Last Call

Shout out to C, who must have been reminded of this by my last-day-of-subbing story. The young man in the picture looks a little like Mr. S's new student teacher, who seemed fast on his way to disillusionment -- and Mr. S has pretty good "disadvantaged" kids. Remember how I began, being met by a guidance couselor who said, “You do know we’re a school for children with discipline problems, right?” I ended closer to full-circle than I expected, given my two-day assignement for a French teacher at a familiar high school.

Yesteday's French classes went fine. Two girls did feed me "she lets us talk all the time" when I asked them to stop having an in-depth conversation and watch the video. The 5th block kids I had met the day before; they were cool. But the school was short on subs, so instead of ending my tenure with those nice young people, I ended with a shift over to the math building. There, having heard the principal remind students on Tuesday that they may not use cell phones or e-mail during school hours, I had to bust a girl for making a cell phone call in geometry class. An administrator came and removed her from class. I collected papers, and the students packed up. As I walked up and down the rows making sure I had all papers, I got from the girl's 10-foot tall buddy, "what you go and do that for? You should ha jus told her get off the phone. You don't gotta call [the office] like that." I love it when they try to make up school rules. "Thanks for letting me know. But you know what?" I smiled up at him. "I really don't care."

I turned my back on him and went to the front of the room, and the bell rang.