karenika - enough

Enough

I took the job because I believed in its message.

I quit my high-paying part-time management job to become a 5th grade teacher. I spent hours working on the application, stayed up nights to prepare for the interview. I had found my life's purpose; I wanted to Teach For America. I didn't listen to anyone's words of caution. My mom thought I was too educated to teach elementary school, which offended me then and offends me now. My friends thought I was insane to leave the cushy, ladder-climbing job where I had put in 120-hour weeks to achieve my current success. I didn't listen to anyone.

My enthusiasm increased all through the summer. Despite the fact that I had to spend five weeks in a dormitory, away from my husband immediately after we came back from our honeymoon. Despite the fact that we woke up at 6am and went to bed at 2am. Despite the fact that the kids never listened to a word we taught. The first night of the Institute, the summer training program, I called my husband after watching the previous year's training video. "I don't understand why everybody in the world doesn't want to do this," I said and I believed every word of it.

Things started going wrong before the first week of school ended. My third-grade appointment was switched to fifth-grade two days before we expected students to arrive. My room was changed three times. On the first day of school, the principal came to introduce herself to the students and said, "Ms. Grunberg was scared to teach fifth grade, but I told her she would to fine, right?" The class nodded enthusiastically.

I put my training to use immediately. I made rules. Consequences. I gave an exam on the rules. I was strict. I was mean. I didn't ask for approval. I prepared ten-page lesson plans. I created my posters. I memorized my student's names. I made sure my lesson plans covered all the modalities. I spent every waking moment outside the classroom working to make myself a better teacher: grading, planning, calling parents. I was all that a first year teacher was supposed to be. Or so I thought.

It look less than a month for the problems to start. I will change the names but the stories are true. Kiram kicked Alisha while I was busy helping Dana. Alisha yelled out loud and kicked Kiram back. Before I made my way back to that end of the classroom, the six sitting at Alisha's table each had a story about who was right and who did what first. Alisha told me to do something. "It's not fair, Ms. Grunberg, he kicked me first!" she yelled indignantly. I agreed with her. I called Kiram's parents that night and listened to an hour-long story about how they had tried everything and simply didn't know how to handle him anymore. The next day, Kiram kicked Alisha during lunch.

Joseph wanted to go to the bathroom in the middle of Math class. The fifth-graders had been punished because of a recent bulletin-board incident and weren't allowed to go to the bathroom during class. Joseph was in class when the Staff Director explained the rule and I reiterated this fact. He picked up his pens and started banging them against the table. Thirty-minutes and three calls to the office later, he had gotten up and was kicking the blackboard. The other students begged me to make him stop. I was completely useless. I wasn't allowed to touch Joseph. The office had no one to send up. I knew that if I told him he could go to the bathroom, this would be the beginning of the end. So we waited. If I didn't have a class of thirty-five fifth-graders staring me in the eye, I would have cried. Instead, I ignored him. As much as one can ignore a stomping, kicking eleven-year-old. Three hours later, the guidance counselor came and removed him from my classroom. This exact scene repeated several more times in the next three months.

Paper planes and erasers flew in the classroom regularly. Students got up and sat down at will regardless of classroom activity. Kids yelled, cried, kicked, punched, and screamed in each period. One day, I had to separate two of my students as they threw textbooks at each other. One of them sat on top of the other and punched him with vigor. When the parents talked to the principal, he said it was because they had a crush on each other.

My personal life had disintegrated into nothing. The school day ended with the last drop of my energy and I crawled home several hours later, completed more lesson plans, graded hundreds of papers and slipped under the covers. My husband wasn't allowed to complain or even ask for a few hours of time. I had none to give.

During Christmas break, I thought long and hard about the commitment I had made. I talked to other teachers who were having a hard time. I asked for advice. I begged for ideas, tips. anything helpful. I thought of quitting. Daily. Sometimes hourly. But I couldn't let myself do it. This was supposed to be my calling.

A few weeks after Winter Break, I was given profound advice and decided I had to renew the integrity in my classroom. I always told my students that if they continually misbehaved I would call their parents. We'd had five principals in six months, so I knew the kids had no respect for school administration, but most of them still feared their parents. They knew I had a good rapport with most of their parents and they didn't want to get punished when they got home. I reiterated my promise to call their parents and told them not to test me.

Ramon Quinines was the first to try. In the middle of Reading, his high pitched dolphin noises covered the classroom, causing instant complaints. I warned him to stay quiet. Minutes later, he started throwing erasers at the other students. I gave him his second warning. When he started throwing pencils, I took out my new cell phone and started punching in his mother's number. Ramon listed apology after apology. "I won't do it again Ms. Grunberg. I swear. It wasn't me. They started it first." I wasn't listening. I had a strong relationship with his step-mother and was delighted to find her home. "Ms. Quinines? Hi this is Ms. Grunberg. I am sorry to disturb you but I am calling because we're trying to do reading in class and Ramon is throwing pencils and erasers instead of listening so I thought you might want to talk to him." I said politely into the phone and then handed it over to Ramon. All thirty-four faces watched Ramon as tears came down his cheeks. He didn't talk to me for the rest of the day. But the class was quiet.

I repeated the same thing four times that week. I called Joseph's mom, at work. Alisha's mom, at home. I invited parents to come sit in class. My class became quieter but I knew it was all over. My self-respect had disappeared completely. Now, I thought about quitting every minute of every day.

Two weeks later, I stood outside my college class, with a drop-form in my hands. I had spent the last three hours crying, torturing myself and putting myself down. I flipped my cell phone open to call my husband for the sixth time that night and scrolled through the names to find his. I landed on Joseph's mother's number which was one below my husband's. I stared at her number for twenty seconds and decided that was it. I didn't want to make one more parent phone call in my life. I had accepted this job to make a difference in the world. Making a kid cry and embarrassing him in front of his peers wasn't the kind of difference I had envisioned.

I quit two days later.

I still miss my kids. I think of them weekly. I feel embarrassed at failing them. Failing myself. But I stand by my decision; it was one of the few sound ones I made that year.

January 21, 2004 | link | share[]