Or start with Scene 1 at http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewshortstory.asp?AuthorID=84575&id=61052
________________________
From 1975-76 I was a full-time, paid intern working toward my teaching credential in a fifth-grade class at Yorbita Elementary in Rowland Unified School District. My master teacher, who supervised my progress and guided me, said that it was best to start out strict and lighten up later.
In her soft, calm voice—the same she used with her students—she said, “If you start out mean, it will be easier to get strict again if the situation in the classroom calls for it.”
She was right. I learned through the years that teachers who started out trying to be friends with the kids later struggled to keep control of their classes. Translation: if the tougher kids discovered you were a softy, they would usually eat you alive.
She also told me to speak in a low voice and only show anger if the situation required it. “Never lose control of your temper,” she said. “It’s our job to teach and to maintain a learning environment where kids can learn—not to be their best buddy. If you lose control of your temper, then some of the kids will think they won because they made you angry.”
That advice was the reason I did nothing to stop the rumor that went around for years that I’d had a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) flashback in the classroom. I didn’t attempt to correct that rumor, because it might help me maintain my learning environment, but I didn’t do anything to cultivate it, either. When a kid wanted to know if I had killed anyone over there, I refused to talk about it.
I was asked by at least one student each year if the rumor was true . I replied every time that I didn’t know.
But that was a lie—my Vietnam flashbacks took place at night, never in daylight or in the classroom.
The rumor might have started with an incident that happened in the early 1980s when I was teaching seventh-grade English at Giano Intermediate.
A boy in one of my classes was talking loudly to a friend while I was giving instructions for an assignment—they were sitting in opposite corners of the room.
“I’m not talking,” the student said when I told him to stop.
If I had been eighty and deaf, I might have doubted myself. At the time, I was thirty-six, and my hearing worked fine.
“If I hear one more word out of you," I said, "you’re going to the office.”
“You can’t make me go,” he said, and resumed the loud conversation.
“Okay, you’re out of here.” I reached for a referral.
“I didn’t do anything!” He shouted, and leaped from his seat. “You don’t like me!”
He locked eyes with mine and curled his hands into fists.
That’s when my blood pressure spiked and anger swept aside the teacher, replacing him with a one hundred ninety-pound grizzly bear, who shoved occupied desks aside to reach this student.
Halfway there, the teacher realized that he could lose his job and end up in jail if the grizzly ripped this student's tongue out. Heart pounding, the teacher calmed the bear down, using the fear of communal prison showers and dropped soap.
Did I hate to turn back around? Yes! In Marine Corps boot camp, no one talked back to the drill instructor because we’d get our asses kicked somewhere north of our ears.
It was a long walk to the room's intercom. Once the student with the mouth realized what was happening, he crossed the room to his friend’s desk and sat on it to continue the loud conversation—the one that, according to him, still wasn't happening.
Eventually, ten or fifteen minutes later, the CPO arrived and escorted the mouth out of the classroom.
I had a difficult time getting to sleep that night. There would be many sleepless nights over the years, thanks to kids like that scrawny gangbanger.
The next day, the mouth was back as if nothing had happened. He didn’t challenge me again, but he also never brought a textbook to class or did any of the work. Day after day, he sat there and filled one piece of paper after another with gangbanger graffiti.
“As long as you’re writing," I said one day, "you might as well do an assignment once in a while.”
He ignored me as if I were a bug. When class ended, he carefully put each piece of graffiti-filled paper inside his binder as if they were diamond-studded platinum sheets. I tried to call his parents, but all of the listed phone numbers on the family contact card were disconnected.
________________________
Thank you for taking time to read these scenes from Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé. If you read the rest of the book, please consider telling your friends and/or posting a short review on Amazon. Word of mouth is an author’s best friend and much appreciated.
“Crazy is Normal” goes on a promotional tour starting October 1st that ends in the middle of November, 2014. During the promotion, the e-book of the memoir will be on sale for 0.99ȼ. The price will return to $3.99 at the end of the promotional tour.
Scenes from "Crazy is Normal, a classroom expose" will appear here Saturdays in thirteen installments covering the first ten percent of the memoir or 12,455 words.
The Introduction, which comes before the Prelude, may be found at:
