I had been teaching second grade at Von Humboldt Elementary in east Humboldt Park for a week when Kevin called me a “punk-ass bitch.” He didn’t say it in anger, but calmly, as if pronouncing judgment. Kevin was the worst-behaved of the 18 kids in my class, which I had taken over a week before spring break, but the same sentiment had already been expressed, in word or deed, by nearly all his classmates.
The official slogan of Bush’s education department is “No child left behind.” But here all of them had been. Maybe two of eighteen could read more than the simplest sentence. Only one could add or subtract with any consistency, and none could correctly name the city, state, and country where we lived. Some kids knew we lived in Chicago, but not Illinois. Some kids knew they were American, but didn’t know what the United States was. When I gathered the kids around the pull-down map one day, the lesson disintegrated into a discussion of which project which child was born in, until I had to break up a fight between Keith and Bobby over which was tougher, ABLA or Robert Taylor.
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When they tried to learn–sat in their seats, listened, concentrated, refrained from launching wooden blocks at one another’s heads–most of them could do just that. But I was rarely able to ensure that that happened. It may be a cliche, but it’s true that kids don’t fail–teachers do. Adults do. My class, one veteran teacher told me, never should have survived past October. That it did is an indictment of everyone responsible for those kids’ well-being, from Mayor Daley and President Bush on down to me. Spread the blame–there’s plenty to go around.
“You need to be tough with these kids,” Karvelas reiterated. “They’ve run their regular teacher and a whole bunch of subs right out of there.”
That first day was something I wish I could have recorded. But I don’t think videotape could have captured the absolute mayhem that prevailed in that room for the next five hours. I never even got the lesson plan out of my briefcase. My tie was yanked and twisted by flailing arms as I broke up about two dozen fistfights. Let me be clear: I’m not talking about kiddie fights–chest pushing, laughable roundhouse punches, and lame attempts at headlocks. These kids knew how to fight. They made their fists right, lining up their knuckles and not folding their thumbs into their palms. They threw punches from the shoulder, hard enough that I can still hear the deep comic-book thwoop of fist punishing flesh.
