Wednesday, October 7, 2009

suits, salaries and the second grade

Of the handful of perplexing childhood experiences I can recall, I will recount one that still has emotional resonance for me as an adult. It was a restless afternoon, and my second grade classroom could not contain me. I had been dutiful all day, completing my assignments on time. Now, faced with another bluish ink-on-white ditto, I was coming quietly unglued. It was the equivalent of someone telling you to run until you reached the horizon, and spending all day in pursuit of it, the “Aha!” moment comes too late: there is no line to be reached at the edge of the world! I had, of course, hoped my teacher might run out of work to give us. If I finished everything well ahead of many of my peers, I bargained with myself, I might be afforded some time to daydream… This would not be the last time I was devastated by the reality that in life, one never runs out of work—there is always more than can be thought up by whoever is running the show.

Staring at my blank, crisp ditto worksheet, I became aware of my curious, love-hate relationship with it. Worksheets, after all, can give you a great sense of accomplishment upon completion. There, on one page, are contained all the fruits of your labor for the last hour. Turning in the finished product is gratifying, and a tremendous relief if it was a requirement to move on to something else. On the other hand, worksheets represent all things painfully necessary, quotidian, and compartmental. Worksheets are wickets that must be negotiated along a course set out by someone else for you to complete. By what authority do they establish these wickets? Who can say, when a bright, balmy Charleston afternoon is busy convincing you to forget the arbitrary requirements of the classroom and wander outside to discover only what you will, when you will. I wanted to be skating around the cul-de-sac at home, jarring bugs with my sister on the brush trails behind our fence—anything but sitting at a futile desk with the scent of dirt and stale sweat still on my skin from recess (hours ago), staring at the lines on that ditto copy. The purply, blurred edges of the words and shapes on it reminded me of the autumn sunset we would have to be dragged indoors from later that evening. Staring out the window, I forgot my worksheet, leaving it half done.

When I was dragged, unwillingly, back to an awareness of the classroom activities, I scrambled to complete it, realizing that I had slipped behind the others in my work. I recall a small bell ringing from the teacher’s desk, and a shuffling in the row next to ours. Suddenly, I noticed that my desk-neighbors in front and behind were taking their seats. I had not noticed them get up, and swung my head around to follow the stream of feet to the teacher’s desk at the back of the classroom. Mrs. C, our teacher, was intent upon collecting all the completed worksheets as each student passed her desk. She was pleasant, but not smiling as much as usual.

I liked Mrs. C, and often felt very conspiratorial with her because her husband was my piano teacher, and she would send messages about lunch dates and groceries to him by me when I was dismissed from class to attend my lessons in the music department.
As I watched her at her desk, I detected that she was also passing something out to students from a bucket as she received their assignments. I turned and looked at the others in my row, busy unwrapping things and popping them into their mouths, and immediately joined the queue since I had apparently missed my chance to turn in my worksheet and receive one of whatever good thing was in that bucket. As I straggled up to her desk, full of expectation, I handed her my work and was panicked to see that the bucket was nowhere in sight. I asked her about it, and explained that I had missed the bell for my row and was just now coming to turn in my worksheet. “That’s fine, H.,” she said, “but you were late. Please pay better attention next time.” She rose to return to the front of the class. I started to point out her oversight, and to inquire about my access to the bucket, but she stopped me and instructed me to return to my desk. I had missed my opportunity, and ought to have been more vigilant.

I returned to my desk out of sorts, my face on fire. I did not cry, but something caught in my throat. I did not understand how my infraction—arriving with another row because I had missed the bell—deserved this deprivation. The candy was still there, wasn’t it? She could take it back out as quickly as she’d put it away, no harm done, and I’d have promised to pay better attention and come when called. The girl in front of me had turned around just in time to see me returning empty-handed, and to save face, I whispered, “I didn’t even want one of those things anyway.” Mrs. C called my name from the front of the class and instructed me to take a place in the back corner facing the wall, until she released me. I had never been sent to the corner in all my life, and this was public humiliation. My face was hot, my hands clammy as I stared at the blank corner until she admonished me not to talk out of turn anymore and to return to my seat. I was still reeling from perceived incongruities and injustices suffered at her hand, but relieved at being allowed to return to my seat to serve the rest of my penance under knowing looks from my peers and the relentless, dragging minute hand on the clock that would release me for the day.

That memories still have the power to recreate the physiological effects of shame, anger, and frustration when recalled years later speaks to the persistence of unresolved experiences. I still blush when I think about this encounter. As crises go, it was a small one with no real trauma associated. But what was the point of it? I was one of Mrs. C’s most consistent high-performers, and I knew this from her comments on my report cards which my mom read with us when they were mailed home. What was the purpose of denying me access to the bucket of goodies she had so industriously meted out to the rest of the class, one by one? Was she trying to teach me a classic lesson, “You snooze, you lose?” Did she think that it would be merciful to teach me early in life not to try and get by on my merits—that I must pay attention like everyone else to deadlines and windows of opportunity that elapse and slam shut without respecting persons? Perhaps she was simply tired that day, and felt the minutes crawling too slowly by until she could escape home to do what she willed, when she willed it. Perhaps she brushed aside my neediness in the aftermath of a mistake, in order to recollect herself in the front of the classroom and to focus on the final tasks of the day. Whatever it was, it still irks me.

It irks me because as an adult I have been on the other side of that desk, at work, and chosen to accept the late product from a subordinate or co-worker, to endure my sense of the five o’clock blues in order to see the relief wash over their faces. I rarely send someone away for arriving even a half-hour late if I can help it. It doesn’t usually serve the purpose of mission accomplishment in my line of work to do so: everyone is on a tight timeline, and chances are they had to wait on someone else who made them late, and will be running late to the next place, too. I might as well help them.

On the other hand, in college and in the Army I have been penalized for missing a deadline, or simply missing out on something that could only be offered for a finite amount of time. Cajoling and eliciting sympathy by arriving out of breath, papers and cell phones fluttering about you will only get you so far. Sometimes the window is just closed, the clock cannot be turned back, and thing proceeds with or without you, no matter how outstanding your performance record is or how well-liked you are. To provide me, perhaps inadvertently, with an early illustration of this in a rather arbitrary fashion does not make Mrs. C a poor teacher, merely a human one. Knowing how and when to respond to students when they err, how to make object lessons intentional and transparent rather than utterly bewildering and confusing is riddled with obstacles. Accurate transmission of a well-guided teaching point is the goal, but there may be many different ways to reach that goal, and none that work every time for every learner. If I were to use an object lesson to enforce a principle (like timeliness) with the aim of developing punctuality in a student, I would keep this event in mind. Even with the best of intentions from an educator, it is just as likely that the student will be so hurt, puzzled, or confused about the consequences that they will either miss the lesson entirely, or feel justified in foisting their own arbitrariness upon future children, students, or employees. Weighing the pros and cons of the candy bucket lesson, I’m not sure that the means truly supported the end, or that the end was achieved: I continue to be a perennial idealist, inclined to think that if people like me and like my work, they will cut me some slack—within reason—when I fail, and I in turn will do the same for them.

This brings me back to reflect on the original purpose of the ditto worksheet. As a drill or rehearsal, the worksheet can be viewed as preparation for what is arguably the most joyless aspect of adult life: paperwork. The more I think about that ditto sheet, its insipid disguise as a stepping stool into the tedium of sundry request forms, staff estimates, periodic reports, memoranda, and proposals, the more frustrating the scenario replays in my mind. What is the point of a worksheet, but to beat people down at an early age, to teach them the necessary evil of a paper trail to show that they actually exist, that they have a seat in the room, that they actually know something, that they can contribute, learn, or make progress? Of course, life, work and education as we know them would be impossible without documentation and deadlines. The challenge, then, is to teach students how to observe and employ them without becoming cogs in a machine of well-documented work. If one can teach a child, or an adult, how to do this while still regarding the person as more than a representative slip of paper, or a late customer, I would judge that person to be a successful teacher.