Baldacci - Inside Mrs. Bs Classroom: courage, hope, and learning on Chicagos South Side

Chapter 1

The Mad Crapper

Copyright 2004 by Leslie Baldacci
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I t was the first time Id been down to The Dungeon. The others were already there. A haze of cigarette smoke layered the ancient boiler room, lending a comic twist to the yellow Warning! Asbestos! signs on every wall.

Sculptured nails tapped an ash into an overflowing ashtray that sat atop a broken, gutted desk, its drawers long gone. Chairs in various states of disrepair and other junk cluttered the perimeter. Pipes twisted this way and that on the ceilings and walls, taped and painted over in a pitiful attempt to contain the deadly asbestos that had insulated the pipes for decades. I looked around the floor for piles of white dust that were the telltale sign of danger. What was I going to do if I saw some? Call the health department?

The Dungeon was the smokers secret hangout. Board of education rules prohibited teachers from smoking on school property. But the stress of the job was high. Sometimes the only relief was to cadge a smoke on the sly during school hours before facing the cruel crowd again.

Donna opened the meeting.

Basically, were gonna have to scare the living shit out of these little fuckers, she declared, blowing out a cloud of smoke. If they dont shape up, its no more departmental. Well be self-contained, and every one of us will have to teach all subjects to the same kids all day.

We all groaned in agony at the thought of being held hostage by our respective classes. This was seventh and eighth grade in a poverty-level, urban school on the South Side of Chicago. Our classes were bursting at the seams with thirty-five, thirty-six and thirty-seven kids apiece. Tough kids, many of them raising themselves in tough circumstances. There was barely room to walk around the classrooms for all the desks. When the kids were in the room, there was no room left. The noise and heat levels were like a steel mill. The only thing worse than teaching one subject to all four classes every day would be teaching all subjects to the same class all day long. There was enough contempt without familiarity.

What should we say? I asked. I was the rookie, always looking for answers. Mr. Diaz, the other seventh-grade teacher and my fellow intern in the innovative Teachers For Chicago program, had been a substitute teacher in the past at different schools in the city. Donna and Mr. Callahan, the eighth-grade teachers, had put in years at this school. Their experience would be our guide.

We should all say something, Donna said. But the bottom line is they wont walk across the stage at the end of the year and graduate from eighth grade if they dont stop acting the fool. We are going on zero tolerance. No more clowning in the hallways. No more stealing from each others desks.

Each of us took a piece of the problem to address. Donna would open the curtain with fire and brimstone. Mr. Callahan would appeal to their desire to move onward and upward. I would announce a peer tribunal to deal with the misbehavers. And instead of two lines, boys and girls, wed walk single file through the hallways from now on in alphabetical order. We had fallen into such profound disorder so early in the school year that any attempt to impose order seemed reasonable. The principal threatened no more changing classes due to loud and unruly behavior in the hallways. The commotion disturbed the administrative personnel in the office, which is on the same corridor. They didnt like to be disturbed.

Donna had a brilliant idea to stop the thieving from the desks: When the students left their homerooms in the morning, they would turn their desks around so that the cubby holes faced in! That way, no one could get their hands inside to steal, destroy property or leave snotty tissues, trash, threatening notes or other unpleasantries. So simple. So brilliant in its simplicity. Those were things we rookies could not figure out on our own because we had no context and were surviving breath to breath. We were so overwhelmed by the complexities of teaching that we could not see the simple solutions.

We herded our students into the auditorium for the big bawling out.

Donna began with a prayer. She was a tall and striking African princess and a devout Christian, a Roman Catholic. Her voice rang like a bell. Her skin was the color of a Hershey bar, and her face shone with a light from within. Ask her how she was doing and she replied without fail, Im blessed.

Breaking all laws prohibiting prayer in school, we all bowed our heads and asked God to bless us and guide us and open our minds. She praised Jesus and warned of Satan (say-TAHN, she called him in private, with a devilish smile) and his sneakiness and lies, his trickery in leading people astray.

These children act like shit in school, she told me, but they are churchgoers and God-fearing.

As Donna wrapped up the prayer, a sudden ruckus broke out in the audience. Mr. Diazs students leapt from their seats, shrieking and jumping around. First a couple, then more, then all. They flooded out of their rows and into the aisles, waving their arms and hollering.

Immediate thoughts: A rat! Roaches! Fleas! I backed up against the stage in case a rat ran out from under the front row. I was ready to jump back butt-first onto the stage with no part of my anatomy anywhere near that floor.

Donna went to investigate, a pissed-off look on her face. She was magnificent, queenly, disdainful. She moved like a fine sailing ship at sea to a row where a few students pointed out the trouble, covering their mouths in horror. I watched a flicker of disbelief, then amusement, dance across her face. Then, deadpan.

Come on, now, she said in her teacher voice that cut through the hysteria, imposing order. Its not like you never saw one of those before. Someone get the broom.

She headed back toward the stage and sidled past me after her discovery. My look said, Well?

Youre not gonna believe this, she said. Theres a turd on the floor.

A what? I said, disbelieving, as she had predicted.

A goddamned turd, she said.

Dont even look at me, I said, about to fall over with hysterical laughter.

Dont you even look at me, she said out of the side of her mouth, walking past.

Somehow we managed to remove the feces, compose ourselves and deliver the lecture of the decade. Each teacher spoke. The ultimate horrorfailing to graduate from eighth grade and go to high schoolwas repeatedly invoked.

But we also told them that we cared about them, that their success was our utmost concern. We implored them not to let their behavior prevent them from succeeding in school, not to let any foolishness get them off track.

We told them what we expected from them in simplest terms: Pay attention, do your work, do your best.

It was all true. We did care or we wouldnt have been there. We did care or we wouldnt have bothered. We did want them to succeed and we would do anything in our power to help them achieve success.

Would it have any effect? Impossible to say. Did they believe us? Their faces said theyd heard it before and it was bullshit then, so this must be more bullshit.

Later, after school when I had time to think about it, I wondered about the turd. Where had it come from? Who had left it? Was it imported from outdoors or actually deposited on the auditorium floor by its maker? Did a kid do it? A disgruntled adult? There was no shortage of suspects, that much was true.

I told my dad about it when we talked on the phone later. Hed seen many such oddities in his thirty years as a teacher. A kid once defiled a bulletin board outside his gym by adding a three-dimensional penis, molded from chewed chewing gum, protruding from the shorts of a basketball player pictured on the board.

The chewing gum sculptor was a one-shot deal. The Mad Crapper would strike again before the year was out.