I Unpacked My Adjectives

"Hey, Ms. Wagner, is this your normal duty?"  my principal asked.
"Yes."
"Now you will be working with our homeless population in the science lab.  We'll let you know when their bus picks up!".

I haven't been feeling well.  I get sick all the time.  I know people would say that is because I work with young children, but this is ridiculous.  This has been happening for a few years, but since I started at my new school, I have been deathly ill twice within five weeks. Fever.  Exhaustion. Lost voice.  Dizziness. stumbling.  Haven't even mentioned weird tastes in mouth...And, I did get a flu shot this year.

"My mom said you called and said Adriana can't read." Veronica informed me.
"No, no.... that is not what I said at all.  Adriana reads really well... please tell your mom to call me if she has any questions about my message....".
I had to call about the accommodations we will be offering Adriana on her Georgia Milestones test.  She's been receiving them for years.  And yes, I've seen that they are threatening to hold her back if she doesn't "pass" that dumbass test.  And I think holding her back is wrong and destructive.  And I hate that her family is starting to think she's dumb.  Because she isn't.

"So, you drink the water here too?"  a fellow teacher asked, while I waited in line to fill up my water bottle at the drinking fountain.
"Yeah, what no one else does?" I answered.
She lowered her voice.
"We got lead."
"Really..." I answered, tightening the cap on my bottle.
"Yeah, but it's fixed now.  No one still wants to drink it!"

I was sitting with my second graders when the fire alarm went off.
"Let's go." I instructed.
We struggled to find a door to get outside and I realized that was my own dumb-assery.  But, we made it out and I lined up my little five person team next to the other full classes on some field I have never seen before.  My kids were good, they stayed quiet and we waited.  Then, we heard sirens.  At first I thought it was a coincidence, until multiple fire trucks pulled into the parking lot.  I put my hand on my mouth and looked down.  What more?  Would this asbestos and lead-filled environmental hazard burst into flames?  Why is this place so unsafe?
And then, I noticed Alberto.
He is a tough little dude.  And his eyes were filling with tears.
I stood behind him and put my hands on his shoulders.  He looked up high, toward the sky.   Multiple hawks were flying overhead.  His eyes widened and brightened as he watched them for several minutes.
"One of then fell-ed." he said, after several minutes, referring to the bird that was now below our sight-line.

I pulled the results from water tests of our school.  We did have several water sources well above the EPA "action" limit, some way above and most located in kindergarten classrooms.  Young children are the most vulnerable to lead.  They were repaired, but nearly every water source in the school is still registering lead content.  I wondered how much lead was safe to ingest, noticing again the telltale metallic taste in my mouth after only two months on that water.
"No level of lead ingestion is safe...." article after article informed me.
"Lead ingestion is cumulative...."
The EPA action limit is 15 ppb.  The average level of lead in the water in Flint, Michigan was 12 ppb.
I filled up a big Stanley thermos with water at my house and trucked it into school the next morning.  Along with my home computer because my work computer is worthless and several other survival supplies to make it through the days at work.  I felt like a camel.
And, I felt like an asshole.  I am an informed adult and I can adjust.  Every time I see a kid drink out of one of those fountains, I cringe.  They eat two out of three meals a day at that school, and the food is prepared with lead-water.  They drink out of those fountains for six years, and then go to another old school with lead pipes that poison their bodies more.  Most buildings built before 1986 will have lead pipes.  Old buildings are in impoverished communities.  This isn't just my school, it's national.  What other environmental issues are effecting poor communities?  I know about asbestos and lead.  What else?  The cycle continues.

"Girls are already beautiful," Gustavo informed me, looking across the table at the new member of our group, the strange girl from a different ethnicity that stutters when she speaks and often looks uncared for.
"They wear hearts on their clothes...." he continued, his own eyes transforming to heart shapes while he looked at her. 

And then, he got up and took a sip of water from the kindergarten fountain. 

Fecal Madness

"Your mama's so dumb, she eat food out the trash can." the little bespectacled girl hissed lowly to the boy behind her.
"Your mama so dumb, she eat food off the sidewalk..." she continued, as the line moved toward the buses.

"There is a CUSS WORD written on the bathroom door!" a little first grade boy announced, flanked by two girls, all staring at me.
"Oh wow, did you try to look away?"  I answered.
"It says F-U-C-K Y-O-U!" he answered, incredulous.
"You spell really well.  I'm sorry you had to see that." the two little girls nodded with me.
"THAT is a BIG cuss word!" he responded.
"Yup, it sure is."

"So he like, my student, he peed his pants."  the teacher told me, slowly, trying to find the right words.
"But isn't he in second grade...." I asked.
"And he went in the bathroom and took his pee-underwear off.  Then he kind of like, snuck the underwear back into the classroom, clandestinely." he continued.
"Then, as he walked behind another student, he like, whipped them out and smacked another kid in the back of the head with the pee underwear!  I still can't figure how I am going to approach that phone call to the other kid's parents....your kid got hit in the back of the head with pee covered underwear?"  the teacher continued, eyes wide.

"I'm gonna bring a knife to school and I'm gonna stab you, faggot.  And I AM NOT PLAYING."
I watched the cell phone video with shock.
"Then, she deliberately peed right through her pants, a huge puddle, and rubbed it all over the floor with her butt." the teacher with the phone added.

I glanced through a window and saw an administrator monitor, curb side, while a family lifted and wrestled a ten year old kid into their car.

"Walk forward in this hallway!"  a teacher yelled at Kavi while my mini-U.N. followed me to the classroom we continue to occupy.
I glanced back with fake surprise, pretending that I had not noticed him amusing himself by walking down the hallway backwards while looking over his shoulder.
Go get 'em, tiger,  I thought sarcastically toward the barking teacher.  Scream all day at everything!

"So, they ripped the metal cover thing off of the paper towel dispenser in the boy's bathroom, put it on one of the toilets and took a shit on it."

"You might want to get a tetanus shot..."  I heard an administrator advise the teacher with the phone video, a few days later.  I wondered if the student had bit him.  Or stabbed him.

I finished my lesson plans on my personal laptop.  It actually has computer-style programs and capabilities that allow me to complete my work, as opposed to my district machine.  I turned my phone into a hotspot and emailed them to my work email address and grabbed my work computer and uploaded the plans onto a platform that is only installed on my work laptop.  Then, I rigged up the printer I'm not supposed to use and printed them.

I heard buzzing rap music and people laughing and cheering.  I thought it was the after school kids until I glanced out and saw the meanest teacher at school sailing by, crouching and popping up in some German style folk dance while the rest of the teachers formed cheering lines beside him in the cafeteria.
The librarian, still dressed as the Grouchy Ladybug for Read Across America Day, stood beside her rolling karaoke machine, bobbing her antennae-ed head to the buzzing beats.

Victory Is Won

I tapped Kavi on the head, playfully, while I waited for him to finish up his morning work before I took him to ESOL.
He tapped me back, on the underside of my bare arm.  The school was muggy.  It felt like hot breath, even at 7:45 in the morning.
"You're peach." he announced, tapping my arm.
"Yeah, I'm kind of peach and pink."  I answered.
"And squishy..." he responded.
"Shut up, Kavi, these guns are made of steel!" I answered, instructing him to view my apparently pasty flabby self as a super hero.

"So, I went to Cornell.  My dad was a professor.  I am not an idiot.  I am educated."  I sat back, knowing this meeting was going to be crazy.
"Of course." I answered, though there were two other people in the room.
He started crying.  I locked eyes with him and found my own tearing up.
"Your child has been placed in the wrong grade, so she is going to be put in the grade she should have been in...the one below...and she is going to start getting ESOL services."
ESOL services she should have been getting five months ago, when she arrived here.  And, when she should have been put in the right grade.  The man kept talking.  He was an American man, wearing Islamic bling.
"Okay...okay she..." his wife started saying.
"I'm speaking." the man mumbled lowly, and she quieted.  And, he continued.
"She's Libyan  A good looking woman?"  he inquired, looking at me.
"Of course." I answered.
"She's raised them, speaking Libyan Arabic..." he continued, "but the real way to learn Arabic is the Koran..."  he continued, giving me a linguistics lesson.
"So she, she live with me.."  the wife began.
"I'm speaking." he mumbled, and she quieted.
"I always knew there was something wrong with her.  She takes after her mother.  That's who she lives with.  The boy is fine."
I looked into the wife's eyes, trapped behind thick glasses as she looked at me fervently.  How the fuck did you get mixed up with this?  I thought to myself.  I tried to scream it through my eyes, but I doubt it worked.
"So, sign here and here..." I told The Man.
"This is stupid... this doesn't make sense."
"Just sign."  I instructed.

"Even though you're young, you look old."  Baby Gustavo informed me, smiling serenely.
"What makes me look old?"  I asked.
"Your hair."  he answered, smiling sweetly.
"Why do we do ESOL?" he asked, still smiling and dancing.
You, Gustavo, will make me slit my wrists, I thought, and smiled at him.

"Hey, come over here..." Habiba whispered, motioning to a little seat on the playground of the Housing Authority.
"I have nail polish."
She pulled a little purse out from her many robes.  She had two bottles of nail polish in it.
"Kayla is coming.  She's a snitch.  Move on!"  she instructed a smaller child.
She unscrewed the cap and started painting some of my nails pink.
"Those people, the ones behind me, they fight.  I've hear them.  He yells at her.  And, they throw wood chips at us."
"You mean those people on the balcony behind us?'
"Yes." she answered, eyes fixed on my nails.
She painted my thumbnail green.  It was warm, but overcast.  Everything felt like a cotton ball surrounded it.
"Which apartment do you live in?  I know you have more than one, but where do you stay?"
I know you have more than one because I have taught half of your siblings and I know your dad has wives installed in more than one apartment.
"That one..." she pointed, motioning to a balcony where a young man stood holding a baby and a school age girl played.
"She's my sister."
"Where does she go to school?"
"Glenn Haven.... but she's sick, do you know what I mean?"
The mist seemed to be collecting around us as Habiba spoke in hushed tones.  She continued painting my nails, but never put enough polish on the brush.
"Does she have an impairment?"
"When we hug, she hits....."
"She can't control her body...?"
"Don't tell her I said that she was sick."
"I won't, Habiba, I won't."
The marshmallow day surrounded us and we sat and painted finger nails.

"Lift every voice and sing....till earth and heaven ring....."
I stood in the hallway at 7:15 in the morning, doing duty.  It was the Black National Anthem.  And it sounded like an angel was singing it.  I spied around the corner, expecting to see a child.  A beautiful woman stood there, in front of the children.

"Ring with the harmonies...of liberty..." she sang, face uplifted as the children watched her, hypnotized.