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Just prior to my son starting second grade, I wrote his teacher, Mrs. P, a letter introducing myself and offering to volunteer in her classroom. I had been volunteering at the school since my son had started there in Kindergarten, so I had some experience at it. She called me and said she would love to have me as long as I helped all the children and not just my son. I began going to the classroom on Wednesdays, but ended up going nearly every day for at least a few hours, and sometimes staying all day; I really enjoyed being in the classroom and working with the kids, and the teacher welcomed the help. We got along great and worked well together. The teacher would break up the class into groups and we would rotate them between us, or we would work with each child individually, if they needed extra help. The teacher also allowed me to plan and do all craft activities; under then-Superintendent of Schools Alan Bersin, art was not allowed, but as a parent I could get away with doing stuff as long as it was sort of English or Math related, like for Fourth of July, we made pinwheels, and on Mother’s Day, we made suncatchers, which really did require the kids to use their noodles to make. I always put craft projects together which were difficult and required a lot of eye-hand coordination. The teacher would say, “These kids are eight years old!” But they could do the work. At the end of the year, the children in that class scored highest in the school on tests. Half of the kids qualified for GATE (Gifted And Talented Education).
The kids were smart kids. Street smart and sophisticated, too. And very social. The girls especially were pretty advanced socially, were already gossiping and flirting with the boys. The students were required to wear uniforms at the school, but the girls still put glittery gel in their hairstyles, and painted their nails, and wore trendy sneakers. One of the girls, “Selena,” was the leader of the pack, a good girl, very bright and did well in her work. She walked, talked, and acted like a miniature adult. She was a pretty little thing, very vivacious, and interested in boys; she was the one I would catch all the time telling one of the girls, “So-and-so boy likes you,” when they were supposedly working on one of their Math or English worksheets. Or she would be whispering in girls’ ears, organizing them against other girls. One day, she didn’t wear her uniform, came in wearing a matching halter top and shorts, floral printed on pink cotton, as I recall. A halter top on an eight year old! I could tell she was a little uncomfortable wearing the outfit, torn between showing off and being too brazen. The teacher couldn’t say anything about it, so I said to her, “Does your mother let you dress like that to come to school?” She laughed, but to her credit, she also blushed. Last time she ever dressed inappropriately at school.
The teacher and I had an agreement, that way. There’s a lot of things teachers can’t do for fear of getting in trouble. But as a mother and a volunteer I had a bit more leeway in certain ways. I kept an eye on the children, straightened them out when they weren’t behaving, let them know when things weren’t right, encouraged the heck out of them when they did something good in school, and talked to them all the time about college. I had my own kids, I had fostered kids, and now I had these twenty more kids; nothing more satisfying than doing a good job with children.
Like all normal children, the class could sometimes be rowdy, particularly the boys. I’d settle them down with my favorite word of warning: “You’re getting on my last nerve.” It struck the right tone of fear and humor, generally they’d smile sheepishly and give over what they were doing, because they knew if they didn’t, next step was reporting them to the teacher who was the ultimate Big Boss, and they did not want to deal with her! Better to listen to me than get sat in a corner.
Some of the kids came from troubled homes, but most were from families where the parents worked, loved their kids, and did what they could to support their children’s academic careers. Those kids came in clean, with clean uniforms, happy and healthy. The other children, not so much. Problems ranged across the board, and it really broke my heart because they had the potential to be so much more than what their environment was limiting them to, if they had a better home life. But at least during the day, in the class, we did what we could to help them succeed and have that success as something to hold on to, and hopefully build on.
There were a lot of organizations and foundations that gave money and resources to help these kids. Scholastic, the children’s book publisher, did things like donate books, and when they had school sales, would offer a three-for-one deal, so if the kids bought one book, they could pick two more. NASSCO also sponsored a book giveaway for the kids at the school, where the kids were allowed to pick a free donated book for themselves.
After one of these book giveaways, one day, the children had all come back into the classroom, and after showing their books to each other and messing around for a few minutes, the teacher asked the children to put their books away in their desks. The rest of the day went as usual. At the end of the day, the teacher instructed the kids to put their new book in their backpacks and get in line so we could walk them to the fence where the parents waited to pick them up. One of the boys couldn’t find his book; it was a glittery gold Pokemon book, which had stickers in the back pages. I helped him look; was he sure he had put it in his desk? Yes he was. We looked around and couldn’t find it. The teacher asked what was wrong, so I told her.
She made all the children sit down at their desks with their backpacks in their lap. She said she was going to inspect each backpack to make sure each child had the right book, maybe someone had “mistakenly” gotten the wrong book. She instructed me to help, by starting at the front of the class, she would start at the back; the boy who had lost his book shared the desk with another boy at the back of the classroom. Immediately, she looked in the backpack of the boy sitting next to the boy whose book was lost. The book was in there. It was turned over to the boy, and the children were lined up, and we went out, with the teacher in front and me at the back. I was struck by how the teacher knew the book had been stolen and knew just how to resolve the situation quickly.
The boy who had taken the book was laughing and messing around, about halfway up the line. He was an average kid, not the sharpest crayon in the box, a bit troublesome and over-active, but he had a good mother and my feeling was that with hard work and a little luck he would come out all right; he had made a mistake. I walked to his side and started to quietly read him the riot act: “I can’t believe you did that to your friend. You play with him every day, you sit next to him in class, you work together, you study together, you eat together. How would you feel if someone did that to you, especially if he was your friend? Was that little book worth so much to you? To lose a friend, to be embarrassed in front of the whole class when the teacher took the book out of your backpack? Do you think your mother’s going to be happy when the teacher tells her what happened?” The teacher, who had seen me talking to the boy, turned away so she wouldn’t know what was going on.
Selena had seen me, as most of the children had, as I was talking to this child, they knew I was in my full mother mode, and they knew what that meant. It took all of thirty seconds, then I dropped back to the end of the line. The rest of the children were somber, thinking about what I said, but Selena got out of the line, and went over to the boy, put her hand on her hip and said, “You got on Miss Lopez’s last nerve!”
Just prior to my son starting second grade, I wrote his teacher, Mrs. P, a letter introducing myself and offering to volunteer in her classroom. I had been volunteering at the school since my son had started there in Kindergarten, so I had some experience at it. She called me and said she would love to have me as long as I helped all the children and not just my son. I began going to the classroom on Wednesdays, but ended up going nearly every day for at least a few hours, and sometimes staying all day; I really enjoyed being in the classroom and working with the kids, and the teacher welcomed the help. We got along great and worked well together. The teacher would break up the class into groups and we would rotate them between us, or we would work with each child individually, if they needed extra help. The teacher also allowed me to plan and do all craft activities; under then-Superintendent of Schools Alan Bersin, art was not allowed, but as a parent I could get away with doing stuff as long as it was sort of English or Math related, like for Fourth of July, we made pinwheels, and on Mother’s Day, we made suncatchers, which really did require the kids to use their noodles to make. I always put craft projects together which were difficult and required a lot of eye-hand coordination. The teacher would say, “These kids are eight years old!” But they could do the work. At the end of the year, the children in that class scored highest in the school on tests. Half of the kids qualified for GATE (Gifted And Talented Education).
The kids were smart kids. Street smart and sophisticated, too. And very social. The girls especially were pretty advanced socially, were already gossiping and flirting with the boys. The students were required to wear uniforms at the school, but the girls still put glittery gel in their hairstyles, and painted their nails, and wore trendy sneakers. One of the girls, “Selena,” was the leader of the pack, a good girl, very bright and did well in her work. She walked, talked, and acted like a miniature adult. She was a pretty little thing, very vivacious, and interested in boys; she was the one I would catch all the time telling one of the girls, “So-and-so boy likes you,” when they were supposedly working on one of their Math or English worksheets. Or she would be whispering in girls’ ears, organizing them against other girls. One day, she didn’t wear her uniform, came in wearing a matching halter top and shorts, floral printed on pink cotton, as I recall. A halter top on an eight year old! I could tell she was a little uncomfortable wearing the outfit, torn between showing off and being too brazen. The teacher couldn’t say anything about it, so I said to her, “Does your mother let you dress like that to come to school?” She laughed, but to her credit, she also blushed. Last time she ever dressed inappropriately at school.
The teacher and I had an agreement, that way. There’s a lot of things teachers can’t do for fear of getting in trouble. But as a mother and a volunteer I had a bit more leeway in certain ways. I kept an eye on the children, straightened them out when they weren’t behaving, let them know when things weren’t right, encouraged the heck out of them when they did something good in school, and talked to them all the time about college. I had my own kids, I had fostered kids, and now I had these twenty more kids; nothing more satisfying than doing a good job with children.
Like all normal children, the class could sometimes be rowdy, particularly the boys. I’d settle them down with my favorite word of warning: “You’re getting on my last nerve.” It struck the right tone of fear and humor, generally they’d smile sheepishly and give over what they were doing, because they knew if they didn’t, next step was reporting them to the teacher who was the ultimate Big Boss, and they did not want to deal with her! Better to listen to me than get sat in a corner.
Some of the kids came from troubled homes, but most were from families where the parents worked, loved their kids, and did what they could to support their children’s academic careers. Those kids came in clean, with clean uniforms, happy and healthy. The other children, not so much. Problems ranged across the board, and it really broke my heart because they had the potential to be so much more than what their environment was limiting them to, if they had a better home life. But at least during the day, in the class, we did what we could to help them succeed and have that success as something to hold on to, and hopefully build on.
There were a lot of organizations and foundations that gave money and resources to help these kids. Scholastic, the children’s book publisher, did things like donate books, and when they had school sales, would offer a three-for-one deal, so if the kids bought one book, they could pick two more. NASSCO also sponsored a book giveaway for the kids at the school, where the kids were allowed to pick a free donated book for themselves.
After one of these book giveaways, one day, the children had all come back into the classroom, and after showing their books to each other and messing around for a few minutes, the teacher asked the children to put their books away in their desks. The rest of the day went as usual. At the end of the day, the teacher instructed the kids to put their new book in their backpacks and get in line so we could walk them to the fence where the parents waited to pick them up. One of the boys couldn’t find his book; it was a glittery gold Pokemon book, which had stickers in the back pages. I helped him look; was he sure he had put it in his desk? Yes he was. We looked around and couldn’t find it. The teacher asked what was wrong, so I told her.
She made all the children sit down at their desks with their backpacks in their lap. She said she was going to inspect each backpack to make sure each child had the right book, maybe someone had “mistakenly” gotten the wrong book. She instructed me to help, by starting at the front of the class, she would start at the back; the boy who had lost his book shared the desk with another boy at the back of the classroom. Immediately, she looked in the backpack of the boy sitting next to the boy whose book was lost. The book was in there. It was turned over to the boy, and the children were lined up, and we went out, with the teacher in front and me at the back. I was struck by how the teacher knew the book had been stolen and knew just how to resolve the situation quickly.
The boy who had taken the book was laughing and messing around, about halfway up the line. He was an average kid, not the sharpest crayon in the box, a bit troublesome and over-active, but he had a good mother and my feeling was that with hard work and a little luck he would come out all right; he had made a mistake. I walked to his side and started to quietly read him the riot act: “I can’t believe you did that to your friend. You play with him every day, you sit next to him in class, you work together, you study together, you eat together. How would you feel if someone did that to you, especially if he was your friend? Was that little book worth so much to you? To lose a friend, to be embarrassed in front of the whole class when the teacher took the book out of your backpack? Do you think your mother’s going to be happy when the teacher tells her what happened?” The teacher, who had seen me talking to the boy, turned away so she wouldn’t know what was going on.
Selena had seen me, as most of the children had, as I was talking to this child, they knew I was in my full mother mode, and they knew what that meant. It took all of thirty seconds, then I dropped back to the end of the line. The rest of the children were somber, thinking about what I said, but Selena got out of the line, and went over to the boy, put her hand on her hip and said, “You got on Miss Lopez’s last nerve!”