Three
September 1994 Continues
Journalism was sixth period and today it started with a staff meeting. I knew these kids.
There were the editors that had been with me the previous year.
Over half of the new recruits had me in ninth grade English the previous year. They were now sophomores and had earned A’s from me in English. None of them had ever been tardy to class. None of them had ever turned an assignment in late. All of them had completed the homework assigned. They seldom were out sick. If they needed help, they asked for it. If I allowed them to do an assignment over to improve a grade, they did. I could depend on them and before the year was out they all proved my judgment was sound. Kids with good study habits seldom change. Their parents were the ones I saw on parent conference night.
“Journalism is an elective,” I said. “No one is required to take this class to graduate. What is the benefit?”
“To become better writers. To help us do better in college.”
“Thank you, Hanna,” I said. “That’s right.” Hanna was a junior and was one of Jia’s friends. Jia had talked her into joining. I had a lot of confidence in Jia’s judgment. Next year Hanna would be the sport’s editor, and she would win awards at JEA competitions.
“It also adds to our transcripts so we have a better chance to get into the college of our choice,” Todd said. These students didn’t need to raise hands to ask questions or participate. They didn’t need a babysitter to watch over them.
“Thank you, Todd.” I waited for a moment. The room was quiet. No one was talking. Everyone was paying attention. It was difficult to tell they were even breathing.
“This meeting is about deadlines,” I said. “Deadlines are important for a newspaper and a nightmare for reporters.” This meeting was only for the new reporters. Jia had asked me to talk to them because some of the reporters hadn’t turned in rough drafts yet. The final draft was due at the end of the week. There were eight computers at the back of the room, one for each editor and one for the reporters. If an editor’s computer was free, a reporter was allowed to use it.
“How can it be a nightmare?” Bobby said. “All we have to do is turn things in on time. What’s hard about that?”
“You’re right, Bobby, but sometimes a reporter can’t make a deadline. Anyone that misses three deadlines in a row will be dropped from the class.” I indicated the editors working on their layouts at the back of the room.
“Jia,” I called. She turned around. “When an editor is depending on a reporter to make a deadline so she can finish her page, who suffers when a piece isn’t turned in on time.”
“The editor.”
“I don’t understand,” one of the reporters said.
“The editor plans her page around every story assigned. If a story doesn’t come in, that leaves a hole in the layout. The page can not be finished if a story is missing. If needed, the editor will write a substitute piece on the spot to make the deadline for her page. The date for the final boards to be picked up by the printer is already scheduled. There is no excuse to miss that deadline for reporters and editors. That’s why we fire people that can’t make a deadline.”
“This class is like a job,” another reporter said.
“That is the way it should be,” I replied. “This paper pays its own way by selling ads. Those computers and printers were paid for by ads and students went out and found those ads. When we compete at JEA write offs, the money for the entry fee comes from the ads we run in the paper. We are a business. The only difference is, you don’t earn money. You earn a grade on your transcripts to help you qualify for the college of your choice. You also learn how to write better.”
“Cool,” a voice said. “I’ve never been in a class like this before. It’s almost like we are in charge.”
“Almost,” I said. “Some of you haven’t turned in your rough drafts to the editor-in-chief yet. It is her responsibility to get them to me so I can edit, grade and clear them for a final draft. After I finish with the rough, the story belongs to the page editor and you all must get the final draft to them on time.”
“But the rough draft deadline isn’t until this Friday.”
“That’s my deadline. You also have an earlier rough draft deadline to your page editor. They like to check what you’ve written before I see it. And they might ask for rewrites. You were told about this during the story board for the paper before the school year started. I suspect some of you weren’t paying attention and forgot.”
“We don’t have enough computers and some of us don’t have computers at home.”
“The library has a computer lab. They don’t close until five-thirty. The librarian has reserved some of the computers for you”
As soon as the meeting finished, half of the reporters left for the library.
Jia stayed after class to have me look over her page layouts for the opinion section. Afterwards, we talked about the new staff. “What should we do about the reporters. There are more of them than stories in the next issue?”
“Have them compete. Assign more than one reporter to a piece. The section editor, with your approval, decides which piece is the best one to get published.”
“If a reporter gets rejected, that could be depressing,” Jia said. “They might drop out.”
“True, but that’s the way life is outside of school. Everyone can’t be successful. School should be the place where kids learn how to survive in the real world. If they can’t take it here, how are they going to make it out there. Anyone that doesn’t like the way we do things is welcome to leave, but I’ll talk to them first.”
* * * *
“Get your fucking hands off of me, Sergio,” Maria said. “I don’t want a massage.”
“Come on, let me give you a massage,” Sergio said. His hands were still where Maria didn’t want them—on her shoulders. He was behind her. He had followed her into the classroom. There was still four minutes left until the tardy bell rang.
“Sergio, do as Maria asks,” I said, and his hands fell away. As Maria walked by, I said, “Watch the language, please. I don’t talk like that around you, and I expect you to do the same.” She nodded. Sergio followed Maria to her desk.
“Get away from me,” Maria said.
One of the topics Mr. Gold had discussed during the responsibility assembly had been sexual harassment. “Maria,” I said. I waved a referral in the air where she could see it. Her face clouded.
“You aren’t going to write a referral on me. I didn’t do anything. I promise not to use the ‘F’ word again.”
“I know that, Maria. If you tell him to stop and he doesn’t, that’s considered sexual harassment. I’ll write him up and send him to the office, but you have to tell me to do it. You have to be willing to sign the complaint.”
She stopped and I could tell by her expression that she liked it. “Naw, not this time,” she said. “I like Sergio. He’s cute. He makes me laugh, but I don’t like him in the way he wants. I’ll give him a break this time.” Then she turned to Sergio. “But next time, I’m going to complain and Mr. Lofthouse is going to throw your cute ass out of his class. Keep your hands off of me, Sergio.”
“You think my ass is cute.” Sergio looked hopeful.
She rolled her eyes. “I think a baby’s ass is cute too,” she said. “I’m not going to change your diapers for you. I’ve got a boyfriend. He’s a senior.”
The tardy bell rang, and I closed the door. The sponge activity started. It was Sergio’s job to turn on the overhead since his desk was next to it. He always wanted to help even if he didn’t do half of the class work.
______________________________________________________
See My Splendid Concubine, historical fiction by Lloyd Lofthouse
“I was struck by the beauty of the cover, and I certainly was not disappointed by the book’s contents. A fascinating illumination of nineteenth-century Chinese culture and the complex Englishman Robert Hart, the father of China’s modernization. Hart’s struggles adapting to Chinese culture, always feeling the pull and force of his Victorian British background, are compelling. His relationships with his concubine and his concubine’s sister are poignant—the novel is as much a study of the complexities of love as it is anything else. A powerful novel whose beauty exceeds that of the book’s cover.” Writer’s Digest judge, 2008
Watch the author of My Splendid Concubine talk about his novel.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Word Dancer Two
Two
September 1994 Continues
The official school day starts with a warning. A bell warns students that the bell signaling the passing period will ring soon. After the second bell rings, students have six minutes to make it to class on time. Then there is the bell that signals class has started. Teachers are supposed to close the doors and lock out all tardy students. Most teacher’s do and a few don’t. At the end of the thirty minute lunch, the same procedure is repeated. There are always complaints from students that thirty minutes isn’t enough time, but the idea is to limit the amount of time the students have to get into fights.
The reason behind the warning bell that another warning bell will ring is because so many students don’t move. The first bell basically says start to think about getting to class before the real warning bell rings. I thought it was stupid. On the other hand, six campus police officer, three vice principals and a principal weren’t enough bodies to cover every square foot of the campus to flush the students out that didn’t want to be in class.
“Mr. Lofthouse, they don’t give us enough time to make it to class,” someone always complained. “It isn’t fair.”
I also thought it wasn’t fair for one day. Soon after I started teaching at the high school, I debunked this myth myself. I walked out to the farthest corner of the campus and stood in the football stadium one morning before first period. I waited for the bell that signals the passing period—not the first warning bell. I walked at a fast pace. I didn’t run. I made it to my classroom with a minute to spare. On the way, I saw clumps of students standing around talking.
“Mr. Lofthouse, where have you been,” several voices scolded. “You’re going to make us tardy.”
I unlocked the door and held it open. “No one is tardy until I’m in the room.” I stood aside and the class poured in. The tardy bell rang. The last two students entered. I started to close the door.
“Wait!” a voice yelled. I saw one of the regular tardy students running down the hall about a hundred feet away. Most of the classrooms in sight had the doors closed and locked. Only a few teacher’s didn’t cooperate with the tardy policy. I smiled, stepped inside the classroom and closed the door.
A moment later a furious student was pounding and kicking the door. She cursed and screamed and the pounding didn’t let up. I called security on the intercom and within a few minutes silence returned. Either campus security had picked the tardy kid up or the tardy kid had taken off. Later, this kid would claim she wasn’t tardy. She’d accuse me of closing the door in her face before the tardy bell rang. That’s was one of the reasons that I did everything on time and by the numbers.
After I finished taking role while the class worked on the sponge activity, a brief assignment designed to keep kids busy on something useful and academic, I opened the door to see if anyone was waiting outside with a tardy slip. No tardy slip, no entry. The girl that pounded on the door wasn’t there. I’d have to squeeze in a phone call to report her. She’d probably decided to go hide someplace and cut class to avoid a detention. For sure, she would show up tomorrow with a written excuse from her parent. It had happened before. Eventually, I managed to get the mother on the phone. She said she didn’t like her daughter staying after school.
“Why do you always smile when someone gets in trouble?”
“Simple. It isn’t me getting in trouble,” I answered, “and justice is served. There is a reason we have standards like the tardy policy in society. If we didn’t, anarchy would rule. No one would be safe. You could get raped or killed in your living room and nothing would happen to the criminal.”
“You’re sick.”
“Possibly. However, I would never call you sick because it takes one to know one.” Several students laughed. “Now, let’s correct the sponge activity.”
The overhead was displaying a grammatically incorrect complex or compound sentence on the white board. Students copied the incorrect sentence and edited it. After they corrected the sentence, they copied it properly below the edited version. I walked around the room making sure most of the students were done. Returning to the overhead, I put up the answer. The students checked their work and made further corrections. Sometimes the sponge activity was sentence combining where students took two or more sentences or phrases and combined them into one.
There are usually nineteen bells each day before seventh period ends. That’s why I hate bells. By the time I finished thirty years, I’d listened to more than one hundred thousand of them.
* * * *
Mr. Gold, the new guy on campus and one of three vice principals, stepped up to the podium to talk. His primary responsibility was discipline. The new VP always got stuck with discipline. After the students quieted down, he said, “I worked in another school district last year.” His voice filled the gymnasium. A thousand students crowded the bleachers. There would be three responsibility assemblies. There wasn’t enough room in the gym to accommodate the entire student body. The school was built for sixteen hundred students. There were more than three thousand enrolled.
Mr. Gold continued, “I went to four funerals of students who died because of drive-bys. I had to stop going because I couldn’t handle the grief. I knew the students that died. I was their teacher. I liked them.
“My goal is to see that as many of you live to graduate as possible, but statistic in this country are grim for ninth graders. Statistics say that half of you won’t stay in school to reach graduation. I want to do whatever I can to see that change. That means I’m going to get rid of anybody that wants to get high on drugs and alcohol or sell them to anyone else. That also means I’m going to be tough on gang bangers and gang hangers.”
A moan went up in the crowded bleachers. Mr. Gold waited until silence returned.
I girl’s hand shot up and waved for attention. Mr. Gold walked out from behind the podium. The girl stood up. She was a thin blond. “What’s a gang hanger?” she said.
“I’m glad you asked,” he replied. “Gang hangers are those students, usually ninth graders, that hang around gangs because they want to belong, to get jumped in.”
Part of the initiation for most gangs is to kick and beat the crap out of new recruits. The newbies get jumped to prove they can take it.
* * * *
“Did the advisor at La Puente High School take any of the journalism students to JEA regional, state or national competitions?” I asked.
“I don’t even know what that is?” the new recruit said. She was a junior that had transferred from another high school.
I explained that JEA was the Journalism Education Association. They sponsored academic writing competitions for high school journalism students. “Was La Puente’s school paper a class or an after school activity?”
“It was a class,” she said.
The counselor had scheduled this new student into journalism without consulting me. Her reason was that the girl had been on another school’s student newspaper. That didn’t mean she could write or make deadlines.
The girl dropped out two weeks later. It turned out that she couldn’t write a simple essay.
There are two kinds of teachers. Those that required students to earn grades and those that passed everyone to boost self esteem. I knew of one teacher that finished grading each quarter in the time it took to write down the grades. The first student was given an A and the second student a B. The third student on the roster earned another A and so on. This same teacher never wrote a referral and some of my problem students, the LaTanya types, were moved from my class to his at the parent’s insistence. The La Tanya types quickly found out who the easiest teachers were and did everything they could to get out of classes like mine.
_________________________________________________________________________
See My Splendid Concubine, historical fiction by Lloyd Lofthouse
“I was struck by the beauty of the cover, and I certainly was not disappointed by the book’s contents. A fascinating illumination of nineteenth-century Chinese culture and the complex Englishman Robert Hart, the father of China’s modernization. Hart’s struggles adapting to Chinese culture, always feeling the pull and force of his Victorian British background, are compelling. His relationships with his concubine and his concubine’s sister are poignant—the novel is as much a study of the complexities of love as it is anything else. A powerful novel whose beauty exceeds that of the book’s cover.” Writer’s Digest judge, 2008
Trailer for My Splendid Concubine
September 1994 Continues
The official school day starts with a warning. A bell warns students that the bell signaling the passing period will ring soon. After the second bell rings, students have six minutes to make it to class on time. Then there is the bell that signals class has started. Teachers are supposed to close the doors and lock out all tardy students. Most teacher’s do and a few don’t. At the end of the thirty minute lunch, the same procedure is repeated. There are always complaints from students that thirty minutes isn’t enough time, but the idea is to limit the amount of time the students have to get into fights.
The reason behind the warning bell that another warning bell will ring is because so many students don’t move. The first bell basically says start to think about getting to class before the real warning bell rings. I thought it was stupid. On the other hand, six campus police officer, three vice principals and a principal weren’t enough bodies to cover every square foot of the campus to flush the students out that didn’t want to be in class.
“Mr. Lofthouse, they don’t give us enough time to make it to class,” someone always complained. “It isn’t fair.”
I also thought it wasn’t fair for one day. Soon after I started teaching at the high school, I debunked this myth myself. I walked out to the farthest corner of the campus and stood in the football stadium one morning before first period. I waited for the bell that signals the passing period—not the first warning bell. I walked at a fast pace. I didn’t run. I made it to my classroom with a minute to spare. On the way, I saw clumps of students standing around talking.
“Mr. Lofthouse, where have you been,” several voices scolded. “You’re going to make us tardy.”
I unlocked the door and held it open. “No one is tardy until I’m in the room.” I stood aside and the class poured in. The tardy bell rang. The last two students entered. I started to close the door.
“Wait!” a voice yelled. I saw one of the regular tardy students running down the hall about a hundred feet away. Most of the classrooms in sight had the doors closed and locked. Only a few teacher’s didn’t cooperate with the tardy policy. I smiled, stepped inside the classroom and closed the door.
A moment later a furious student was pounding and kicking the door. She cursed and screamed and the pounding didn’t let up. I called security on the intercom and within a few minutes silence returned. Either campus security had picked the tardy kid up or the tardy kid had taken off. Later, this kid would claim she wasn’t tardy. She’d accuse me of closing the door in her face before the tardy bell rang. That’s was one of the reasons that I did everything on time and by the numbers.
After I finished taking role while the class worked on the sponge activity, a brief assignment designed to keep kids busy on something useful and academic, I opened the door to see if anyone was waiting outside with a tardy slip. No tardy slip, no entry. The girl that pounded on the door wasn’t there. I’d have to squeeze in a phone call to report her. She’d probably decided to go hide someplace and cut class to avoid a detention. For sure, she would show up tomorrow with a written excuse from her parent. It had happened before. Eventually, I managed to get the mother on the phone. She said she didn’t like her daughter staying after school.
“Why do you always smile when someone gets in trouble?”
“Simple. It isn’t me getting in trouble,” I answered, “and justice is served. There is a reason we have standards like the tardy policy in society. If we didn’t, anarchy would rule. No one would be safe. You could get raped or killed in your living room and nothing would happen to the criminal.”
“You’re sick.”
“Possibly. However, I would never call you sick because it takes one to know one.” Several students laughed. “Now, let’s correct the sponge activity.”
The overhead was displaying a grammatically incorrect complex or compound sentence on the white board. Students copied the incorrect sentence and edited it. After they corrected the sentence, they copied it properly below the edited version. I walked around the room making sure most of the students were done. Returning to the overhead, I put up the answer. The students checked their work and made further corrections. Sometimes the sponge activity was sentence combining where students took two or more sentences or phrases and combined them into one.
There are usually nineteen bells each day before seventh period ends. That’s why I hate bells. By the time I finished thirty years, I’d listened to more than one hundred thousand of them.
* * * *
Mr. Gold, the new guy on campus and one of three vice principals, stepped up to the podium to talk. His primary responsibility was discipline. The new VP always got stuck with discipline. After the students quieted down, he said, “I worked in another school district last year.” His voice filled the gymnasium. A thousand students crowded the bleachers. There would be three responsibility assemblies. There wasn’t enough room in the gym to accommodate the entire student body. The school was built for sixteen hundred students. There were more than three thousand enrolled.
Mr. Gold continued, “I went to four funerals of students who died because of drive-bys. I had to stop going because I couldn’t handle the grief. I knew the students that died. I was their teacher. I liked them.
“My goal is to see that as many of you live to graduate as possible, but statistic in this country are grim for ninth graders. Statistics say that half of you won’t stay in school to reach graduation. I want to do whatever I can to see that change. That means I’m going to get rid of anybody that wants to get high on drugs and alcohol or sell them to anyone else. That also means I’m going to be tough on gang bangers and gang hangers.”
A moan went up in the crowded bleachers. Mr. Gold waited until silence returned.
I girl’s hand shot up and waved for attention. Mr. Gold walked out from behind the podium. The girl stood up. She was a thin blond. “What’s a gang hanger?” she said.
“I’m glad you asked,” he replied. “Gang hangers are those students, usually ninth graders, that hang around gangs because they want to belong, to get jumped in.”
Part of the initiation for most gangs is to kick and beat the crap out of new recruits. The newbies get jumped to prove they can take it.
* * * *
“Did the advisor at La Puente High School take any of the journalism students to JEA regional, state or national competitions?” I asked.
“I don’t even know what that is?” the new recruit said. She was a junior that had transferred from another high school.
I explained that JEA was the Journalism Education Association. They sponsored academic writing competitions for high school journalism students. “Was La Puente’s school paper a class or an after school activity?”
“It was a class,” she said.
The counselor had scheduled this new student into journalism without consulting me. Her reason was that the girl had been on another school’s student newspaper. That didn’t mean she could write or make deadlines.
The girl dropped out two weeks later. It turned out that she couldn’t write a simple essay.
There are two kinds of teachers. Those that required students to earn grades and those that passed everyone to boost self esteem. I knew of one teacher that finished grading each quarter in the time it took to write down the grades. The first student was given an A and the second student a B. The third student on the roster earned another A and so on. This same teacher never wrote a referral and some of my problem students, the LaTanya types, were moved from my class to his at the parent’s insistence. The La Tanya types quickly found out who the easiest teachers were and did everything they could to get out of classes like mine.
_________________________________________________________________________
See My Splendid Concubine, historical fiction by Lloyd Lofthouse
“I was struck by the beauty of the cover, and I certainly was not disappointed by the book’s contents. A fascinating illumination of nineteenth-century Chinese culture and the complex Englishman Robert Hart, the father of China’s modernization. Hart’s struggles adapting to Chinese culture, always feeling the pull and force of his Victorian British background, are compelling. His relationships with his concubine and his concubine’s sister are poignant—the novel is as much a study of the complexities of love as it is anything else. A powerful novel whose beauty exceeds that of the book’s cover.” Writer’s Digest judge, 2008
Trailer for My Splendid Concubine
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