The moment I set foot inside the library at Jorgensen High School, something felt off, in a tangible way. By the time I set foot inside my classroom an hour or so later, I knew that I had made a grave mistake in accepting this job.

It was a Friday morning, and the area had been undergoing a massive heat wave.  This was not uncommon for the time of year, but what was uncommon was that it was not cooling off at night.  Typically, at night, cooler air would blow in from the ocean and make it at least as far inland as Jeromeville, almost certainly as far as Nueces and Fairview, leading to a nightly reprieve from the hot sunshine that would take over again by the middle of the following morning.  But the weather conditions currently prohibited that cool air from arriving last night.  I left the house at 7:15, and it was already 79 degrees outside, with a projected high of 105.

We had one extra day of work for summer school, today, the Friday before students started.  We would begin today with a short staff meeting, and then have time to set up our classrooms.  This room I would be using for summer school would likely not be my permanent classroom, so hopefully I would not need to do much setup, just put my stuff away and make a plan for the first few days.  Yet still I drove all the way to Jorgensen High with a feeling of foreboding, as if summer school would be a trial by fire.

I walked apprehensively into the library and sat at a table by myself.  The first thing that I noticed was that the air in the room was hot and stuffy.  It had been hot all week, and it was warm last night; maybe the air conditioning had not been turned on yet.  Another teacher sat next to me and introduced herself as Mrs. Johnson, an English teacher here at Jorgensen.

“I’m Greg Dennison,” I said.  “I’ll be teaching math here in the fall.”

“Welcome!” she replied.  “I heard there were three new math teachers?”

“I know of one other one besides me.  I don’t know who the third one is.”

“You’ll want to talk to Derek Raymond later,” she said, pointing at a man in his thirties with a shaved head and a goatee.  “He teaches math here at Jorgensen. I don’t know the other summer school math teacher.”  I saw on the master schedule that there were three math teachers for summer school, and I wondered who the third one was if Mrs. Johnson did not know him.  I would learn later that he was from Golden Valley Middle School, the school that sends its students to Jorgensen.

The principal for summer school was a man named Jerry Holden, definitely not the same principal who had hired me for this job.  He explained procedures for the summer and passed out a master schedule to each of us.  Summer school started at 8:00 and got out at 12:15 each day.  I was in room C-1, teaching two periods of “Algebra 1/Algebra,” each two hours long with a fifteen-minute break in between.  I was unsure what purpose the slash in the class name served.  I was even more confused when I saw my attendance sheets, because I had four of them, not two.  I had twenty-eight students in first period Algebra 1 and twenty-six in second period Algebra 1, but then there was another attendance sheet with two students in first period “Algebra,” without a number, and another one with one student in second period “Algebra.”  I walked up to Mr. Holden after the meeting and asked, “I was told on the phone that I would be teaching Algebra 1 and Algebra 2, but this just says ‘Algebra 1, slash, Algebra,’ and this master schedule says that Mr. Raymond is teaching Algebra 2.”  I also explained my confusion about having four class rosters instead of two.

Mr. Holden looked at my schedule and class rosters and answered, “For first period, you have two classes, these students in Algebra 1, and these in Algebra.  For second period you also have two classes.”

“So this is just Algebra 1?  Not Algebra 2?”

“Algebra 1 and Algebra.  No Algebra 2.”

Already this was not looking good. I was under the impression that part of my schedule would include Algebra 2, a more advanced class as far as high school mathematics is concerned, but apparently whoever called me asking if I wanted to teach summer school was misinformed. And Mr. Holden made it sound like I would be teaching combination classes, with students in the same room taking two different classes. I continued, “What’s the difference between Algebra 1 and Algebra?”

Mr. Holden looked at my schedule and rosters again, looking just as confused as I was.  “You’ll have to ask your department chair,” he told me. “I’m not too familiar with the math curriculum.”

“Who is the department chair for summer school?  Mr. DeBoer isn’t teaching summer school, as far as I know.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Mr. Holden replied. “See if any of the other math teachers for summer school know.  Mr. Raymond can probably help you.”

I nodded and walked toward my classroom, frustrated at the lack of straight answers from Mr. Holden.  He was not the regular principal at Jorgensen, so it was understandable that he might not know everything about the school, but I still expected that he would be more prepared.  I did not understand at that time that people who take summer school positions are not always the same people who hold the same positions during the school year.  Many full-time school employees want summers off, and some teachers want or need extra work in the summer, even if that means teaching at a different school.  I would learn later that Mr. Holden was new to the district, like me, and that during the year he was a vice principal at the middle school.

I found building C and unlocked the door to room C-1 with one hand as I carefully attempted to balance the book and supplies I was carrying in the other hand.  I put everything down on the desk and took a deep breath of the same warm, stuffy air that had never cooled off for the whole hour that we had been in the library.  I flipped the light switch on and looked for something that looked like a thermostat or temperature control, but I found nothing.  I did see a telephone, though, which was good, because I could contact the office or call parents directly from my room. Last year, I did my student teaching at Nueces High, where there were no phones in the classroom, so I had to go to the office if I wanted to call a parent.

I sat at my desk, trying to organize the supplies I had been given, making a list of things I needed.  After about a minute, I heard a knock and the soft creak of the door, which I had left unlocked, slowly opening. Derek Raymond poked his head in the door.

“Hi,” he said.  “You’re Gregory Dennison?  One of the new math teachers for next year?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Derek Raymond. I was in this classroom last year. Well, for four periods at least; I had one class in a different room.” He stepped into the room and said, “It’s nice to meet you.  What are you teaching this summer?”

“I don’t exactly know.  I have so many questions.  First of all, is the air conditioning broken?  It was hot in the library, and it’s hot in here too.”

Derek’s face made the familiar expression one makes when one is about to drop a difficult truth on someone.  “Yeah, Jorgensen doesn’t have air conditioning. Most of the school doesn’t, at least.  The science building does because it’s newer, and there are a couple of classrooms where people put in their own window units without asking the district.  That’s why I asked for C-2 this summer, because it has one of those, and it kind of works.  But you can use that fan in the corner.  Just leave it here at the end of summer school. Most of the rooms have fans.”

“Oh,” I said, downhearted.  I was going to have to spend six of the hottest weeks of the year in a hot, stuffy classroom with no air conditioning, with students who had failed Algebra 1, and the upcoming school year would be uncomfortably warm at the beginning and end of the year as well. I started berating myself in my mind for signing a contract to work here without even having bothered to ask, or notice, whether or not the school had air conditioning. I suppose I took it for granted that air conditioning would be a given in this climate.  I decided not to dwell on the subject, so I asked Derek about the separate rosters for Algebra 1 and “Algebra” without a number.

“Algebra 1 and Algebra?” he repeated, clearly also unfamiliar with this distinction.  He looked at my class rosters, trying to figure it out.  “All the students in just ‘Algebra’ are 8th graders, or they were last year.  So I guess because they’re still classified as middle school students, their middle school transcript just says ‘Algebra’ instead of ‘Algebra 1.’”

“Is it the same class?  Do I teach the same thing to all of them, or do I have to do something different with the 8th graders?”

“Just teach them all the same thing.  8th grade algebra is the same curriculum as high school Algebra 1.”

“Oh, good,” I said.

The first few days went relatively smoothly.  Some of the students seemed uninterested in doing anything productive, but others really were trying their best.  Some just struggled in math to the point that they got behind during the year, while others were in summer school because they just had not made much effort during the year.  Two of the three who had been 8th graders had not failed math during the year; they were taking this class in order to skip Algebra 1 as freshmen and go straight to geometry. Those two both seemed like excellent students.

The illusion that summer school would go smoothly was shattered on Wednesday of the first week.

I was at the board, about half an hour into period 2, demonstrating how to solve linear equations with variables on both sides.  I gave the students time to work on a few problems on their own.   I had the windows open at the start of the day, when it was cooler outside, but now, at 10:45, it was warming up outside. I walked around while the students were working, and as I passed the windows, I closed them.

“Man, why you doing that?” asked a student named Chris.

“Because when I got here this morning, it was cooler outside than it was inside, but now it’s getting hot outside.”

“But it’s hot in here!”

“It’s just as hot outside too.  This is the best we can do,” I explained.  I continued walking around the classroom, checking students’ work. A girl named Kelly had forgotten to combine like terms first, so I pointed at the expression “2x + 3x” on her paper, and asked, “What’s 2x plus 3x?”

“5x?” Kelly replied.  “Oh, yeah, you have to do that first.”

“There you go.”  I continued walking around when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.  Chris was out of his seat, dragging the fan over next to his desk.  “Chris, please put the fan back where you found it,” I politely requested.

“I can’t feel it!” Chris shouted.  “It’s hot in here!”

“The fan is oscillating, so everyone can feel it.”

“Oscill– man, what’s that mean?”

“See how it’s moving back and forth.  That way the air hits as many people as possible.”

“Well, more of it needs to be hitting me!”

“Chris, please put the fan back where you found it,” I repeated.  I looked at Chris, who just stared back and did nothing.  Another student, DeMario, who was sitting near where I had originally placed the fan, got up and moved it back the way I had it before.  “Thank you, DeMario,” I said.

I continued walking around, looking at students’ work to see how they were doing, when about ten seconds later I heard movement again.  I looked up to see Chris walking toward DeMario’s desk.  Chris gave DeMario a hard shove and began pulling the fan back toward him.  DeMario jumped up, and Chris feigned a punch before pulling his fist back at the last minute.  DeMario raised his hands to block, shouting, “You wanna fight me?”

“Yeah, I wanna fight you,” Chris replied, throwing another fake punch.  The two of them hopped around on their feet, staring each other down, for about another ten seconds.

“Come on!” DeMario shouted.  “Fight me!”  Most of the rest of the class was watching now, with some students cheering on one or the other of the two combatants.  Chris and DeMario continued their small hops, fists raised at each other.  Chris took a swing at DeMario, who ducked out of the way and shoved Chris in response.  I ran to the phone and called the office.

“Office,” Kathy, the secretary, replied.

“This is Mr. Dennison in C-1,” I said.  “A fight broke out in my room.”

“Like, an actual fistfight?”

“Yes!”

“We’ll send someone down as soon as we can.”

About a minute later, while Chris and DeMario were still pushing and shoving but no actual blows had landed, Mr. Holden arrived, along with a large man who looked no older than thirty and, I would have guessed, probably played football when he was in high school.  I would learn later that this was James, the campus security guard.  “Come on, boys,” James said loudly.  Chris and DeMario ignored him, so James and Mr. Holden walked across the room, attempting to break up the fight.  Both boys stopped once they saw James approaching, following him and Mr. Holden to the office and loudly protesting.  I let them leave and then turned to the class, saying, “Let’s get back to work.”  I resumed walking around the room, trying to check if students were correctly solving equations, but I was having a hard time focusing, still feeling a bit shaken by all that had happened.  After a couple minutes of taking deep breaths, I did the best I could to finish class as I had originally planned.

About three minutes after class was dismissed, Mr. Holden walked into the room.  “So both boys went home.  Normally for things like this, we would be kicking both boys out of summer school.  But then DeMario’s mom came to the office, insisting that he wasn’t doing anything wrong, that the other boy must have been the instigator.”

“That’s pretty much how I remember it, to be honest,” I said. “Chris was the instigator.”

“Can you come down to the office for a minute and make a statement, so I can have all the facts on record?”

“Okay.”  I followed Mr. Holden to the administration building, and into his office, where a middle-aged woman was sitting with DeMario.

“You’re DeMario’s teacher?” she asked me.

“Yes.”

“My boy needs this class.  He needs to graduate.  You can’t kick him out.”

“Mr. Dennison is going to tell us exactly what he saw,” Mr. Holden explained, interrupting DeMario’s mother.

I started from the beginning of the story, how I had the windows open at the start of the day, but I closed them when it started to get hot outside.  I continued through every detail, including Chris’ unauthorized attempt to move the fan and DeMario moving it back where I had it initially.  I attempted to recall as accurately as I could that Chris had walked up to DeMario and pushed him out of his desk, and that Chris had thrown the first fake punch and the first real swing.

“Thank you,” Mr. Holden replied, taking notes on a note pad the whole time.  “I need to review all the facts, and we’ll call you later today and let you know whether or not DeMario will be staying in summer school.”

“You can’t kick DeMario out,” his mother protested.  “He needs to graduate.”

“Mr. Dennison, you’re free to go.”

“Thank you,” I said.  Since I was already in the administration building, I checked my mailbox, which was empty except for my class rosters. Back in 1999, class rosters were printed weekly on bubble sheets. Every day, I would fill in bubbles with a No. 2 pencil for students who were absent or tardy. Someone from the office would pick up the papers from everyone’s classrooms every period, scan them, and return them to the teachers’ boxes for the next day.

I walked to the courtyard, preparing to turn back toward my classroom, when a voice behind me shouted, “Hey!”  I turned and saw DeMario’s mother, still standing in the courtyard.  She walked up to me and repeated, “You can’t kick DeMario out of summer school.  He needs this class to graduate.”

“There isn’t much I can do right now,” I explained.  “I told Mr. Holden what I saw, and it’s ultimately his decision.

“He needs this class to graduate.  He needs to graduate to get a good job.  He isn’t too good at school, especially math.  He needs a good job, because you never know what’s gonna happen in this economy.  He wasn’t fighting.  He’s a good boy.  That other boy started everything.  DeMario told me he was just minding his own business, and then that other boy pushed him.  DeMario is a good boy.  He’d never do anything like that.”

I nodded and said, “I’m sure he is.  Like I said, Mr. Holden is going to review the facts and decide what to do.  I can’t do anything more for you.”

“My boy, he’s a good boy.  He doesn’t get in fights.  But he needs to graduate.  He has two more years left here, and he needs this math class to graduate.  He’s not a troublemaker.  You can’t kick him out of summer school.  He’s a good boy.  I raised him right, made sure he did his homework every night.  His daddy was never around, but I raised him right.  He wasn’t fighting.  It was that other boy.  DeMario needs this class to graduate.  I’m not gonna raise a deadbeat like his daddy.  DeMario can go far in the world, but he needs your class to graduate.  He’s more like me, not like his daddy.  He’s a good boy.  He doesn’t fight at school.  He knows how to behave at school.  He’s just a little behind in math, but he’s a good boy.  He does his work.  He tries his best.   He needs to graduate so he can get a good job and be ready for the world.  It’s gonna be the year 2000, and no one knows what’s gonna happen in the year 2000.  Maybe the end of the world.  My boy needs to be ready.  No one knows what’s coming in the year 2000. DeMario needs to stay in your class.  You can’t kick him out.  He wasn’t the one who started the fight.  He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  My boy is a good boy.  He isn’t like that.”  I started tuning out as DeMario’s mother continued to ramble on and on and on and on, repeating the same talking points.

After about fifteen minutes of standing there doing my best to listen to her, finally I said, “I need to go check in at the office.  I’ll tell them your concerns.”

“DeMario is a good boy,” she said.  “He wasn’t fighting.  It was that other boy.”

“I know,” I replied as I walked into the office and approached Kathy’s desk.

“Yes?” Kathy asked.

“The mom I just met with, she’s out there in the courtyard.  She’s been repeating the same things to me for about fifteen minutes.  I told her it’s not my decision whether he stays in summer school or not.  I don’t know what to do; I have things to do in the classroom before I leave.”

“Go ahead and go back to your room.  Take the back door.  We’ll deal with the mom.”

“Thank you so much,” I replied.  I walked back to my room by another route, watching over my shoulder to make sure that DeMario’s mother was not following me.  She was not.

Apparently Mr. Holden sided with DeMario’s mother, that he had not done anything to warrant getting kicked out of summer school, because DeMario was back in class the next morning.  He did not make trouble the rest of the year, although he just barely did enough work to get credit with a D-plus in the class.  Chris never did return to my class, and I was thankful for that, because the way he had acted kind of scared me.

This week had certainly been a wake-up call.  My comfortable bubble of honors students and Christians was starting to deflate during my student teaching year last year, and after this incident, it was completely shattered.  DeMario, and probably Chris, and many of these other students had very different backgrounds from mine.  I had no idea what it would be like to grow up like DeMario, in a house with no father and a mother who communicated the way his mother did.

I do not know whatever happened to DeMario or Chris. I did not have either of them as students in the fall. Teaching students like DeMario and Chris to think mathematically would be a challenge.  Getting them to be quiet in class would itself be a challenge as well, especially in this heat with no air conditioning.  I really wanted the best for these students, but at this point, I was not sure how I was going to get through the summer, let alone the rest of the year.  This is what I had signed up for, though, and I would just have to do the best I can, hopefully with help from the office and other teachers who had been doing this longer.

Readers: Welcome to Year 6! This is the final season of Don’t Let The Days Go By. I did not take the customary break at the end of year 5, because the story timeline is currently near the same time of year as real life, and I think it would be fun to continue telling the story at the same time of year.

Have you ever had a physical confrontation break out in front of you? Tell me about it in the comments.

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[Everclear – Father Of Mine]