Can't Nobody Tell Me Nothin'

"FOCUS...." I instructed my four-student, third grade team.
"Chili cheese fry brain," I mumbled, looking sideways, undercutting my previous warning.  They started giggling.
"Rat smell..." I continued.
I can't even remember where the ongoing, chili-cheese-fry-rat-smell inside joke started, but the last hour of the school day is a constant mix of sternness and delirium.

I looked over at Faba.  The students had been instructed to wear their teacher's favorite color to school that day.  His too-small, tight green t-shirt had obviously been dug from the bottom of a drawer, with care.

"Are you worried about something?' a little girl asked me.  I smiled and asked her what she meant.
"You just like you're worried about something." she said and smiled, touching my hand.

Alec read over the New York Times article about humanitarians in various stages of legal trouble for trying to help migrants survive their trek across the southwestern United States.
"That's what you used to do..." he kind of asked-stated.
My mind's eye flashed backwards to the men in the back of my car, to the medical helicopter flying into the desert sky with one man while the Border Patrol handcuffed another, to the men splayed out on the dirt road, eyes red and Mexican ID cards laid in front of them.
"Yeah." I answered.

I walked through the cafeteria to the place where my desk is located.  A hand extended, the little girl in the same sweater, the one that was worried that I was worried.

Gabriel swept the floor of the lab where I sit with the homeless kids, waiting for their special bus.  He is on the school's Safety Patrol.  I teach a number of his four siblings, they are pretty widely regarded as probably the most awesome family in the school:  smart, respectful, sweet.  All of them.  Everyone even knows their parents, a rarity at my school, because they escort their children to and from our establishment everyday.
"Gabriel, were you ever in ESOL?"  I asked in English, though I usually force him to practice Spanish with me.
"No, they gave me the test though when we moved to this school from Silver Hill."
Remarkable, I thought.  Neither parent speaks English as a first language, yet they were able to raise their son to be bilingual enough to not qualify for English services.
"I didn't know that you had gone to another school before here." I responded.
"Well, my mom doesn't have a driver's license...."
I felt the hair on my arms stand up.
"So we needed to move closer so that she wouldn't have to drive far to bring us to school." he continued.
"My dad works all the time." he added, still sweeping the floor.
The dad, the same dad that still finds time to accompany his children to school every morning.  They chase each other up the front sidewalk, all laughter and smiles.  A man that truly enjoys his children.
"One day he got pulled over and he gave them his Mexican driver's license and they took him to jail.  It took a long time to get him out."
I noticed an almost electrical smell, emanating from the sweat accumulating at the roots of my hair.
"So, he has a trial coming to decide if he will be sent back to Mexico.  My mom is from a town called Honduras."
"I am so sorry, Gabriel.  That must be so stressful for your family." I said, hunting for the right thing to say.
"It is.  It is very stressful.  We have to rely on our faith." he responded solemnly, like a person well beyond his eleven years.

"I still think you're worried," she told me again, one of the following mornings of many mornings.
"You need to think of happy things." she advised me, and walked away.

"Highs and lows?"  I asked my Housing Authority group.
"HIGH...."  Aazim answered, eyes aglow.
"My parents, both of them, left us, all of us, alone in the apartment on Saturday....."
"ALL of you?  You, Mahja, Suleymann.....wait, who am I forgetting?"
"Jabez!  Yes, all of us...." he said, sighing contently.
"Is the apartment still standing?  Does it have walls still?"
"It does, it does," he answered.
"I drank soda until my heart was content."

*Title, Old Town Road, Lil Nas X

Don't Go Breaking My Heart

David looked at his paper and gave himself an 'A'.  Written in red, it looked like the anarchy symbol my little punk rock friends used to write on everything when we were in high school.

"You a judge?"
I turned slowly, realizing the man on the sidewalk in front of my house was talking to me.
"What...?" I said, trying to be pleasant.
"You a judge?"
"No..." I answered and tried to smile.
At that moment, we locked eyes.  His were red rimmed and hostile, it was a violent, horrible stare.  I turned slowly, trying to look casual and walked up the steps to my front porch.
"You fine...." he hissed.
"Look at you....you look good...ummm...you tight....." he continued.
My hands were shaking while I fumbled with my keys, trying to get through that door before he ran up behind me.
"You so fine...."
I knew he was going to be on me in seconds.
The door opened and I shot through and closed it behind me, locking it quickly.  I spun around and watched him trot down the sidewalk, still talking.

"Can you make sure LeGary gets a Kona Ice?"  I asked the kindergarten teacher, handing her four dollars.
"Don't tell him it's from me, if you he asks just say there was extra money or something."
She smiled and started saying something about me being nice.  I abruptly turned and walked away.

I walked through the hallway around lunch time and saw the teachers lining up the kids with money for ices in the front of the line and those that did not, in the back.
"I tried to get treats from Dollar Tree for the kids without any money, but they didn't have anything..." one mumbled to me while lining up the haves at the front of the line.
I walked through the cafeteria to the room where my desk is.  A festive truck was parked outside, outfitted like a tiki bar with signs advertising exotic flavors of ice like Tiger's Blood and mango.  Smiling children stood in a line, waiting their turn to buy a fancy ice.  The rest sat in the cafeteria, staring at the truck.
I saw LeGary across the cafeteria happily eating with his class, a giant, bright red ice in front of him.

"Don't go breaking my heart......" sailed out from the tiny speakers on my phone.
"I couldn't if I tried......"
"OOOOH hooo!  Nobody knows it!"  Faba and I sang together while he finished writing his El Deafo narrative.

"Wagner, did you get yourself an ice?" my principal inquired, in front of everyone, at the faculty meeting.
"Um, no I didn't make it out there...."  I didn't know how to tell her that though it was generous that all of the teachers were offered a free ice, I would never walk out there and get it in front of all of those kids.  And I was mad at myself that I hadn't secured enough cash the night before to get the other four homeless kids in my duty group ices.  I was tired and decided to go home instead of drive around town trying to get four piles of single dollar bills.

We watched the motivational speaker begin his peppy talk.  He had the same last name as I do.  The second and third graders started to wiggle within thirty seconds.   A first grade teacher cruised by, holding her phone up where I could see it.

"Your husband's boring" it said.  I could not agree more.

*Title, Elton John

Dolphins are Rapists

I walked into school, trying to look cheery, and greeted the school nurse, who has a duty station close to mine.  The first time I met her, she told me that this was her last year before retiring.
"Good morning, Ms. Warner!"  she said with a big smile, like she always does.  I never remind her that my name is not any of the versions of W that she calls me.
"I want to go home...." she said lowly, when I got a little closer, her eyes narrowing like slits.

I stared at a wall while I administered the Georgia Milestones test to one student, my second round of proctoring the hours long test and my third day in a row.  The trailer smelled weird.  An oddly familiar, sweet but musty, William S. Burroughs kind of smell an old apartment of mine used to have.  I looked at the time-out area the teacher-occupant of the trailer had set up.  A desk faced a rusty, but live, fuse box that advertised "WARNING.  POTENTIAL ARC FLASH HAZARD" and featured a drawing of person being thrown backward by bolts of electricity.

A movie was playing for the kids at the Housing Authority.  I opened up my work laptop while a few of my kids worked nearby, hoping to catch up on a few things.  Mahja cruised by, fresh from walking over from the middle school.
"Hey!  Your work Chromebook is the same kind they gave us at school!"  he said brightly, referring to the student Chromebooks the kids receive.  He hit a little circle in the bottom right corner.
"That's how you give yourself a nicer desktop!"  he added, putting a mountain scene for wallpaper on the desktop of my shitty faculty computer.
We looked for a new movie for the kids to watch.
"What about this dolphin thing, do you think they would like it?"  I asked a co-worker.
"Nah.  Dolphins are rapists.  Google it.  They won't even put males and females together at Sea World because no one wants to see that."  she responded.

The little ones were acting up.  Their older sister, one of the homeless kids I monitor until their bus comes after school, was talking to me.  She had been doing that a lot lately.
"I am getting glasses like yours, but red!"  she told me.
"Those will look great on you," I answered.
"Red was a good choice."
"When do you think they'll come?"  she asked.
"Maybe in like a week?"
"They said four to six weeks."  she answered.
"That seems like a really long time...."
"LeGary!  Stop it!"  she yelled at one of her little brothers.
I didn't even see what he had done.
"You ain't gotta talk to me that way...." he said lowly, eyebrows knitted together and chin down, with vampire-like laterals bared around his missing front teeth.
"I'm done here." she responded.
"I'm done going soft on you.  I've treated you soft because you're young but no, not anymore.  What do I get, I get this..." she continued, a harsh mother's voice and speech emanating from her lips.
"You ain't soft on us!  You hit!"  he hissed.
"And I can fight you!"
"Who taught you how to fight?"  she asked.
"Roassst...." the other kids murmured.
"I did.  You was using just your feet and you know what?  Feet don't hurt anyone.  I taught you to use your fists.  And I ain't going soft on you anymore." she continued.
"Yeah...." the peanut gallery continued.
"I will give you a black eye."
She clicked her long, false nails together and the boys got silent.  She is ten years old.

"I have a prediction."  Alejandro volunteered.  I was stunned.  I have been trying to get my students to use these reading comprehension techniques and I hadn't even asked for one, yet my quiet boy was volunteering.

"I think Ivan and Ruby will be friends.  I saw it on the cover of the book...."

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.

On My Side

February 2nd was my birthday.  All the time I think to myself, what if a month from now everything is totally different than it is today?  What if a year from now everything is way different than you could ever imagine?  Well, everything is totally different today.  Then a year ago.  Then a month ago.  Then two weeks ago.

My students wear the same clothes to school, everyday.  Not just the same outer sweater or hoodie, but the same pants, shirt and outer
wear.

I heard my phone buzz in my bag.  I was leaning over a student's desk, trying to help her with her classwork.  I figured it was a friend texting me and ignored it.  I walked past the front office of the school after the class and saw a complete cluster fuck.  I pulled out my phone and saw that the message was some sort of tornado thing.  I continued with my day, assuming we'd hear an announcement if anything was going on.

One of my best students was absent the day of his standardized test.  The one I have to administer.  I learned how to do it, barely, two weeks ago and have done nothing but that ever since.  I stood in the dismissal car pool line, one of my school duties.  I saw his mom ride up in her compact car to pick up his other three brothers.  He smiled at my serenely from the back seat as he glided by, wearing the same sweater he always wears to school.

"TORNADO!"  a teacher screamed, running through the hallways.
"GET IN THE HALL!"
Kids and teachers filtered out and assumed the position.  I motioned to one of the few children I knew to get on his knees and bend over.  I've been through dozens of tornado drills, some of them not drills.  I was embarrassed that I felt like I was going to cry.  This thing could be real.  It could rip the roof off, plow down this janky ass school.  And every kid here could die.  And no one even sounded an alarm, except for the teacher that lost his shit and ran down the halls.  I watched one of my kids, Kavi, his hand over his mouth and the other over his forehead, smash himself into place.

I stood in the dismissal line.  Two police officers walked from their car into the school.  They returned with a student between them, put him in the back of the car and drove away.

"I have to report another testing violation." I told my assistant principal, after saving the information for hours until I signed in the rest of my materials.
"She entered the room, I told her that even teachers could not enter the testing room and she told me to tell you that she was "not going to pee herself", then she entered that little kindergarten bathroom between the two rooms."
I saw the administrator's face turn to disgust.
"That...bathroom?"
"Yeah."
My school is old.  Back when kindergarten rooms had these little water closets off to the side.  The idea that an adult would use THAT BATHROOM and, ignore any semblance of the presence of standardized testing because they refuse to walk down the hall and use an adult bathroom was baffling.  And, I was alienating my new co-workers by telling on them.

I returned to the kindergarten room the next morning, to finish my testing.  The administrator was with me.
"So, I spoke with Ms. Snyder about testing and she kind of grumbled, but it is what it is and I think she understands."  she told me.
Then, she started pushing this 1940s cloak closet in front of the door Ms. Snyder kept invading through.  I grabbed the other side of it and pulled it in front of the door.
"Thanks!" I said sheepishly.
"We will finish today."
Gustavo watched us, wearing his cute daily sweater.
"Ms. Barrett is much younger than you." he said, peacefully.
I cringed.  Shit, am I really so old looking?  I reminded myself that he was seven, didn't know that he had totally crushed my spirit, and that Ms. Barrett really was young and beautiful.

"Kavi,"  I called during dismissal, "I owe you...."
I released a couple of candies into his hand.  I gave them to the kids after they finished the hours long, standardized test.  I watched him when he stood up from the tornado and saw him pull the candy from his pocket that I had given him that day.  It was melted and flat.
He fist pumped me and took the candy from my hand.  He promptly turned and gave one of them to the student behind him.
He was wearing his same outerwear the he has on everyday, but underneath, he had on a long-sleeved red shirt, for Valentine's Day.