daniel, Page 4 Author

Wonder if I could do this in 2014 … I began teaching English in 1969 at the urban high school from which I was graduated in 1961. From the very beginning, I posted grades weekly. This chart, viewable by all, included name, assignment grades, weekly grade and running grade … the latter being the grade that would hit the report card if it came out that day. Grades were numeric … never lower than 60 … this, because a kiddo could always make a comeback and have a chance to redeem him/herself. There was never a complaint about this method … no whining, no indignant parents, no embarrassment shown. It was transparency that counted with the 10th to 12th graders. Report card grades were never a surprise. What they learned was that they were responsible every single day for their own success or failure … they, not I, earned their grades or not.

Two years before I retired, in a blitz of budget cuts, I had helped to cut my own job in order to save staff. I knew that with 29 years seniority that I would land somewhere but I didn’t want to see the 32 libraries that took such work over many years go back to having a part-time Librarian or worse … none at all. So, wanting for the previous sixteen years to go back to daily contact with students, I asked and received a wonderful position. I became the Principal of an Alternative to Expulsion for Weapons Possession School. All of my babies were sent via a Superintendent’s Hearing. It was a great deal for everyone. They were no longer excluded from school, they were not out on the streets and our teachers had the opportunity to provide a non-violence curriculum. Located in a beautifully renovated Carnegie Library, my office was floor to ceiling windows that looked out on the County Court House, St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Cathedral and a huge circular fountain with a magnificent statue of Columbus in the center. In fact, if one was not Catholic, the circle was Columbus Circle … otherwise, it was St. Mary’s Circle. It did not take long, in the midst of registration and the hubbub of schedules and teachers going to and fro to notice that everywhere I went I was no more that ten feet from a very large and handsome student. He stood over six feet tall and was muscular … a no nonsense kind of guy. As things settled, and he was still with me,
I asked his name and why he was hovering. He was a Kearse. This is one of the largest families in Syracuse. I had gone to school with them, had them in classes, read about them in the papers … I asked him why he was staying with me. He said without fanfare, “I am here to keep you safe.” I had lots of personnel for that … police officer, hall guards, etc. but let me say that of all of them this wonderful kid made me feel very safe and very welcome in this school. I got him in to his classroom but if given half a chance I would have had my own bodyguard for life in this wonderful Kearse.

Twenty+ years ago, the Comstock Writers Group (publishers of the national poetry journal Comstock Review) determined that it was important to support the poetry arts in children. Thus began Poetpourri, Jr. and many years of collaboration with the Syracuse City School District. We were not prepared for both the excitement of 20,000 children and the lack of enthusiasm on the part of some parents. At the first reception, a mother was heard to say about her little boy, “The other kids already think he’s a fag and NOW he writes poetry.” We were stunned on two counts with that one. In two years’ time, we moved our readings out of Ch. 3 television studios and into a huge auditorium … we were forced to move from K-12 entries to K-6 because of the amazing response from children and teachers … still, we filled that enormous space.

Another problem we had to address was that families up and left after their child read. Thus began my love affair with garage sales. In search of pristine stuffed animals, I learned every hi-way and bi-way in Central New York. Our urban babies often had few extras in their lives and these toys along with a bag full of goodies kept all in their seats. We filled the stage with the animals and brought the kids up in small groups to make a selection AFTER all children had read. It was no longer just the kiddo & Kath on stage looking out on just his parents, g’parents and siblings. The last child to read had the same large audience and APPLAUSE as the first child who read. In a very short amount of time, we truly changed the idea of poetry and those BOYS and girls who love to write it. We changed parents, too … as the bumper stickers proclaiming “MY KID IS A POET”!!! seen on cars all around the city attested. Many of those babies are now college graduates and poets!!!

Perhaps the most memorable class that I remember took place the day after Halloween. I think it was an all African-American class, probably Grade 10 or 11. A boy said, “I dressed up as a girl for Halloween. Ms. Niles, Does this mean I am gay?” Not one sound was heard from my very verbal Black kids … no giggles, gaffaws, no big laughs nor catcalls! Silence. Well, there went the day’s lesson. I was all of twenty-five and not exactly worldly at that point but for the next fourty-two minutes we talked. We covered virtually everything on the spectrum from what we now call the LGBT community. We knew nothing about transgender but spoke of what we did know. There was not one word spoken that disparaged others. It was if I was standing in front of Grad students at Syracuse University instead of my street babies. In fact, I have taught Grad Students who were less mature about far less challenging subject matter. It was determined that our questioner was no different than the kid who dressed as a pirate. I always believed that one of the greatest failings we had as teachers was severely underestimating our students. They fail to thrive in our classrooms when we fail to appreciate their desire to excel. I was guilty of this on more occasions than I wish to recall.

On my very first day of teaching, I was standing outside my classroom between classes. It was the end of the 60s and the school was very different from what it was when I was graduated from there in 1961. It had become an urban high school. We understand that code … it was no longer predominantly White … and it was edgy, dangerous and alien to many of the seasoned staff. It was both an academic and a technical high school and the variety of kids was thrilling to some and frightening to others. On this, my first day as their teacher, one of the old guard, a lady who was teaching there when I was a kid, approached me, leaned in and whispered, “How many of THEM do you have?” I was stunned. I am absolutely fluent in White. I knew exactly what she meant. She wanted me to tell her how many black kids I had. I said to her, “I don’t know how many Tech kids I have yet.” There was no way she was prepared to clarify her query. She turned and left. She never spoke to me again and retired in June. So, years later when I complained to my dear friend, the Black Guidance Counselor, Sara Walker, that I had 149 out of 150 Black kids and said, “Do you know how verbal Black kids are?” … she replied, “Where do you want me to put them, Kathleen?” Thus my classes became what Sara needed them to be. And, I was a very happy teacher.

It has been over forty years since the film premiere of Ashes From A Long Dead Fire (I would later use this title for a chapbook with totally different content). My student, Jim Barr, whose parents wanted him to be a doc, wanted desperately to be a movie director. So, after his graduation from high school and before his enrollment in college, I spent the summer with him making a film. I wrote the script, gathered family, friends and neighbors to play the parts and we worked like the proverbial dogs for two months. Jim did all the technical stuff and I did the creative stuff (though he was perfectly capable of doing both). The film dealt with a spiritual awakening of a young boy … the kid next door, Dennis Barry. Dennis was incredible … amazing … and if any Hollywood types had seen him, he would be a star today.

At the end of the summer, we held a premiere at my parents’ home … thinking back on it, Jim and I were both kids but what a job we did in putting something we knew nothing about together and packaging it. It was another magical summer … not quite up to Cattail Summer … but a highlight of an average life. It is the only thing I have with my mother speaking and it is precious. I, too, had a cameo role. I was just back from Trinidad and as dark as this half White girl would ever be. Jim won a Kodak award for it and he soon headed to California.

Some years later, his brother John called me to say that Jim had drank himself to death. We were little fish swimming in a little pond. We could hold our heads above water there. We could do some amazing things but we had so little competition that what was probably great in Syracuse was mediocre in the Big City. Often, we must be so careful not to let our dreams outpace our ability to make them come true.

During my first week of teaching, I was in the hall between classes. We were instructed to be there in order to monitor the passing of classes. There was terrific unrest in the country and in the school. The great civil rights movement was at a fever pitch and the residual anger over slavery, subjugation and segregation was palpable within the students. They were always on the verge. Fights broke out in the streets, the halls, the cafeteria, the stadiums, the classrooms … a slight jostle during the passing of classes was sufficient to cause a huge fight involving scores of kids. As I stood there, I watch a boy set off a fire alarm. Of course, I challenged him. By the time he was finished telling me that I did not see him do it, I wasn’t so sure that he had. We both walked away. That was the first and the last time that happened to me. Never again would I allow anyone to tell me what I saw … what I knew to be true. The lessons learned in those early days have lasted a lifetime.

At one point, I had four divisions. The most critical was my supervision of the 32 Library Media Specialists who served our K-12 babies in the various Elementary, Middle and High Schools. They were an amazing group and taught me even more appreciation and respect for Librarians than I already had. I tried very hard to visit two or three of the libraries each week. On one visit, I would concentrate on the LMS and do the yearly evaluation. During the other visits, I would concentrate on the babies to learn how they were using the library and, in conversation with the LMS, ascertain needs in order to go after resources to assist them.

Now, look at the photo to your left. There you will see my Aunt Fran’s Irish face! While that is the face I see in mirrors, it only represents half of me. I have always been startled when I expect people to see that I am not just a White person and they do not … I have far too many stories connected to that particular mental glitch!

So, back to the library. This day, I was with an all-Black class of 2nd graders and their wonderful LMS. As the librarian and I became engrossed in conversation about needs & wants, the children slipped into kiddy mode and began to act out. They did not respond to the LMS so Kath steps in to save the day … delusional Superwoman to the rescue!!! I slam my hand on a book shelf to get attention. It does the trick. Then, I say, “When I was a young Black child … etc.” The students listened intently and quietly. The LMS, however, was leaning back on her heels, jaw slacked, and staring at me in disbelief. I explained. Back in the car, I got laughing so hard I hoped no one would notice. The children, like most African & Caribbean-Americans, inately understood that we come in all colours from alabaster to ebony. The librarian, however, was just this side of apoplexy!

As most people over 40, I have had my experiences with arrogant people who achieved success too early.

1) There was the time the Supt. asked if I would mind covering the office so he could take his secretaries to lunch for Secretaries Day. It was my pleasure. A young guy who was an Ass’t to the Super came to me with a letter and an envelope. He said, “Here, fold this and put it in the envelop.” I, mind you, was also an administrator assigned to the Superintendent. I said, as succinctly and as sweetly as I could muster, “Do it yourself.”

2) There was the guy who asked me to take his photo off a photo wall of colleagues in my office because “it embarrassed him.” I removed it. There have been numerous guffaws since.

3) The guy who removed my name from the front of a document and put his on it. When the boss told me to memorize it, I said it shouldn’t be too hard since I wrote it.

4) The fellow whose wife was doing all his work at home so he could prance about giving orders … He and I were standing in the hall chatting one day when he caught the Principal approaching. He pretended not to see him and began giving me directives. We were both VPs. There was the morning when he thought he had really nailed me. His wife entered his grades on the computer for him. I did my own. He ran to the Principal on the morning they were due to tattle and tell him that mine were not online. Of course they were. His wife just looked a few minutes too early.

My list goes on and on. Far too often we are so quick to think this one or that one is a rising star. Far too often we are so wrong. I never knew any rising stars among the women with whom I worked … they didn’t get promoted too soon nor did they seem to have the attitude that they were superior in some way to all around them. Sadly, I see it in men over and over and over.

As a new teacher, there was much to be excited about as I made my way into a career for life. Some of my classes were deadly but others were thrilling. We had a very nice teachers’ room replete with sofas and easy chairs. During our “free period” we could gather in small groups and enjoy each other’s company … talk about anything and just simply relax before tackling another class. I remember vividly the day that something had gone really well and I wanted to share it with my colleagues in the English Dept. I told them about the class and how excited I was for its success … presuming, of course, that they might enjoy trying the exercise or whatever it was in their classes. Shortly thereafter, I was taken aside only to be told that no one was interested in my successes and that it was bragging to talk about having a great class. I imagine with that line of thought that we missed a tremendous opportunity to increase our ability to give to our students from a greater reservoir than ourselves. I wasn’t bragging. I was sharing. Sadly, the result was the same. I never again shared any success with my colleagues.