January 6, 1999. Low expectations, and hiding in plain sight. (#203)

The hills looked unusually beautiful this morning, I thought as the gas stations and fast food restaurants on the eastern outskirts of Nueces approached.  The sun was just rising, and although this was my third day back at Nueces High School for student teaching after winter break, the first two days had been cloudy.

I had just driven through those hills five days ago.  Brian Burr, my older roommate from two years ago, was long known for throwing great parties. For many years, he had given a party for the New Year back at his parents’ house in Valle Luna.  He was now a student at New York Medical College, but as he had last year, he returned home for the winter break and threw another party.  I did not enjoy this one as much as the previous year.  Not as many of Brian’s friends from Jeromeville, the ones I knew, were there.  Brian spent most of his time catching up with people he had grown up with in Valle Luna, and now that he was twenty-five years old, many of his friends had entered the real adult world and did not have much in common with a student like me.

I brought a sleeping bag, the same one I got for the Moonlight Cove trip a few years ago, and stayed the night on the floor of the Burrs’ living room, along with about ten of Brian’s other friends who were not local to Valle Luna.  Being a light sleeper, I woke up earlier than the other guests, and since I anticipated this, I brought a book to read: The Regulators by Richard Bachman, who was actually Stephen King.  Early in his career, Stephen King had written books under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, and when the media discovered that the Richard Bachman books were actually written by Stephen King, he staged a mock funeral for his alter ego.  A decade or so later, he wrote two books set in parallel universes with connections between the stories; one was published under his real name, and the other as Richard Bachman. The introduction to the book called it a posthumous work supposedly found among Mr. Bachman’s things by the nonexistent man’s nonexistent widow.  Reading kept me busy for about an hour until Brian woke up.  I left after telling Brian good morning and thanking him for inviting me.

It was around this time of morning on that day, January 1, with the sun just rising, as I left Brian’s house.  I was flipping around on the radio on the way home, looking for a good station, and a few minutes after I left Brian’s house, I heard the song “1999” by Prince.  The song was from 1983, but being that it now actually was 1999, I had a feeling I would be hearing this song many times over the next few days.  I heard it twice more on other stations before I got to Jeromeville that morning.

Now, five days later, I was almost halfway through the school year, and in my student teaching assignment, I had transitioned to a role as the primary teacher in both of my classes.  Basic Math B was doing a lesson on arithmetic and geometric sequences; as was usually the case in that class, the students who paid attention and did their work regularly seemed to understand, and the ones who did not pay attention struggled and did not care.

The other class was called Geometry, but the curriculum that Nueces High used took a more integrated approach.  Some geometry topics were introduced in the previous year’s Algebra 1 class, and some algebra topics were explored this year, particularly those that connect algebra with geometry.  Dr. George Samuels, one of my professors from the University of Jeromeville, was a co-author of this textbook.  The geometry class was learning about lines in slope-intercept form, and Kayla Welch had raised her hand to ask a question about a problem on the homework.  “Write an equation for the graph, then use the equation to find the cost of renting the bicycle for 4.5 hours,” she read.

I talked Kayla through finding the slope and y-intercept of the line on the graph; she correctly deduced that renting the bicycle cost a $12 fee, plus $8 per hour. I continued, “Now we put 4.5 hours into the equation to find the cost.”  I wrote the equation that Kayla had figured out on the board using function notation, f(x) = 8x + 12. “So what do I do to find f of 4.5?” I asked.

“Wait.  What is f?”

“That’s the equation of my function.  F of x equals 8x plus 12.”

“But where did you get f times x?”

“That doesn’t say f times x.  That’s function notation.”

Another student, Andy Rawlings, raised his hand.  “What’s a function?” he asked, confused.

Suddenly, a clear but disturbing picture of the reason for these students’ confusion began to emerge.  “You’ve never seen function notation?” I asked, pointing at the symbol “f(x).”

“No,” several of them replied.

I shook my head in frustration.  “I’m going to have a talk with Dr. Samuels,” I said angrily.

This comment lost them even further; I could tell by the looks on their faces and some confused noises that none of the students had any idea what I was talking about,  Apparently, not only had they not learned about function notation in Algebra I, like I had, but they also forgot that I knew one of the authors of their textbook.  I had told them once that I knew Dr. Samuels before, hoping that they would be impressed, but they apparently were not.  “Never mind,” I continued.  “Let’s start over from here.” I rewrote the equation without the function symbol, “y = 8x + 12,” and asked, “Does this make sense to you?”  The students who usually participated in class nodded and answered in the affirmative.

The rest of the period went on as normal.  After the bell rang, Mrs. Tracy motioned for me to come to her desk.  “They don’t see functions until next year, in Algebra II,” she said.

“I learned function notation in Algebra I,” I replied, genuinely confused.

“You were probably in all the honors classes.  These kids aren’t like you.  We just need to get them through this class so they can graduate from high school.  Most of these kids aren’t going to go to college, and if they do, it’ll probably just be Fairview Community College.  Maybe one of them will go on to a school like Jeromeville.  They aren’t ready for advanced topics like function notation.”

I just nodded, not sure what to say.  “Mmm-hmm,” I eventually replied.

“Just keep things simple.  Get them through your class.”

“I guess.”

“It’s not a bad thing.  You’re doing well so far overall.  Just think about that.”

“I will,” I said.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah.  See you then.”

This conversation was still on my mind that night when I showed up to The Edge, the junior high school age youth group at Jeromeville Covenant Church.  We always began the night with a short leader meeting.  The leaders sat in a circle on the floor of the fellowship hall, waiting for Faith Wiener, the intern in charge of junior high ministry whose name was probably amusing to some of the junior high school boys, to start the meeting.

We had quite a bit of turnover in our staff this year.  Adam White, the youth pastor, was still there.  Taylor Santiago, Brody Parker, Martin Rhodes, and Erica Foster were still on The Edge staff.  Hannah Gifford, the girl whom I had personally invited to join The Edge staff last year, had signed on for a second year. Noah Snyder, who held Faith’s position last year, was still on The Edge staff, but just as a volunteer.  Noah, like me, was studying to be a teacher, but for elementary school, and he was doing his student teaching through the other university in this region, Capital State.  Since he needed to focus on his teaching this year, he stepped down from the part-time paid position.  Five others from last year had left The Edge staff for other ministry opportunities. Josh and Abby McGraw had moved on to work with the high school group this year, as had Barefoot James.  Courtney Kohl and Cambria Hawley had both left The Edge to be Bible study leaders with JCF; I was in Courtney’s Bible study.

Since the start of the new year, one new leader, a freshman named Jonathan, had joined the staff of The Edge.  He showed up one Wednesday in October wanting to work with kids, after having been to J-Cov on a few Sunday mornings.  Jonathan’s heart seemed to be in the right place, although he did not act like the typical church kid.  Something about him rubbed me the wrong way.  And tonight there was someone else sitting in on our leader meeting, a taller than average, slim girl with dark brown hair that contrasted with her pale skin and blue eyes.  I knew this girl from JCF, although I had no idea that she would be here tonight.  She looked up and recognized me, so I said, “Hi, Jamie.  Are you going to work with The Edge?”

“Yeah!” she said.  “I’m going to check it out.  I was just thinking about what else I could get involved with at church.”

“Welcome!  It’s good to see you here!”

A few minutes later, when everyone had arrived, Faith called our meeting to order.  “We have a new leader tonight,” she said in her North Carolina drawl.  “This is Jamie.  Apparently you know Greg.”

“Yeah,” Jamie replied.  “From JCF.  And I know Hannah from JCF too.”

“Why don’t you tell us a little about yourself, and why you came to work with The Edge.”

“Well, I’m a freshman.  I’m from Ashwood.  I haven’t decided on a major yet for sure, but I’m thinking psychology or something like that.  And I’m looking at The Edge because I used to work with kids at my church back home, and I want to get back into that.”

“Sounds good!  Welcome!”

We went over the order of events for the night, starting with the game we would be playing.  “We’re gonna be doing the leader hunt tonight,” Faith explained.

“I love this one,” Martin said.

“Five of you will be hiding somewhere on the church property, and the kids will be looking for you.  You’ll each have a pen, and the students will have a card, and you’ll initial their card when they find you.  They’ll have five minutes to find as many of you as you can.  I’m thinking Jamie probably shouldn’t be one of the leaders hiding, since the kids don’t know you.”

“Good idea,” Jamie replied.  “That’s fair.”

“The bushes in the back behind the parking lot are always a good place to hide,” Adam explained.  “And I know Martin once hid in the church van and left it unlocked.  Are you gonna do that again?”

“I think so,” Martin replied.

“In a few minutes, when we’re done talking but before the kids show up, you can look around for good hiding places if you need to.  Plus, it’s dark, so it’s easier to stay out of sight.”

During the rest of the meeting, I thought about the layout of the church grounds, trying to think of a good hiding spot.  I had not investigated the bushes behind the parking lot well enough to know if that would work for me.  After the meeting, I walked around outside, looking to see what might offer a reasonable amount of concealment, and I suddenly got an idea for a somewhat nontraditional way of hiding.

The students began to trickle in. I overheard a girl wearing a shirt from Abercrombie & Fitch admiringly pointing out that Jonathan was also wearing an Abercrombie & Fitch shirt. “Yeah, I like their clothes,” he said. “They’re kind of expensive, but that’s my style. I can’t help what I like. And people complain about how they use sweatshops, but I just like to think I’m giving some Third World kid a job.”

Calm down, Jonathan, I thought. No one cares about your style that much. And do 13-year-old kids really think about Third World sweatshops? I walked to the other side of the room and watched some boys playing basketball on the small-sized basketball hoop and backboard attached to the wall.

After the students had arrived, Adam called them all to attention.  “Tonight, we’re going to be playing the Leader Hunt game.  If you’re hiding, stand up.”  Faith, Hannah, Martin, Taylor, and I all stood up.  “These five leaders will be hiding somewhere on the church grounds, and you have to find them.  While they’re hiding, the rest of us will read you the announcements.”

I walked outside with the others who were hiding.  “Where are you hiding?” Faith asked when we were far enough away from the building for students not to hear.

“I was thinking, I’ll just hide in plain sight,” I explained.  “I’m going to sit on the bench at that bus stop over there, looking in the opposite direction, and act like I’m waiting for the bus.”

“That’s a great idea!  Do you think it’ll trick anyone?”

“Probably not many, but it’s funny.  Unexpected.”

I walked to the bus stop as Faith went to find a hiding place in the other direction.  I was not even sure if the buses ran at this time of night.  The local buses in Jeromeville were jointly run by the city government and the student association, with schedules meant to accommodate university students traveling to campus.  Another bus agency, called Arroyobus, ran local routes in the two other cities in Arroyo Verde County, as well as commuter buses between those two cities and other cities nearby. The Arroyobus route connecting Jeromeville and Woodville also stopped at this bus stop.  I knew nothing of the Arroyobus schedule, but I assumed that a bunch of youth group kids in their early teens also knew little about bus schedules, so they not be suspicious of seeing someone waiting for a bus at 7:30 at night. This would not affect the legitimacy of my hiding place.

Jeromeville was relatively quiet at night.  Most of the noise I heard was just from traffic passing by on Andrews Road.  Andrews was a fairly busy street, and across the street a little to my left was a large shopping center anchored by a grocery store. Just on the other side of the shopping center was Coventry Boulevard, the major east-west thoroughfare in the northern parts of Jeromeville.  This time of year, it was already dark by the time The Edge began, but the church grounds were illuminated by lampposts, and there was a streetlight not far from me, so with all of that, plus the non-hiding leaders keeping watch, it was safe for these students to run around the church property at night looking for leaders.

I heard voices as the students left the fellowship hall to start looking for us, but it sounded like most of them were headed in the opposite direction from me, toward the parking lot in the back.  I looked to my right, south on Andrews Road away from the church property, then I turned and looked to my left, slightly more visible.  I did not see any students coming, but I did see two young men on bicycles wearing white dress shirts, ties, and name tags.  Jeromeville was one of the most bicycle-friendly places in the United States, so seeing people riding bicycles at night was not at all uncommon here, but these two were too well-dressed to be students.  This could only mean one thing, which was confirmed when the two of them approached me and one of them asked, “Excuse me, sir?  We were wondering if we could ask you a few questions while you’re waiting here for the bus.”  He was now close enough that I could read his name tag: ELDER SIMMONS, THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS.  The words “Jesus Christ” were larger than the other words, just as they were on signs at their churches and logos on their promotional materials.

I had mixed feelings about Mormons and the Latter-Day Saints church.  They all seemed like nice people who favored traditional family values.  But from what I knew, they believed in additional Scriptures besides the traditional Old and New Testaments, and much of what I had learned about the Bible in the last few years seemed to suggest that there was no true Word of God beyond the Old and New Testaments.  I had Mormon cousins, because my grandpa on the Dennison side divorced Dad’s biological mother when Dad was a child and married into an LDS family.  I had only met those relatives a few times, but I always got along with them.  I had Mormon friends in high school, including Jason Lambert, who was in a lot of classes with me.  Jason and I once had an extremely liberal history teacher who we used to like to argue with.  More specifically, Jason liked to start the argument, because Jason was a lot more confrontational than me, and a bit cocky as well.  Jason was a great guy, but he rubbed me the wrong way sometimes.  Kind of like how Jonathan rubbed me the wrong way, with his Abercrombie & Fitch shirt and giving kids jobs in sweatshops. Maybe I should tell Elder Simmons to go get Jonathan to join the LDS church.

“Oh, sorry,” I said to Elder Simmons, realizing that my mind had been wandering for a few seconds, and that I had never replied to him.  “Actually, I’m not waiting for the bus.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.  I’m hiding from a bunch of kids.  I’m a youth group leader, at this church.”  I subtly emphasized those last two words as I motioned toward the buildings of Jeromeville Covenant Church behind me.  My experience had been that LDS missionaries tend to seek people from outside the church entirely, and they leave me alone when they find out that I attend a church.

“That sounds like fun,” Elder Simmons replied.  As he said that, a girl named Katie Hunter, from a family very active in the church, walked up to me with two of her friends.  They all handed me index cards.

“I found you, Greg,” she said.  “Sign this.”

“I see how the game works now,” Elder Simmons observed aloud.

After I signed the cards, the girls ran off to look for other leaders.  “I’ve been working with this group for about two years now,” I explained.  “One Sunday, that girl’s older brother came up to me out of nowhere and asked me if I would take him and his friend to McDonald’s.  We hung out all afternoon, and my friend heard about it and said I should be a youth group leader.”

“That’s a great story.”  A few other kids came up to me with their cards, and after I signed them, Elder Simmons continued, “I’ll let you get back to your game, then.  Here’s my card; you can let me know if you have any questions about our church.  Or you can come visit us; we’re on Eighth Street, down here and then turn left.” He handed me a card with his contact information on it.

“Okay,” I replied, with no intention of actually contacting him but wanting to be polite.  “Thank you.”

“Have a great night!” the other LDS missionary said.  They continued down the road on their bikes.

At the end of the night, some of the leaders talked about how the Leader Hunt game went.  Most of the students eventually found me at the bus stop.  The majority of them missed Martin in the church van.  I told Martin and Taylor about the LDS missionaries, and they thought that was funny.

That night, as I tried to sleep, I said a prayer for Elder Simmons and his friend.  I thanked God that they had some knowledge of Scripture and the truth.  I prayed that God would reveal the full truth to them, and that they would know Jesus Christ personally.  Only God knew for sure whether Elder Simmons and his friend were true believers in their hearts; it was not my place to judge.

My mind kept drifting again to earlier that morning, to what Mrs. Tracy had said about her students at Nueces High.  She did have a point.  I had a lot of classes in high school that were mostly honor students, and I had spent the last four and a half years taking classes at a relatively prestigious university, where virtually all of the students had been honor students in high school.  I was not used to students who were not in advanced classes, and I did have to remember that not all of my students would be going on to college.

The way I saw it, though, that was no excuse for low expectations.  Even if not all students were college bound, all students should at least know about the options for their future, so that they can be in control of their futures as much as possible.  The best teachers should be approaching their classes from the point of view that everyone can succeed, and I hoped that I would never have such a negative view of my students’ collective future as Mrs. Tracy had that day.  And I genuinely did believe that function notation was an Algebra I topic, which Geometry students would have seen before, because that was how it was in my own schooling.

The new year was almost a week old at this point.  I was really hoping for a good year.  For the most part, 1997 and 1998 had not been bad, but each one had had a few major letdowns.  I was not expecting 1999 to be perfect, by any means, but I was hoping that my life would continue on an upward trajectory.  This whole training to be a teacher thing was giving more clear meaning to my life, and if all went according to plan, by the end of the year I would be a paid full-time teacher with a classroom of my own, full of fun teenagers who called me Mr. Dennison.  Maybe then I would finally feel grown up.

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