Independence Day

"The trick is not minding that it hurts", I always remember that line from Lawrence of Arabia when Peter O'Toole burns his hand over an open flame. My old, best friend Margaret and I always used to say it to each other when things got shitty. Actually, we would simply say "The trick is not minding". Care a little less and it actually doesn't hurt at all.

It is considered a sign of weakness in the U.S. schools if you turn to the administration for help with discipline problems. Yeah, they carry titles like "Discipline Assistant Principal", but say "Keep your problems in your classroom". Here, they have prefectos. Their job is to rove the school, looking for kids acting like assholes. I decided not to deal with discipline problems anymore. "Puedo entrar?" in other words, "I am late as hell, can I come in?", answer: "No". Ask them once to be quiet and they don't, "Ven conmigo, we are looking for the prefecto". Actually not the prefecto, the prefecta, because the female one does her job. I had noticed that I had a silent majority in my classes that watched me furtively and wanted to pass. I have always had this problem in the classroom, concentrating all of my attention on the idiots and forgetting the other thirty kids. Yeah, it seems a little weird to abandon the class and wander around the school with some kid that irritates you, but something had to give.

There were also the unsilent, special cases. Victor, this great kid in a low performing group that helped me with Spanish pronunciation. I COULD NOT understand a lot of the kids' names when they would tell me; from day one Victor would articulate every syllable, I would repeat and I would have the name. Jose Luis, who struggled with every aspect of English grammar and could not speak to save his life, yet was hell bent on learning our pinche language. El Hombrecito, a little wildcat that looked like he was twelve but was actually sixteen. He was tiny, but apparently had grown at some point, because the hems of his pants and their waistband always rode way too high and his crazy gelled, spiky hair made him look like a superhero. Hector, the Mexican version of Arnold Horshack, a runty kid with a wispy mustache who stood at the bottom of the "stairs", a descending pile of old tires in the sand, with a sleazy smile on his face calling "Chicas, I'll catch you" as the class descended the hill. Gloria, who for some odd reason reminded me of the enigmatic Keeley from my Arizona desert patrols, who told all the students that I was secretly her mother. The kids that wore their uniforms on Fridays, though they are allowed to wear whatever they want and apparently didn't have anything else to wear. There had to be a piece of me that could give something to them.

"Rigid", that is what my U.S. principal called me. "Just doing my job" was my response. My kids spoke better Spanish than any other teacher's. "I am proud of what I do", I told him. You know what? Here, I would do less. There are kids that can learn in a closet with a book and others that can't learn from Jaime Escalante. I wasn't going to cram it down anyone's throat, I was teaching to the willing. They could go as crazy as they wanted to go and I would rove and teach those who wanted it. Hell, Mexico is loud anyway.

It really helped that we had Sept. 16th, Independence Day, off. After a four day swine flu week. I couldn't figure which class was where; suspensions for swine flu, a day off for Independence Day, and various impromptu faculty meetings had left all nine groups at different points in my lesson plan. There was also class period when we would salute the Mexican flag. They don't just say the pledge at the beginning of class, they randomly assign a whole class period to pledge the flag and sing patriotic songs, knocking the lesson plan for one group completely off track. I was surprised how they saluted the flag, right arm outstretched. I assumed that that must be how they do it in Mexico, but had an image of some plane flying over the school and seeing hundreds of young Mexicans in a central courtyard, and one crazy American woman, saluting Nazi style and discovering that I was actually part of a secret sect. I spent Independence Day like a good American, shopping at Wal Mart. I assumed that I would run into some sort of parade or fire works display, but never saw anything. When I returned to school on the 17th, everyone, even the snack shop guy, asked me what I did and proceeded to tell me about all that I missed. I guess it never occurred to anyone that a foreigner wouldn't know what to do on Mexican Independence Day. Anyway, we had exams that week and I had about 320 to grade.