Emergency Teacher by Christina Asquith Page B

bilingual teacher. I would teach English, social studies, and reading to my class in the morning. Then, after lunch, I would send my class next door to the team teacher, who also had a class of sixth-graders. She taught science and math. She would send me her students.
    The team teacher would teach in Spanish, and I would teach in English, but use my Spanish when necessary.
    â€œI can tell you’re not aggressive,” Mrs. G. said. “I’m posting someone outside your door for the first day.”
    â€œCan I see my room?” I asked, but Mrs. G. said she was busy. Mr. Marr, the seventh-grade social studies teacher, who was on a different team, must have felt sorry for me, because he offered to take me when no one else would. We headed up the stairs.
    On the way up to the second floor, we bumped into Danyelle, a young teacher starting her second year. She was taping a poster to her door.
    â€œI thought you were leaving?” Mr. Marr asked her.
    â€œNah. I couldn’t get into another school, so, oh well,” she trailed off, and returned to her room.
    At the end of the hallway, toward the back of the school, he showed me Room 216, your standard classroom in that it had a big teacher’s desk at the front near the blackboard, and dozens of small desks attached to chairs. The dim space creaked even when we stood still. It was spacious, with three blackboards and only a few cracks in the ceiling panels, although it had uneven wooden floors. There were twenty-three desks. Mr. Marr was already lugging in from next door what eventually added up to ten more desks.
    â€œYou’ll need these,” he said.
    The teacher’s desk was wooden, like an antique from Laura Ingalls’ oneroom schoolhouse. I stood behind it, and then knocked on it for no reason. “What happened to the teacher who taught here last year?”
    â€œHe left. He refused to ask for help. He thought he was Jaime Escalante or something,” he said, referring to the famous teacher from the movie Stand and Deliver . “The teacher before him left, too. A lot of teachers hate coming to work here,” he said in a soft voice. “The kids know the teachers who hate them, and they hate them back.”
    Mr. Marr left me alone. The few signs around Room 216 looked like splotches of bright paint splattered on a gray board. As I lay down my bag of supplies, the breadth of what I’d undertaken was like a massive storm cloud that suddenly broke open and drenched me. Tears welled in my eyes. What had I done? This was crazy. I don’t know how to teach! I fought off panic and reached into my bag for some supplies.
    Four giant READ! signs went up over the doorway. My nameplate belonged on the inside of the door window, facing outward. The back wall would be perfect for my world map. By the door, where I’d line up students, I planned on making a “college board” with information about different universities. For myself, I posted one wrinkled page behind the desk. It was a list of advice my mom, whose dream had been to finish high school, had given me years ago: “Go for It.” “See Things as They Really Are.” “Hang onto Your Dreams.”
    My parents were immigrants from England. My dad came from an upper-class British family. My granddad ran a refinery during World War II and had received the Order of the British Empire from the queen. He later sent my dad to boarding school and eventually on to Harvard University. My mom, on the other hand, had dirt-poor, working-class roots. Her father was a electrician, and she had five siblings. When my mom was fifteen, she came home from school one day to discover she wouldn’t be going back. She had to find a secretary’s position in an office. She was devastated, and even now, thirty-five years later, the memory brings tears to her eyes. The message to me was simple: Missing out on an education was the world’s worst injustice.