The Class of '96
Nilson, Nina
Nina Nilson THE CLASS OF '96 A high school teacher's memoir from hell. M any people, including teachers, tine, proper, liberal, always politically "Regular" classes are the bottom track Most of...
...if they are female, they are "white bitches...
...Would that be too of and wants to avoid the travesty of the lower floors...
...You need to take at least two survey courses in British Literature," she informed me, "beginning with Chaucer and encompassing at least the eighteenth century...
...Britta Selini, my supervising teacher, teaches a second-hour "college prep" class...
...The advanced classes with glee...
...I now laugh at the absurdity of that conversation...
...Children with ex- teacher encounters on a typical day are days...
...But we can't do anything," he says...
...Soon after, Willis was imprisoned for a car theft "he didn't do...
...While the other two teachers periodically engage in activities other than video-viewing, this man's ratio of vidto-work is even less sound...
...The next day I dismissed Cherie from class for three days...
...The complaints lack variety or imagination...
...No," I say, "were going to write," or "were going to read a story...
...If they make you read and write and have expectations of you, they are "white dissin' bitches" who are "trippin"' or "on crack...
...They groan, they act Iteach three eleventh-grade English classes, including an advanced World Literature class in the morning and two "regular track" English classes in the afternoon...
...My fifth-hour class has presented the most discipline problems and the most resistance to learning...
...Even the good students are learning to be marginal and mediocre...
...Jackie was not so stupid, though...
...The students are mostly well behaved and some are actually motivated to learn...
...Yes," I retort, "regular, not retarded...
...I am a student teacher with a "tracking system...
...I don't think it's good," says Tara...
...Paul, Minnesota—pris- attend an advanced class...
...Students in "regu- lar" students, a young Vietnamese refustate...
...there is, at least among the teachers I am ent...
...Belinda in fifth hour is a very pregnant seven months...
...The students do a presentation every Friday on a topic of their choice...
...Tootle in fourth has two, and is on probation, recently moved here from Peoria, Illinois...
...Cherie, sitting near by, rejoined, "No, she just be standin' back and analyzin' it, tryin' to decide whether it evil or not...
...My bachelor's degree in Literature and Languages, my counselor informed me, was insufficient...
...Yet when a black student does a presentation on police brutality, everyone is rapt...
...The father of both her children (one father, which is unusual) does not come to see her at the foster home, ostensibly because he is afraid of Tara's foster mother...
...Willis claimed that "some white girl had [given him oral sex] and she had the disease in her mouth and that's how I gave it to you...
...Ihave been having problems with Cherie Alden, a student in my fifth-hour class, for a while now...
...She experienced a terrible burning and pain...
...Granted, "gifted and talented magnet school" hour waking kids who are sound asleep, students are responsible for the chaos, I am new to this...
...Somehow, he believed that oral sex, instead of actual penetration in this case, was a mitigating factor...
...I recall a conversation three years ago with a guidance counselor as I prepared for a career in teaching...
...But then Willis left for a while with a white girl because she performed oral sex...
...But for some reason she has now decided that I am the enemy and that she will fight me to the end...
...often default to the "regular" classes, twenty" at this school...
...They had sex and she became pregnant...
...Recently, at the beginning of a short story unit on evil, I asked the students, since they had trouble defining the word "evil," to give examples of evil, or of how they saw it functioning in their world...
...She is currently pregnant with twins, and will have four children before her eighteenth birthday...
...When I went next door to ask the teacher to turn down the volume, the teacher was sitting with his back to me, wearing earphones, reading a book, while his students slumbered or frolicked along with Shane...
...asks Britta, "It isn't our fault...
...Each day, as they lumber into class, the students ask me if we are seeing a movie today...
...In the other adjacent classroom, another movie blasted...
...The class had no idea who these authors were, or what contributions they had made to the long debate over black/white relations...
...Jackie wrote a ten-page paper about her relationship with Willis—the father and a convicted felon—and the birth of her son...
...Black and debilitating resignation...
...Jackie in fourth hour has one toddler...
...We want to read about good things happening to blacks...
...Its theme song, the rock anthem "Wild Thing," throbbed against our back wall...
...Guns ain't evil," he said, "Guns is good, they's fo' protection...
...To bolster black enrollment in World Literature, the teachers included three black authors—James Baldwin, Gloria Naylor, and Alice Walker—to accompany Eudora Welty, Tillie Olsen, and Ernest Hemingway...
...They didn't do nothin...
...English, was drowned out by the chatter 24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1991 of his classmates...
...We are not flexible, sensitive, or caring enough...
...Before I entered these classrooms dominantly black...
...I must appear the giant Pollyanna...
...Because of the racial diversity of the class, I thought we would begin my instructional period with a "multicultural" short story unit...
...They do not fear me, because they fear nothing...
...Throughout its history, no the war...
...She seemed friendly, and welcomed me on my first day at this school...
...More- education called "regular" classes, can are "weighted," meaning that kids tak- in my fifth-hour class gave a presentaover, this is St...
...Mainly, the f---er...
...His important story of represNina Nilson is a writer and teacher living special, or gifted, or even intelligent, black student has ever made the "top sion and survival, in timid and faltering in St...
...Teachers write that their lives in that is, any child who thinks he is spe- grams and upper floors of the building called one of her Vietnamese classmates classrooms across the country are hell, cial, or whose parent thinks he is smart while the black kids hide out in the a "slopehead," her friends and fellow yet they seldom if ever come clean about or above average, or who is conscious "regular" classes and rule the halls of African Americans positively shrieked what it's really like...
...Toward the end of an "informal class" one day, when many of the students had gone to the library, we reconvened in our room for the last five minutes of class...
...White teachers are racist...
...Around her eighth month of pregnancy, Jackie discovered that "everything wasn't right down in my vagina...
...Their eyes plead...
...Paul neighborhood, pre- of complete chaos...
...I feel I have been hearing too many can'ts for too long now...
...He is near retirement age, as are the other two "educators" whose classrooms 1 had just visited...
...Many of the black students in the class complained that we (the school, the powers that be, the white THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1991 25 overwhelmed...
...The commotion and mirth issuing from the other classrooms left my students more distracted and uncooperative than usual...
...She met Willis when she was with her girlfriend on their way to "beat up some girl at the neighborhood community center," as Jackie recounts in "Birth...
...You have 50 minutes to read it...
...But why should we pay for your babies...
...He tells me he don't love me but I don't care, I have enough love for the both of us, I be lovin him for a long time, for ever, I be waitin...
...She didn't go quietly...
...In the "regular" classes I Black students are often hostile and incurrently associated with, a pervasive The institution where I teach is a teach, I spend five minutes out of every sensitive to other racial minorities...
...Another Vietnamese student much of a reflection on them...
...Tara, like so many of the young mothers at this school, says she will live on welfare...
...That set them back a moment...
...I thought that I would take advantage of the students' professed interest in black history to introduce them to black authors...
...You need to study writers like Milton and Pope and Johnson, because you're going to have to teach them...
...Some of them laughed and shrieked...
...Get busy...
...It was love at first sight...
...She doesn't like her foster mother, because she has to perform chores and can't go out whenever she pleases...
...Things have to change," I insist, "before we all become victims of implosion...
...Though I knew she was doing this just to get a reaction out of me, I was too shocked to react...
...But I understand what he's saying...
...Low expectations affect all students badly, but it seems that black students, who seldom recognize the salvation of the "advanced" option, suffer disproportionately...
...Still, the accusation that we are not doing enough to accommodate the black students' divergent needs echoes angrily, and daily, in the air...
...I was the most stupid person he had witnessed in a long time...
...26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1991...
...It is difficult, if not impossible, for individual teachers to maintain standards when the school itself—by now with the deep complicity of students, parents, and the school board—refuses to aid in upholding standards...
...He sneered at my naivete...
...This is exactly what we are doing for our students, providing them with too many opportunities to say "I can't...
...It is cool to be black and uncool to be white...
...The groaning and moaning reaches intense proportions...
...They both sneered at their hopelessly naive teacher...
...I assigned essays by Maya Angelou and Richard Wright...
...Moreover, it became apparent, they had no real interest in black history...
...It's contagious...
...It was February...
...Each day, as they lumber into class, the students ask me if we are seeing a movie today...
...The doctor diagnosed her as having a sexually transmitted disease...
...Most of the kids had lost their lists of examples of evil, so we devised a new one...
...Britta asks the two panelists what they think of a new program in Wisconsin where the extended family takes responsibility for teenagers with children, instead of the state...
...Tara in fifth hour has two children...
...One day, a Western was playing loudly on the video monitor in the classroom to the left of ours...
...Whites sit next to whites, blacks next to blacks...
...A day later, we continued our discussion...
...The measure did not succeed in attracting black students...
...The class consists of twenty-three whites, three Asian immigrants, and only two black students...
...The students do not socialize outside of their race...
...The school another five minutes keeping them most of the foul language and inapproin an "inner-city" high school in St...
...The so-called Tracking has created a two-tier, two- often taunted with the sobriquet "chink mise of learning, but nothing prepared gifted and talented programs are not quality learning experience...
...They began to loathe me...
...She was on to him and she put Willis in his place...
...That comment doesn't sink in...
...The child has done absolutely no work...
...It should be no problem...
...Reactions to the stories were uniform: "It's boring, it's stupid," then the more devious "Were sick of reading about blacks having.a horrible life, having bad things happen to them...
...The students were quietly conversing among themselves...
...Those who ing these classes earn higher grade-point tion on his escape from Vietnam during don't have a parent thinking they are averages...
...She and her children will leave her foster mother in two months...
...We may be able to affect a few students, but we really can't do anything else...
...In a way I can't blame them, and though their indifference and hatred hurts me, the system that has made them this way outrages me...
...Once Willis got out of jail, the two swore their love for each other and said, "Baby, I love you so much I'll never leave...
...This is an exceedingly common scenario...
...Cherie's mother, by the way, is white...
...My fourth- and fifth-hour "regular" classes are a different story...
...They are proud to graduate from high school with a D-minus average...
...Their eyes plead...
...But then Jackie's son was born and both Jackie and Willis were so happy, though Jackie had to have a Caesarean because of the sexually transmitted disease...
...Para lives with her children in a foster home...
...I mustered a lame "Oh come on . . ." Many of the kids looked embarrassed and averted their eyes...
...She thinks she'll pass the course with a D or D-minusbut that she'll pass...
...And you'd better not tell anyone any differ- an even lower track called "assurance countless, often nameless aggressions...
...I dropped the multicultural story unit...
...The two rooms adjacent to my own blast videos all day long...
...None of these mothers is over seventeen years old...
...They read books for the class and write papers...
...I felt humiliated and powerless...
...I wasn't the only one...
...Pau4 Minnesota...
...She entitled her opus "Birth...
...Cherie suddenly yelled out to her friend Tulissa, a pretty, seductive, "mixed" girl at the other end of the room, "Hey, Tulissa, you have anal sex, don't you...
...When I made it apparent to these "regular"--track students that they would actually have to read and write in my class, they were incensed...
...The topic this Friday was teen motherhood...
...Overwhelmingly, these children identify with being black, not white...
...Everyone was goin' on about it...
...Cherie looks like many of the tawny young people of this school, many of whom are, as the current expression goes, "mixed...
...Down the hall, the King of the Moles—video teachers are called "moles"—slowly emerges from a shadowy recess in the wall...
...Mitch Clayton, a small young man, objected to the inclusion of guns as agents of evil...
...I be lovin him," she writes in one ofher papers...
...Maaaaan, this a regular class," protests Tyrel...
...The fourth- and fifth-hour classes are divided equally between black and white students...
...At first, I liked her...
...I tell them, "It's a thirteen-page story...
...But then the wayward Willis came back to his true love and again swore his allegiance and loyalty...
...They demand "honors" credit for the class because they claim they do as much work as the advanced classes...
...There are strict allegiances, strict modes of behavior to follow...
...You tellin' me some dude's gettin' ready to rape you, you don' shoot him, you don' wan' a gun, no I bet you say, `just go ahead and rape me,' yeah, I bet that's what you do," and he chortled and looked at his friends for commiseration, again contemptuous and disbelieving...
...Why you kickin' me out for...
...Students who complain about their teachers are told by their parents to ignore the white teachers, as they are racist.race) weren't doing enough to celebrate African American History Month...
...Then the white students started in: "I think we should have a white history month...
...has a forty percent minority population awake, and at least fifteen minutes strug- priate sexual behavior, and most of the Paul, Minnesota...
...The school's prin- lar" classes do no homework...
...He is, appropriately, the head of the audio-visual department...
...If a white tries to act black, they call him a "wannabe," a misguided individual with an excess of inherited racial guilt...
...I n the teacher's lounge at school, I 1 relate many of the incidents in my classroom to one of our long-term substitutes...
...She tells the class a social worker is arranging an apartment for her...
...Tara loves the father of her two sons and hopes—expects—that he will come see her when she moves out from the foster home in two months...
...They just wanted to complain...
...The class/audience questioned both girls about their situations, their plans for the future, and the difficulty of being a teen mother...
...When another of my students, me for such mediocrity and destructive- bona fide because they are self-selected: white kids inhabit the advanced pro- a pretty, popular light-skinned black girl ness...
...Para, my student with two children, and another girl, with just one child, were the panelists...
...You on crack...
...I am becoming certi- and lies on the fringes of Selby-Dale, gling to maintain an atmosphere short fights in the hallways...
...She reiterated her challenge several times, till "anal sex" was like a manic echo in the air...
...It is difficult, sometimes, to make them listen to a woman who is twice as old as they and has no children...
...In order to fail a student, one must tackle a forbidding maze of paperwork...
...Cherie said, "School is evil," and "American society is evil," and "I hate America," and "White people is evil...
...Each time I pass out a short story, somebody protests...
...Sometimes he hurts me by runnin round with other mommas, some white sluts...
...If a black student prefers a white to a black friend, blacks call him a traitor...
...There are two Asian students in each...
...They do homework—some do a lot of it...
...I reasoned that once the students tasted their own literary heritage, they would become thirsty for a broader spectrum of literature and that, if they didn't, at least they would have read something...
...M any people, including teachers, tine, proper, liberal, always politically "Regular" classes are the bottom track Most of the discipline problems a are writing about education these correct and morally irreproachable...
...I be tellin him all the time I miss him and his two boys be needin him...
...One of my "regufied to teach secondary English in this a troubled St...
...Teachers express frustration with have a fine school system here, and ceptionally low ability are banished to the result of black students' acting out low pay and oversized class-loads...
...gee just three years in Minnesota, is I had read various accounts of the de- cipal is black, a woman...
...This should be in college prep class," they assert and reassert tirelessly...
...she demanded...
...of mastery...
...We of a tracking system...
...Why should they have to pay for our mistake...
...Man, you trippin'," Cherie says to me, examining the photocopied pages with distaste...
...I needed various English courses to supplement my background and to qualify for a Minnesota teacher's license...
Vol. 24 • November 1991 • No. 11
