A Back to School Story

Let's go back to Baltimore

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This week, my kids and my students returned to school. Every day, I start my day talking about books with thirty teenagers. Several come early after zero-hour gym. One opens the windows to keep us cool. One tells me I might need to check the assignment I posted as it won’t allow them to write on it. One begs me not to play the song she chose as her favorite song. “It was just a joke,” she said, and now she’s worried the others won’t find it funny. It is the greatest gig in the world, and in honor of it, I’m sharing a story about how it all began. I’m taking you back to the beginning of my teaching career, when I was responsible for thirty plus students but still wasn’t allowed to rent a car in most states. Last April, I performed this story on stage, and if you’d like to check it out, you can do so here.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

In 2001, I joined Teach for America, and I had for my first interview for a REAL job, at Yorkwood Elementary School in North Baltimore. Keisha, my fellow corps member and I, were driving to our interviews in my new red Honda civic which didn’t have air conditioning but did have a cd player. Keisha and I rolled down the windows, despite the rain and sang along to Lauryn Hill.

“That Thing, That Thing, That Thing… “

We were feeling pretty good.

We were excited about the prospect of new jobs in a new city.  Neither Keisha nor I was from Baltimore. This is one of the criticisms of Teach for America’s program, that they bring in teachers from outside, teachers who don’t know the cities they’re going to teach in. Keisha and I did not know Baltimore. I had printed directions to the school, but they weren’t holding up to the rain, the road construction and our general cluelessness. We eventually made it to the interview, but we were two hours late.

Deborah Sharpe, the principal of Yorkwood Elementary School, interviewed us anyway, and to our great surprise, she hired us on the spot. To be fair, I think she saw us for what we were, cheap, inexperienced labor who wouldn’t be sticking around long. About half of Teach for America teachers leave their placements after the first two years.

I didn’t know this at the time though. There were a lot of things I didn’t know about what teaching in Baltimore would be like. This was before the 4^th season of The Wire educated the entire country about Baltimore City’s Public Schools. In fact, they filmed that fourth season my second year of teaching. Daquan, one of my best 4th grade students auditioned and landed himself a small speaking role. He was a ten-year-old drug runner.

Over time, I learned things about my new city. I learned that Baltimore was home to Orioles baseball, duck pin bowling and the second worst performing schools in the country. I received four weeks of summer training before stepping inside my classroom for the first time. It was kind of like sending someone to summer camp before they go to war.

When I joined TFA, my hope was to teach high school English. I wanted to share my love of Zora Neale Hurston, Walt Whitman and John Steinbeck with my students. I was assigned to teach 31 fourth graders, a third of whom couldn’t read yet.

Some people ease into adulthood. Adulthood is a pool of water they dip one toe in at a time. I, on the other hand, was clearly taking a cold-water plunge. I had to wake up at six every day. My friends were still going out on weeknights whereas I had morphed into my grandmother and was in bed by nine. Despite my early bedtime, I was sick all the time. I don’t know if you guys know this, but cooties are real. And fourth graders have them.

When I wasn’t sick, I was lesson planning. I was now responsible for teaching math, which meant, I had to relearn how to do math, and then I had to figure out how I would teach it to 31 fourth graders, 35 now because Keisha quit in October, and they weren’t able to replace her.

In my summer training, I remembered learning something about how some students need to touch things in order to learn. I decided I was going to teach my students how to multiply using cheerios. The morning of the lesson, I laid everything out on the desks before my students arrived. There was an audible hum of excitement when they walked through the door. “Can we eat them?” Dante asked me. “No,” I said, we’re going to use them to learn math. Dante’s excitement visibly dissipated, but I kept on. I put up a sample problem on the board, and I showed the students how they could group the cheerios to solve the problem. The students, including Dante, followed my lead, and their faces started to light up. They were getting it. I circled the classroom singing to myself.

“That Thing. That Thing That Thing…”

I was feeling good.

And then I got to Haneif’s desk. I could tell he was a little lost. I pointed out where he had made a mistake, and I encouraged him to try again. Haneif did not want to try again. He knocked his desk over in protest shouting that he wouldn’t do any more work. The generic cheerios I had bought on my very limited budget spilled everywhere. Korey decided this was the perfect opportunity to throw his cheerios at the back of Hanief’s head. Hanief didn’t appreciate this. He picked up his heavy math textbook and was getting ready to use it, not for math. I managed to intercept the book from Hanief before it made contact with Korey’s head. I separated the boys in the back of the classroom. Dante raised his hand and for a moment, I thought we could return to the lesson.

“Yes, Dante?”

“Can I eat the cheerios now, Ms. Hutto?” he asked.

“Yes, Dante,” I sighed.

One morning I came to school and learned that Korey and Haneif had been suspended. They were fighting in the auditorium before school. I learned from my students that there were no adults present at the time. In the hallway, I ran into Ms. Sharpe, and I told her that I didn’t think this would have happened if there had been supervision in the auditorium, that it didn’t seem fair to punish the boys for an adult mistake. Later that day, I was called down to the principal’s office. Ms. Sharpe, apparently, was not a woman who appreciated feedback. She took me into her office, the only air conditioned room in the building and scolded me for ten minutes. “You need to learn your place,” she said.  

I learned that I couldn’t ask anything of Ms. Sharpe. If I wanted help, I went to Mrs. Burton. Every school has a heart, and Mrs. Burton was the heart of Yorkwood Elementary. She was warm, kind and welcoming, but she was a no-nonsense veteran teacher.  She wore purple pant suits and orthopedic white nursing shoes, and she commanded respect. “If Korey and Haneif misbehave,” she said, “you send them to me,” which I did, and it worked because you didn’t cross Mrs. Burton. Mrs. Burton had high expectations for her students, and she had earned her reputation over many years of hard work. The students saw themselves in her.  I couldn’t step into her shoes, but she helped me anyway.

On my birthday, at the beginning of my second year at Yorkwood, I found myself once again rising before dawn, fighting off another cold and questioning my life choices. By that time, I had memorized my route to my school, I no longer needed directions, but I still felt lost.

There were some good days, but there were a lot of other days, days when it felt like no one learned anything and no one cared. I walked to my classroom trying to muster the energy for another day. I turned on the loud fluorescent lights, and I heard several students shouting. There were no adults in the room, but my kids weren’t fighting. They were throwing me a surprise party. Daquan, the drug runner on The Wire, brought a store-bought lemon cake with white frosting and was grinning from ear to ear. Several of the students brought gifts which they begged me to open. I received a framed Our Father prayer… in Spanish, earring backs- like no earrings just the backs and a beheaded angel which I don’t think was intentional, but just a casualty of Haneif’s backpack.

It turns out. Ms. Sharpe was right. I did need to find my place, and I had. This year marks my 21st year as a public-school teacher.

As always, I’d love to continue this conversation in the comments. Tell us your back-to-school stories, past and present. What resonates with you today?

Here’s the heart to click in case you forgot your reading glasses.