Ms. Purple Pants

I was standing on the wooden stairs outside of my portable screaming, “Security!” at the top of my lungs, I had to hang tight to the railing, since every time one of the kids threw a desk against the wall, I came really close to losing my balance.  I’m no dummy.  I had learned that technique the first day of school.   Hang tight!  I had also learned that threatening to call the office was more of a dare than a warning.  When I said, “If everyone doesn’t stop yelling and return to your desks when I count to 3,” they heard, “At the count of 3, I want you to scream as loud as you can and throw furniture at me!  If you also throw a pencil at my eye and manage to nail the pupil, I’ll give you twenty bucks!”  What they knew, and I didn’t yet, was that although I had a phone in my portable, they apparently didn’t have one anywhere else in the school.  When I called the secretary, assistant principal, principal, or security office, it would just ring, and ring, and ring.  This was particularly disheartening when, while discussing an eleven year-old student’s failing grade with her mother, she hung up right after informing me that she lived across the street and was coming over right now to “whoop your ass.”  Since I had studied Judo extensively throughout both 1^st and 2^nd grade, and scored a 2^nd place medal in the 56 pound weight class in what I was led to believe (so most assuredly was) the Junior Olympics, I felt confident that I was prepared with a proper response to just such an attack.  I quickly removed my restrictive form-fitting jacket and lunged into action. Of course I mean I lunged straight for the floor, stuffed the jacket under the door to the portable so that no one could peer in through the crack, laid right up against it, closed my eyes and engaged in the deep, diaphragmatic breathing made much more possible now that I was only wearing my cotton-spandex blend t-shirt.   I had two informative conversations the next day.  One:  My grade-level team informed me that situations like this were the reason we were only supposed to make parent phone calls during our weekly team meetings and only if we had one of the security team walkie talkies on us.  Two: that adorable pig-tailed little girl told me her mom said I was a wimp-ass ho and “That’s why I hate this f#$ckin class anyway, bitch!”  When I was deciding what to do about it, I got distracted because I realized that three boys had matches and were trying to light their desks on fire.  They didn’t succeed, but they gave a match to another boy who went to the restroom and set it ablaze.  He was sent to In School Suspension for the rest of that period.  Yep, then he was back.

            I forgot to mention the fact that I was teaching in a portable unit that was shared with another teacher.  It was very much like two classrooms except there was no door between my room and his, so it was actually very much more like one giant classroom.  Oh, and that classroom was located smack dab in the middle of Hell.  So, another hindrance to my teaching geometry, pre-algebra, and (let’s be honest) basic arithmetic, was the horrific, tortuous screaming of my fellow 6^th grade teacher next door. “Shut up!  Open your book!  Don’t light that joint in the room!” I had a few moments of contemplating studying my neighboring teacher’s techniques, but I quickly realized he was having no more success than I was.  Before I had much more time to analyze and perhaps emulate his technique, the desire became obsolete because the stress of the job led him to require a heart transplant operation and he left and never returned.  

            Once that happened, the sub rotation began.  Every day a new substitute teacher rolled in, and every day he or she rolled out by lunchtime.  At that point, I was in charge of 60 plus 6^th grade students at a time.  As you can imagine, it all went very smoothly.  We drank tea (making sure that our pinkies stuck out at just the right angles), and we ate crumpets (with just enough home-made preserve to be tasty but never enough to be obtuse). 

            No substitute EVER  lasted past lunch.  Nope, not a one.  So, every day from noon to 3:00 I was in charge of 60+ 6^th graders who pretty much scared the crap out of me.

            One day, the room next door found a sub who stayed.  Yeah, she even came back after lunch.  Not only did she return, but there was near-silence next door .  Then, she ACTUALLY came back the next day.    What, you ask, happened then???  More silence!  After about two weeks, I couldn’t contain my curiosity.  What was this teacher doing, and why wasn’t I inspiring the same respectful response?  I tip-toed to the edge of the room, hid behind the closet door, and listened.  This is what I heard:  “You talk to your mama like that?  Do you?  Do you?  Well maybe you do.  Here’s what I’m gonna tell you.  If you act like that one more time in my room, I’m not gonna give you a warning and I’m not going to call your mama.  No, I’m gonna go out to my car, get my gun out of the trunk, and pop a cap in your ass.  And that’s the end of that.”

            She stayed the rest of the year.  So did I.  Her side of the room remained silent.  Mine got a little better as we went along.  I was never going to be someone who could scream and yell at or shoot the kids.  If that meant I got furniture thrown at me here and there, that’s just the way it would be.  I focused on trying to get to know the kids individually, listened to their stories when they were willing to share, and tried my damndest to teach a little math along the way. 

One of my students had witnessed a horrific crime when he was 2 and had never spoken since.  One day, at the end of class, he walked up to me and said, “I got a new backpack.”  I responded like it was no big deal but bawled as soon as the kids were gone.  The next day I called on him during class.  “What kind of graph is this?  Samuel?”  It was the first time I’d ever heard that room be silent.  The silence hung there for about half a minute until this little boy responded with, “It’s a line plot.” There were about 3 more seconds of silence and the entire room erupted into cheers and claps.  They had gone all the way through elementary school with Samuel and never heard him utter a word.  Things changed after that.  Even my name changed.  I was no longer “Hey, Miss!”  I was “Ms. Purple Pants.”  My maiden name is Greenslade.  So that went to “Greensleeves”, which turned into “Green Jeans”, and finally “Ms. Purple Pants” stuck.  My classroom was chaos all year, but it was now a good mixture of chaos and respect, and I didn’t have to buy a gun to get there, so that was cool.  Samuel would stay after class every now and then and hang by the door.  I’d have to ask him if he’d like to tell me something and then wait patiently.  Eventually he’d tell me something quick (never looking at me) and then run out of the room with a big smile on his face.  I don’t know why he chose me (my room was the only place he spoke), but that little boy just melted my heart. He also gave me the courage to show up for the rest of the year.

            This is the part where I tell you that every one of those kids aced the state exam at the end of the year and eventually became the world’s most respected team of rocket surgeons while I reconfigured the entire school and was promoted to superintendant of the district a mere two years into my career in education.  In reality, I limped my way through the school year, cried so much that I gave up on mascara entirely, and found a job at a rural school where the kids didn’t scare the crap out of me.