Mista

By John J. Kaminski

MISTA tells the story of a year in the life of an inner city English teacher at an alternative high school. It details the day-to-day interactions with students, teachers, administrative staff and parents, and delves into problems and issues that teachers can never adequately prepare for.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 17, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452056791

John J. Kaminski

Mike Dreeland is a pop artist and art director living in New York City. He has been creating art there since 1999. @mdreeland at every social media outlet John Kaminski is a writer and educator living in Northern New Jersey. His first book Mista is available on Amazon.com. Twitter and Vine: @johnjkaminski Follow the Primed for Stardom Facebook page.

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AuthorHouse™ LLC

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2010 John J. Kaminski. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 08/30/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4520-3132-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4520-5679-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010907591

Contents

Acknowledgements

Back to School

-1-

-3-

-6-

In Session

1.

-2-

-3-

-4-

-5-

-6-

-7-

-8-

-9-

-10-

-11-

-12-

-13-

-14-

-15-

-16-

-17-

-18-

-19-

-20-

The Next Session

-1-

-2-

-3-

-4-

-5-

-6-

-7-

-8-

-9-

-10-

-11-

-12-

A New Beginning

-1-

-2-

-3-

-4-

-5-

-6-

-7-

-8-

-9-

-10-

The Last Hurrah

-1-

-2-

-3-

-4-

Acknowledgements

S PECIAL THANKS TO JEFFREY DALLAS Moore and Benedict DiGiulio for keeping me on track when it was easy to quit. To Alice Elliott Dark, for reminding me to believe in myself.

Many thanks to Douglas Niles Eldredge, Chris Kipiniak, William Deubert and Mitch Wenger for taking the time to provide me with their real opinions. I also need to thank RJD and Douglas Weitz for giving me some very helpful advice along the way.

Thanks also to my email friends that took the time to read my stories over the last ten plus years.

And, of course, thank you to my students from RDHS and NHRHS who genuinely made it enjoyable to come to school (most of the time).

And I didn’t forget …

Many thanks to Mike Dreeland for the many cover layout ideas

and

to Angela Rocha for the cover concept.

For Danielle,

my lovely wife

and

My dear Mother,

who has worked for over 38 years in public education

I.

Back to School

-1-

I T WAS A LITTLE AFTER 3:00 P.M., and I was looking out from the second-story window of a room that would be our new office. It was crammed mostly with boxes and books. People passed through it to get to the Day School math department office. Our program was called Twilight. The crack was that it was The Twilight Zone . Since it was summer, the school was only open to serve the needs of the Twilight students, so it was relatively empty.

According to other members of the Twilight staff, the Day School teachers disliked the Twilight teachers. Supposedly, these Day School teachers didn’t think our students deserved a second chance at getting high school diplomas. So, I guessed the best way to express their animosity was to be rude to the people trying to help these students succeed.

The Spanish teacher, the math teacher, the history teacher, the social worker, the guidance counselor, the librarian and the clerk were in the Day School math office, which was the temporary Twilight office. There was little seating or table space available for our staff to do anything. The room was stuffy and cramped, and the dull colors weren’t conducive to positive thinking.

Yesterday, my first day, I was sitting in a chair in the math office when I learned that it was the personal chair of one of the math teachers. One male staff member from the Day School said, That’s OK for now, but if he saw you sittin in it, he’ll tell you all about it. I hoped a chair would never become that important to me.

I decided to work at the circular table in our future office. As I sat looking out at the smog, and after counting six smokestacks, I heard the students arriving and walking and talking in the hallway. One of the students popped her head in and said, Hey, Mista K.

I said, Hi. I wasn’t sure what her name was, but I wouldn’t know every name for the next few weeks anyway.

My main rule was that I wouldn’t be called Mista. I thought the students would show me more respect if they identified me as a person and not just any white guy they had to listen to in school. I introduced myself as Mr. Kaminski and wrote my name on the chalkboard. I asked the students to repeat it if they got it wrong, and I repeated their names if I mispronounced them.

When I was repeating my name, one girl said, Ka-what? I ain’t sayin that. So Mista K was the compromise. At least it wasn’t Mista.

Our urban district paid a lot of money to an educational institution to help the Twilight staff develop seminars for its students. The man who presented these models to us during the first three days of teacher training apparently made $49,000 for his efforts. I heard that number repeated numerous times in the temporary Twilight office.

Today, another lady from that institution came to present a seminar for the staff and the students so we could all familiarize ourselves with a new, modern teaching method. She was blonde, attractive, and from Texas, but I was quickly turned off by her overlapping two front teeth and her wedding band. The history teacher, the Spanish teacher, the math teacher and I were all asked to participate in her presentation. We sat in a circle, said our names and drew up nametags to make the atmosphere more comfortable.

Whenever the math teacher spoke, most of the students laughed at him because he was Indian and had a very deep accent. To get to his job at the school, Dinesh drove his car to a train station about forty miles away before taking a thirty-five minute train ride to a PATH station. After one stop on the PATH, he transferred to a bus to get to our school. It took him about two and a half hours in each direction. I wanted to scold the kids and remind them about what respect was, but he needed to take his own stance to get respect.

Our Spanish teacher Mariella was from Venezuela. She was attractive and had the most gorgeous hair I had ever seen; it nearly reached her waist, and the girls always asked to touch it and she let them. Her daughter was still in Venezuela, so Mariella promised not to cut her hair until they reunited. Mariella had a science background but could not speak English well enough to teach it in the United States, so she settled for teaching Spanish. Her boyfriend was at another Twilight school and they were appalled at how little respect they got, because in Venezuela the situation was much different. The students asked her why she was so quiet. She didn’t smile as much as she did during teacher training.

The seminar started with fifteen students and ended with almost thirty, as students arrived late to school. It lasted almost an hour and a half, while the temperature of the room got hotter. The students were incessantly restless.

It all began with a conversation about how people should speak to one another, before moving on to a discussion about a Quaker painting. To me, it was too banal and boring to be a conversational springboard. As the seminar progressed, I brought desk-chairs from other classrooms to accommodate students arriving late. I tried to prevent some students from just putting their heads on their desks and not participating. The history teacher was in the circle, but Dinesh and Mariella were squeezed out.

At one point, we were naming pictures of paintings being passed around the room and writing them on the board. Although I was sitting in the circle, my mind was in and out of what we were discussing. One student was really annoying me because he was playing a game on his cell phone. He thought he was being slick about how he was hiding it from us. No one told him to stop what he was doing.

I wrote a note on a sheet of paper that said, Can you please stop playing that game and contribute to class?

I walked through the circle, placed it on his desk across the room, and made it back to my seat without creating a distraction. I watched him stop his game, read the note, and ask his neighbor for a pen. I watched his hand make three jagged connecting lines followed by a circle, which was exactly how the word No was written. He then placed the note on the corner of his desk and used his cardboard nametag as a paperweight. Earlier, a gust came through the window and sent papers flying off desks and onto the floor. The student resumed his game.

Some were reading the titles from the board, and it was my turn to share my suggestion.

Animal Habitat, I said. I read what I had written on the paper on my desk. There was silence and a few gasps.

What choo mean we animals? one girl yelled.

I had no idea what she was talking about. Everyone was looking at me. It was so hot in the room, and I was still trying to cool down from carrying those desk-chairs.

You’re supposed to be picking a title for what the Twilight program is, one kid said.

You don’t know how to pay attention, another kid said. I realized how awful my flub was.

I’m sorry, but I’ve been trying to get everyone involved in the seminar because the seminar works only if you contribute your own ideas and everyone can learn from each other, and when people are talking loud and playing games and playing on the computer… I nodded toward the kids that were doing these things.

I continued, These are fine examples of different kinds of distractions, and I’m sorry I was so affected. It wasn’t said in anger and seemed like a worthy appeal. I looked away at no one to the left of me.

Mista K mad, one girl said. The Texan consultant got the seminar back on track.

When it ended, she congratulated the students and said that each and every person did a great job and should be commended. I completely disagreed. This kind of compliment only reinforced the bad behavior we just experienced. I told her how I felt.

I disagree. I thought it went well, she said. The history teacher agreed with her. I still disagreed.

After the seminar, the Twilight clerk divided the students into As and Bs, since she knew all the students and, more importantly, knew exactly who to divide. One group would go to one class, and one group would go to another. Because of the low attendance expected for the first few days back to school, the plan was for two teachers to teach double periods to each group.

All the Bs should go to the other room, I said. All but one of the students got up and left, and I was sure that the one remaining student was a B. Since the guards weren’t there, the mass exodus led to hallway chaos. Thankfully, someone shuffled the students back into the room.

Mariella and I worked together. We both prepared lessons we planned to teach consecutively. It cut down on students getting distracted while traveling to their next class. Since she didn’t speak during the seminar, I asked her to teach first so the students could get to know her before she began teaching alone the Thursday after Labor Day. She presented them with a ditto, and once students were done, they lifted their papers in the air and told her they were done. She gave them more dittos. She was up to her fourth one.

During her teaching time, the fire alarm went off, and I presumed it was a student. It was the loudest and most irritating noise I ever heard. I covered my ears. All the students jumped from their seats and made their way to the hallway. Since I was unsure of the evacuation procedure, I tried desperately to maintain order. In the hallways were two guards giving teachers and students conflicting directions. Thankfully, Jack, the Head Teacher, took command of the situation. We were all directed back into the classrooms because it was apparently just a test. The alarm rang for more than a few minutes.

Jack was a flamboyant homosexual, whose partner was the Head Teacher of another Twilight school. He told me all about it during teacher training, as he told me how I was being reassigned here, which was the worst school in the city. He was very supportive and laidback. I was surprised the students didn’t make fun of him.

After dismissing the students at 8:15 p.m., the teachers reconvened for ten minutes before going home. Yesterday, I clapped after Jack’s encouraging and uplifting words at the end of the day, and everyone followed. We needed a good clap. Jack hugged everyone and kissed the women on their cheeks before we left. I made sure to shake Dinesh’s hand and give Mariella’s hand a squeeze, because she looked completely defeated. She smiled briefly when I did this.

We made it through the day. It will only get easier now once everyone gets into the routine, I said. I hoped I wasn’t lying.

-2-

This is a story about teacher training.

T ODAY WAS THE FIRST DAY at my new job as a high school English teacher in an inner city school, and since I had not had a full-time job with benefits for about three years, this was a major cobblestone in the cobblestone road of my life. More recently, I had a brief tenure as a freelance proofreader. I also worked a few times as a computer " consultant, " who was responsible for turning off all the computers in a Manhattan skyscraper on a Saturday before returning on a Sunday to turn them all back on. To better assume my role as a teacher, I began growing a beard about a month ago, which meant that I had a beard I wasn’t used to. I was still without the pipe and the tweed coat with elbow patches, but, let’s face it, they’re surely around the corner.

I liked Twilight’s alternative work hours. Students in Twilight came at 3:00 p.m., and their first class didn’t begin before 4:00 p.m. These students used the school once Day School students left.

Waking up early to an irritating and grating alarm was a thing of the past for me. My regular workday was now from 1:25 p.m. until 8:25 p.m. The position paid more than the same one in the Day School, but Twilight had smaller classes and a later start time. Twilight was created to better accommodate students who were unable, for one reason or another, to attend Day School.

So on this very first day, I woke up at 11:00 a.m. Over the weekend, I was diagnosed with acute bronchitis and was the sickest I had been since I had the flu one Christmas in the mid-1990s. No matter how bad I felt, it would be impossible for me to miss my first day of work. But with encouraging words from my doctor and a prescription of strong antibiotics, I somehow felt great this morning. I was cruising down the Turnpike around 1:00 p.m. My destination was the Board of Education building, where three August days of teacher training were to begin. The first day of work for teachers was always before the first day for students.

Being sick had its obvious downsides: minor wheezing; thick, green phlegm in your respiratory system; and a wretched taste in your mouth that was surely just as disgusting for anyone unfortunate enough to converse closely with it. Although I brushed my teeth thrice before I left, the taste of infection lingered. I needed to get some gum to battle and defeat the odor.

I stopped at a gas station, and it only had the twenty-five cent gum. I bought a pack of green Doublemint, ripped the top of the pack off, pulled two pieces from it, unwrapped them, tossed them into my mouth, and began chewing like there was no tomorrow. I got back into my newly-detailed car and cruised to work. I was arriving early, and it was a great day to be alive.

So I was blowing bubbles and pop-pop-popping away, and I was scanning the radio for a song to sing and Heart came on. The band Heart recently made an appearance on my personal nostalgia road since I just found my old posters from childhood at my parents’ house, my current place of residence. I also found my Miami Vice poster. I remembered how cool I used to be.

Ann Wilson was singing Never, and I was singing along:

"Hey baby I’m talking to you

Stop yourself and listen."

And then after that line there was a little riff, and I tried unsuccessfully to pop-pop-pop my gum to the beat. I started driving a little too fast in the traffic, but I kept on singing:

"Walk those legs right over here

Give me what I’m dying for."

I was really into it, so into it that I wanted to check out my soft and sexy singing lips in the rearview mirror. It was then that I saw all the green gum caught in my moustache and the hair below my lower lip.

I slammed on my brakes to avoid slamming into the car in front of me. I was lucky not to get into an accident, since I was just a few inches from its bumper. Slamming on the brakes, however, did not solve the problem of the gum on my face.

When I was younger, my mom had a book called Hints from Heloise. Heloise said that if you got gum in your hair, all you needed was peanut butter to remove it. It was about 1:10 p.m., and the Board of Education was around the corner. I couldn’t be late for my first day of work.

I ran into a deli to see if it had any peanut butter I could rub all over my face. I covered my mouth with my hand.

I looked around, but there was no peanut butter and not a large variety of products either. The Indian guy behind the counter watched my every move.

Do you have any peanut butter? I asked.

Huh? he said. It is probably the kind of response to expect when you speak to another person while choosing to cover the hole in your face that emitted sounds called words that were needed to communicate with others. After two more similar exchanges, he said there wasn’t any.

Here was where I used my ingenuity. See, I was graduating from graduate school in October, and that meant I would indeed be a Master. I had to start trusting my feelings. I thought about chocolate candy and about what varieties contained peanut butter. My eyes soon spied peanut butter cups on one of the shelves below the register counter. I grabbed them and placed them on the counter.

Seventy-five cents, the Indian guy said.

My right hand was still covering my face, and my wallet filled with money was in my right pants pocket. Using the left hand to pull the wallet from the pocket while opening the wallet to get the money to give to the man…The task was too daunting.

HAHAHA, laughed the Indian guy when I pulled my hand from my face. When I gave him the five dollar bill, there was a brief moment when his laugh began to wane, but once he got my change, he started laughing in my face again.

Suck it! I said, before running to my car.

I sat in the driver’s seat, opened up the package of peanut butter cups, flaked off the chocolate, and rubbed the peanut butter on my face. Then I realized that the car detailers threw the napkins away. The chocolate was no longer confined solely to my hands but had fallen onto my shirt, my lap, my freshly shampooed rug and my new shoes. The gum was coming out though.

The second cup smear was moved outdoors, but the last of the peanut butter failed to remove all the gum. I had to go back into the deli. The Indian guy laughed at me again.

With the help of more peanut butter, bottled water and napkins, my face was cleaned and ready for work. I was even able to clean the mess from the car. It was 1:18 p.m. when I entered the Board of Education building.

I took an elevator to the eighth floor and made it with a few minutes to spare. I found a chair on the outer perimeter of a rectangular conference table that was occupied by other teachers. The vice principal Miss Carter entered the room and asked everyone to sign in.

Our official lunch/dinner break was at 4:30 p.m. During the presentations and conferences, teachers made numerous comments about how they wouldn’t remain in the meeting if it went to 4:31 p.m. The male consultant made numerous jokes about how official the time was, and many teachers laughed at the idea of leaving later than the official time.

After grabbing a quick lunch/dinner, I returned to my seat in the conference room. There were a few other teachers eating, reading and softly talking. I didn’t know anyone. I tried reading a book since I was tired and worn down from being sick.

One overweight black teacher came in with a huge bag of McDonalds and sat in her chair at the table. I was struck by the pungent smell.

She was talking and pulling food from her bag. She was talking and eating. Her meal consisted of one Big Mac, one large fries, one large drink, and two apple pies. I couldn’t avoid listening to her, and I wasn’t even sure who she was addressing.

This diet’s flat, she said.

I chuckled to myself. I tried to read.

When you fat, you don’t get wrinkles, she said to the skinny Asian woman to her left. She laughed. I laughed too.

-3-

U NTIL DAY SCHOOL BEGAN the Thursday after Labor Day, the cafeteria was closed. For one hour a day, I had lunch duty, since Twilight kids began their day with lunch. The room was white and very bright, and I wasn’t sure what was on the menu. Jack showed us the cafeteria on the first-day-of-school-for-teachers tour.

Don’t eat here, Jack said. It’s not good, and it’s expensive. I couldn’t imagine what it looked like with students because there was only a vast white openness without tables, chairs or any shred of hominess. In one area, there were more than ten large, clear bags filled with small, white cardboard boxes.

If the students see those bags during lunch, they would be all over the cafeteria. I hoped they were gone by Thursday.

Today, our students started their day in the auditorium. Ten arrived by the time my duty began. Dinesh, Mariella, the history teacher, and I had a brief conversation while we waited for more students to arrive. We discussed how we would all begin working our actual class schedules, since the guidance counselor finally had the official student schedules.

Mariella was very nervous. She and I had the most students because every student, in order to graduate, needed to take four trimesters of English and three trimesters of a foreign language, a requirement that was just raised from two trimesters. Each of the four Twilight teaching blocks would have two separate classes, like Spanish 1 and 2, or English 1 and 3. Each block couldn’t exceed fifteen students. Twilight also wanted us to teach separate lessons for each class.

Mariella had worksheets ready for her students. She wanted to get a Spanish book so she could design her classes, but the bookroom was locked, and the person with the key was still away on summer break. I told her to do her best to keep their attention until next Thursday because the absentee rate was so high— way over fifty percent. It was impossible to begin a focused curriculum if the students weren’t in school. We were unregimented and disorganized. Absenteeism was a major problem before Day School began. I heard Mondays and Fridays were bad throughout the year.

At teacher training, the vice principal of all four Twilights, our boss Miss Carter, said that our lesson plans for the week would be due every Monday. Since there were so many absent students, it wasn’t worthwhile to devote planning time toward classes with so many missing students. The standardized lesson plan sheet itself was complicated and wordy. The process was demonstrated to us quickly at teacher training, but I still hadn’t seen one completed. On that day, all teachers received a two-inch pile of papers in an envelope. They were all punched with three holes, so I imagined we were expected to provide the binder. Since the history teacher was here last year, she promised to help me. Miss Carter had the right to view lesson plans at any time. She had been to school twice in the last four days.

Mariella knew that I thought it was a waste of time at the moment. Neither of us completed any of it. The history teacher began on time, and Dinesh’s first lesson plan would be today. I doubted Miss Carter would be asking us for them until sometime after Labor Day, and if she did, I would tell her that I hadn’t done them and I would tell her what I did do in my classes.

Yesterday, after the seminar with the Quaker painting, some students said that the teachers and the Texan instructor should talk about more relevant issues affecting their community. I decided to discuss some of these issues as my lesson. My students picked the topics. The first few were obvious, like AIDS, cop killing, terrorism, and racism. Then, they got even worse with issues like stripping, teen prostitution, giving head for Chinese food, and homeless teenage pregnancies.

Look, education is important. With more education, you can make more money. If you don’t take advantage of your teachers, who are paid to help you complete your high school education, you are just throwing money down the toilet, I said.

Some kids opened up.

I was walking to singing practice yesterday, and I started crying because this would be the year I got my diploma, one kid said.

This is my last chance, another said.

During our discussion, Miss Carter walked past my door a few times before popping her head in to listen. It distracted the students, but we were able to get back on track.

Later, she said: Those were some of the worst students in the program. That was the best motivational speech I ever heard. At least she didn’t bother me about the lesson plans.

Miss Carter hired me on the spot when I interviewed in June. She personally escorted me to Human Resources to make sure I filled out every sheet of paperwork correctly. Getting a job gave me a summer free of having to find one.

Jack and the history teacher said Miss Carter was a bitch and a tyrant, and they mocked her for being unmarried and wondered how any man could ever deal with her. I tried not to let these comments influence my opinion of her, since she had never been a bitch to me.

While Mariella, Dinesh, the history teacher and I were talking, the Texan consultant arrived. She was supposed to help design lessons, and she assured us that she would arrive at 1:25 p.m. It was a little after 3:30 p.m. Earlier, Jack made a reference to the $49,000 her company was paid.

The Texan instructor wanted to conduct another seminar, and she created an ambitious one. When she looked to me for assurance, I said I looked forward to it and that it sounded great. Over these last few days, she told me that she was a graduate student in Texas. I hoped she wasn’t writing a thesis supporting the value of her company’s educational models. It was probably paying for her schooling. If she had to admit the failures of yesterday and today, her institution might not get its $49,000.

After her presentation, she asked if there were any questions.

In his garbled and accented English, Dinesh said, I don’t know how to write lesson plans, and I don’t know how to incorporate this seminar teaching with math.

If I get some time, I’ll try to help you, she said.

We were beginning the school day with one huge seminar of around eighteen students. We had yet to have an actual day broken up as it would be throughout the year.

During our meeting, I suggested we make new nametags, since the ones from yesterday were filled with small writing assignments and doodles. She began her seminar by passing out blank cards. Dinesh, who had