I had this kid in my 10^th grade “Strategic” class, we’ll call him Arthur. Strategic is what we call sheltered at my school, at your school it’s probably just as strategically named to try to unsuccessfully hide from the students the fact that they are in a sheltered class. Arthur was a black kid from Oakland. He was hella ghetto. In Northern California, we say the word “hella”, it means “a lot of”, “much” and “many.” It is basically used for emphasis. Arthur was hella ghetto. That made him different from almost no one at my high school.

Of course, Arthur was hella funny too. You should see this kid smile, he had one of the best smiles I’ve ever seen, no joke. All teeth, I mean all of them. Like Carroll’s Cheshire Cat with an extra set of molars and incisors. He actually kind of looked like a 30 year old man, he had sporadic facial hair, and what seemed to be a receding hairline. He was hella ghetto, hella funny, and hella failing most of his classes.

“Man, Mr. Amaral, I gotta pass Algebra this year. I’m tryin to git my units, you know what I’m sayin?”

What can I tell the kid? Do I say, “Hey Arthur, you’re pretty much screwed. As far as you and math are concerned, and pretty much college, and most likely graduation, you are done. Done for. Thanks for playing though, have a nice bus ride back to Oakland.”

Why can’t Arthur pass Algebra? I’ll tell you, although you’re not going to like it.

Arthur was in 10^th grade, and 3 months into the school year he hadn’t had an algebra teacher yet. That’s right, a different sub every day. It was a class of mostly freshmen, Arthur was one of the only sophomores in the class. Every day a new sub would come in, and at the end of the day (sometimes in the middle of it) they would high-tail it out of there and never come back. You know how kids act around subs, now imagine not even having a teacher to answer to.

Of course I had known the situation had been going on. After three weeks of balancing, I figured we’d hire someone. Then a month went by, then another. Arthur came in every week, “Dang Mr. Amaral, I need to git my units, but dem kids in there – they bad.”

Some of the subs were trying to teach them what little algebra they knew. Others just tried to keep the kids from drawing penises on the whiteboard. I know you probably have a few questions, namely, “Why wasn’t there a teacher hired at the beginning of the year?”

I don’t want to go into it too much. But this is how jobs work at my school. As a beginning teacher you are pink slipped at the end of every year. We wait to see what the numbers are like, and hire the minimum amount of teachers with the maximum amount of class sizes so that we’re not overpaying for teachers. We want all the classrooms filled with 38 students and the exact amount of teachers for each section. So we don’t hire until a week or two before school starts, or let teachers who were pink-slipped know they have their job back until then either. I’m simplifying this, there is more to it. Not all teachers are pink-slipped, and not all are hired two days before the first day of school. But it is the rule more than the exception. On top of this, many teachers have to teach under temporary credentials every year. My buddy at the high school down the street has a Master’s from Cal, and he’s entering his third year as “Temporary.”

So what happened was that they missed with the guessing game, were a couple sections short, and had to fill it with subs. By that time most good teachers had been hired, and the ones that hadn’t didn’t want to teach at our school anyway, and those that would come to a school like ours didn’t want to enter into a situation of trying to calm 9^th grade Algebra sections who hadn’t had a teacher yet. Add to this the fact that the reason for this guessing game with sections is because our district doesn’t have any money, so they can’t afford to sandbag, but they can afford to miss by a bit. They also don’t have a problem paying the low wages of the substitute teachers every day instead of hiring on a new full-time teacher. Evidently they were in no hurry.

So the class continued to be off the chains. When report cards came everyone was given an F or Incomplete, I forget which one. Eventually a teacher came in (in maybe the fourth month), but by then, with an F on their transcript, they couldn’t pass algebra with full credits anyway, and would have to go to summer school, or take it again next year.

The funny thing about high school kids is they don’t blame the school or adults yet. Especially the hella ghetto kids. “Man, Mr. Amaral, I need to git units this year, you know what I’m saying?” He says “I” need to get units, not “they need to at least put a teacher in my room.”

Heartbreaking, I know. True? Unfortunately. Now here is the part you’re not going to like (as if you already don’t like it, I know).

You might be wondering, well, Arthur is a sophomore, what did he do freshman year in Algebra class?

As a freshman, Arthur had a pregnant teacher who taught for a month or two, then took the rest of the year off. They had different subs, some long term, and everyone in that class failed too. I’ve heard this happen a lot. I’ve even heard of pregnant teachers taking on “extra” sections to increase their pay, knowing full well they were going to be leaving. Needless to say they were knowingly condemning an extra 32 students to different subs, on top of their regular sections.

What does administration do about this? Well, that was, like, seven principals ago. Last year my high school went through 4 principals. FOUR! And this year we’re starting with a fifth.

So there was Arthur, who hadn’t even had an Algebra teacher for two years, flunking most of his classes, trying to smile his way through them with all those teeth. But one day he blew up and tried to choke another teacher. The anger was there, and it finally came out. The anger is the defining characteristic of our male youth in inner-city schools. If they were protagonists of their own novels, we would call anger their internal conflict. Arthur was escorted into my class by security one day while I was in the middle of class.

“Hey Mr. Amaral, I need my homework for the rest of the week.”

“Aw man, what happened dude?”

“I tried to choke Mr. _____ in third period. I dunno, I just flashed. I need to control myself, you know what I’m saying? I dunno what happened. Somethin wrong with me.”

Of course I knew what was wrong with Arthur. I know all about the anger. And it didn’t escape me that he had internalized everything going on in his education as something wrong in himself. And at some point, that anger, that frustration, that ghettoness, won’t take it anymore. Can’t take it anymore. We weren’t even giving him a chance to be successful. But to Arthur, his failures were his own, and that was how he was beginning to define himself.

I gave Arthur his homework, so he could at least get his English units, you know what I’m saying?

You see, in my class he had an A-. He was one of the best writers in the class, and didn’t even belong in Strategic to begin with.