Liz's Final

Misunderstandings

1

Our sound of the week was ā, the long a sound spelled ai and ay and four first graders sat around the curve of a large kidney table waiting for me to give them the next word.

“May,” I said and was quickly answered with, “Say.” “Tray.” “Lay.” “Play.” As each child contributed their rhyme I drew a small clean line below their name, keeping track of their correct responses with nice neat picket fences. There would not be a winner or a loser in our game but the fact that they earned “points” always got students excited.

“How about sail?”

“Mail.” “Jail.” “Whale.” “Spail.” The last answer came from Paige. She was a sweet girl with blonde hair that reached her waist and round cheeks like a cabbage patch doll. I drew tallies for the first three answers and looked at Paige.

“Can you tell me your word one more time?”

“Spay-il” she repeated, slower this time.

“Hmmm. Spail is not a word but it certainly rhymes with sail. Good job.” And I drew a fresh line under her name.

“ No. It’s a word” Paige continued with confidence. “You know, like my spailing words.”

Vowel sounds proved to be a tricky thing to teach outside of one’s hometown. I had, on countless occasions, handed my teaching assistant a straight pin from my desk only to meet a puzzled face as she repeated her request for a pen. I smiled and assured Paige that she was right, spail was definitely a word. I had just misunderstood her.

2

The kindergarten teacher stood one hand on her hip, the other pointing a long red fingernail in the direction of Lamaar.

“Dooshy?” she yelled. “DOOSHY!!”

Although I knew why Lamaar was being scolded I was utterly bewildered at what this woman could possibly be saying to him.

It had taken me three months to realize that Lamaar did not know the names of all the alphabet letters or their sounds. I approached his kindergarten teacher who readily confessed that she passed him to first grade knowing that he was not prepared.

The district office had recently informed principals that children held back before the third grade were five times more likely to drop out of high school. This was due to national tests administered during third and fifth grade that were designed to “catch” students who were behind. Such a large number of kids were being held back at these junctures that it seemed futile to hold them back prior to third grade.

The principal decided that the best thing for Lamaar was to send him back to kindergarten for reading instruction and then spend the rest of the day in first grade. Recently Lamaar was arriving late to reading and that morning we discovered him taking a 20 minute water fountain detour during the eight foot journey across the hall.

“Dooshy? Dooshy!!” the kindergarten teacher yelled.

As I listened to her continue to shout this incomprehensible word I wondered what she could possibly be saying. What was a dooshy? Was it an action she expected him to perform? Was it a family nickname? Many of the students and faculty were related, so pet names were not uncommon. Could she possibly be calling him some abbreviated version of douche bag?! A year ago I would not have believed that was possible, but since then I had learned a lot of things happen in schools that I did not think were possible. After all, the school officially closed their spanking room only two years earlier. Then it all became clear.

“Dooooooshyyyyyyyyyy! Dooshy Lamaar? Do your mother tell you what to do when you’re in school? Do she? Do she?”

Lamaar shook his head. “No’m” he said.

“Ok then!” The kindergarten teacher straightened and pushed her glasses back into place. “From now on I expect you to come straight into my room from Ms. Kengeter’s class! You understand me boy?”

Lamaar nodded and left.

At one point I might have been appalled to hear a teacher not only repeatedly yelling at a student but doing so with improper grammar. But after six months I questioned could I really call the way I spoke “correct” if over half of the students, their parents, and most of the faculty spoke differently?

3

As a Title I school we endured intense test score scrutiny. Exams were frequent and once the results were returned the principal would hold staff meetings which included everyone from classroom teachers to the janitorial staff. The test scores of each individual’s class was put into bar graph next to those of other teachers in the district and placed on an overhead projector. Our school was notorious for low scores, particularly on the math benchmarks.

In years past, first graders often did poorly on the estimation section. I was determined to change this pattern and started working on estimating skills early in the year. We estimated how many marbles were in various sized jars, how many minutes it took to perform different activities, steps to the cafeteria, kids in a classroom, scoops of rice to fill a soda bottle, etc. When benchmark day arrived I felt confident that we would do well.

The first estimation question asked, “If they stood on each other’s shoulders, about how many men would equal the height of a house?” The choices were about 2, about 5, or about 15. As most of my students live in trailers, they circled ‘about 2.’ Strike one.

The second question asked “About how many bananas are in a bunch?” The options were 5, 15, or 30. Almost the entire class circled 30. I was frustrated by such stupid questions but at the same time could not believe how many students did not know how many bananas were in a bunch. When I asked my teaching assistant she just said, most of these kids don’t eat bananas at home.

The next morning I went into the cafeteria to round up any straggling students from breakfast. Today’s menu was sausage pizza. Apparently the presence of sausage qualified the dish as a breakfast item. I picked up a carton of milk and started down the lunch line. At the end of the counter near the registers was a huge pile of bananas. They were pulled apart and stacked in piles of about 30 and I realized that my kids were right.

4

After the breakfast pizza and realization that the only place my students had seen bananas were in cafeteria lunch lines I called my mother to see if she was willing to visit my class the next time she drove down to see me. My mother is a registered dietician and when I was in elementary school my teachers used to invite her to my class and talk about healthy eating habits. She made a tomato costume for the occasion which she stuffed with crumpled newspaper, filling out the red sack-like suit to make her about four times her regular width. The tomato suit was accompanied by a hat made from long newspaper strips painted green and glued in an asterisk for a stem. Thankfully my fellow classmates thought the outfit was hilarious and despite my personal feelings of humiliation, they dubbed my mom as dubbed as funny and cool.

The tomato costume was long gone but my mother said she was happy to speak to my class about healthy eating and good snack choices. When I told the students that my mother was going to visit they had lots of questions. “Will she bring us candy?” “Does she look like you?” “How old is she?” Then Diaysha raised her hand and asked, “Ms. Kengeter, what color is your mom?”

Earlier that year my boyfriend, Mr. Matt, came to visit my class. He was a juggler and the kids loved his performance. One student told me she was going to draw a picture for him. I said that was lovely. When she handed me the finished drawing there were three brown bodies flying over the ocean and across a sky of stars. She explained that it was Ms. Kengeter, Mr. Matt, and Frederica. My skin color varied in many of the student’s drawings but I always assumed they were just using the crayon at hand.

However, when I responded to Diaysha’s question, “What color is my mother? She’s white like me,” Diaysha promptly replied, “Oh no Ms. Kengeter, You’re not white. You have light brown skin.”

I casually corrected her but she continued to insist that I was simply “light skinned,” definitely not “white”. The other students were divided on the topic and it struck me how the students who were asserting that I was light brown did so with reassuring tones and seemed to be trying to comfort me.

5

Before Lamaar started going back to kindergarten he had been in a reading group with one other boy, also operating below grade level. I first met Jamal when he came to school with Mr. Zollinger, a man I thought was his grandfather. They were unable to come to the Back to School Night and another teacher, a relative of Jamal, drove them both to the building to meet me. I gave them the materials and explained the newsletter and supply list to Mr. Zollinger and he nodded. Before he left I asked him to sign the list that I would put out later that night for visiting parents. I chatted with Jamal while Mr. Zollinger signed in and the two left. When I picked up the clipboard there was only an ‘X’ mark for his name.

Jamal’s shy introduction belied a more tempestuous and impulsive temperament. He seemed to have no control over the volume of his voice, was unable to stay in his seat, and could not keep his hands to himself. While everyone sat at small tables I gave Jamal, the oldest in the class, a ‘grown-up’ desk so that he could have his own space. My teaching assistant spent most of the day working with him one-on-one. His eyes were bright and wild and head covered in soft golden fuzz that shone against his brown skin like a halo. He could be both the most affectionate child in the class, throwing his long lanky arms around my waist, as well as the most violent, seven years old but skilled at throwing punches and rallying a mob. He also put everything in his mouth. One afternoon I was telling the kindergarten teacher that he had just chewed through possibly the tenth pencil that week when she just looked at me and said, “Nothing you can do about that Ms. Kengeter. That’s just a side effect of him being a crack baby”.

I asked her how she knew that and she responded that everybody knows that. Jamal’s mother, like his grandfather, was and is a drug addict, which is why Jamal was being raised by his great grandfather, Mr. Zollinger. Mr. Zollinger had taken Jamal home from the hospital and raised him out in the country. Mr. Zollinger did not have a driver’s license and was illiterate, hence the ‘X’ signature on the parent sign-in sheet. When Jamal started kindergarten it was the first time he had seen children his own age. Before that he spent his days with a pack of dogs and the adults who brought his great grandfather food or other supplies. During his first year of school he was constantly under the tables, licking and biting the other students like the puppies back home. She concluded that he probably had some sort of disability but hadn’t been tested yet.

And so I discovered that the boy in the back of my class with the wild eyes and golden hair was really just a little Mowgli born in 1999 in North Carolina.

6

I joined Teach for America right out of college. I was drawn to the idea of working with a service organization in the US as opposed to the international focus of the Peace Corps, plus I would get teaching experience. During the final round of interviews, applicants are asked to rank their preferred teaching locations. You have to list about ten but great effort is made to place corps members in one of their top three choices.

I grew up in a rural area and had just finished four years at a college in the middle of Pennsylvania farmland. This was my chance to go some place new, live some place totally different. I wanted new experiences, to live outside my comfort zone, and work with kids with a different background from my own. My first choice was Washington D.C. I liked the idea of a living in a city and thought, ‘history, museums, art, politics? Sounds perfect!’ The idea of working with inner city youth sounded daunting and I was excited.

My second choice was Eastern North Carolina. I wasn’t brave enough to put three completely new and exotic locations on my list, so this was the safety pick. Out of the 22 possible places to work, I felt that this site would feel very familiar. The description of farms and rural life sounded like the places I had lived before and hoped I would not actually be assigned there.

The third choice was Las Vegas. The location and landscape seemed both foreign and romantic. I imagined grading papers under a Southwest sunset and looking out over cacti and desert. In addition to my naive musings this decision was also motivated by the fact that while reading the description of the region, a past corps member mentioned that they had taken hula lessons in the city. That irrelevant piece of information guaranteed its spot in my top three.

When my acceptance letter arrived I found I was placed Eastern North Carolina. I was disappointed and thought that I missed my chance at seeing a different part of the country and way of living. Yet, I was also relieved, thinking that at least I would be within my comfort zone and would have docile country children and not have to deal with the stress and violence of the city.

Little did I know I was headed for a foreign country where I did not speak the same language, eat the same food, or experience life the same way. My students lived in a land where spail and dooshy belonged in the dictionary and bananas come in bunches of thirty. Where a five year old knows skin color is more complicated and complex than just pigmentation and a boy can live six years without seeing another child his own age. I thought I knew the east coast, poverty, and rural life. I thought I knew my country and I thought I knew myself, but really it was a misunderstanding.