Adequate Yearly Progress Page 5

  Then he quickly checked his e-mail, clicking the embedded link and scrolling to the biology standard: Students will use the scientific method during laboratory investigations and experiments.

  Lamont, who seemed to slide a couple of inches in his chair every few minutes, had slouched to a forty-five-degree angle.

  “Lamont, you see that stack of papers on the front table? Will you grab those and give one to each person? Great. Thanks.”

  Hernan wrote Scientific Method on the board as Lamont passed out the instructions for the experiment.

  MATERIALS

  Water-filled cylinder or upright tube

  Floating worm

  Tweezers

  DIRECTIONS

  The tweezers represent the beak of the crow. You must hold them in one hand and cannot alter them in any way.

  You can use any materials you find in the room, but you must use only the tweezers to handle them. (Remember: crows have no hands!)

  The tube must remain upright and on the table at all times.

  You cannot add water to the tube.

  Solve the problem by removing the worm from the tube using only the tweezers.

  “The first group that figures out how to remove the worm from the tube gets extra credit.” Another strange phenomenon Hernan had observed: even students who didn’t do their regular assignments would work for extra credit.

  “And I’ll give y’all a hint.” Under Scientific Method, he wrote, Step one: Make observations. “This means look around carefully. Notice things. Pick things up and feel them. Use all five senses.”

  As always, students spent the beginning of their observation time arguing among lab partners and jiggling the tubes to see if the worm was real. Eventually, however, they settled into trying to solve the puzzle. Hernan walked around the room, observing. Aside from his plants, the room had the attributes found in most high school science labs: rows of rectangular lab tables; shelves of tools for mixing, measuring, and filtering; two sinks, one of which worked. Scattered among these lay bolts, screws, and other small metal objects Hernan had placed around the room the day before.

  He wrote the next step on the board. Step two: Propose a hypothesis.

  “Okay, everyone, hopefully you’ve had some time to make observations. Now it’s time to form a hypothesis—that’s an educated guess about the answer to the experiment.”

  He wrote the last four steps on the board:

  Step three: Design a controlled experiment to test the hypothesis.

  Step four: Do the experiment.

  Step five: Reject or fail to reject the hypothesis.

  Step six: Draw conclusions. Then, if you need to, go back to step one.

  He knew there would be much work to do before students fully understood the steps. The schools that fed into Brae Hill Valley considered it a matter of survival to focus on each year’s tested subjects, and while students took reading and math tests every year, only fourth and seventh graders took science tests.

  “We’ll discuss all this later,” said Hernan, gesturing toward the board. “For now, just work on forming a hypothesis.”

  Eventually, a student would notice the bits of metal hidden around the room and figure out that if they dropped these in the water, the worm would float to the top of the tube. In the meantime, Hernan circled the room, offering occasional pointers. His mind wandered to Lena: the year’s first happy hour was on Friday, and he hadn’t heard from her yet. Maybe she’d forgotten. Maybe Lena was just being polite when she asked for his number. Or maybe he should have taken her number instead. Then again, would he have even called? He wasn’t one to make things awkward with a coworker.

  “Mr. Hernandez.” In the doorway stood Hernan’s least-favorite assistant principal, Mr. Scamphers. He was giving Hernan the look one might give a child who had indeed put someone’s eye out in a game he’d warned them would only be fun until someone got hurt. “You are out of compliance with the Curriculum Standard of the Day Achievement Initiative.”

  “We’re working on the scientific method,” said Hernan, pointing to the board. “Isn’t that the standard?”

  “The standard is to be written on the board in its entirety, Mr. Hernandez, as per this morning’s announcement.”

  “Sorry.” But then, since Hernan wasn’t actually sorry, he added, “It’s just that we were already in the middle of the lesson when that announcement came on.”

  “Well, I’ll certainly make a note of that.” Scamphers scribbled on his clipboard.

  Before Hernan could wonder why this was worth noting, a burst of activity erupted from a lab table near the window. Someone had made a correct hypothesis. Now students were all hunting for bits of metal to pick up and drop into the water, just as crows did in the wild.

  High school science experiments were like this. Everything that determined the outcome was already in the room, working as it always did, as predictable as the laws of gravity or volume displacement. They were only new if you hadn’t noticed them before.

  It was Nilda who first called, “We got it!” She held her worm up like a trophy.

  “Nice,” said Hernan. “Congratulations to the whole group on using the scientific method to find a solution!” He couldn’t resist looking at Mr. Scamphers as he emphasized the words.

  But Mr. Scamphers offered no sign that he had understood. He marched out the door, his clipboard cradled stiffly in one arm.

  Hernan turned to the student who had vindicated him. “Nilda, why don’t you tell us what your hypothesis was?”

  Nilda shrugged. “I saw everyone putting these metal thingies in the water, so I tried to get more of them than everyone else.”

  Hernan sighed. “You were supposed to form a hypothesis first.”

  “Yeah, but, Mr. Hernandez, sometimes you just gotta go for it.”

  Sometimes you just gotta go for it was not the takeaway of the lesson, but the bell rang before Hernan could answer, and the students filtered out of the room. It was early in the year, he reminded himself. There was still time. He watered the plants along his windowsill before the next wave of students arrived, feeling a vibration he at first assumed was coming from the air conditioner. Then he realized it was his phone, announcing a text message from inside his pocket.

  This Friday. Papacito’s?

  A smile crept onto Hernan’s face as he realized the area code was from Philadelphia.

  See you there, he typed back.

  PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SOURCES

  “I’M CONCERNED ABOUT a couple of my students.” Kaytee avoided saying the names Yesenia Molina and Jonathan Rodriguez to her school-assigned mentor. She didn’t want to set off one of Mrs. Towner’s parents-who-don’t-speak-English rants.

  “I know.” Mrs. Towner nodded sympathetically. “These kids are bad.”

  “No, no, they’re actually really smart kids! But it’s like they’re so used to being failed by the system that they’re sabotaging their education by talking in class.”

  Mrs. Towner looked confused.

  “I called home to try to invest their families, but I could only reach one parent.”

  “Single mom?”

  “No. Well, I mean, I don’t know. The mom said she would talk to her son, but the next day nothing changed. And the girl—”

  “No surprise there. Most of the parents who support education moved their kids to the suburbs years ago. Or they go private. Like my husband and me—we both went here, but we busted our butts to send our kids to Catholic school.”

  Mrs. Towner, who administrators had picked last year as Kaytee’s guide to Brae Hill Valley, was always quick to share that she’d attended the school as a student. She was even quicker to add, It sure wasn’t like this when I went here. From what Kaytee could gather, the school district had desegregated after Mrs. Towner’s senior year. She’d returned from teaching college to find a diversifying mass of teenagers who—according to her—got worse every year. Conversations with Patty Towner were like archeological digs
in which each layer of sediment revealed a new, well-preserved stereotype. These were exactly the type of conversations TeachCorps had warned them about.

  “Listen, hon, I’m going to share something with you that someone once told me. A couple years ago, I went to a professional development session, and they gave us each one of these.” Mrs. Towner opened her desk drawer and pulled out an oversize Q-tip. “You know what the letters in Q-tip stand for?”

  Kaytee shook her head.

  “Quit. Taking. It. Personally!”

  “Oh.”

  “I know, isn’t that great? Whenever this job is getting to me, I just open my desk drawer and look at this and repeat that to myself: quit taking it personally.”

  Kaytee had a sudden, strong desire to be back in her own classroom.

  “But you know what? I think you need this more than I do now.” Mrs. Towner handed the Q-tip to Kaytee as if passing an Olympic torch.

  “Wow. Thanks so much. Really. I appreciate it.” Kaytee was backing out of the room. There was nothing she wanted less than to stand near Mrs. Towner’s open door holding a two-year-old Q-tip. “But I should go now. I have a ton of work to do.”

  “No problem, hon. Have a great weekend. And remember—Q.T.I.P.!”

  Kaytee hurried back toward her classroom, so focused on holding the Q-tip away from her body that she didn’t see Lena Wright until they nearly collided.

  “Girl. Why are you running back into the building on a Friday afternoon?” Her eyes traveled to Kaytee’s hand. “And why are you holding a giant Q-tip?”

  Kaytee glanced over her shoulder. She didn’t want to offend her mentor teacher, but it felt urgent to let Lena know she wasn’t doing this by choice. “It’s supposed to stand for ‘quit taking it personally,’ ” she whispered. “I’m trying to find a place to throw it out.”

  “You don’t need a Q-tip,” said Lena, not whispering at all. “You need a drink. It’s payday. We’re all going to Papacito’s.”

  Maybelline Galang walked quickly past them and reentered her classroom. Kaytee watched, weighing her options. On the one hand, she should probably work late like Ms. Galang. She hadn’t graded the past few days’ exit tickets, and TeachCorps had warned them that falling behind on grades made it hard to maintain high expectations. On the other hand, this was the first time Lena Wright—or any of her colleagues—had ever invited her to happy hour.

  “Okay. I’ll meet you there.”

  Before she left, she ducked back into her classroom to stuff the exit tickets into her TeachCorps tote bag. The Q-tip she dropped in the garbage.

  * * *

  “I mean, I get not wanting to pay taxes,” Lena was saying when Kaytee arrived. “I just don’t get all this focus on what’s going on inside other people’s butts.”

  “Because it’s a sin for a man to lie down with another man,” answered Breyonna. “It’s written in the Bible.”

  Hernan Hernandez, who sat facing Kaytee at one end of the table, gave her a smile that suggested Lena and Breyonna just might be crazy. At the other end of the table were Candace and Regina, who taught at nearby schools and whom Kaytee gathered were from Breyonna’s sorority.

  Lena was smiling directly at Breyonna now, her eyes telegraphing a conversational knockout punch. “Have you actually read the Bible?”

  “I grew up in the church choir.”

  “Because you know the Bible says it’s okay to have slaves, right?” Lena leaned forward. “There’s even, like, directions for how to treat your slaves. And, meanwhile, there’s only one line in the whole Bible that can even be interpreted to say that being gay is a sin.”

  “Well, it should be obvious.”

  Kaytee wondered if Breyonna regretted inviting Lena and Hernan—and, by extension, Kaytee—to fill the empty seats at her table.

  But Lena either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “I just don’t get how it’s possible for black people to agree with Republicans. On anything.”

  Kaytee wasn’t sure if it was okay, as the only white teacher at the table, to laugh at this remark. She settled for a small hmm that could be taken as a laugh if appropriate.

  Regina and Candace laughed. But it was okay if they did it.

  “I’m not a Republican,” said Breyonna. “I just think being gay is nasty.”

  The food arrived, and hands reached in toward wings and nachos. Kaytee took a celery stick from the wing plate. It crunched loudly when she bit into it, intensifying her self-consciousness. She wondered if she was the only one at the table on a diet.

  Lena turned at the sound of the crunch, her face lighting up as if she’d just thought of something. “Hey! Remember that presenter a couple years ago who gave us Q-tips?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Hernan. “She was like, Keep this big, dusty Q-tip in your desk and stare at it when you’re having a bad day.” He was addressing the table, though he seemed mostly focused on Lena’s reaction.

  “Yup, that’s the one. Anyway, guess who I saw outside Patty Towner’s room holding a giant Q-tip?”

  Kaytee blushed. “I was on my way to throw it out.”

  “You threw out the Q-tip?!” Hernan opened his eyes wide. “You were supposed to keep that in a safe place!”

  Kaytee looked at him, surprised. “You kept yours?”

  “Nah. Just kidding. I used it to clean my ears.”

  Lena laughed, and Hernan’s fake shock melted into a smile. “It gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling when I used it, though.”

  “Mrs. Towner gave it to me. And she gave me this whole speech about how I’m not supposed to take it personally if my kids don’t succeed.” Kaytee hoped her tone communicated enough incredulity. She didn’t want anyone here to think she was like Mrs. Towner. She was the opposite of Mrs. Towner. “Actually, I was trying to get advice about some students who have been sabotaging their success by talking in class. I wanted—”

  “I know,” said Candace. “These kids are bad.”

  “For real,” said Breyonna. “And y’all know I went to the Hill—but we sure didn’t act like the kids do now.”

  “No, no.” Kaytee tried to clarify. “They’re actually really smart kids! But it’s like they’re so used to being failed by the system that they’re…” She trailed off as Candace and Breyonna began to look bored.

  “We gotta help this girl out now that she’s not a rookie anymore,” said Lena. “Otherwise she’s gonna get kidnapped by the Q-tip people. Give her some real advice about Brae Hill Valley.”

  “Don’t put your lunch in the teachers’-lounge fridge,” offered Breyonna.

  “For real.” Lena turned to Kaytee to explain further. “They always tell us we can’t have those little fridges in our rooms, but everyone does. People steal at this school.”

  “I used to take a bite out of my sandwich before I put it in the lounge fridge,” said Hernan. “Then one day someone stole it anyway. That’s when I got my own fridge.”

  Lena laughed. Hernan straightened in his seat.

  “And try to get honors classes.” This, like nearly everything Regina said, sounded like a complaint. “They actually do their work, so they do better on the TCUP and you get your test score bonus.”

  Kaytee looked at Breyonna, who taught the honors classes in the history department, but Breyonna was digging in her purse.

  “Wait,” said Lena. “I thought the scores depended on whether we believed in students enough.”

  “Yeah,” said Hernan, “and we get to take ownership of that this year. It’s super exciting.”

  “A real paradigm shift,” agreed Lena.

  “Based on real research and statistics.”

  “You’re so crazy, Hernan!” Candace interjected.

  “Not just crazy,” said Lena. “Crazy and you owe me a drink. Remember the bet we made?”

  “I remember,” Hernan admitted, then signaled to the waitress. “Her next one’s on me.”

  “What we need,” said Regina, as if sensing the threat of incoming cheerfulness,
“is a neck-tattoo statistic.”

  They all turned toward her.

  “They want to send us data like, This many black students passed a test in some other teacher’s class, and this many are passing in your class. But that’s not even the point. I mean, I’m black. Breyonna and Candace are black. We can pass a test.”

  “Yeah, exactly,” added Lena. “I can pass a test.”

  “How ’bout you tell me how many thirteen-year-olds with neck tattoos are passing a test in another teacher’s class? Then compare my neck-tattoo kids with their neck-tattoo kids. Then tell me what kind of teacher I am.”

  Kaytee made another hmm sound that could have been a laugh, though she hoped it was clear she was not laughing at thirteen-year-olds with neck tattoos, who were trapped in a cycle of generational poverty that was certainly not funny.

  “Actually,” said Lena, “I’ve got some kids with neck tattoos who are even smarter than the other kids in the class. They’re just a different kind of smart.”

  “You should see our students this year,” said Breyonna. She launched into a story about a group of girls she called Pookie and them, which led Regina to follow up with a comment about Quay’Vante and them, which Kaytee gathered were fictional names, chosen because they sounded like the type of names that represented generational poverty among African Americans.

  This time, Kaytee refused to laugh. She reached back to feel her TeachCorps tote bag, which hung from the back of her chair with the stack of exit tickets inside. If she graded some of them at the table, right here at happy hour, maybe it would serve as an example to these other teachers, who had nothing to say about the kids except that they were bad. Her thoughts flickered briefly to her blog.

  Breyonna looked at her phone. “I got to go soon, y’all. Roland and I are going to dinner with some other people from the marketing department at his bank. I mean, don’t get me wrong—wings are good and all, but I’d rather have some crab legs and filet mignon, y’all know what I’m saying?”

  “Forget the TCUP bonus,” said Candace. “I gotta get me a rich fiancé.”