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  ______

  I interviewed at Explorers, a public high school of 4,700 students, at the beginning of our summer training. Due to subway block-ups, I arrived half an hour late for my interview. I ran into the English department office, which contained a small anteroom, at the end of which the assistant principal sat behind a Plexiglas wall. Of course, I was flustered and apologizing left and right. But the head of the English department seemed too immersed in the charts on his computer screen to care. He swiveled his chair toward me, asking in an almost bored tone of voice, “So, what are your views on education?”

  I am not certain what he expected me to say, since I was fresh out of college and had never officially taught anything. But whatever I told him must have been what he wanted to hear. “Well,” he said, after a few minutes, “the principal of the school is out today, but I’d basically like to ‘sign you’ now.”

  “Sign you”—it sounded like I was a basketball star. “Can I think about it for a couple of days?” I asked.

  “Well, I don’t think that’s a very good idea, because we’re trying to fill our spots pretty quickly so that we don’t run short. You probably won’t have a position if you wait much longer. . . .”

  I was flattered that someone was so interested in hiring me that they’d push me into a contract on the spot. I signed.

  ______

  Teaching Fellows summer training involved a combination of classes, observations, and supervised student teaching. Mrs. Walker, my cooperating teacher, was in her last summer before retirement. She was about five feet, five inches tall and slender, with smooth, almost black skin and a seemingly infinite wardrobe of elegant summer dresses. She couldn’t have been older than fifty, but her approach to education was traditional, tough-love. “Everyone’s too concerned with making things fun for them,” she said, with just a trace of a Haitian accent in her otherwise impeccable English. She pronounced the word “fun” as though she’d been forced to swallow detergent. “And that’s stupid—they just need to sit still and do the work, whether they like it or not!”

  Mrs. Walker cut an imposing figure, despite her small size. Looking back, I admire her ferocity. She was a tough grader. Very tough. During my first week assisting her that summer, one of the brightest students in the class got a 72 on a test. “Miss, a 72? Why’d I get that?” Then he paused and said, “Wait . . . but that’s good, coming from you, isn’t it? Never mind.” He sat down, looking defeated.

  Another time, a student didn’t answer when I took attendance because he wasn’t paying attention. “Just mark him absent,” Mrs. Walker snorted. Then later she said, “Did you mark him absent? Good!” The student was sitting right there. Her teaching methods motivated the students to write, in an essay on the theme of responsibility in John Knowles’s A Separate Peace, that the character Gene should be forced to sit through Mrs. Walker’s English class as a punishment for pushing his best friend Phinneas out of a tree. I laughed out loud when I read that, and then exhorted them to hurry and write something else before Mrs. Walker caught on.

  The summer school class contained incoming and repeating twelfth-graders. Some were nearly my age, having missed years of school due to pregnancy, immigration, multiple academic failures, or parental illness. Most were only a few credits shy of graduating. They needed this class badly enough to come to an un-air-conditioned, graffiti-tagged classroom with undersized, wobbly desks. When the windows were open, which they had to be in June and July, they let in the smell of garbage rotting in the heat of the Bronx summer.

  “Why are you guys here?” I asked on the first day Mrs. Walker let me teach a lesson on my own. I was hoping to inspire some revelation about the value of education and perseverance.

  “Because second-period English was too early,” said one of the football players whose knees stretched out three feet in front of him. Scattered giggles came from the back of the classroom.

  A pudgy kid by the name of William Williams, whose hair was in neat cornrows, lifted his head up from the desk and said, “Like my momma said—’cause I fucked up.” Then he put his head back down on the desk.

  That’s one way of putting it, I thought. But I said to the kids, “Can anyone tell me what makes the people sitting here in summer school different from their peers, who also flunked English, but are hanging around on the block instead?”

  “We’re stupider?” one girl replied.

  This line of questioning wasn’t going where I had intended.

  “Has anyone read any good books lately?” I asked.

  They all cracked up laughing.

  “Okay, magazines?”

  “You mean over the summer?”

  “Yeah, now.”

  A small, shy girl named Hazel, with light brown ringlets and delicate bone structure, raised her hand. “Miss, I read a book,” she said tentatively.

  “Great! What was it about?”

  “Well, it’s about how not to get pregnant, and how to deal with smooth players who have lots of money.”

  “That sounds informative. Anyone else?”

  “I read Sports Illustrated,” offered a tall, amiable-looking kid named Alcides, sitting near the front.

  No other students raised their hands.

  “Well, okay, what do you guys do in the afternoons, when you go home?” I asked.

  One of the students in the back, a hulking boy named Igor who had a perpetual grimace (and, I would later learn, was the head of the local Albanian gang) deadpanned, “I smoke a fat blunt.”

  The students around him laughed. I stared, disbelieving.

  I told them to take out a piece of paper and write a paragraph explaining their motivation for coming to summer school. “Motivation is why you’d want to do something,” I told them.

  “Miss?”

  “Yes, what’s your name?”

  “Kevin.”

  “Yes, Kevin?”

  “I can’t concentrate.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I keep lookin’ at your pretty face, Miss.”

  I blushed, and muttered, “Come on, Kevin, do you work.” It had not escaped any of these kids that I was only a couple of years older than they were.

  ______

  “Okay, this poem by Robert Frost . . . what’s it about?” I asked them a couple of weeks later. I was teaching “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” an eight-line poem about the impermanence of beauty. There was no response.

  “Guys?” I tried again. Still nothing. They were all sleeping, doodling, or staring out the window. It was Monday. They’d obviously had a long weekend.

  So I did what Mrs. Walker always did in these situations—told them to take out a piece of paper and write an essay. Eric Evans, a tall black kid who would take his contraband do-rag off whenever his unfailingly accurate sixth sense told him that the deans were approaching the classroom, but would put it back the moment they left, wrote one long, graphic sex scene. “I touched my girlfriend’s ebony body in ecstasy, she moaned in ecstasy . . .” it read.

  “Very interesting piece of creative writing,” I scrawled in red pen at the top of his paper, “But I’m unclear on its relevance to the theme of ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay.’”

  The next day I returned the papers. A minute later, Eric called me over. “What does this mean?” he asked, pointing to my comments.

  “It means I didn’t understand how your essay has anything to do with the poem,” I told him. “You talk about sex with your girlfriend for one and a half pages, and then you just tack on a random line from the poem at the end.”

  “Miss.” He grinned slyly. “You know what I mean.”

  I did not, but it didn’t seem wise to press for further explanation.

  Later, when we read “The Road Not Taken,” I explained about Frost’s message of sometimes having to make the more difficult or less popular choices. “The ‘road not taken’ is the decision fewer people make, guys,” I said. “Do you know what that’s like?”

  Eric raised his hand. “Miss
, could this poem be about a woman?”

  I misunderstood him. “You mean, could it apply to a woman as well?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well yeah, sure. Women also have to make difficult choices. . . .” I stopped and look at him, confused.

  “No, I mean, the poem is about women. You choose the one not ‘taken’ . . . and that makes all the difference,” he said. The class laughed, saying, “Ohhh, yeah.”

  Sexual interpretations of the poems became rampant. Listening to them, one might think that Robert Frost had written an entire anthology of erotic poetry—“Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening,” for instance, was met with enthusiastic discussion about the “gay horse” that is trying to figure out its sexual preferences.

  “What?” I asked, bewildered by a reference that seemed to come out of nowhere.

  William Williams appraised me with sympathy. “You know, ‘My little horse must think it’s queer. . . .’ He hasn’t decided if he’s a fag or not, Miss.”

  A chorus of “Yeah, this poem is mad gay,” resounded throughout the room.

  I opted not to miss out on what we call, in education, the “teachable moment.”

  “Okay, first of all, when we’re reading about something that you guys think is ‘gay,’ I want you to say it has ‘homosexual undertones.’ Can you say that?”

  “Homosexual under . . . what?” they said, almost in unison.

  “Undertones.”

  “So this poem has homosexual undertones?”

  “Yeah . . . well, no, not really, but . . . well, I guess that’s one interpretation.”

  ______

  When I wasn’t in Mrs. Walker’s English class, I was attending FA, or “Fellows Advisory,” a special class taught by an experienced teacher wherein all the new fellows were supposed to learn lesson planning and classroom management skills. What it ended up being was more akin to group counseling. We, the new teachers, would all sit around bemoaning the injustices of our respective summer school programs.

  “My students don’t have any books!” one teacher would cry.

  “You think that’s bad? We have kids sitting on the windowsill because there aren’t enough desks!” another would yell.

  “Yeah, well our kids have to take the exact same English class two periods in a row, because they failed both English 7 and 8, but the school can’t be bothered to create two different level summer school classes! These children aren’t learning!”

  “Why do you always call them ‘these children,’ like they’re some sort of aliens? You have to get over your latent racism!”

  It would go on like this until the lead teacher would call us to order, causing us to shift our focus toward lesson planning instead of complaining—much in the manner of our own students—about our schools, our fellow teachers, or our classes.

  ______

  I remain profoundly grateful to those first summer school students who, having been granted a young and inexperienced summer school teacher, didn’t use the opportunity to make my life a living hell. They sometimes slacked off, but they were never rude or disrespectful to this wide-eyed suburban kid from Virginia. I knew other teachers in the Fellows program who dropped out before completing summer school, citing horrific working conditions. One teacher I knew had his classroom set on fire. Thankfully, I never experienced anything like that.

  ______

  Months after summer school ended, when I was well into my first year of teaching, a handsome young man flagged me down a couple of blocks from the school building. He was about a foot taller than I was, and sported a shiny pair of wire-rimmed glasses. Because of this, it took me a moment to recognize him.

  “Miss Garon! Don’t you remember me?” he asked.

  “Eric Evans!” I sputtered, as everything zoomed into focus. “How are you? What are you up to these days?”

  He gave me the rundown: Mrs. Walker had passed him with a 65—one of her more generous acts, I couldn’t help thinking, since he’d done none of the work as far as I could tell—and so he was done with high school. Now he was living with his mom and working at McDonald’s. He was thinking of enrolling in community college.

  “You’re smart! You should do it!”

  He burst out laughing.

  “Eric, what’s so funny?”

  “Miss, you’re always, like, mad happy,” he told me.

  “Is that bad?”

  “No, at first we thought it was annoying, but now . . . ” he paused. “I don’t know. We like it. You just gotta learn to be more strict—otherwise, those little punk-ass freshmen will be walkin’ all over you.”

  He was right, of course. Despite my best efforts to fashion myself as a disciplinarian, the punk-ass freshmen were eating me for lunch.

  “So, you’re saying I should be . . . like . . . meaner?” I asked him, resisting the temptation to whip out a pen and take notes.

  He furrowed his brow. “Nah, not really meaner... just . . . ‘do you,’ Miss. Don’t front. Do you.” He said this with finality.

  I nodded. He gave me a hug and continued on his way. I didn’t see him again after that.

  Looking back, I realize he was giving me good advice. However, it took several years before I trusted myself enough, both as a teacher and a person, to know that he was right.

  YEAR 1

  Welcome to Ms. Garon’s English Class!

  A few rules for everyone’s safety and enjoyment (and 5 points homework credit if you bring this back, signed by a parent):

  1. No sucking candies, lollypops, gum, potato chips, Chinese takeout, Doritos, seed packets, or any other snack/food substances are allowed in this class. To that end, there will be no strolling back and forth from the trash can, either. All wrappers and lollypop sticks will be thrown away before entering the classroom. Drinks in a bottle are allowed, as long as they are kept in their containers and do not cause a mess or a disturbance.

  2. Anyone who shoots garbage at the trash can and misses has to clean up the whole room after class.

  3. Any video games, walk-men, MP3 players, or other devices with or without headphones will be confiscated if I see them, and may or may not be given back. They are to remain in your jacket, pocket, backpack, whatever. Just do not allow them to be visible. Yes, I see those headphones underneath your hood. Do you really think Ms. Garon is blind?

  4. You are to come prepared for class. This means bringing paper, a marble notebook, pens or pencils, any books or packets we are reading, a homework folder, and of course your homework. You will be docked points for being unprepared. Enough said.

  5. Ms. Garon comes to class before the bell, and so should you. Lateness will result in a deduction (that means you lose those points) from your class participation grade. School is your “job.” You need to be here on time. No, I do not care that the line was long at the metal detectors. Wake up earlier. Take a Pop Tart to go. Become friends with the bus driver or the security guards.

  6. If you do not come to class, you will be marked absent. You can only make up work if your absence is excused, meaning that a parent/guardian, doctor, lawyer, judge, or someone else important writes me a note vouching for your whereabouts. Yes, I can always detect forgeries. I am mad smart that way.

  7. You know all those rules about raising your hand when you want to speak, staying in your assigned seat unless the teacher gives you permission to move around, being respectful to your peers and your teacher, and behaving maturely? Yeah, those same rules apply in here, too.

  8. Your grade will be computed in the following manner:

  - 30% class participation (attendance, coming on time, acting alert).

  - 30% homework and class work (Ms. Garon only takes late work if you have an excused absence).

  - 40% tests, quizzes, and special projects (which you can only make up with an excused absence note!).

  9. No coming to class stoned.

  I have read and understand these rules.

  I’m two days into teaching high school English
, and I’m still alive.

  Aside from inappropriate attention and love notes from members of the opposite sex (and I mean from the faculty, not the students), my difficulties have been manifold, including: not having any books for my kids, failing copy machines, classrooms that are assigned to my ninth-grade English class and a tenth-grade social studies class for the same period, having to substitute in a tenth-grade science class for which I wasn’t left a lesson plan or an attendance form, having a nonfunctional key to the teachers’ ladies room (I have to stand outside and wait for someone else to let me in), and being observed by some official from the Board of Education on my second day teaching to see if I was implementing some new literacy program for which I haven’t been trained despite the state mandate that I go to this training. (The school wanted to send me, but it cost $5K. They didn’t have $5K.)

  My kids are great. Yesterday and today, I had them write me “Dear Ms. Garon” letters introducing themselves. Here are some of my favorite sections (exact spelling included):

  “The movie that best describe how I feel is The Fast and The Ferious. I love speed, danger, and risks. My favorite car is a Honda Civic with a big wing in the back. Speed describes the way I live.”

  “I love softball that’s pretty much all I have to tell you . . . other than I have had an opperation for my appendics which I really think you did not want to know that but that’s my only medical problem well I guess not anymore since it’s out of my stomach. Oh yes I do have another medical problem well I have something with my kidney so I get pains sometimes but I haven’t got any pain in a while so you don’t need to worry that’s all you need to know.”

  “I would like you to know that sometimes I have a problem with reading out loud. But I can read good in my mind. Oh and you will have to repeat the homework because sometimes I don’t write it down. Oh and I didn’t see the movie Freddy vs. Jason but I’ve heard it was hot.”