Almost a True Story

“Excuse me, Ms.” said a rough voice that barely registered over the cacophony of children.

Ursula didn't turn her eyes from the thirty students spread across mismatched desks, assorted tables, the dirty floor, and each other. There wasn't much she expected to see on which she could effect change, but it at least comforted her to know where each student was. Last week she'd discovered one industrious student's slightly successful attempt to pick the lock to the science closet, a vast two room space, with only a twisted paper clip. Now the lock to the door was busted as well, but fortunately it was jammed shut, rather than open.

As she stood, almost forgetting something, a wad of spit and paper flew through the air and landed with a splat on the face of a fourteen year old boy. Though it was a 6^th grade class, this teenager had been held back, and if it wasn't for the two year limit per grade, he would never leave. Both boys, offender and offendee vacated their seats in a storm of obscenities. Out the back door they went, one after the other.

“At least they're gone,” Ursula said to herself.

The backdoor made no sense. All the classrooms had two doors; most of them with one into the hall and the other into a neighboring room. Yet, her room had one in the front and one in the back, both leading into the hall. Student's felt no guilt in running out one and in the other, a strange circle.

“What are you going to do about that?” The voice reminded Ursula of the existence of another observer in the room.

She turned and saw it was one of the three assistant principals, a portly and intelligent looking man. His intelligence, she had observed in the past two months, seemed dedicated to the perverse cause of statistics to create a semblance of order and success for the school. This order did not produce an absence of chaos, as one might expect, nor did it care for the achievement of the students. No, it was for the sole purpose of devising and implementing procedures to protect the school's reputation. The administrators' honor. The plans produced a low suspension rate, not because the school functioned well, but because no behavior was disruptive enough to send student home. Not even lighting a fire in the bathroom. The numbers coming out of the school looked good in an abstract bloodless way, as dictated by distant, executive-type bureaucrats who did not comprehend what learning was.

Ursula thought all this, and wanted to say, “What are you going to do about it?” but instead she looked at him with a smile and said, “Can I help you?”

He did not ask her again about the children who were running around in the halls, and would eventually return to disrupt the desperate learning Ursula and an oppressed minority of students engaged in. He did something odd instead. His eyes seemed to focus on her, blotting out the world as if it were not there. She wasn't even sure he could see her.

“Are these students yours?” he said, gesturing to the right and the left, but not looking, because if he saw them, they would exist in space and time. He ignored reality and hoped that it might not shackle responsibility upon him.

“That one,” said Ursula, “is, but she has been disrupting the class. She ran out the back. Please, can't you take her away?”

He looked at Ursula with blank eyes.

“And that one” she said, pointing now, “already had this class today. She's not supposed to be here now. Just take them both away!”

The two-way radio on the man's belt made a brief noise. He lifted it, listened, and mumbled into it. Then without a word, eyes as good as closed, he began to walk out of the room.

In disbelief Ursula could not bring herself to prevent his exit. As his first foot crossed over the threshold of the classroom, she finally made a sound between a scream and a gasp. A more pitiable and lamentable cry had not been heard since the fall of Troy, or just the other day in the another wing of the school.

It seemed to bring the assistant principal to his senses, and he halted. Overjoyed she moved toward him, motioning the two girls to follow, not noticing that one had already run out the back of the classroom while the other ran around, turning on all the water faucets.

He said, “By the way, you can't lock this door. It needs to be left unlocked in the event of an emergency.”

Again stunned, she waited a minute, and then whispered at the retreating back, “If I can't lock the door, how can I keep out the disruptive students that wish to run in and out all day long? And how can I keep you out as well?”

Looking back at the classroom full of adolescents who couldn't know what the future would require of them, who didn't have enough nutritious food to eat even though they lived in the wealthiest nation in the history of humanity, she felt a deep abiding sadness. The lives they lived; with absent parents, surrounded by drugs and gang violence, and without the proper resources to thrive.

“Ms,” yelled a student, “I broke into the closet where you keep all your stuff. I spilled coffee on your phone, ate part of your lunch, and tore up the grade book. And I did it all .... accidentally.”

At that moment Ursula was thankful the state didn't allow corporal punishment, as some states did. Because if it had, she might have tried it, even though she nearly vomited at the thought of controlling another through force, and she knew all the studies demonstrated that violence produced the opposite of the intended effect: sullen, abusive adults. She imagined the hopeless suffering of those who had been beaten, and those who had acted under the orders of their supervisors.

And she felt worse for society, producing who knew what, in schools they were too cheap to improve, with children they were too uncaring to aid. If not for the children, then for the future; for those who were children grow up, and they don't fade away, but become the teachers of their own children.

The bell rang. Finally, lunch time. And a quick check of the email.

From the principal: Today we have discovered that the rosters for all the classes do not match the children that have sat in those classes for the first two months of school. In lieu of changing the rosters, I have decided that the children will be moved to match the rosters that currently exist. If we figure out how to change the rosters online, we will switch them back at the end of this month.