucks (US). He also looked at our old boiler and said he'd come back for parts. My wife declined his offer to pay for them.

The next day, when the salvage guy came for the oil tank, he was livid to find it empty.

"You said it was heavy, so I emptied it for you," my wife informed him. "I did you a favor."

He looked sadly at the burner. "My friend is going to come over for some of the parts," she told him.

This was too much for him to bear. "I'm going to take all of it, or I'm going to take none of it," he declared.

My wife smiled, said no problem, and went upstairs to call our friend. She asked him to take the parts right away. But our multi-faceted friend was hiking in Pennsylvania, and couldn't make it.

She went back downstairs.

"Tell you what," offered the guy. "I'll take the whole system now, and I'll give you two hundred bucks for it.

"Well..." began my wife, reluctantly.

"Two hundred bucks," he repeated, counting out twenty dollar bills.

"Well okay," she said, "but my friend is gonna really be disappointed."

A Tale of Two Administrators

It was the best of schools, it was the worst of schools, but it was summer school and Mr. Sandoval was the only ESL teacher. The summer principal, Mr. Prince, stopped him in the hall, introduced himself, and said, "Listen, it's very important that you give homework every day, and to make sure the kids know about it, I want you to post it at the beginning of each class, and leave it there for the entire period."

Mr. Sandoval said OK, and did as requested. But his summer AP, Miss AP, entered his classroom, and said, "Mr. Sandoval, you cannot put the homework up until the very end of the class. If you put it up this early, the kids will spend class time doing homework. That's absolutely unacceptable." She walked up to the board and erased the homework assignment.

Mr. Sandoval was disappointed she chose to lecture him in front of his students, and even more disappointed when she entered his class the following day, giving him sour looks and furiously scribbling for an hour. The day after that, she came into his classroom at the end of the day, dropped an envelope on his desk, and walked out. Mr. Sandoval considered she was his boss for only six weeks, decided he didn't want to read her observation report, and tossed it into the trash.

Unfortunately, his AP had been peeking. She retrieved the document, and said, "I'm going to read it to you."

Mr. Sandoval expressed regret that his working day was over, and explained he had other obligations. The following day he was dragged into the principal's office, where Miss AP told the entire saga, from the homework to the observation report.

"I'm sorry, Miss AP," replied the principal, "but I have 5 APs, and only one ESL teacher. At this point, I need him more than I need you. Please leave him alone for the rest of the semester. If he needs observation, I'll do it myself."

And Mr. Sandoval had a far, far better summer school experience than he had ever done before.

How to Fix a New York City Door

Every single day, Mr. Williams got the interruption. He was trying to teach his class the fine points of Global Studies, when some tall, fast kid would open his door, shout "Puta madre!" and run away. Worse, several of his students had told him what it meant, and he didn't think it was nice at all.

He repeatedly, formally, informally, directly and indirectly asked the custodians to fix his door, but six weeks later, they had not gotten around to it. He had informed the administration, and watched the principal's mustache move up and down as he responded gravely to Mr. Williams' concerns. Still, every day, it was "Puta madre," and try to continue. It was becoming unbearable.

Now Mr. Flowers, the math teacher, was very handy. Not only that, but he was familiar with the ancient locks in the 100-year-old school doors. But Mr. Flowers had also heard that teachers could be fired for doing the work of custodians.

So one day, Mr. Williams gave his kids a writing assignment, and told the kids they were free to help one another. Mr. Flowers brought a screwdriver and fixed the door while Mr. Williams kept vigil. They stopped several times when administrators came down the hall, and pretended to be team-teaching. Several administrators praised them for their initiative.

By the end of the period, Mr. Williams' door locked, and distractions to his class were once again limited to those of his own students.

Cars

This school year is drawing to an end, and there are some things we'll miss (like the kids), and some we won't (like getting up early).

In our school, we have an extended day, and we all fight over the disappearing early schedules. There's good reason for that. For example, I get out about 90 minutes after the first group.

One of my colleagues parks directly outside my trailer, and shouts at me daily while I'm directing the students inside.

"Hey, Mr Educator. I just want you to know that I'm going home now!"

"Good for you," I reply, pretending not to care.

"That's right. I'm going to get into my car right now, and then I'm going home."

Then she gets into the car and starts it up. She then gets out again.

"Well, I've got the car started now, so I'm gonna get in and drive home."

This, by now gets me mad. "I still get paid more than you."

This does not even phase her. "That's OK. My husband gets paid more than you."

"Well, I'm a better human being than you are."

"Maybe that's true. But anyway, I'm going home now."

Then she gets in her car and drives away. If I'm on early and she's on late next semester, I will make it my mission in life to exact vengeance every single day, even if it means driving my car into the building, up the stairs, and parking outside her classroom, wherever it may be.

Driving up the stairs may be rough on the tires, though, so maybe I'll just take the elevator.