Jackie

Part 2

(After Jackie played her song with the inappropriate language, I tried to turn the debacle into a teachable moment by relating the difference between cuteness and cleverness using the tale of Uncle Harry, Joey, and Joey pummeling Uncle Harry’s toe with a hammer at Thanksgiving Dinner.)

“There is a huge difference between being cute and being clever.  People who want to be cute want to draw attention to themselves.  Their actions are saying, ‘Look at me!!!!  Look at me!!!!  Look at me!!!!’  They are craving attention.”

I saw a number of students shift uneasily in their seats.  Jackie sat with her arms crossed in front of her.

“Being clever means making people think about something old in a new way…..like Caleb did yesterday when Caleb made the connection between Donne and rolling your eyes when you say something sarcastic.”

All of you are adults.  You are NOT babies. You get points in the adult world for being clever.  Leave cuteness to the babies.”

They were silent.  Hey, it was the best teachable moment I could conjure up.  When the bell rang, they marched out in silence, except for Jackie who bulled and elbowed her way to be the first to leave.

In the spring of that school year, I noticed that Jackie was absent two days in a row.  The reason why became apparent on the third day of her absence.  In my mailbox was a Progress Report for Jackie.  When students were suspended or had a parents’ conference, each teacher was required to fill out a Progress Report noting grades and behavior. This was used at the readmission meetings. Teaching five level three classes meant I would fill out many many Progress Reports.  Jackie was failing my class and her language was increasingly filled with profanity.

I completed the Progress Report and decided to hand it in personally to Rae Levin, Jackie’s guidance counselor.

“So why did Jackie get suspended?”  I handed Rae the Progress Report.

Rae was from Atlanta and still retained a southern accent.  She began to read the Progress Report.  “She got in a fight with another girl on the bus loading platform.”

“What over?”
“Boyfriend I think.  Jackie saw this other girl talking to a boy that Jackie liked.”

“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”

“How is the other girl?”
“Okay.  But Jackie shut out her lights.  She was taken to the hospital and released the same day, bless her heart.”

“Who is the other girl?”
“Diane Jenkins.”

Diane was in my seventh period class.

“I didn’t get a progress report for Diane.  Did she get suspended?”

“Nope.  Witnesses say she didn’t throw a punch.  She was more or less a victim.”

“Rae, another question?”

“Sure.”

“What’s with the yellow raincoat?  Last week it was seventy five degrees in my room and she is wearing that heavy yellow raincoat on top of a sweatshirt.”

Rae pulled her chair closer to the desk implying something confidential was about to be shared.  I moved my chair closer to the desk.

Rae folded her hands in front of her on the desk.  “You’re a man.  You might not understand. Jackie is very very very ashamed of her figure.  She wears the yellow raincoat every day to cover it up.”

I felt my soul sink. “Damn.”

Rae nodded.

“Can I make some changes to that Progress Report?”

The next day, before Period 7 began, I pulled Diane aside.  “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, Mr. M.  I’m fine.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know.  I was face to face with Jackie waiting for the bus, and we’re going at it, ya know, me yelling at her, her yelling at me.  Then I turned away and started to walk away when I thought of something else to yell at her.”

“Uh huh.”

“That’s all I remember.  I turned to yell at her and all I saw was yellow and then nothing.”

“You’re okay now, though?”

“Yeah. I’m good.”

The next day Jackie returned to school.

Period 3 went as usual.  We struggled through Robert Burns. “To a Mouse.”

When the bell rang Jackie hung behind and waited for the room to empty out.

“Glad to have you back, Jackie.”

She put her hands in her yellow rain jacket.  “Thanks for the good things you wrote in the report.”  I could tell that this was a really hard thing for her to do.

“Just told the truth. By the way, here is the essay you wrote before you got suspended.”

She looked it over, flashed surprise at the B-, and read my comments.  I made the usual criticisms of spelling and paragraph structure and errors in punctuation, but I purposely included phrases like “beautifully written” when a nice segment of prose appeared.

Jackie passed my class, honestly, as did Caleb.

Six years later I was still assigned five classes of level 3 students.  I asked my department chairperson if I could be assigned a higher level group if only to develop some other teaching skills.  Truth was, I feared burning out.  Years of teaching students hostile to learning was taking its toll.  But sometimes success is a death knell.  I worked well with level 3 students and school is about placing people in pre-ordained niches, including teachers.

As my sixth year of teaching Henry Bouquet High School’s most inexperienced students drew to a close, the birth of our first child neared.  One day in mid-June Polley experienced contractions; we made a phone call to our obstetrician who advised us to go to the hospital.  We were in the hospital parking lot when Polley began to stamp her feet.  “I’m not going in there.  The contractions stopped.”  We later learned that Braxton-Hicks contractions were common.

“We’re here.  Let’s just go in and check it out.”

“No!!!  I am so embarrassed.”  Polley did not open her car door.

“Embarrassed?!  Honey, what are the chances we see anyone we know in the hospital?”

My mind was rolling the film of Polley stomping her foot.  “I will be so embarrassed!” when I heard a splash upstream and to our right.  Mike heard it as well. “Well, at least there is one trout in this creek.”

Then another splash, this one closer to us, and then another practically in front of us.  We leaned down closer to the water to see what insects were inspiring trout to rise to the surface.  Mike was the first, as always, to identify the hatch.  “Quill Gordons.  I think they are Quill Gordons.”

That made sense.  Quill Gordons were an early spring insect.  I reached into my vest for my dry fly box, looked up and down the rows of hackled flies and found the Quill Gordons.  When I looked up and began to tie on the fly, the stream we thought was devoid of trout was boiling with life, trout inhaling the insects, wings upright, that now were like a flotilla of tiny sailboats riding the current downstream.  My blood pressure shot up a hundred points.  With anxiety-inhibited fingers, I tied on the fly and made a cast upstream.  Mike was doing the same a few yards downstream.  I watched my fly float down toward me, one imitation Quill Gordon amongst thousands of naturals.  My eyes searched for my fly.  A trout rose, and I lifted my graphite rod to hook him.  I felt no resistance.  My fly came up into the air and bounced off my waders.  My eyes were mistakenly following a natural!!!  I made another cast, trout were splashing all around me, and my eyes sought my fly, a sailboat coasting along with a fleet.  A trout rose to inhale a fly but I did not lift the rod because I thought the fly the trout took was a natural.  Then I felt resistance!  Again, I was following the wrong sailboat!  This trout hooked himself.  I landed and immediately released the fourteen inch brownie.

Hatches do not last long, perhaps twenty to thirty minutes, but Mike and I had a great time in that short period.  We laughed afterwards at how many fish we missed for various reasons.

It was one of those pleasant surprises.  A stream I swore earlier was troutless became a caldron of hungry, feasting creatures.

When Polley and I entered the emergency room of the hospital, an aide immediately pushed a wheelchair underneath my wife who was still shaking her head.  “I am so embarrassed.”

“Why?  Look, we’ll just check everything out.  Okay?  Look, nobody we know.”  I made a sweeping gesture with my arm, and just as the arm stopped, we heard, “Mr. Maltese!!!!!!”

It was one of my students from that year.  Then another student from that year appeared and approached.  Then, as the aide wheeled Polley to an examination room, one of her former students spotted her.  And then another.  Polley shot me a look.  I knew that look.  “What!?  Do half our students volunteer here?”

I simply shrugged.

In the examination room we waited for someone to tell us what we already suspected.  Braxton-Hicks.  False labor.  I was reading an article posted on the bulletin board, “Dietary Habits That Will Make You Healthy” when the curtain suddenly parted and a mass of white filled the room.  “Hey, Mr. Maltese!”

It was Jackie.  She had on a white uniform with a pink ribbon in her lapel.

“I heard from Marie that you were here.  How you doing?”
My shocked Ralph Kramden came out of my mouth….all babbling, but through the blather I was able to make introductions.

“So Jackie, how are you doing?”

“Just fine.  I went to school and I’m a nurse’s assistant.   I bet you’re surprised.”

“No, not at all.”  I lied.  “Do you like it?”

“Yes.  Very much.  I like helping people.   I am going to enter another program so I can work in pediatrics.  I like working with kids.” “That’s great.”

We had a nice chat.   Years later Jackie’s son Jonathan showed up in my class.  Nice kid.   I heard from Jonathan’s counselor that Jackie had demanded he be placed in my class.

Nature is full of surprises.