I stole books for the kids

I was assigned to teach sixth-grade science at Lynwood Middle School. My classroom was T-42. T stood for the trailer. The population of the school was so high that there were not enough classrooms in the building to house all the students. As a result, converted trailers were placed on the football field and used as classrooms. I don’t remember how many trailers there were out there but considering that I was in T-42 we can assume that there were at least forty-one other trailers in the field.

I had six classes and for the first few weeks of October (I didn’t start in September due to the failed drug test) I had no less than forty students in each class. One class had fifty kids in it. Fifty. I had students on the floor. I had students in chairs around my desk. I had a few couples of smaller students sharing desks. It was a ridiculous sight. 

Daily, students would vanish and they were placed on another track of sixth-grade classes to help reduce the size. But even by the time I was down to my final lists, I was averaging thirty-two students a class; with my largest class being thirty-six bodies. Six classes with an average of thirty-two students. That’s one hundred and ninety-two students.

I was allotted 30 books.

This was my first run-in with the system. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I was supposed to teach one hundred and ninety-two students with thirty books? Okay, nobody trained me to do that. 

I mean, obviously, it could be done because it was being done by everyone else at the school that was doing the job I was doing so I was basically supposed to just figure it out.

I went to Clark Atlanta University. We find a way or make one. And that’s what I did.

First thing first. Get more books. 

Oh. Yeah. There were more books. There were rows and rows of books in the library where the books that no one was allowed to have were stored. The librarian or guarder of the books was a sweet woman who made the worst cup of coffee known to man. No one drank it. It was known throughout the school for its horrible taste. She told me "no" the morning I went to see her about having more books.

“I can’t give you any more, Sweetie,” she said like a grandmother denying a little boy his request for another rectangle of the huge Hershey’s bar she holding.  

“I only need five,” I pleaded.

“I’m sorry, sweetie.” She smiled at me and I realized I was defeated. I also realized at that moment that I had woke up determined to catch her early to ask for books and hadn’t gotten coffee. She must have noticed that I was without coffee too.

‘Would you like a cup of coffee,” she asked. 

“Sure,” I answered. I mean how bad could coffee be. 

She turned around and with a slow walk, she went into her office to make me a cup of coffee. It took forever. I swear I have never waited so long for a single cup of coffee. It was like seven minutes. She had her back to me and hummed the whole time. She never looked back once. 

The coffee was gross. The sugar nor the creamer did anything for the taste. To be fair, maybe someone likes that direct one to one ratio of cups of water to scoop but I don’t. It’s sludge. It’s disgusting. It’s gross. And I drank it. I drank for five straight school days. It took her damn long to make it that I literally had time to run to the stacks, find the book I needed, take the book off the shelf, stash it in the small of my back, cover it with my jacket, and be back in the chair by the time the sludge arrived. I stole five books.

Next, we covered the books and divided the covers into six sections. Then each student in each period got a section of the book and I let them decorate their section. I knew that humans tend to express themselves when given ownership of blank space. It was pretty cool to see how the shared covers turned out. But I digress. 

I didn’t give homework. At least I don’t remember giving any. And I didn’t take roll either. I figured the school needed the money. I mean I knew who was in class. Like I took roll that way. But after a while, you know them by face and name and you just know that they are there. So roll was a waste of time. I had forty-five minutes. I wasn’t going to waste time calling thirty-two names. 

I didn’t do lesson plans and nobody ever asked me for one. I read the chapters out loud and repeated parts if asked. I had them follow along with their fingers. I told them they could call out slow down or speed up and they got a kick out of the time that I let them make me talk hella fast and make me talk hella slow. Anyway, I read the chapter then we reviewed the questions and did the school work. There were experiments. There were no scientific instruments. Luckily for me, the entire sixth-grade science curriculum was basically space. 

Solar systems and stars and planets. Oh. And the scientific method. Thank god for Pepsi and March Madness.