Any Given Day

“What kind of mother would leave a four-year-old outside unsupervised?”  That was my reaction many, many years ago in my small, insular Utah community when I heard the story of Rachael Runyon.  Her busy mother had sent Rachael and her three older brothers outside to play in the summer sun while she watched from inside.  She alternated making lunch and cleaning the kitchen with perfunctory looks out the kitchen window.  And in a glance, Rachael was gone.  Abducted by a brazen kidnapper from her mother’s distracted care.  Her preoccupation with the dishes suddenly vanished as she stood at the kitchen sink.  Rachael was gone.  

            Three children and many sleepless nights later, in my comfortable New Jersey community, the doorbell roused me from a short nap in the middle of the afternoon.  I had spent the previous night testing my daughter Chrissy’s blood sugar every few hours.  Sometimes it seemed her diabetes was more demanding than a newborn. So while she and her brother were in school, I parked my four-year-old Daniel, my youngest, in front of the video.  (Something my pre-mother self swore I would never do.) It must be the UPS man, I thought as I rushed to the door, trying to shake off the daze of an afternoon nap.  I opened the door to my neighbor, holding Daniel’s hand.  He had been happily playing in the front yard, alone. And I thought of Rachael Runyon.  There but for the grace of God go I.

            Teaching and parenting are unique callings.  They require adults to devote hours of attention to children, usually without respite.  Both are very solitary occupations.  We

are alone in our homes and our classrooms.  There we laugh, we play, and we teach.  There also children test our patience when our energy is zapped.  But only those present within the walls of a classroom or home know what happens there.  Most teachers are happy, and most parents are decent.  Yet our contracts with society are rather tenuous.  Society understands our jobs are often thankless and our pay—be it kisses or apples—is not commensurate with the demands and it seeks to placate us with special days for mothers, fathers and teachers.  (When was the last time you honored your dentist, accountant or lawyer?)  At the same time, however, it demands our credentials be impeccable and our behavior perfect.  Our voyeuristic society revels in the nanny cam and whenever a teacher or parent is caught, there are thousands of Americans collectively thinking, “What kind of person would do that?”

Discipline is the task we hold teachers and parents to the highest standards.  To discipline is to systematically instruct a disciple or follower in proper behavior and conduct.  But frequently children do not want to be disciples; they are not little adults eager to be instructed.  They just want to have fun.  And it is at the intersection of their fun and our responsibility that we parents and teachers sometimes lose tempers and we make mistakes.  And we are liable for those snap judgments made in the heat of the moment.  And while I might join society in its snap judgments about egregious parents or teachers, when I read of the teacher, such as Brad Turner who not only lost his job and his teaching license but found himself in the center of a civil lawsuit when he attempted to discipline a student for throwing grapes on the floor, I silently say to myself,  “There but for the grace of God go I.”           

I am only a substitute teacher.  But I am a teacher nonetheless. Today I was reminded of this when I caught myself at my kitchen sink. 

I walk into a different classroom every day.  I must think on my feet.  And experiment.  Anything to engage students, whom I do not know, who thrill at seeing a substitute.  They too want to experiment, to walk the thin line that separates propriety and an in-school suspension.  Today I am in 11^th grade U.S. History. The topic is Hiroshima.  I love U.S. History.  I love Japan.  I lived there for sixteen months.  There could not be a more perfect fit.

I look at the lesson plan.  The class is 80 minutes long.  The teacher has left a 67-minute DVD.  That leaves me thirteen minutes.  When there is no lesson plan, thirteen minutes can be an eternity.  Even videos are not a sure thing.  But Ms. Jones has left some preparatory material, and I have a lot to add. Thirteen minutes is but a blip.  That leaves me fashioning an anticipatory set that can be quickly accomplished.  I cue the DVD, and then I scrawl Hiroshima in Japanese.  (Not in kanji, mind you.  Only in hiragana—the simplest Japanese phonetic alphabet.  It is a bit like writing in rudimentary block letters as opposed to neat, proper script.  But I am counting on the fact that my students will never know the difference.)

Then I stand at the door and welcome my students.  “Konnichi wa,” I say, bowing, my hands pressed together.  

The students stare.  Then laugh.  “Dozo,” or please, I say motioning with my hand for the students to enter the room.

“You’re speaking Chinese, aren’t you?” they question.

“Chigaimasu,” I humbly beg to differ, I reply.  “Nihonogo de hanashimasu.”  I am speaking Japanese.

This is fun.  The students do not also realize the paltry extent of my Japanese.  (There are, of course, no Japanese surnames on the roll—only Chinese or Filipino.) They are perplexed and intrigued, a state not often achieved by a substitute.

But during those brief gleeful moments, I walk into the classroom with some of the students.  The bell has not yet rung, yet I have left my post at the door.  Then, as luck would have it, there is a commotion in the hall.  I return to find a large girl, a very, very large girl, with a half-nelson hold on a not-so-particularly small boy.  I must take razor quick, decisive action.  I feel like the Will Smith character Jay in the movie Men in Black: during a training simulation he must choose to shoot either the obvious threat, a lunging, snarling beast about to attack a man with a briefcase, or a cute eight-year-old girl toting books on advanced physics.  He chooses the girl with the books.  My decision is not so clear-cut.

A teacher can touch a student only if someone’s safety is at risk.  Is someone at risk?  Who?  The boy?  Or me?  Physically intervening will escalate the situation.  Can I handle this with my voice?  I summon my most commanding voice. “Stop that,” I yell.

I am pleasantly surprised. She releases her hold.  But then he quips something back.  She lunges for him again, missing. 

“Stop that,” I yell even more forcefully.  And to the small crowd, I add, “Get to class.”  I pause.  “NOW!!”  

It works.  The crowd disperses and to my surprise the girl strolls into my class.

I begin my lesson.  But it is not as much fun.  Questions dart through my head. Why did I let my attention be diverted?  Why was I not patrolling the hall?  Would this have happened if I had been at my post?  Should I have called security?  Can a substitute even assign detention?  What if they hadn’t listened to me?  How would the newspaper have portrayed me? 

What kind of teacher would do that?  I now know the answer to the question.  I am that teacher.  And the truth is, so is just about any teacher.   Experience helps.  So does a level head, compassion and caring.  But any given Monday or Tuesday, almost any teacher can make a very simple mistake. And any given day after, there will be countless, indignant armchair quarterbacks questioning that teacher’s call.  Some of those teachers are exceptional.  Some are not.  But none of them gets the benefit of the doubt.

Long ago, male physicians learned to protect themselves by having a female nurse present when conducting gynecological exams.  Service representatives record their phones calls for quality assurance. Policemen have videotapes admissible in court.  Lawyers have attorney-client privilege to mask some of their mistakes.  CEOs have press secretaries and public relations firms to positively spin their mistakes and nice retirement packages just in case.  Teachers have only a classroom of trust.  A trust that surprisingly is not shattered more frequently and a union, which pays the bills when accusations fly, but cannot save even innocent teachers from public pillory.

Me?  I have no union.  I am only a substitute teacher.  I stand at my kitchen sink, and I think I understand what kind of mother Rachael Runyon had.  There but for the grace of God go I.

Texting Mother

When did mothers suddenly become so popular? I have spent the past few weeks pondering the question.

I am not talking about the preschool set. Mothers have always polled exceptionally high among that demographic, especially those with persistent separation anxiety. I am talking about teen-agers. They who roll their eyes at their parents’ sage suggestions. They who bud their ears to avoid adult dinner conversation. They who lol with their bffs when their homework, which never seems to get done, beckons.

Last week, in an hour-long high school honors class I confiscated four different cell phones, one mid-test. This despite my oh-so-pleasant request, prompted by a student blatantly texting as I introduced myself as their substitute teacher, that they put their cell phones away. Because my request only prompted half of the class to act, I followed up with a not-so-veiled threat to confiscate any phones that I saw in use.

“But it’s my mother,” the first boy protests as I demand his phone. I hope he is cleverer in class than he is in his texting. Only a few feet from my desk, he has assumed the “standard” classroom texting pose, both hands under the desk, the phone centered in the lap held just under the edge of the desk.  A pose that often prompts colleagues to embarrass the violators with innuendo as to their actions.

I can only assume from his furtive glances from test to phone that he is cheating, texting a friend or searching the Internet to find the answers he does not know. But, not ready to unleash a firestorm of privacy and first amendment issues, I dare not look at the text. I put the phone in my pocket without so much as a glance. I treasure my paltry income as a substitute teacher. I then lean down to pick up the fluorescent blue study guide stretched out underneath the desk of his less tech-savvy neighbor. My how the nature of cheating has changed.

Does his mother know, I wonder. Not that he cheats, but that he blames it on her.

The second student attempts the “camouflage” pose. She assumes her prime spot in a back corner of the room and her large bag situated just so on her desk protects her texting from my purview. She is far more interested in reading her texts than the class novel. At least she has finished her test. Aware of my presence as I move into her zone, she does the “quick slip,” a quick slide of the cell phone from the desktop to the pant pocket, a move not nearly as discreet as most students presume. She hopes the bag hides her move. But it does not. And, like a shy child hiding in her mother’s skirt, she hopes to hide behind the excuse of texting her mother.

It is March 25^th.  Perhaps she celebrates Mother’s Day in Slovenia, I think. Perhaps she forgot to buy her a present. Perhaps she worries her mother will feel neglected. Perhaps.

“It’s her mother,” a voice claims automatically as I ask for the third phone. My eyes are no longer young, but I am fairly certain the gallant defender cannot read her text from his desk two rows behind her, even though she has assumed the “about face” classroom texting pose, her torso uncomfortably twisted, leaning into the aisle, in order to face the rear of the room as she texts. Like a two-year-old who covers her eyes and assumes the world can no longer see her, this student assumes her back turned to me makes her cell phone invisible. She has heard my threat. She has seen me confiscate. She has recognized my intent. But there is an urgency she cannot ignore. She is driven to text.

Mother must be a helicopter parent, I conclude.  Or a tiger mother. Compelled to please, she has aced the test and cannot wait to share her success with her mother. Her text is clearly worth the risk.

The fourth student does not even try to hide his cell phone. There are eight minutes left in class. He employs the “it is my right” pose. He sits on the front row, elbows planted on the desk, holding his phone up to eye level as his thumbs fly over the keys, oblivious to my stare as I stand a few feet away. He seems genuinely surprised when I move only inches away and hold out my demanding hand, flat, palm up in the universal classroom sign language for “hand-over-your-phone.”

“But I thought class was over,” he protests. Which translated means, “If I do not find the class work compelling and if there is less than ten minutes remaining in class, then I have the right to use my cell phone.” A god-given right, I am sure, if I were to poll the class. At least he does not claim he is texting his mother. Surely she must feel neglected.

Two years ago pollster Joel Benenson found that the average student sends more than three texts per class. That means that there were at least sixty-three text messages sent during that honors class. (Perhaps a few less if I were to factor in the four confiscated phones.) If I were to assume that by average, Benenson means a true arithmetic mean and not a mythical average like that in Lake Wobegon, and if I were to assume that there are at least a few students in my class who do not just appear to be, but are actually completing the test and reading their books instead of texting, then I am led to an astounding conclusion: there are two or three students in my class who love their mothers so much that they sent them at least five texts during the hour I was with them. (I certainly hope those mothers appreciate my efforts.) Furthermore, if all these students text their mothers as often as is claimed when caught, then the average mother should receive at least fifteen texts from each child every day. Imagine all those average, happy mothers. Getting texts, affirming they are far from average in their children’s eyes. Every day. Every hour.

None of my three children sends me a text each day. They whom I have willingly nursed and diapered. They for whom I have whooped and cheered unreservedly during tediously long little league games. They for whom I have applauded wildly as I shivered during torrential downpours at band competitions. They who have unlimited texting for which I pay. I consider myself fortunate to receive an occasional text requesting a ride home. Which, as I consider these statistics, creates great maternal angst. And questioning. Why am I so unpopular with my children? Am I not average? (For my children are certainly far, far above average.) Do my children not love me? Have they forgotten my number?

And ultimately I am led to choose between two conclusions: either my children do not use their cell phones during class or they do not love me. Naively I am assuming the first.