I arrived on Wednesday morning, still feeling somewhat optimistic.  It was September 1, day number three of working as a full-time teacher.  School started at 7:45 in the morning, but I did not have to be there legally until 8:12, and I did not have to teach until 8:42.  Jorgensen High School, being overcrowded, ran a schedule with two different start times, so that some students took their classes periods 1 through 6, and others periods 2 through 7.  Teachers also were designated either early start teachers, with period 7 off, or late start teachers, with period 1 off, in addition to our prep periods at some other point during the day.

I was a late start teacher, the only one among the ten math teachers.  I was okay with that; it meant that I did not have to wake up as early, which was especially useful since I was driving for a little over half an hour to get there all the way from Jeromeville.  When I saw my schedule last week during the meetings to begin the school year, I saw that I was in room E for periods 2 and 3.  I asked Jerry DeBoer, the math department chair, if this was a typo.  My understanding was that the buildings on campus were named with letters, and the rooms within the buildings were named with the building letter and a number. I had taught summer school in room C-1, for example. “Which room in building E is this?” I asked.

“It’s just ‘Room E,’” Jerry explained.  “A few years ago, they remodeled the storage space in building E and added this room between E-3 and E-4.  It’s a smaller room, but we only have small classes in there, like your Basic Math A and Algebra 1 for freshmen..”

“Okay,” I said.  As soon as I got to Room E on that day last week, I could tell exactly what happened.  Building E had three classrooms on each side, E-1 through E-3 on one side and E-4 through E-6 on the other, with doors facing the outside.  The building was designed to have storage space in a long, skinny room between the classrooms, with doors connecting to all six rooms.  Around the corner from E-3 was an unmarked door where Jerry told me I could find my classroom.  Room E apparently had been carved out of this storage space, with a thin partition wall in the back and a door leading to the remnant of the storage space.  So basically, I would be teaching in a converted closet.

I could not go to room E right away when I arrived on that day, though, because, with the school being overcrowded, I did not have the luxury of a quiet classroom to myself in which to do my work.  Every room was used every period as much as possible, which meant that most teachers had classes in different rooms and no reserved place to work during prep periods.  Martha Cervantes taught Basic Math A in room E period 1.  She then had prep period 2, and taught other classes in room C-3 periods 3 through 6.  I taught in room E periods 2 through 4, then had lunch and prep, then I moved to room C-6 for periods 6 and 7.  I carried two textbooks under one arm, with my notes and gradebook inside a plastic file box that I carried with my other hand, and parked myself in the teacher lunch room, where I sat in a chair working on lesson plans for next week.  I saw other teachers carrying file boxes and tote bags, and I decided to buy a file box for this purpose a few days ago.  One teacher took the whole situation of sharing rooms to a dramatic extreme, carrying her things around in a full-size shopping cart.  Taped to it was a cardboard sign in the style of those made by homeless people; it said “WILL WORK 4 CLASSROOM.”  I probably would not be able to get away with such theatrics as a brand new teacher.

Yesterday, as period 2 was starting, a large student unknown to me walked through the entrance of room E and shouted across the room in my direction, “You need a TA?” Yes, I thought, I did need a teacher’s assistant, a student to run errands for me and things like that, so I signed his schedule change form.  His name was Jamal Brown, a senior.  Jamal arrived to class two minutes late today; I marked him tardy on the bubble sheet and placed the paper on the clip next to the door, where an office TA would come by and bring it to the office to be scanned.

My first assignment in all of my classes was to have students answer a few questions about themselves so that I could get to know them.  I got this idea from Kate Matthews, one of my master teachers from student teaching at Nueces High last year, who in turn got it from the teacher’s edition of one of the textbooks that school used.  I collected these from students yesterday and read through them after school, and now I handed them to Jamal along with my gradebook.  “Record these for me, please,” I said.  “Give them ten points if they are done.”

“Yeah,” Jamal grunted.

I walked back to the front of the class.  “Today you’ll be getting your textbook,” I explained to the students.  “Take a few minutes to look through your book.  If you notice any writing in it, any torn pages, anything like that, write it on this paper I’m going to give you.  That way, when you turn your book in at the end of the year, you won’t get fined for anything that someone else did to your book before you had it.  Also write your name on the line in the inside cover, but don’t write anything anywhere else in the book.”  I walked around and handed a book and a form to each student, then I continued walking up and down the rows to make sure that they knew what to do.  “Thomas,” I said to a student who was doing nothing, “if you leave this form blank, you’re saying that your book is in perfect condition, and any writing or rips we find in it at the end of the year, you’ll have to pay for.  Is that what you want?”

“Fine,” he sighed loudly, halfheartedly flipping through his book.

“Hey!” I heard a shout from across the room.  Jamal was standing up.  “I gotta use the bathroom!”

“Take the TA pass,” I said, handing him a reusable hall pass I had made.  After he left, I noticed that he had not entered any of the papers I had given him in the gradebook; apparently he had just been sitting there the whole time.  He never came back to class, and he never returned my hall pass, so now he had free rein to wander the school whenever he wanted.

I spent the rest of the period attempting to teach my Basic Math A students what negative numbers were.  Today they were relatively quiet while I was talking, but half of them sat there doing nothing when I gave them the opportunity to try problems on their own.  I was happy when the bell rang and my 3rd period Algebra 1 class entered the room.

The state had given extra funding to schools for small class sizes specifically for ninth grade.  Basic Math A classes were typically almost all ninth grade students, so these classes were kept small this year.  Algebra 1 was more complicated, since a number of older students also took Algebra 1, typically ones who took Basic Math A as freshmen and did well.  Rather than make all Algebra 1 classes small, the school made separate classes called “Algebra 1-9th” with only ninth graders in them and a limit of twenty students, while regular Algebra 1 classes were for non-freshmen only, with class sizes well over thirty like every other class at the school.  One with common sense would understand that Algebra 1 students who were not freshmen needed extra support and would benefit more from the smaller class sizes than freshmen who were testing on grade level.  But it seemed often that schools were run by people who cared only about money and themselves, not common sense.

“Mr. Dennison?” a student named Peter asked as he walked in.  “Can I give you a high five?”

“Sure,” I said.  I raised my right hand with my palm open, but since Peter was maybe five foot two at most, I did not extend it fully upward.  Peter jumped up and slapped my palm with his.  I smiled as I walked to my desk and filled out the attendance bubble sheet, getting a little irritated again when I remembered that Jamal had stolen my hall pass, but I tried my best to put it out of my mind as I gave these students their textbooks and told them to look for pre-existing damage.  After that, I began the first lesson, reviewing what variables were, and how to turn phrases like “three less than a number” into variable expressions.  Just yesterday I had finished making cards with all the students’ names on them, so I could call on students randomly instead of calling on the same three or four students who raised their hand every time.  “Julia?” I called after pulling her card.

“Three minus x,” Julia answered.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Julia replied, confused.  “‘Less than’ means subtract.”

“But how many are you taking away?”

“Three.  Because it says three less.”

“Yes.  You start with the number and take away three.”

Julia thought for a second, then said, “So it’s ‘x minus three?’”

“Exactly.”  I walked the students through a few more examples and gave them time to get to work.  Most of them used their time productively, and none of them were major distractions.  This class looked like it would be the bright spot in my schedule.

As I was walking around, checking to see that students were doing the work correctly, a girl named Tasha pulled a piece of paper out from under her textbook.  “Here, Mr. Dennison,” she said.  “I drew you a cat.”

I looked at Tasha’s drawing and smiled.  It was better than I could do.  I hoped that she had taken the time to take notes, and that she had not spent the entirety of my math lecture on this cat drawing.  “I’ll put this on the wall behind my desk,” I replied.  I walked back to my desk and taped the cat to the wall, the first of hundreds of pieces of silly student artwork I would save over the course of my career.

At lunch I went to the office to tell someone about Jamal’s disappearance.  Sharon McCall, one of the vice principals, said that she would let campus security know that my hall pass was stolen.  In the whole time I worked at Jorgensen, I never did ask Sharon if she was related to the McCalls that I had known growing up.  That was the kind of thing my mother would have done right away, but I did not want to make things weird.

“I’ll also speak to the counselors and get Jamal into a different class,.” she said.  “He hasn’t shown that he is responsible enough to be a TA.”

“Thank you.”

“In the future, you might want to only let students you know and trust be your TAs.”

“Good point.”

For periods 6 and 7, I was in a full-sized classroom.  Mike Novak taught in that room for the other five periods, with prep period 6, and during our time to set up last week, he made it clear through his attitude that it was his classroom, not mine.  It was big enough for two teacher desks, but the posters in the room were his, because he had been in that room for a long time and that was just the way things were, in his view.  All the teacher posters I had went up in room E instead.

A wide range of students were in the geometry class.  Geometry was normally taken during sophomore year, but I had quite a few juniors and two seniors who were behind in math, as well as four freshmen who were ahead in math.  One of the freshmen, Milo, I had met during summer school; most of my summer school students were there because they had failed math the previous year, but Milo was there to get ahead.  I went through the same routine as in the other classes, passing out textbooks and asking students to check the condition of the textbooks and write down any pre-existing damage that they found.  Those two periods passed relatively uneventfully that day, except that the room was hot.  I had discovered the hard way while teaching summer school that most of the buildings at Jorgensen High, including buildings C and E, had no air conditioning.  I made it quite clear that students were not to touch the fan; summer school was still fresh in my mind, when two students got into a fistfight in the middle of class while arguing over which way to point the fan.

About a week after Jamal stole my hall pass, I felt like I was settling into a routine.  Given how much chaos I dealt with during that first week, I should not have been surprised one bit when my routine was massively upended again, through no fault of my own.

I arrived at school and checked my mailbox.  Nothing there except the bubble sheets for attendance.  As I headed toward the lunch room to get some work done, I heard Sharon say, “Mr. Dennison?  May I talk to you for a minute?”

I stepped into Sharon’s office and asked, “Yes?”

“So we’ve been running the numbers, and some of our classes, including geometry, are way too overcrowded.”

“Okay,” I said, hoping that this might mean that my sixth period class might have fewer than the current thirty-three students moving forward

The solution Sharon was about to propose was much more drastic.  She explained, “We’ve been looking at scheduling options, and the best way we can find to solve this problem is to hire another math teacher part time.  Susie Andrews used to teach here until a few years ago, when she decided to stay home with her kids full time, and she’s agreed to come back part time to teach two classes.  But the least impactful way to fit this into everyone’s schedule is to give her your third period Basic Math A class.”  My face fell.  This was by far my favorite class, and apparently I would not be teaching them for the rest of the year.  I nodded as Mrs. McCall continued, “We’re going to open a new geometry class 3rd period.  We’ll keep you in room E, since you’re already there for periods 2 and 4, and since there are only twenty-three desks in that room, we’ll cap the class at twenty-three.  And you’ll only have two preps now, geometry and Basic Math A.”  I had heard the term “two preps” during my student teaching, and I was confused what that meant at first; I figured out at some point last year that it meant that I would only have to prepare lesson plans for two different classes, as opposed to the three I was preparing now.  That would definitely be an advantage, less work on my part.

“I really like the students in my third period class now,” I said, a little disappointed.  “But I also like the idea of only having two preps. When would this go into effect?”

“Tomorrow.  I’ll come into your period 3 at the beginning of class and tell the students what is going on, and we’ll meet with the students who will be getting schedule changes to go into your new third period geometry.”

“Okay,” I said.  “I’ll see you third period, then?”

“Yes.  Thank you for being flexible.”

“No problem.”  I felt like it was a problem, though, because I would be losing a wonderful class, and I would have to start over, establishing routines for a new class.

The next day, Mrs. McCall arrived in room E just seconds after the bell rang to end period 2.  I stood near the doorway as students trickled in.  Peter was one of the first to arrive; he gave me a high five and exclaimed, “Hi, Mr. Dennison!  Who’s that?  Isn’t she the vice principal or something?”

“Yes,” I explained.  “Mrs. McCall.  She has an important announcement for the class.”

“Is someone in trouble?”

“No.”

“Hi, Mr. Dennison!” Julia said, smiling, as she walked in.

“Hi,” I replied.

After the bell rang, Mrs. McCall announced that she had something important to say.  I filled out the attendance bubble sheet as she explained, “We are making some schedule changes in order to make our classes less crowded.  But in order to make everything work out, your class is moving to room C-5, and you’ll be taught by Mrs. Andrews.”

“What?” Peter called out.  “Mr. Dennison isn’t gonna be our teacher anymore?”

“That’s correct.  We need him to teach geometry this period, since we have so many students enrolled in geometry.  Mr. Dennison is already teaching two other geometry classes, and you are his only Algebra 1 class.  So today will be your last day with Mr. Dennison.  Tomorrow, for this period, go to room C-5 with Mrs. Andrews.”

“We’ll miss you, Mr. Dennison!” Julia said.

“Mr. Dennison?  Can we have a party, since this is our last day with you?” Peter asked.

“Unfortunately, no,” I explained.  “I don’t want you to get behind for Mrs. Andrews.  It’s going to be hard enough for her, having to add this class at the last minute.”

I went through my regular lesson plan that day, but it was a bittersweet day.  All of the students were well-behaved and on task.  When the bell was about to ring, and I gave them permission to pack up, I told them, “I’ll miss all of you.  Come say hi when you see me around campus.”

“We will!” Peter exclaimed.

I got to room C-6 for the afternoon geometry classes a few minutes before Mike’s period 5 class ended.  He was sitting at his desk looking over something that did not look school related while his students were halfheartedly working independently at their desks.  I had heard less than stellar things about his teaching, and what I had seen by walking into his room at the end of 5th period every day seemed to reinforce that opinion.

Mike walked over to me when I sat down at my desk.  “Your students stole markers from on top of the file cabinet,” he said.

“What?” I asked, still processing what I had just heard.

“I had a set of overhead markers on top of that cabinet, and when I got here this morning, the red one was missing. Students like to steal the red markers because it’s a gang color.”

“I’m pretty sure no one went back there during my classes,” I replied.

“Just keep an eye out.  Make sure no one goes near my desk.”

“I will,” I said, mildly annoyed.  I wanted to remind him that he spent the last several minutes of his last class not paying attention to what his own students were doing, but it probably was not worth arguing at this point.

Last year, when I told my colleagues from student teaching at Nueces High that I had been hired at Jorgensen High, everyone familiar with the schools in the area kept telling me that Jorgensen was a great school.  A couple weeks in, though, there were only two ways to explain what I had experienced, and I was not sure which was true.  Either things at Nueces were much worse than they appeared to me if Jorgensen seemed good by comparison, or Jorgensen had a reputation from the past but had gone downhill quickly.

Sharing a classroom with Mike Novak never got any easier.  It was the same old story for the entire time I was at Jorgensen; any time anything went missing from his classroom, he would blame my students, but he spent much of his classes barely paying attention to his own students.  My colleagues from student teaching at Nueces High and the student teaching program at the University of Jeromeville both led me to believe that sharing classrooms like this was the norm these days in this state, but fortunately, after I left Jorgensen, I never had to share classrooms again.

I never did find my hall pass.  But, while walking around campus, I often saw the students from the Algebra 1 class that Susie Andrews took over, and they did say hi to me when I saw them.  A few of them, including Peter and Julia, had me for geometry the following year.  And, by a bizarre coincidence, I ran into Peter in my thirties at Target where I live now, over fifty miles from Jorgensen High.  Apparently he lives in this area now too.  He recognized me, but I did not recognize him, since he had a late growth spurt and had grown about a foot since I had last seen him at age sixteen.

My student teaching experience last year was a harsh introduction to what high school students were like, outside of my bubble of honors classes. My first week teaching summer school, when the fight broke out, was a harsh introduction to what summer school was like. And those first couple weeks at Jorgensen in the fall were an equally harsh introduction to the level of disorganization plaguing many public schools in this state.  Some years and some schools have definitely been worse than others, and Jorgensen was definitely one of the more chaotic of the schools where I have worked, but as a teacher, I have come to find that I will never escape unexpected last minute changes.  That is also true of life in general.  I did not have to like it, but I did have to accept it.

Readers: Have you ever been surprised at how disorganized something was? Tell me about it in the comments.

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[The Offspring – The Kids Aren’t Alright]