The Reading

One of my sophomores has a picture of her ultrasound on her binder. I avoid the situation, until I realize that she is passing the picture around in class, showing off ghostly images of her baby’s tiny hands.
“Hey, Stephanie, is that your baby?” I ask her after class.
“I think it’s a girl. I’m four months,” she says. The next day she writes a poem in class that says, “I’m a teenager/ I don’t believe in abortion/ I wear my Dodgers windbreaker/ I love my baby.”
The day after, she takes out her lip piercing in class using a mirror, and I ask her, “Stephanie, can you do that after the bell rings?”
She looks up at me for a moment, expressionless.
“Fuck you, I’m going to take a piss,” she says matter-of-factly. She swings her backpack onto her back and walks out. I contemplate how to punish her before realizing that she will transfer soon anyway.
Sure enough, a few days later, she comes by with her transfer paper. “I’m leaving to go to the school for pregnant girls,” she says. “Peace out, miss.”
Five students have transferred to other schools in the past month alone. My remaining students face a slew of temptations to slog through if they want to graduate.
My high school has a reputation for allowing students to get away with anything, and it’s true. Students wander the hallways during class time, knowing that the three security guards on campus are too busy painting over the tagging on the stairwells to bother writing them up for truancy. Students drop into class twenty minutes late, trailing sheepishly behind a teacher on their break. There is no tardy policy in place. The dean, a pudgy, cheerful man too similar to Santa Claus, says, “There isn’t a guard in the boys’ locker room, and they just use it to smoke weed. The whole place is one big hotbox.”
“Miss, don’t you know what kind of high school this is?” one student says. “People smoke out in class when the teacher isn’t looking. The use the little rain coverings of their backpack to cover up the smoke. I’ve seen it!”

If desperate times call for desperate measures, I’m more than desperate. In a fit of inspiration, I contact Ms. Lacey, a teacher at a nearby public school. Ms. Lacey does a project with her students where they each choose their best piece of writing for the year. The students edit their writing multiple times and finally put the finished piece into a real book, published by an online company. Each student gets a copy.
Many of the students choose to publish an assignment about the hardest obstacle they have ever overcome.
I decide to copy this entire project from her, and my vice principal agrees to pay for it. Ms. Lacey graciously offers to bring her students in for a reading of their personal writing.

“So guys, guess what?” I tell my classes. “You are going to be published in a book.”
One boy squints. “What do you mean, like a bunch of pages stapled together?”
“No, a book. A real book. You will be an author.” I hold up an example of the book from Ms. Lacey’s class. It is decorated with miniscule pictures of the students and their family members.
A cheerleader brushes her hair out of her eyes. “Can we have our book look like that?”
“Can we put a bunch of pictures of us? Of everyone in this class?”
“Can we buy copies?”
“I’m nervous my story won’t be any good,” another girl says.
All of my classes seem excited about the project, except my fifth period boys, who are defiant as usual.
“Hell no,” Gonzo says. “I don’t write about personal shit. That’s my shit. I don’t share it with nobody.”
“I don’t want to share. I’m scared they’re going to laugh at me,” another boy in military fatigues says.
“No one will laugh at you,” I say. But I am not confident about this. I have no idea how I’m going to get my students to share their writing with the class, let alone in a book that will be published for everyone to read.
***
A chunky boy wearing a red and white striped polo shirt stands at the front of my classroom. “I was ten when my father left and I took my place as the man of the house,” he says, reading from a book. “It was not my choice for my father to cheat on my mother, but it was my responsibility to help my mom out. It was what I had to do.”
My fifth period is staring up at him. They are silent. This boy is a former student of Ms. Lacey, who is sitting in the back of my class. She urges the class to clap for each student who reads.
“Any questions?” the boy asks after he finishes.
Gonzo raises his hand, and I’m worried he’s going to curse at him in Spanish.
Instead he says, “Did you cry when you wrote this?”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “I had to read it at an assembly, and I cried even before I started. I cried the whole time. But I used to be an angry kid, and ever since I wrote this, I’m not angry anymore.”
Johnny, whose Rockies baseball hat is resting on his desk, raises his hand. “How old are you?” he asks.
“Sixteen,” the boy says.
“Just like me,” Johnny mutters.

The day after the reading, one girl who is absolutely silent in class comes up to me and says, “I know what I’m going to write about, miss.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to write about my mom. We walked to the store yesterday and I told her I’m going to be in a book and she said, ‘Why don’t you tell my story?’ Her mom used to beat her, and she has ten brothers, and she has lots and lots of stories. So does my uncle. So does my whole family.”
“So many stories to tell,” I said.
“Yeah, I do,” she says. “Everyone has so many stories.”
I’m just beginning this project. I can only anticipate the stories that will be told, and what will happen to my students after they tell them. But seeing the smallest amount of promise in their eyes makes me feel less hopeless, and I hope it makes them feel the same way.

The Faculty Christmas Party.

Two weeks before the last day of school in December, I get a pink flier on a half-sheet of paper in my box, which says, “Come to the faculty cafeteria to practice caroling for the Christmas party!”
In the cafeteria, the college counselor sits at a lone table wearing a Christmas hat, holding a stack of printed lyrics to “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”
“We’re practicing for the Faculty Breakfast,” she says. “This is what we’re singing.”
I look more closely at the lyrics, which are rewritten to say, “Oh the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me: seven seniors sleeping, six cell phones ringing, five IEP’s!”
“That’s okay,” I say, beginning to walk backwards out of the cafeteria.
“Come on!” she urges. “You’ve never been to one of our breakfasts before. It’s really nice. Everyone goes to the cafeteria and they serve us a nice, catered breakfast and people sing songs.”
My friend who works at a private Jewish school received a Visa gift card loaded with seven hundred and fifty dollars as a holiday bonus, donated by the PTA. I receive a tiny pin decorated with a snowman’s face and a free breakfast. I’m hoping for something in the vein of lox, béchamel sauce, maybe with a swan carved out of a melon.
Upon arrival, the fluorescent-lit cafeteria is decorated with white tablecloths, and a karaoke machine is set up in the corner next to a fake Christmas tree. The principal is wearing a red striped apron, scooping potatoes from a pool of orange oil onto my plate, along with some gray scrambled eggs and a ball of crumpled bacon pieces. “Merry Christmas!” he says.
I arrive too late at faculty meals to sit with my real faculty friends, which is how I end up sitting next to the librarian, the Spanish teacher, and across from the middle school students who played in the Christmas band. The MC, a counselor sporting a thick mustache, grabs the microphone.
“We’re starting the festivities soon,” he says. “First, let’s introduce the woman with the vision of God! She worked in the front office for at least 200 years!”
He hands the microphone to an older black woman with elaborately curled hair, who rises up her hands and says, “I see God in all of you. You all helped me through my bereavement and glory to God who saves us and takes us under his wing!” The audience smiles and gives her a round of applause.
Meanwhile, I wait next to the high-tech toaster, designed like a conveyor belt; slices of toast are dropped in one end and plop out the other. The toaster is stuck.
The special education director kicks it with his black hiking boot.
“That should do it,” he says.
“That won’t help!” cries the office assistant.
I decide to eat my bread untoasted, and return to my seat to pick at my eggs with a plastic fork and talk as sparingly to the people around me as possible. The show has just begun.
“Here is Mr. Diaz,” the MC says, “Impressing us with his singing skills yet again.”
Without warning, the karaoke machine clanks up, and a young male teacher I have seen in passing, wearing a burgundy blazer, begins an earnest rendition of “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.”
Everyone stares at him in amazement, eating their eggs silently. His polished rendition would be excellent for any nightclub or shopping venue. “He’s just great, isn’t he?” the Spanish teacher murmurs.
“Just great,” the MC blabbers, “and next up, we have Ms. Charles, who is directing our school play!”
Ms. Charles, a large black woman who is dressed in a ruffled shirt, pencil skirt, and stiletto heels, clearly once had bigger dreams, like being on Broadway.
“Please excuse me, it’s early in the morning,” she says, clearing her throat like Mariah Carey. I’m waiting for the music to begin when I realize in horror that this is an unaccompanied song; just Ms. Charles and the microphone.
She leans in close enough to hear breathing on the mic and closes her eyes, which is disconcerting, especially as I’m munching on bacon.
“There was a baby Jesus,” she sings in a high, quavering voice. Everyone is mesmerized. I look down at my eggs, turning pink.
“In the manger,” she warbles. “The baby Jesus in the manger.” She whispers a line, and then belts out the next as though she were playing Effie White in a production of “Dreamgirls.” After a long, excruciating ballad, she finally finishes and takes a bow.
“Next we have the line dancers,” the MC announces. A pregnant counselor, another wearing a cowboy hat, and the whole large group of Filipino teachers take the stage. The karaoke machine cranks out “Achy-Breaky Heart” for at least five minutes while they line dance. After this, the faculty chorus performs, and no one laughs at the rewritten lyrics to “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” I feel guilty that I did not participate, but not guilty enough to wander up and join, as some teachers do.
“Somebody already put that on YouTube!” the MC cracks. “Now, for our final number.”
Ms. Charles and Mr. Diaz arrange themselves for the finale, with Ms. Charles sitting on Mr. Diaz’ lap. She musses his hair and rubs his chest. “Ew,” one middle schooler says. They begin an elaborately choreographed rendition of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” about a guy cheating on his girlfriend.
“Please don’t go, baby,” Ms. Charles cooes, clinging to his shirt.
“It ain’t so, baby, I have to send this text,” Mr. Diaz ad-libs, and the audience howls.
“They’re just great!” the librarian shrieks.
Everyone gives them a standing ovation and rushes off to pick at the last of the free food. “Take two plates for lunch,” the Spanish teacher advises. Another teacher and myself are trying to get the last of the coffee out of the silver urns without scalding ourselves. After the requisite raffle that I don’t win, we all start to wander back to our classrooms to prepare for the last day.
“Wait, before you go, we are giving everyone a complimentary mouse pad with a picture of our beautiful high school on it,” the principal announces.
I’m appreciative of the breakfast. What better way to show your teachers love than feed them potatoes? But when I try to commiserate about the performances with someone, anyone, no one seems to think them odd or weird at all, which is, of course, the weirdest part.