Wednesday, March 03, 2004
Behind Locked Doors
Every so often I volunteer in the Underwood High School Discipline Office. The school has two chief disciplinarians, Mr. McDonald and Mr. Cogan. Both have been in the business for years and are quite skilled in their work. And let me tell you the task is not an easy one. They have a large office in the basement, one that is twice as large as the standard classroom. There is a reason for its size. Dozens of students are sent down for discipline each day for every conceivable reason, ranging from the minor (wearing a hat in violation of school dress code) to the extreme (smuggling drugs...or trying to through the metal detectors). According to Mr. McDonald, the same kids come in everyday. It's a veritable gallery of rogues, the same lineups of usual suspects on an unceasing rotation, in the door, out the door, in the door, out the door, and so on. And that's not even including the kids who come in asking for a key to the bathroom. Everyday. Like clockwork, or so they tell me. And that despite receiving the same answers every time. There is no key to be found in the discipline office.
Originally I only visited when there were discipline problems that needed to be resolved in my classes. Now I go down there in search of management strategies. The students remain challenging and defiant in my classroom, and no one proves quite as effective at asserting influence over the student body as the school police and the disciplinarians. They have a keen grasp of power, how it works and how to wield it. And for some reason their threats seem to stick where mine slide away off the Teflon coating of my students' apathetic disdain. We have a symbiotic relationship, the disciplinarians and I. They let me stick around and watch them work, and in exchange, I file paperwork or sign suspension slips. Doing what needs to be done. In some ways being a disciplinarian is a far more straightforward job than being an educator. And despite having to deal with the very worst of the students...the violent, disruptive, or criminally insane...at the end of the day, the work stays at school. How they get through the day, I'm still not sure. Maybe it's good humor, cynicism tempered by amusement at the addled and looking-glass cracked view of the world the students hold as the enter the office. Students who swear so much they don't know they're cursing, or present a story with bald faced contradcitions so blatant and so insurmountable, that most outsiders simply could not understand it. No...there is no clearly obvious key to their battle hardened determination, at least, none that I can see in the discipline office.
As I was filing suspension notices on Monday, for example, we had one student who had been sent downstairs for insulting a teacher after she asked him to put his comb away during class. I was there along with Mr. McDonald and Ms. Wintergood (a math teacher who has a long history of volunteering with the disciplinarians), and we listened to this story with amusement as he told how the teacher obviously was trying to "play him." It wasn't the rule, he claimed, that made him so angry, but the teacher's means of enforcing it. She was trying to be smart, through her words and body language. (Being smart, as I have mentioned before, is a derogatory thing in the context of Underwood student culture. The nearest I can translate, it means "rude" or "insulting") I sat there marveling and trying desperately not to intervene as Ms. Wintergood elaborated on the ideal nature of the teacher-student relationship.(i.e. If a teacher asks a student to do something, they should do it...especially if it involves calssroom management.) Eventually I chimed in with one comment: Not all teachers are out to play you. We are trying to work towards a greater good in our classrooms. But this comment only provoked scoffs from the others in the room: chuckles at my idealism and naivete from the veteran teachers and grumbles of stifled belief from the youngster. I thought I could unlock this student's potential, but he was a senior, and there was no key in the discipline office.
Finally that day, Mr. McDonald took me aside and showed me something fascinating. "You know what, Mr. _____ ?" he began. "Let me show you what the students at this school are capable of and why security is the way it is around here." He walked over to one of the two smaller rooms adjoining the main office. He unlocked the door and revealed it to be the storage room for confiscated cell phones, CD players and other such contraband that students attempt to bring to school through the metal detectors.
"Mr. _____, let me explain. The kids from the south or far northeast parts of the city, they are never late. They take the bus every day, they have a set itinerary, and even if it takes them an hour and a half to get to school, they get here on time. I would strongly prefer to let these students carry a CD player with them on the bus. They deserve to listen to some music during their trip. But I can't do that. And you want to know why?" Here I said it was because students were using the players in class rather than studying. And I was partly right. But there was more to it!
"No...we can't let CD players in because kids were using them to smuggle razor blades into the school." Apparently, some genius figured out that if you take the batteries out of a standard size CD player, you can use it to smuggle in a 5 pack of razor blades. All of the CD players in his office...9 mailing crates worth if you can believe it, the thought that they could all be bringing in razor blades to the school seems both absurd and terrifying. Impossible and yet intimidating, all at the same time. So now they confiscate them at the door, along with the cell phones which were being used to sell dope.
"But it doesn't stop there," McDonald continued. "Now kids are still smuggling in razor blades, they just hide them in their mouths."
It was about then that my jaw really hit the floor. The raw violence in this world, this blackboard jungle, the fear and hatred that must exist such that students would be driven to smuggle razor blades in their mouths to a place of learning. I pondered this as I watched Mr. McDonald take the CD player he had used to demonstrate the razor smuggling and place it gingerly back in its crate. Here in the United States, we live in a civilized world, a sanitized world, an idealized world of idealized dreams. The bloody savage side of human nature is still very much alive beneath the surface, and I can see it in the youth. Just a week ago, there was a shooting outside Underwood. No one was hurt, thankfully, but the kid was a repeat offender who was involved in the death of an officer (to a heart attack following a struggle) the year before. And now he's back, this time with a gun. One of my students shot himself a few weeks back. He showed up for the first time in weeks in my class on Tuesday. He's gone again. And who knows where? What is one to do in the face of such tragedy? Each day I ponder this question and look to my colleagues for inspiration. I think the disciplinarians may be on to something with their three ring circus view of the immature barbarity around them.
Still, as I watched Mr. McDonald relock the confiscated materials locker, one certainty was confirmed. There is no quick fix to the problems of the Underwood High School community or similar communities in cities across the country. There is no easy way to bear the pain. There is no key to success to be found in the discipline office. Just new insights, new possibilities, and a few new ideas that I might incorporate into my own preexistent attitudes and maybe become more capable of controlling the frustrations of both myself and my students.
And with that thought in my mind and our conversation ended, I bid farewell to Mr. McDonald and the discipline office, and left to unlock my classroom for third period.
Every so often I volunteer in the Underwood High School Discipline Office. The school has two chief disciplinarians, Mr. McDonald and Mr. Cogan. Both have been in the business for years and are quite skilled in their work. And let me tell you the task is not an easy one. They have a large office in the basement, one that is twice as large as the standard classroom. There is a reason for its size. Dozens of students are sent down for discipline each day for every conceivable reason, ranging from the minor (wearing a hat in violation of school dress code) to the extreme (smuggling drugs...or trying to through the metal detectors). According to Mr. McDonald, the same kids come in everyday. It's a veritable gallery of rogues, the same lineups of usual suspects on an unceasing rotation, in the door, out the door, in the door, out the door, and so on. And that's not even including the kids who come in asking for a key to the bathroom. Everyday. Like clockwork, or so they tell me. And that despite receiving the same answers every time. There is no key to be found in the discipline office.
Originally I only visited when there were discipline problems that needed to be resolved in my classes. Now I go down there in search of management strategies. The students remain challenging and defiant in my classroom, and no one proves quite as effective at asserting influence over the student body as the school police and the disciplinarians. They have a keen grasp of power, how it works and how to wield it. And for some reason their threats seem to stick where mine slide away off the Teflon coating of my students' apathetic disdain. We have a symbiotic relationship, the disciplinarians and I. They let me stick around and watch them work, and in exchange, I file paperwork or sign suspension slips. Doing what needs to be done. In some ways being a disciplinarian is a far more straightforward job than being an educator. And despite having to deal with the very worst of the students...the violent, disruptive, or criminally insane...at the end of the day, the work stays at school. How they get through the day, I'm still not sure. Maybe it's good humor, cynicism tempered by amusement at the addled and looking-glass cracked view of the world the students hold as the enter the office. Students who swear so much they don't know they're cursing, or present a story with bald faced contradcitions so blatant and so insurmountable, that most outsiders simply could not understand it. No...there is no clearly obvious key to their battle hardened determination, at least, none that I can see in the discipline office.
As I was filing suspension notices on Monday, for example, we had one student who had been sent downstairs for insulting a teacher after she asked him to put his comb away during class. I was there along with Mr. McDonald and Ms. Wintergood (a math teacher who has a long history of volunteering with the disciplinarians), and we listened to this story with amusement as he told how the teacher obviously was trying to "play him." It wasn't the rule, he claimed, that made him so angry, but the teacher's means of enforcing it. She was trying to be smart, through her words and body language. (Being smart, as I have mentioned before, is a derogatory thing in the context of Underwood student culture. The nearest I can translate, it means "rude" or "insulting") I sat there marveling and trying desperately not to intervene as Ms. Wintergood elaborated on the ideal nature of the teacher-student relationship.(i.e. If a teacher asks a student to do something, they should do it...especially if it involves calssroom management.) Eventually I chimed in with one comment: Not all teachers are out to play you. We are trying to work towards a greater good in our classrooms. But this comment only provoked scoffs from the others in the room: chuckles at my idealism and naivete from the veteran teachers and grumbles of stifled belief from the youngster. I thought I could unlock this student's potential, but he was a senior, and there was no key in the discipline office.
Finally that day, Mr. McDonald took me aside and showed me something fascinating. "You know what, Mr. _____ ?" he began. "Let me show you what the students at this school are capable of and why security is the way it is around here." He walked over to one of the two smaller rooms adjoining the main office. He unlocked the door and revealed it to be the storage room for confiscated cell phones, CD players and other such contraband that students attempt to bring to school through the metal detectors.
"Mr. _____, let me explain. The kids from the south or far northeast parts of the city, they are never late. They take the bus every day, they have a set itinerary, and even if it takes them an hour and a half to get to school, they get here on time. I would strongly prefer to let these students carry a CD player with them on the bus. They deserve to listen to some music during their trip. But I can't do that. And you want to know why?" Here I said it was because students were using the players in class rather than studying. And I was partly right. But there was more to it!
"No...we can't let CD players in because kids were using them to smuggle razor blades into the school." Apparently, some genius figured out that if you take the batteries out of a standard size CD player, you can use it to smuggle in a 5 pack of razor blades. All of the CD players in his office...9 mailing crates worth if you can believe it, the thought that they could all be bringing in razor blades to the school seems both absurd and terrifying. Impossible and yet intimidating, all at the same time. So now they confiscate them at the door, along with the cell phones which were being used to sell dope.
"But it doesn't stop there," McDonald continued. "Now kids are still smuggling in razor blades, they just hide them in their mouths."
It was about then that my jaw really hit the floor. The raw violence in this world, this blackboard jungle, the fear and hatred that must exist such that students would be driven to smuggle razor blades in their mouths to a place of learning. I pondered this as I watched Mr. McDonald take the CD player he had used to demonstrate the razor smuggling and place it gingerly back in its crate. Here in the United States, we live in a civilized world, a sanitized world, an idealized world of idealized dreams. The bloody savage side of human nature is still very much alive beneath the surface, and I can see it in the youth. Just a week ago, there was a shooting outside Underwood. No one was hurt, thankfully, but the kid was a repeat offender who was involved in the death of an officer (to a heart attack following a struggle) the year before. And now he's back, this time with a gun. One of my students shot himself a few weeks back. He showed up for the first time in weeks in my class on Tuesday. He's gone again. And who knows where? What is one to do in the face of such tragedy? Each day I ponder this question and look to my colleagues for inspiration. I think the disciplinarians may be on to something with their three ring circus view of the immature barbarity around them.
Still, as I watched Mr. McDonald relock the confiscated materials locker, one certainty was confirmed. There is no quick fix to the problems of the Underwood High School community or similar communities in cities across the country. There is no easy way to bear the pain. There is no key to success to be found in the discipline office. Just new insights, new possibilities, and a few new ideas that I might incorporate into my own preexistent attitudes and maybe become more capable of controlling the frustrations of both myself and my students.
And with that thought in my mind and our conversation ended, I bid farewell to Mr. McDonald and the discipline office, and left to unlock my classroom for third period.
