Itinerant

I started Kindergarten in the Spring, as the school district had “A” and “B” grade levels in those days.  When I was in 6^th grade, “A” and “B” were eliminated and the school year, for every student, then started in September.  The principal came to our classroom and explained that the brighter students would spend only one semester in 7^th grade at junior high and the others would be “scrubs” for a year and a half.  A list of students who were considered for the abbreviated 7^th grade was read.  There were nine boys and I was one of only two girls.  The boys, it had been decided would do the quickie 7^th grade but the other girl and I, as well as the rest of the 6^th graders would spend an extra semester at Millikan Junior High.  I took a lot of electives, the only one of value that I recall was typing.  I earned money in college typing term papers.  There were also art, music and drama classes, which were fun but also codified my lack of talent. 

For my three years of part time ESL teaching, I teach level 1B.  Now, the A and B levels have been eliminated.  When I considered students for promotion at the end of the semester, I bore in mind that students would either be promoted to the second level or have to endure the rudimentary basics (Hello.  My name is Diego.  I’m from Honduras.  What’s your name?) for a full school year or, plunge into the much more challenging 2^nd level.  I know that a number of students who weren’t promoted are bored and, I imagine that a number of the level 2 students are struggling.

I am amazed to have been offered a nearly full-time schedule.  I have an early morning class at a modern elementary school, an environmental science magnet, named in honor of Al Gore and Rachel Carson.  The class is tiny and a mixture of level 1 and 2 students.  I haven’t taught a mixed level course, nor the materials that formerly constituted level 1A. I am also new to teaching off campus at a branch location and pushing a wheelie cart full of teaching supplies.  The sign-in that I sign daily at the elementary school lists me as an “itinerant” teacher.  That’s pretty much a description that applies to all of Adult Education.  And most of the students too.

Among the young moms in the branch class is Wilma, the mother of a ten-year-old student at the school.  Wilma has made sure that we are all aware that she is suffering from cancer.  Her head is shaved.  She reports enduring half a dozen surgeries, with two more on the schedule for the fall.  Her husband is a long-distance truck driver, so she relies on public transportation for her medical appointments. Wilma leaves the class ostentatiously and frequently, reporting in an outside voice that she needs to inject morphine.  She helps the other students with their English, about 75% correctly, not too much lower than my own percentage.  In addition to help with lessons, Wilma has offered job leads, baby-sitting services and all manner of advice to the other students.  I have to stay with her after class while she uses the microwave in my classroom to heat her son’s lunch.  She reports that the child is autistic and eats only a limited diet.  

Wilma speaks often about remaining cheerful and helpful in the face of adversity and suffering.  The situation she describes is dreadful.  If Wilma’s description of her plight is unexaggerated, I am a terrible person, but something feels a bit fishy and perhaps Munchhausen-ish.  I sense that the other students are a bit uncomfortable too.  The pattern is that she gloms immediately onto any new student who arrives and frequently these students don’t return for a second day.  It becomes, I suspect, apparent, that participation in this small class requires bonding with needy/controlling Wilma.  As the instructor, I don’t have a way out and I can’t imagine a delicate way to ask Wilma to stop talking about her cancer and special needs kid and quit trying to ingratiate herself so much to the other students.

My morning class ends at 11:30 and fortunately it takes only about 20 minutes to return to my home office and tend to my business.  Many teachers have morning and then evening classes and a number don’t live close enough to campus to return in-between. At 9:00 p.m. the faculty parking lot is like a scene from The Walking Dead.   I think, although I’m only two weeks in, that I’ll be able to hack it although I haven’t started my Saturday morning teaching schedule yet.  There is less time for creative lesson planning so for the classes I haven’t taught before, I am relying more than I had previously on the textbook and pre-made resources.

My evening class is in the largest classroom in the school.  There are sixty students enrolled but level 1 ESL classes have huge attrition rates.  I’m happy in the big room as I can actually move between the aisles and have students work in groups.  There are a number of students I’ve had before.  I feel bad for them having to start at the beginning of the book but there are also brand-new students who can’t even count to ten in English.  I try to offer something for everybody but the “everybody” of beginning ESL classes is so fungible that the middle is in constant flux.

I am hoping that my morning class expands to a degree that mutes Wilma’s influence.  It will never be a huge class so there will be an opportunity to give the students enough attention to effectuate genuine progress.  Students will come and go from the big evening class, but I know that there will be a handful of success stories. The teaching time flies by and it is the only time of day when I completely lose myself and experience palpable satisfaction.

It’s the other stuff that’s wearisome.  The district requires a lot of busy paperwork and my own school has its own requirements, many of which are time-wasting.  There is a new and very cumbersome attendance system that the district has contracted for.  Unfortunately, it is designed for elementary schools, so it is particularly clunky for use in adult school record keeping.  Students need to sign contracts about district computer use and releases for use of their photos in promotional materials.  There’s a dress code and parking rules and tons of “goal setting” documentation.  Most of the materials are translated into Spanish but a bunch of my Spanish speakers barely read and write.  And there are students who don’t speak Spanish at all.

There is a good size list of bureaucratic requirements that could make me succumb to crankiness.  But former students come to see me during the break and bring little gifts.  I’m getting to know my current students.  Many are from farther south-Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru…I know that many will drop out.  Schedules change.  Learning a language is difficult.  The class is too easy.  The class is too hard.  The teacher is too weird.  The books are too expensive.  But even those who show up only once, have taken risks the likes of which I never have or likely will.  The textbook I use has a unit about free time and vacations.  I try to teach it a couple of times but while I dwell constantly on my own recreational activities and travel, the unit offers no real relatable language for my students and I skip it.  I try to combat my own frustration and fatigue by reminding myself about the vacationless lives of the students that I’m privileged to serve.

The 1991 film The Quarrel depicts a conversation between two Holocaust survivors.  For one, the experience has served to deepen his belief in the existence of God.  On the other hand, the Shoah cements his friend’s atheism.  Both of these disparate reactions to the trauma make sense. There’s no right answer.

It is unfair to compare the current state of American democracy with the Shoah except that the response to the present times, among reasonably intelligent people, falls at different ends of the spectrum.  Himself writes hundreds of postcards prior to the 2018 elections but I imagine this is to placate me.  His consumption of news is cursory, and he is nearly militantly detached.  He trivializes my obsession with political news as akin to sports fandom.  I admit that my eye on Washington D.C. has an element of scorekeeping to it, but I am desperate for a renaissance of sanity.  I respect Himself’s instincts towards self-preservation and I suppose he grudgingly accepts my own reaction to what has, since November of 2016, never ceased to feel like an emergency. Trumpterror looms over everything, even if I turn off the news for a couple of days.  Spending my days and nights with demonized immigrants in some ways exacerbates my dyspepsia. Good things aren’t as good and bad things are worse as the kleptocracy rages on.  The results of the 2018 mid-terms were a brief respite from angst. As November 3, 2020 grows nigh, I expect that I’ll end up in a giant lather.  My teaching gig allows me to be sort of an ambassador of true Americanism and is a comfort when I remember to think about it that way.  For my students, lack of vacation or free time activities isn’t a choice. Without going 100% martyr, I do intend to use some of my 2020 free and vacation time like I did in 2018, when it became clear that individual schlubs, like me, can work together and effectuate change.