COLUMNAS SOPORTE DEL SISTEMA MOTRIZ

Back in Jacksonville, I have a speech to write. I sit at my dining-room table and hammer away on my laptop. In this speech, I want to do what Beth suggested, which is show how I found my way to Jacksonville as a Teach For America corps member, leaving out the part about trying to prove myself to an ex-girlfriend. But I also want to be honest about how hard this work is, that I have moments of despair, and yet, I keep going because it still feels important, because my students deserve teachers who don’t give up on them. I say that our training had been rigorous, but that nothing externally can really prepare you for the first time a ten-year-old cusses you out in class. I frame my message with song lyrics from The Fray: “Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same.” The words come freely because they accurately represent what I think and feel.

I type my last sentence, save my work, and e-mail the draft to Betsy. She replies quickly, saying she loves it but needs to pass it on to her supervisor before she can give the official thumbs up. I don’t hear anything further about the speech until the day of the event.

When I check my phone after school, I have a voicemail from Betsy. “Hi Chris,” she says. “I just wanted to talk to you about your speech. There’s one thing I’m

concerned about. Let’s have a quick conversation before dinner tonight, okay?” I call Betsy back, but she doesn’t answer. I leave a voicemail asking what we need to talk about. I’m wondering why this conversation has to happen so last minute. And why do we have to talk about this when everyone else is around?

I shower and throw on some dress pants, a shirt, and a tie. I’m running late. I drive by myself, with Mapquest directions in hand, to a better-than-chain-but-not-quite- luxury hotel. I look for and find a spot in a parking garage. I ask a man in the hotel lobby where the Teach For America event is, and he points me in the direction of a ballroom. I’m relieved when I see friends and colleagues standing in line at a check-in table outside the room. Betsy sees me approach and comes toward me.

I ignore her warm greeting and launch in. “So what’s the concern?” I ask. “Well, there’s one line,” she says.

“Let me guess,” I say. “The line about getting cussed out?” “Yes,” she says.

I shake my head. I’m exaggerating everything in my head, deciding I’ve going to have to resort to playing used-car salesman, which I hadn’t signed up for. Why hadn’t Betsy said this a few days ago so we could have a real conversation about it? This will be my only time in two years that I get upset with Betsy, the consummate professional, more an expert than almost anyone I work with, in or outside of Teach For America. She cares about kids, and she makes an effort to get to know the corps members under her

supervision. She also senses my anger, and she seems far from her comfort zone, like this is about the last conversation in the world she wants to be having at this very moment. Best I can tell, this stance is almost surely coming from above her anyway.

Still, I can’t resist getting on the high road for just a couple more minutes before I submit because it’s my only option. “So we just go around telling half-truths?” I say.

Oh how quickly I’ve forgotten about my own “tidying up” for Betsy during the co-investigation process. Anything to look good, to hide the uglier parts, to make her

95

think I had things all figured out. And come to think of it, maybe that’s really why I’m angry anyway. I’ve heard it said that when we react negatively toward other people, it’s often because they’ve reminded us about parts of ourselves that we don’t like. Maybe this is why I write memoir because I do think the whole, messy truth is more compelling than

marketing copy. But that doesn’t make me beyond my own performing and posturing. As she always seems to be, Betsy’s response is gentle and disarming, vulnerable even. “I’ve got mixed feelings about this,” she says. “We’ve got to be careful that people don’t walk away hearing and seeing only one image of our kids.”

I wonder why we have such low expectations of people that we expect them to be unable to hold onto the paradox that a child can misbehave and even blatantly disrespect an adult at times and still be worthy of love and a quality education? It’s an important nuance, it seems to me, about the teaching life. I don’t say any of this to Betsy in the moment, though. I just tell her that my speech – as written – is fair to and even honors my students.

She nods but doesn’t say anything else. “So bottom line, I get rid of that line?” I ask. “Yes,” she says.

Just like that, the conversation is over. I check in and walk into the ballroom. The floor has maroon carpeting and a chandelier hangs from the ceiling. Round tables are spread around the room with a speaker’s podium and microphone near one of the walls. Silverware, plates, glasses, bread, and nametags wait for us on tables. I sit down at an assigned table with corps members I know, and a few school administrators and business types I don’t. I guess who people are by the racial dynamics: corps members, some mix,

but more white; school administrators, mostly black; and donors, mostly white. We try to make polite small talk with each other. I say hello to the others at my table, then I glance down at my speech. I cross out the line in question and write down a weaker replacement. We eat a fine meal of salad, chicken, vegetables, and cake.

After dinner, Crysta, Teach For America Jacksonville’s 26-year-old Executive Director, welcomes everyone and introduces another corps member who goes up to the podium and gives a short but charged speech about working with her students. Then Betsy introduces me, and I making my way to the front of the room. My knees shake as all eyes in the room focus on me. I start talking. It’s like I’m back in a higher-stakes college speech class. Read the words, look up, find some friendly eyes, keep reading. Annunciate, try not to be monotone, act like you mean what you’re saying. Like a good soldier, I leave out the line I’m supposed to, and I look directly at Betsy as I delivered the new line. I can only hope that she and I are the only ones in the room who know a part of me is seething. The speech seems to be well-received because afterwards, several people I don’t even know come up to me, introduce themselves and thank me for my words.

A couple weeks after the speech, FCAT week arrives. No more practice testing or warnings sent home or lectures from me; it’s time for the real thing. The test is a week- long affair during which little else got accomplished. At least that means I get a break from lesson planning. The state requires testing from third-through-sixth grades, so Northern enacts a policy of complete silence in the upstairs hallway for the week. Dr. Smith assigns other members of the faculty to help the teachers, like me, administer the test. I hope she sends Danica to my room because I know she would be a huge help and would help make this drudgery more tolerable.

97

Instead, Ms. Wesley, the school’s art teacher, shows up at my door. Of course.

Ms. Wesley is that teacher. You know, the one who never stops yelling at kids, the one

who knows the answer to every problem and is never wrong, the one who argues with the principle during faculty meetings. Maybe she reminds me a little to much of what I could become. She has taught at a bunch of places, is probably in her fifties or sixties, and the word around school is that she’s National-board-certified. That means different things depending on who you talk to, but at the very least she gets paid more than the rest of us. I do know that she is a talented artist because I’ve seen her touching up her students’

work – who does that? – while displaying it on the hallway bulletin board. Would she

rather be making and selling her own art as a career than she would be teaching

elementary students? Come to think of it, would I rather be writing than teaching writing? I think about Sean Connery’s character in Finding Forrester; his observation that a

disappointed artist can be a dangerous teacher.

I don’t really deal with many behavior problems on the first day of testing, though Charlie is noticeably absent. The other students wait quietly at their desks while Ms. Wesley and I pass out tests and pencils. I’m just about to start reading the script when Kayla raises her hand. I look in her direction and stop what I’m doing.

“Yeah, Kayla?”

“Mista Schuma, I didn’t get a pencil,” she says.

I look over at Ms. Wesley, who has the pencils. She starts walking in the direction of Kayla. As she passes me, she says, “It’s just as well she doesn’t have one. She’s probably one of the stupid ones anyway, and maybe it would help if she didn’t take the test.”

I repeat what I heard in my head just to make sure I didn’t get it wrong.

Something is happening inside me, something building, though I don’t exactly possess the words. I’ve been forced into a moment in which I hear the most extreme conclusion of cynicism and it’s so disturbing. I’m also terrified that at least a few students had to

have heard what Ms. Wesley said. Do I confront her in front of the class? Do I say something about it later? But I just watch Ms. Wesley hand Kayla a pencil. Neither I nor anyone else says anything. I start reading from the script.

This moment will be added to the dozens of actions and non-actions I would love to get back and do over during my time in Teach For America. When I get that chance again – with Ms. Wesley or some other version of her – I will defend Kayla because she deserves my advocacy. She’s drawn a helluva deck of cards in this life, but she is not

    99