Justin wasn’t going to budge. He had rooted himself to the floor underneath the table and defiantly crossed his arms and legs. He stared at me with his dull eyes and chubby cheeks, like a squirrel who thieved part of a picnic lunch. But instead of a ham sandwich, it was my dignity that had been stolen. My heart began to race and I could feel my face start to warm. I crouched under the comically small elementary school table and tried to coax him out to join the group, but he was having none of it. As I locked eyes with his big brown pupils in a battle of wills, I realized the five-year old was winning and it wasn’t particularly close.
And so began my teaching career at South Brunswick School District. It was mid July and the district offered students entering kindergarten through second grade a literacy program called “Summer Magic.” In addition to reading and writing enrichment, the program also served as a practice ground for new hires or teachers that were switching to the primary grades. It was like spring training for teachers to knock off the rust and field ground balls. Presumably, we were learning best practices in early childhood education, but on occasion there were also real-world simulations in hostage negotiation situations.
Teachers were arranged in pairs and team-taught a small class together. My partner for the month was Kelly Wilson. Kelly was pretty, well-dressed, and had just graduated from college. We had both been hired that summer and together we were the newest, youngest, and greenest combination of teachers there. Every other duo either contained at least one early childhood specialist or a veteran teacher. During the first planning session all the teams ran off to furiously jot down ideas and pull favorite books off the shelves. I felt like we were on a cooking show and Bobby Flay just yelled, “And your time starts NOW!” as everyone noisily collaborated and shared inside jokes. Kelly and I just stared at each other and were like, “So…the kids get here at nine?”
If Kelly and I weren’t insecure already, the open space classroom didn’t help either. Open space classrooms were a mid-century progressive educational innovation that literally removed the walls between classrooms. Imagine a warehouse with eight separate elementary classes going on with no physical boundaries between them, so everyone can see everyone else’s “classroom.” I’m not aware of the precise educational philosophy behind it, but I’m sure drugs and the sixties were involved. At any rate, thirty years later, South Brunswick still had some sort of open space leftover and that’s where Summer Magic took place. Which meant my questionable classroom management was on display to everyone, including Martin Levin.
Martin Levin was the “principal” of Summer Magic, and he was widely regarded as the toughest elementary principal in the district. Equal parts Patton and Yoda, he was as polarizing as he was unorthodox. He was known for his off-the-wall interview questions and seemingly out of left field management style. His reputation preceded him and he liked to use that to intimidate younger teachers. While Martin Levin didn’t dress the part (he looked like a youth basketball coach or early morning mall walker), he was an intellectual force to be reckoned with–smart, sharp, and quick with a truth that would make you feel about three inches tall. After each day of Summer Magic, the middle age administrator would gather us together and debrief us on our teaching experiences.
The summer school “post game” was also our lunch time. At the end of class, I toted my turquoise reusable lunch bag and raspberry Snapple to the library with Kelly. It was high school all over again. The more experienced teachers congregated on one side of the room; Kelly and I were the awkward freshmen desperately hoping not to misstep, just praying to remain anonymous. But trying too hard to go unnoticed in the cafeteria, or in the open space library, typically has the exact opposite effect–and the bully finds you ever time.
“Steve…” Martin Levin began, his casual voice shaking my very essence, “Why don’t you tell us about the boy under the table, what was his name?”
The room froze. The cool kids stopped eating and looked in my direction. I could feel the weight of their judgement and expectation. I thought about looking under my Snapple cap for some words of wisdom but there wasn’t time. Martin Levin had called me as his first witness and was about to humiliate me with his questioning. Fortunately for me, instead of allowing me to incriminate myself, he just launched into his own monologue.
“Control is a zero-sum game in a classroom; either they have it or you have it. You have to find your discipline style. Everyone is some combination of power and finesse. Look at me–I’m all power.” As he spoke he gestured to his chest and the word “power” didn’t quite match the stocky, balding man in cargo shorts and a golf shirt. Yet, he was 100% correct. He had carved out his educational kingdom and ruled his teachers and students with absolute authority. Martin Levin had found what worked for him.
Eventually, the topic of conversation moved away from kids under tables to teaching emerging readers. As the days passed on, Kelly and I started to find our stride. We planned more efficiency, built our confidence, and weren’t singled out at lunch again. We solved the ancient mystery of how to transition 20 six-year olds from building blocks to lining up neatly at the door. Justin incrementally improved his reading and writing and didn’t initiate any more standoffs. At the end of four weeks, Kelly and I parted ways, each off to our own first-grade classrooms on separate sides of town. In future years, when we ran into each other at a professional development or district-wide gathering, our eyes would meet with the steely acknowledgement that we had survived the Summer Magic foxhole together.
The following summer, I would return to Martin Levin’s open-space classrooms for another round of fielding ground balls at Summer Magic. My new dance partner was Nicky Balmanti, a newly-tenured teacher that was moving from fourth grade to kindergarten. With a whole year of teaching first grade under my belt, I was able to give her such sage advice as, “You can’t just tell them to read page sixteen. Do you see how half of them are holding their books upside down? They might have trouble finding page sixteen, let alone reading it.” No longer the “clueless freshman,” it felt good to know a thing or two about teaching literacy, and I sat taller at those debriefing lunches, confidently sipping on a Nantucket Nectar.
I spent the rest of the summer rollerblading, painting houses, and singing the score to The Lion King. When I returned to school in the fall, I was dealt an interesting challenge in the form of a particularly defiant student. Brandon was entitled, cunning, and oppositional; the most Machiavellian first grader I ever taught. His version of hiding under tables was uttering the phrase “I don’t want to” when asked to do almost anything. And it wasn’t just the words that made my skin crawl, it was the way he said them. He would utter this phrase without emotion yet with this strange sense of conviction, like some sort of baby Terminator. I can still hear “I don’t want to” in my head and fear Skynet has sent a T-800 back through time to destroy my peaceful classroom.
For the first few months, I had very little success reaching Brandon. After trying mostly “power” discipline techniques, my principal suggested more “finesse.” One day in her office she told me, “The only way you win tug-of-war with this kid is to not pick up the rope.” I’m pretty sure she stole the concept from the end scene of WarGames, and it was exactly what I needed to hear at the time. For the rest of the year I Jedi mind-tricked that kid to do whatever I wanted him to. One of the beautiful things about teaching first grade is the teacher still has the power to make “something” or “someone” wildly popular through their endorsement. (This technique works less well with jaded middle schoolers.) So whatever Brandon didn’t want to do, I used my teacher-y influence to make that the coolest thing since POGs and Beanie Babies. If Brandon wouldn’t practice his lowercase letters, I made penmanship the most popular thing in the class that day. By the end of the year, I got his reluctant pencil moving.
For the rest of my teaching career, I would say stealthy, borderline-manipulative-yet-benevolent motivation of my students was my calling card. I secretly hid armies of knowledge within Trojan horses of what seemed like fun and games. Using a pizza divided in twelves to teach the concept of five minutes or Starbursts to teach probability was as popular as it was delicious. The year I had an NBA-crazy fourth grade class, we formed the Geographic Basketball Association (GBA) to learn US capitals. Sure there were more boring days of skill-and-drill and times finesse had to be traded in for power, but ultimately I came to see teaching as having deep personal conviction that you can move your students from Point A to Point B. That target could be memorizing their multiplication tables, writing a complete introductory paragraph, or maybe just getting them out from under a table. Justin may not be one of my favorite students I ever taught, but he certainly is one of the most important. Somewhere, his millennial self is out there in the world, probably sporting an impressive beard and wearing an ironic Def Leopard t-shirt. I’d like to think that if he were hiding under a table today, that I would absolutely be able to get him out from under it. After all, what 32-year old wouldn’t want to sit on the circle rug and listen to a reading of The Very Hungry Caterpillar?
