D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
March 2006
D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
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The first time I subbed as a teacher above the elementary-school level in Deming was in a "behavioral disorder" class at the middle school. Of the six kids, three or four spent their time stomping around the room, yelling as loud as they could, or standing by the open window talking. I didn't even really know how to fill out the referral form, to send kids to the office. I was scared, and it was a disaster. (I remember later seeing one of those girls at the Mid High, crumpled and insecure-looking, fragile even. Some of the scariest kids are not really scary at all.) At one of the substitute-teacher workshops, a speaker said, "If you're afraid, they'll eat you alive." Unfortunately, that's been true of me. I've felt at times like a little goldfish flipping around in a pool of sharks. But then other classes are so eerily quiet you can hear a pin drop. Even to the regular teachers, kids' behavior is somewhat of a mystery. They wonder why one guy or girl will be a raving "homie" type in one class but sedate in another. First period you can pretty much count on to be quiet. Students are still waking up, still adrift in the opaque waters of their "alone" mode. But a fourth-period class with 29 students in it is usually like a coffee percolator heated to boiling. Kids physically bounce around like bubbles. I learned early on that I didn't have to be afraid I'd be unjust in terms of race when disciplining. There's usually no problem identifying who's being the noisiest, and it doesn't have anything to do with what they look like. Kids are very often from mixed families anyway and you're not sure exactly what race they are. It's a good idea not to draw lines between races, but from long association I can say there are definite differences in culture, both good and bad. Hispanics tend to be more social and talkative than Anglos, even at the chatty middle-school age. It makes sense to me that Hispanics represent a booming market for cell-phone companies. So it's not surprising that it's really common for students, the great majority of whom are Mexican or Mexican-American, to spend three-quarters of class time (or more) talking. It's an exaggerated situation for substitutes, of course, because we're not taken seriously anyway. And it's not really surprising that the classes that are hardest to face are often the Spanish-language, or "bilingual," classes. The kids are in a perpetual carbonated state—they fizz up with chatter and giggles, and jump, strut and pull not-very-fun jokes on the teacher. As a Hispanic instructional assistant once said to me dolefully, "I sometimes wish I had some duct tape and could just wrap it around and around them." I know something of where these kids are coming from—I mean literally. I've traveled in Chihuahua and Zacatecas, and I know that a book is an extravagance when you've had nothing to eat for a day or two, or don't have milk for your children. It's hard to blame them for not getting the hang of education. (Some, though, do very well—I know of one who aced his way to college). But these kids, who so often don't seem the least bit interested, can do some unexpected things. I remember noting that a bunch of guys in a classroom were almost certain to be the troublemakers. One in particular I wryly classified as a "junior rapist," with the brazen, defiant look he gave me from the beginning. The teacher had asked me to do a "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" game on the board. I was so shocked when these guys turned out to be the ones who out-performed the rest. They flung up their arms and gasped and gagged out answers. The girl helping me had to shield herself from one named Manuel who almost fell right onto her. "Manne-ee," she shouted, cowering. The class laughed helplessly. The trick is to get the kids interested in the subjects, something as a substitute I have little chance to do. But I witnessed a distinct example recently in an elementary school of how kids can and do get interested. Some of the kids in this class had made things out of colored construction paper stapled together, which they dragged along with strings of yarn. Three of the boys had made creatures over four feet long. One of them, Javier, had made what he called "boats," connected to each other in a long, twisting line. The piece on the tail end was made of two boxes next to each other that I called "water skis" because my feet fit into them neatly. The only motivation behind Javier's creativity seemed to be sheer fantasy. Another student, Marco, made a "dragon" with a humped back. Marco had already developed a hardened, cynical look, in just third grade. He didn't listen at all. When we were about to do some academic work, Marco went to park his dragon under a table, but he was so obsessively drawn to it I had to literally drag him away so he could do his multiplication or possessives. The third boy, Danny, was another rebellious kid who walked around the classroom at will. I don't remember his piece well, but I'd catch sight of all three guys scrambling around on the floor with their creations at any given point during the lesson. At the end of the day the kids had to clean up. At last they could drag their handiwork around to their heart's content. Javier, a little guy and bright as a button, kept saying to me, "This really helps! This really helps clean up the place," as he picked up bits of paper and pencils and put them in his boats. I told them they ought to get patents on their inventions. I told them they should invent cars or trucks when they grow up. Or vacuum cleaners. If only the schools could harness these obsessions and turn the kids into mechanical engineers, architects, artists or industrial designers. They do sometimes. But the pressures some of these kids are under, with six or eight people in their family's singlewide trailer and so much noise to cope with, and parents with little education, makes it hard to imagine that happening much. The necessarily bureaucratic teaching methods and bland public-school textbooks work against it. My guess is that with maybe five kids to a class, it would be conceivable. It's not that the teachers don't want success to happen, but it doesn't very often. What a loss of talent and intelligence.
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