Or start with Scene 1 at

School started the Tuesday after Labor Day with a relentless bell marking zero period at 7:06.

My first class—period one—started at 8:08. Only a few teachers taught a zero period; I was never one of them.

Periods two [9:10 – 10:06], three [10:12 – 11:08], and four [11:14 – 12:15], were swift and quiet—all ninth-grade English classes.

Fourth was followed by lunch, and then came fifth [1:01 – 1:57], my planning period.

Sixth [2:03 – 2:59], journalism, was the last class of the day.

The first assignment was the same in all of my English classes—to copy the classroom rules displayed on the white board using an overhead projector.

We were to have ten rules—no more. “Keep it simple,” the principal instructed, “so your students will have an easier time remembering how to conduct themselves in your classroom.”

In fourth period, after reading the rules out loud and having the students copy them on paper, I asked if there were any questions.

A hand shot up. I nodded.

“Do you make us do book reports?” Hector asked.

“How many do we have to do?” Alexis asked without raising her hand. Raising a hand before asking a question was one of the rules the students had just copied. I ignored her and nodded at another student with his hand up.

“Hey, I asked first,” Alexis protested. I walked to the poster on the wall at the front of the room where the rules were written in HUGE, brightly colored print. I also had four posters of them up, one on each wall. I pointed at the rule that said to raise your hand and wait to be recognized before asking a question.

“So!” she said.

Remembering my master teacher’s advice in 1975 to start with tough love, I reached for a referral. She knew what it was, so she made a face and stuck her hand in the air.

I called on another boy who had been holding his hand up without talking.

“How many book reports?” he asked.

Alexis bull snorted.

“Four a semester,” I replied. “Eight for the school year.”

"How long are they?" he asked.

"The A and B book reports usually run about six to eight pages."

“You must be crazy!” Alexis blurted out. "You think this is college? We aren't college students!"

I could tell Alexis was going to be a pleasure to work with.

Clara, who wore wire frame glasses, shoved a hand in the air. I looked at her and nodded. “What if we ain’t going to college?”

“That doesn’t matter,” I replied. “This is a college prep class, and some of you might not want to go to college now, but will change your mind later. That’s enough questions for now.”

I turned on the overhead, and it lit up the white board. “You are going to answer this ten question quiz about the classroom rules you copied. These are all multiple choice. Number a piece of lined paper from one to ten and write the letter of the correct answer next to the matching number. You can use your notes or read the posters on the four walls. The finished quiz is due before the bell and is your first grade of the school year.”

I put the transparency on the glowing glass, and the questions appeared on the white board.

“You really are crazy like they say,” Alexis said. “We can’t finish all that with the time that’s left.”

I looked at the clock; twenty minutes remained. I noticed that one of the quiet students was already done. Alexis might be a student who read at second grade level and was functionally illiterate. A few years earlier, district administration forced the English teachers against our collective will—I was there when it happened—to close the basic classes, leaving only English as a second language (ESL), college prep, advanced placement, and honors English. Since then, college prep classes had kids reading from second grade to college level in the same room, working out of a grade-level textbook with grade-level vocabulary, and teachers were required to teach the state-mandated curriculum for each grade level.

Alexis was chewing gum, too.

I thought of all the gum I had scraped off the carpet and from the bottoms of desks to get this room ready. I picked up the trash can and walked to her desk. I knelt down so we were face to face. “Get rid of the gum,” I said softly.

“I ain’t got any gum,” she replied, and kept chewing.

I could see the white lump in her mouth flopping around between her teeth. I went to my desk and picked up a referral.

“Unless you spit that gum in the trash right now, Alexis, I’m going to assign you a one-hour detention after school tomorrow.”

“I don’t have it in my mouth no more,” she said. “I swallowed it.”

“How can you swallow something you told me wasn’t there? You proved with your own words that you lied to me. Now you have two hours of detention, and I'm thinking of sending you to BIC.” She started to open her mouth to say something, but stopped. I would have walked on shattered glass in my bare feet at that point to see her gone for good.

"What's BIC?" Clara asked.

"BIC is the Behavior Intervention Center, where teachers send suspended students. It’s also where the high school holds after school detentions and Saturday school. It’s in a portable across from the main office near the front parking lot."

When I did meet the parent of an Alexis, he or she was usually combative and accused me of picking on the kid. The Alexis parent often claimed that I was the first teacher to have trouble with his or her angel. A few accused me of being a racist because I was Caucasian.

The accumulated records since kindergarten for this Alexis said otherwise. I always checked the records before a parent conference and made a few phone calls to the students’ other teachers.

Two years later, this Alexis would be caught in the boy's restroom having sex. Her mother called the principal a liar and said her daughter would never do anything like that.

Half of the students stuck their hands in the air. Alexis and Hector were among them. Clara was not. At least she was being honest.

I should have asked, how many plan to go to college to work hard, read hundreds of textbooks, and write thousands of pages of notes until your hand cramps, so you can graduate and have a better chance to find a higher paying, more secure job?

Thanks to Hollywood, I think most of these students thought college was a four-or five-year paid vacation.

“What do you want to do about the editorial position?” I asked Amanda.

“I don’t want to do anything right now,” she replied. “I’ll do the opinion page myself.”

“That means you have two jobs. How many honors classes are you taking?”

“Five,” she replied. “I don’t mind. I was the opinion editor last year, and I liked it. I can handle it.”

I wanted to clone her.

I opened the envelope and discovered that last year’s high school newspaper—even with those rebellious seniors—had earned nine hundred out of a thousand possible points for a first-place international award. There was only one award higher—The Gallup Award.

Imagine what we could achieve this year.

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: