Harold wakes up in the morning, jumps in the shower. After the shower he then puts on his dog tags from the army, puts on his black suit with his red tie and is out the door ready for his first day as a teacher. As he gets closer and closer to the school he is looks out his window and sees that the neighborhood isn't so good. He sees gang members outside on the corner kids playing in the street when they are suppose to be in school, abandoned houses, and he sees that the streets are just full of trash. He arrives at the school in an orderly fashion, goes into his trunk and gets his briefcase and heads straight for the principal office to see what class he has to go through. When he is walking through the school he can see all kinds of people, Mexicans, blacks, white, Hispanics, Albanians, and Arabs. He is amused that the school looks clean and they have work up on the bulletin boards and that they have signs up about how drugs is bad and everything. When he walks into the principals office he addresses the secretary people for the school as sir and ma'am, army standards. As he walks in he realizes that the principal is a big white man who looks he doesn't give a dam.
As he is watching the principal talk on the phone with his wife, Harold then knocks politely. The principal recognizes him from the interview that they had from last month and invites him in nicely. When The principal asks him does he think he can handle the job, Harold replies with laughter. He calls him sir and starts to talk about how he been dealing with bad things during the war and that the little kids can't possibly be worse. The principal then responses with a joke by saying enter at your own will. After the principal tells Harold where is class is , Harold leaves. When he is walking to the class room its just him by himself in hall. Harold arrives at the classroom and opens the door.
As he enters the class he realizes something very unusual. He noticed that all the students were playing cards rapping to each other, and doing things that they aren't supposed to do. Coming from the army he was always taught that respect is number 1 and when the kids were acting like that in the class room that is what really ticked him off. Harold slammed his briefcase on to the desk. The whole class had got real quiet for about 2 minutes and then went back to what they were doing. Very loudly, Harold said his name. No response from the students. Harold then raised his voice a little louder and said his name. Still, no response from the students. That's when Harold exploded, he said his name so loud that that it made students in the hallway look in the window to see what was going on. That's last scream had got all of their attention. Harold then introduced him self and told the students that he would be there new teacher til further notice. He told the students that he wanted respect at all times no matter what the circumstances were and that he wanted to be addressed as Mr.Jones or Sir. Nothing else. They all just said yes and went back to what they were doing but not as much as when he first came to the class. That's when Harold just got fed up. he asked the kids if they thought it was right that they were playing card in a classroom that's suppose to be for learning. They once again stopped what they did and gave him their attention. One kid burst out and asked if he was trying to make a change by giving them all these instructions and demanding all their attention. Harold then started to explain what he was there for.
Harold explained to them that he was not trying to change them but instead trying to encourage them. He didn't really care if they had changed or not he just wanted them to see what it would be like to actually learn something and it was their decision on whether or not they wanted to follow through or not. Harold told them that if they were going to be loyal to him and trust him to teach them then they have to stick by their word, something he picked in the army, especially at his base and with his unit. Harold then told the students to raise their hand if they wanted to learn and 3/4's of the class raised their hand. He then told the rest of the class that he didn't care what they did as long as they didn't bother the kids who did wanted to learn. Harold made it loud and clear that if the students who wanted to learn were bothered by the kids who didn't want to learn then there would be some serious re precautions.
Throughout the past weeks Harold has been helping them with their reading and writing til everything went wrong in last couple of days.Day after day the classroom would get smaller and smaller til one day Harold showed up for school and realized something that made him really upset. When Harold walked into his room he noticed that there was only 10 people in his classroom when there are suppose to be 27. When he asked where everybody was, no answers. They had given up on school. Some kids got arrested, some had family and money problems, girls got pregnant, and some just couldn't do school no more and turned to drugs for money.
As Harold stood their in disbelief and shocked, one of the kids said to him that the classroom can't always fix what goes on in their outside lives. Harold stood there just looking at the kid. Harold then grabbed his coat, hat, and briefcase. As he started out the class room he started crying, and then looked at the boy and said your right, I was wrong. Then he told the remaining kids that he will see them tomorrow and closed the door slowly.
No comments:
Post a Comment