Period 1: Why oh Why?

Chen stands rigid before the class, staring down at his notes. In a halting voice he begins reading Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven. He stops abruptly at "quoth", then says "quote". Other 9th graders shift in their seats. Two girls begin putting on make up. A large boy, hunched over his notebook, perfects his gang letters.

Welcome to my Period 1 sheltered English class, and my new high school career after 15 years of teaching elementary. I am deemed qualified to teach this class because of the many hours of training I received in elementary in sheltered ESL techniques. But after six weeks of Period 1, it is not entirely clear what it is I am supposed to accomplish here. These kids have in common that their English language skills are lacking, but the similarities end there.

The room is suddenly quiet as Chen stares out at the distracted audience. I ask him if he found any metaphors in the poem. He stares at me as if we hadn't been discussing metaphors every day for weeks. Suddenly Juan has had enough. He throws a paper airplane across the room. Anything I might have said to Chen about metaphors is now forgotten in the commotion of my dealing with Juan, whom I decide must go to another room.

"Hey man, what did I do?" says Juan, to calls of " He didn't do nothin'", and "Give him a chance, man".

Chen's fifteen seconds of teacher attention is over. I decide to rebel against this injustice by asking Chen to stay a few minutes after class. I ask him about his life. He tells me he arrived from Korea two years ago. I gather that he is not picking up English quickly. His vocabulary is small, though he assures me he is proficient in Korean. I ask him what his favorite subject is. He tells me it's math. He's very good at math.

The next morning I pay no attention to Chen at all because two very huge boys are shouting profanities as they walk into class. Two girls laugh approvingly. The boys begin shoving each other, and several others join in. About ten minutes of class time is used up in quieting everyone down.

I hand back a recent quiz, and it turns out that Rigo got the only "A", beating even our brainy Persian girl, Violet. "Hey, Mr. Lasken, and you thought I was stupid, man" says Rigo. This is the last work I will see from Rigo before several weeks of distraction and truancy.

Violet asks me if she can read some announcements from student council. She stands before the class, reading with a heavy accent and some uncertainty with vocabulary, but with a self-assurance that silences even the most restive of her audience. Her mental strength shows through. Everyone knows she is in this class because of a trick of fate, and will find her way out soon.

One student, though, is immune to Violet's stage presence: Sonia, the mysterious Russian girl. As usual, Sonia is reading a steamy paperback romance, oblivious to her surroundings. I thought at first her seeming delight in reading was a sign of an academic star. But she has contempt for the mundane doings of our class, and has fared poorly on tests. Last week she protested her "D" on the five-week report, telling me she needs a higher grade to stay on the swim team. Two minutes later she was immersed again in her novel.

I visit Ms. Ellis, the bilingual coordinator, for background on my class. She fills in many gaps in my knowledge: Manny's drug overdose at school in which he was found comatose in the hall; Christina's attempts to run away from home; Sonia's suspension for writing sexually explicit letters in health class. The stories are absorbing, but offer little by way of practical help.

Of more immediate interest is Ms. Ellis' news of the hundreds of dollars of bilingual funds for which my students are eligible. It turns out I can go into an educational store and buy at will for these kids. Like Sonia being torn away from her novel, I am momentarily intrigued. I could follow the advice of one of my colleagues in the English department and buy a set of "bilingual" Romeo and Juliet's (translated into modern English). I could buy flash cards, posters, grammar books. I marvel at the largess of our society. I sober up on my way back to my classroom. The money will be well spent, but the basic problems will remain untouched.

I try to sum up these problems:

  • Many students do not define themselves as students. Particularly at the high school level, they believe their current abilities in reading and writing are permanent, and they regard school as a holding facility, akin to jail. At odd, poignant moments, I am able to reach them, but these moments are fleeting and come at great cost.

  • There are students who want desperately to learn, but they learn slowly, and the unrelenting, competitive pace of high school has left them behind. The theories of sheltered instruction, and the generous funds, are designed with these students in mind. They are worthy recipients, but surely the theory envisions more than one or two minutes of teacher attention per day per student. My final thoughts are of students like Violet, ideal students who will progress against all odds. I find myself grieving for Violet's wasted time: I could teach her five times as much in a more conducive setting.

    In elementary school, although I was critical of bilingual education as it was practiced, I did feel that the average teacher of English-learning students was a huge positive force, conveying all day long the elements of language and culture that the students needed and wanted.

    But something is terribly wrong at the high school level, and the problems do not lie only with educational theory. These problems, I believe, involve social theory. They provoke questions like: "Who should go to high school?", and "Which students should be mixed together in the same classroom?"

    And these questions, in turn, lead to even more difficult ones, such as: "Should high school function partly as a holding facility for the unemployable, or should it function exclusively as an educational setting?"

    Our society's current grappling with the problems of our public schools tends to shy away from such politically difficult social questions. Our discussions, both within the educational community and without, focus almost entirely on educational theory ( how to teach, what to teach, etc.). Our current focus on standardized test scores, for instance, puts virtually the entire burden of success on educational theory.

    Perhaps if the test scores do not go up as demanded, we will be ready for the tough questions. Until then, students like Chen, and their teachers, will have to fend for themselves.

    Doug Lasken teaches high school English in the Los Angeles Unified School District.