Summer School #1

Welcome to Scholastic Alchemy! This is mostly a blog where I mostly write about education. Usually, I post some links and commentary about them on Mondays and then later in the week I write something longer about a topic of my choosing. But, it’s summer and we all know that the rhythm and dance of educators’ lives shift in the summer months. Our time becomes more fungible but somehow still can’t fit everything in. Maybe it’s taking on more childcare duties as our own kids are out of school. Maybe it’s finally time to read all those articles and books that have been piling up or to pound out chapters of a long-neglected manuscript. Or, maybe, you’re teaching summer school. Summer school posts are going to be irregularly timed, more personal and reflective, and a bit more casual, befitting the vibes of summer.

Jamaican Dave

Technically, my first day teaching as a certified educator was actually as a summer school teacher for a course I was not actually certified to teach. I’d been hired for the fall at the tail end of the previous year and received a faculty-wide email about teaching summer school, so I applied. I was told I’d be teaching two sections of 10th grade English Language Arts, which at this school was their year for learning “world literature” but this also includes ancient myth and legends so you can really mix it up. Back then, my understanding of summer school was that it was for kids who wanted to get ahead. You’d take a summer class to graduate early, to skip ahead and take college level classes, or because you wanted to work during the year and weren’t going to take a full course load. I was excited and eager to finally be a real teacher.

At that time, I lived in Athens, GA about a 90-minute drive away from the school. I was scheduled for two of the three daily two-hour sessions, 10:15-12:15 and 1:30-3:30. I showed up early because I wanted to get the lay of the land and have some time to mentally prepare to teach. I might need to make copies or write out some things on the board. I arrived at 9 to a deserted parking lot, which struck me as odd because there should have been a session that began at 8am. Then again, I thought, younger high schoolers don’t drive so they’d probably have been dropped off by their parents. Or maybe there was some carpooling happening.

When I walked up to the school where I’d properly start my education career, I was greeted at the locked door by the assistant principal who’d be running summer school, Jamaican Dave. Jamaican Dave was a small, ashy old man with a wardrobe of too-big suits and extremely wide ties that he always wore loose, hanging below an unbuttoned top button. He spoke very softly but had an unmistakably thick Jamaican accent. I didn’t call him Jamaican Dave until months later when other teachers at the school introduced me to this nickname but in their defense it was pretty rare to encounter Jamaicans in the suburbs of Atlanta and he was Jamaican and his name was David. I also came to learn later that there were a lot of rumors around this guy and he was one of those assistant principals who was shuffled from school to school. The main rumor, though, was that he was “not all there” in the sense that he seemed not to know what was going on or who anyone was even if he worked with them on a daily basis.

Anyway, I showed up with a few bags of supplies and plans to teach World Literature to tenth graders who were trying to get ahead. Jamaican Dave told me I would be teaching 9th grade math and earth science. I explained I was not certified to teach those subjects and that I also did not agree to teach those subjects and that I furthermore had spent the last few weeks planning to teach World Literature. Jamaican Dave explained that there were no students taking ELA classes at this location, this was the school for all the kids doing math and science classes so I would be teaching math and science. Furthermore, he explained that because I’d also earned a special education certification — something you can get in Georgia simply by taking a test — I was able to teach any subject.

I probably should have objected then and there because I knew that was B.S. but I was a fresh hire trying to earn a bit of money and start my career. What if he fired me and I lost my teaching job for the fall, too? So, I tried to take an agreeable tone and said I’d just need to talk to the other math and science teachers for some support in prepping to teach subjects that I’d only just found out I was teaching. Jamaican Dave only shook his head and said, “no other teachers, you are the only one, it is okay.”

Sardines

Jamaican Dave showed me the way to my assigned room and as we rounded the corner, I was surprised to find several students students standing outside the door. I had arrived an hour early and, apparently, so had they. As we closed the distance, I could hear another surprise: talking, teaching, coming from the room. There was already someone present, teaching math to a room that can best be described as over capacity. The room was not originally a classroom and was meant to be a department office. It adjoined a supply closet and a smaller room with a copier and some filing cabinets. There were no windows. There was no board. Months later when I returned to teach in the fall, it was once again an office. Only in that moment, that summer, had it become a classroom for thirty six kids. Children filled every possible space, including the floor, the teacher’s desk, and sitting on the filing cabinets in the other room. They were packed in as tight as and as greasy as sardines. The woman teaching the class looked up and audibly said “oh thank god”.

“He is the teacher” explained Jamaican Dave before turning to me and saying “good bye” with a quick nod. As he walked away, I looked back at the other teacher who was quickly packing up her things and asked if I could talk to her for a moment. We walked across the hall to what I learned was her classroom. Mrs. Gardner, math department chair it turned out, had been in the school only to grab some things from her room and had seen the pile of children unsupervised in the “classroom” across the hall. She asked me why I was an hour late and that’s when I had the opportunity to explain that I was there to teach a 10th grade World Literature class that wasn’t supposed to start for another 45 minutes. I’ll never forget the look on her face when I said I wasn’t a math teacher. It was somewhere between the look of absolute rage and complete disgust.

Mrs. Gardner took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and laid out what had to happen. “I’m going to make a phone call and see about fixing this, but you have to stay with these kids. I cannot stay here and he won’t stay with them.” I nodded along as if that made sense to me. “You might as well teach some math,” she said and handed me a textbook. “We were here,” she pointed to a page with a sticky note along the edge, “but this is my copy so you have to leave it here in this room on the desk after today. It won’t be locked.” She also asked if I had a district computer for taking attendance, email, and entering grades. I did not but that was a problem to solve for another time. Mrs. Gardner brought out her laptop, printed a class roster, walked me across the hall, introduced me to the kids, apologized to them for the space, and left.

The Cold

I don’t remember a lot about what I actually did mathematically with that first class, but I do remember the complaints about the cold. Like all schools in the American South, ours had industrial strength air conditioning and when the building is empty and closed all day, it gets very cold inside. The makeshift classroom had no exterior walls or windows, no way to become warmer, and thirty seven bodies wouldn’t warm an open room enough to compete with AC meant for a school of 2500 kids. The thermostat in the room did not seem functional but did read in the low 60 degree range. So, while teaching my very first math lesson live with only a textbook for a guide, I also had to field complaints about kids’ discomfort. I told them to wear warm clothes when they came in tomorrow which led to many kids audibly groaning. “We have to come in tomorrow” asked one of the students seated on a filing cabinet, “is this every day?”

That’s also when I learned that 100% of these kids were rising 10th graders who’d failed 9th grade math. Nobody was “getting ahead” or mathematically precocious or even happy to be there. I remember asking them to ask their parents to call and complain and telling them they deserved better. I remember feeling cold. Cold because of the actual temperature but also cold because this seemed like an affront to everything schools were supposed to do. These kids needed the most support but everything felt like an afterthought cobbled together carelessly. These children were, that summer, literally left behind with nobody to teach them math besides an English teacher.

When my 40-minute portion the two hour instructional block was done I tried to dismiss the students on a more hopeful note, explaining that tomorrow I would get a larger classroom and reminding them to grab warm clothing. That’s also when I realized I didn’t know where my next classroom was. I was, apparently, supposed to teach earth science but didn’t know where. So I wandered. I went down the science hallway, looking for another open door or another gaggle of students. Remembering that my math classroom was not a classroom, I started checking the entire building. It was empty save for three of the students from my math class who claimed they couldn’t find their way out. This is how I learned that kids from other schools in the district were enrolled here for summer school, it wasn’t just this school’s students.

I left the deserted school at quarter to twelve, totally in the dark about what was supposed to be happening and feeling quite chilled. I made it maybe ten minutes into my drive home before I realized that the earth science class I was apparently supposed to teach could have been in the third session, starting at 1:30pm. My confusion stemmed from being hired to teach the second and third sessions but not realizing in all the turnabout of the morning that the math class I was thrown into was the first session, starting at 8am. I returned to the school with about half an hour until earth science was possibly going to start.

The door I had exited about twenty minutes before was locked and nobody came when I rang the doorbell or knocked. I left voicemails at the office and at the number listed in my paperwork for the summer school program. With the way the day had been going, I had to entertain the distinct possibility that I would be teaching earth science right there in front of the school. But nobody came. The school remained deserted right up to 1:30 and 1:45 and 2pm. At that point I drove around the service road behind the school and down to the athletics field, finding nobody. Feeling totally off-kilter, I once again drove home.

The Morning After

After spending the night prepping Algebra lessons based on some stuff I found online (this was web 1.0 so the content was not in a format ready for kids), I woke up at 5:30, showered, threw on some warm clothes, and ordered drive-thru chicken biscuits and coffee on the way down to work. I arrived at 7:45 on the dot. The school met me with its emptiness. I sat, finishing my coffee, wondering if anyone would arrive just as Jamaican Dave appeared in the doorway behind me. He introduced himself and asked me my name. I reminded him I’d been there the day before and told him I felt better prepared to teach math. “No math today,” he murmured. I thought I’d surely misheard and asked, eloquently, “what?” He repeated, “no math today” and added that I was early. When I asked him what I would be teaching, he said English. I reasoned that I was early because I would be teaching in my original time slot, at 10:15, more than two hours from when I arrived.

I remember feeling pretty indignant at that point and trying to get some information about what exactly was going on. Jamaican Dave was impenetrable. When I asked about earth science, he just repeated that I was teaching English today. When I asked about what was going on with the math class from yesterday, he didn’t really answer at all and replied only “it is okay”. The only helpful information I got out of him was a handwritten weekly calendar showing which summer school classes were being taught, where, and when. Summer school operated on a block schedule. English was a Tuesday/Thursday class. There was no reason for me to have come in the previous day if only I had not misunderstood my start date as my actual first day of work. Still, the calendar did not answer all of my questions, for example, earth science was only taught on Wednesdays, seeming to violate the whole idea of block scheduling.

Jamaican Dave walked me to my new classroom, leaving me at the door with another “good bye”. Happily, this was an actual classroom with lots of desks and tables and a whiteboard and even a digital projector, which was pretty fancy for those days. Kids started arriving and I realized I had a new problem. Without a school issued computer, I could not access the school’s attendance and grade systems. Since it was still a little bit before class started, I went back to the office where I found Jamaican Dave looking out the window. After hearing my problem, he walked back to his desk and handed me his laptop. “You will use this one,” he whispered and smiled, “it is okay.” I looked at the screen for a moment, it was open to his work outlook. I asked if he was sure. Didn’t he need a computer for the day? “It is okay,” he said once more. Just outside of the office door, I realized I need a way to charge the computer and went back to Jamaican Dave, who was again looking out the window.

Charger and laptop in hand, I returned to the classroom to find a couple more kids had trickled in. I wish I could tell you more about how my first proper English class went but I remember almost none of it. What I do remember is wondering during the lunch break if I’d had some kind of hallucination or mental breakdown, if yesterday had been entirely imagined. I remember telling myself that I would still go to school the next day, Wednesday, to check and see if the math class was real, and if it still needed a teacher. I was prepared to do the nearly 100 mile round trip just to make sure that those kids were taken care of. It also occurred to me that I was only being paid to teach two classes, so I needed to find a way to get paid to teach math, if I was going to teach math. There was a knock at my door and a “hello.” It was Jamaican Dave.

“Tomorrow, you teach earth science. It is okay. Good bye.”