When Anger Doesn't Heal: From Kuwait to the United States, Teacher's Memoir

Chapter One

Trey

YOU DON’T KNOW NO SHIT about us. You don’t care. I don’t like it here. Ain’t gonna tell you what botherin’ me. You know what bother me? You. You bother me every day. You know nothin’ about me. You yell too much. You have no control over your class. Leave me alone. You don’t know nothin’ about us.

Don’t ask me about my family. Why you wanna know about me? My daddy is none of your business.

He was shot at the bus stop around the corner. I wish he was dead. But he lived. He don’t care about me or my mom. He don’t care about nothin’. I wish he was dead. He drink everyday, day and night. He won’t stop drinking. He’s in a wheelchair, you know. So he don’t like his life. Would you like being in a wheelchair? You live my life for one day and see for yourself. See if you like it.

My mom don’t care about nothin’ ‘cause my daddy don’t care. She don’t try to make it better; she just sit around all sad like my daddy do. I hate seeing her like this, but she don’t care. Now she found her medicine. She buy stuff from this short guy on the corner. I know she do. I seen her do it. She don’t care that I know. She buy it in front of me, and she sniff it in front of me, too. She don’t care about nothin’. You try livin’ my life for one day; only one day all you can take. See, my daddy in a wheelchair drinking and my mom sniffing coke right in the living room.

Last night, I woke up at 2:00 in the morning. I hear some noise comin’ from my mom’s bedroom. She was all naked and shit. I saw this guy in bed with her. You just know no shit. My life ain’t like yours. My life is shit and I have to deal with it.

I scream that night at what I seen. I pulled the blanket and the sheets and scream. That faggot was naked too. My mom was sleeping with this fruity guy that sold her the stuff around the corner. She wanted more, but don’t have no money. So she sleep with the guy to get some of that stuff that made her high and shit. I know all of that. I seen it on TV. I don’t need nobody to explain this shit to me. The motherfucka’ fruity was sleeping with my mom!

I wanted to punch him good. But my mom stopped me and pulled me away. You see, she’s a tall, black lady with problems but have lots of muscles. You don’t know my mom, she can pick you up and throw you to the other side of this room. She ain’t no fuckin’ wimp. She strong.

I stopped yelling ‘cause my daddy was in the other room drunk. I didn’t wan’ him to wake up seeing this kind of shit happenin’ in his house just next door to his fuckin’ room. 

I went to the living room and called the police. The police don’t do no shit either, like you, you know. They just listen and listen, nod and won’t do nothin’ to help. The police came that night. This short, white officer they sent said to me, This is a family matter; I can’t help you. What kind of shit is that, I can’t help you! Then who would?  You? No thanks. You’re a midget and look like a wetback. My mom, who can pick you up and throw you across the room, don’t listen to no Hispanic midgets. But for now, I have to help myself.

The next time I see that faggot, ain’t gonna call the police. I kill the motherfucka’. I don’t care if I go to jail. I’m thirteen. They can’t kill me ‘cause I killed a drug dealer who was sleeping with my mother. And if they try, I run away. They won’t find me. I hide in alleys and dumpsters. They ain’t gonna find me. You see for yourself. I make the news, Trey killed the motherfucka-fruity drug dealer who slept with his mother. 

If I feel like it, I might even kill my mother. She ain’t no angel sleeping around with drug dealers next door to my daddy’s room. How my daddy feel hearing all that shit? I heard it. He heard it, too. He try to kill himself ‘cause he’s in a wheelchair. But she can’t sleep around ‘cause of that.

Wait, you’ll see.  When it happen next time, ain’t comin’ to school. I be with my homies in some jail. I be happy there, very happy.

What education you talk about? No education gonna make me feel good. I want that motherfucka’ dead, and you talk about education? Ain’t gonna finish eighth grade, ain’t gonna go to high school or college. I know I’m gonna end up in jail. I wanna be there with my homies. That to me is home, not livin’ with a cripple and a whore. My mom is a whore, you know. And my daddy is a sick bastard who ain’t gonna do nothin’ about it. I rather jail over this home.

You don’t know no shit, you know nothin’ about us. You just a teacher who don’t care. You listen, but you ain’t gonna do nothin’. Listening ain’t gonna kill the motherfucka’ who sleep with my mother.

Chapter Two

Cole Middle School

I MET THE DENVER PUBLIC Schools’ recruiter at Southwest Texas State University job fair where I received my two degrees – a bachelor’s degree in communication disorders and a master’s degree in special education – in 1998. The recruiter was practically begging me to apply, We will help you get your teaching certificate. We’ll provide you with what we call an emergency teacher certificate. After that, you’ll receive your residency certificate. After a quick interview, we signed a one-year contract and I was on my way from San Marcos, Texas, to Denver, Colorado – from the heat, the drought, and high possibilities of shrub-fire and tornadoes to the snow, afternoon showers, and the distant view of the Rocky Mountains.

All the new teachers came to Cole for orientation around mid-August. This is your room, Ms. Smith, the principal said, opening an old, heavy, wooden door with a creak; chips of wood peeled off from the edges and fell to the floor. And this one is yours, Ms. Dashti, she said as she opened another heavy door, but this one didn’t squeak. My room was located between two exit double-doors, one led to the main hallway and the other led to Martin Luther King Street. The room was spacious with a sink in one corner. The floor was concealed with white linoleum, which made the room look less than a classroom and more like a kitchen. Wooden cupboards and drawers were built into the walls on one side while four large windows occupied the other side of the room. Every room had massive windows but most of them faced the mountains. Not mine, the courtyard and a bullet hole in one of the upper glass panels of one of the windows was the view I inherited.

I was scheduled for an interview at a middle school in the northeast part of Denver, only three miles or so from downtown. Cole Middle School was an old red brick building that was nearing its 100th birthday. It was located in the heart of the neighborhood where a white-and-yellow light rail ended its long journey there and shuttled back to the center of town.

The principal announced on the intercom, New teachers, we’re meeting in the IMC.

It was a truly beautiful building with thirty large classrooms and two large basketball courts. Twenty-five feet aloft, a white solid balcony overhung like a large belly on top of the main entrance. However, no one was allowed on the balcony for safety reasons.

The empty, long hallway felt gloomy and lonely as I sauntered through it to the IMC. The principal sat at the head of a large wooden table in the library with hands locked together. She waited patiently for everyone to come aboard. I was so nervous I wasn’t able to grasp everything she was saying. But I paid close attention when I suddenly heard her say, Our children. She was referring to the sixth graders. They are scared when they first come here. We need to help them, show them the school, their lockers...

Most teachers who taught at Cole were able to survive one to two years. The classroom next door to mine vacated every year and sometimes even twice in the same year. At the end of every year at Cole, more than half of the faculty left and was replaced by another set of new teachers who couldn’t handle our children. I watched this happen every year for four-and-a-half consecutive years until my time was up and myself left.

An explosion of images ran through my mind as I tried very hard to picture these big, empty hallways full of kids. Our children made me visualize little kids, probably under four feet, running joyfully around the school yard, saying hi to the teachers while smiling and laughing. As I imagined our children, I didn’t envision anything but respect and contentment.

At the end of the 1998-99 school year, Ms. Landers – a tall, heavy set African American woman who taught English as a second language or what the district preferred referring to it as English Language Acquisition (ELA) – tiptoed into my room dressed in a dark-colored caftan with her visibly thinning hair tightly pulled in a neatly assembled small bun that looked like a round push-pin-pillow that had accidently stuck to the back of her head after a long, restful nap. Looking over her shoulders not once but twice, she whispered, Hey, I’m not coming back next year.

The principal stressed the importance of posting classroom rules, We have to teach them everything. How to open the door, enter the room, sit down, listen, when to talk and when to be silent. We need to teach them everything as if they’ve never been taught before.

No, no. You can’t leave. No, no. Please stay for the kids’ sake, I pleaded with her and naïve enough to think it would change her mind.

Hurriedly and excitedly, I returned to my room to work on that poster. I was taught in college that Kids remember three to five rules; anything more, you’ve lost them. I came up with: No eating, No talking, No moving out of your seat. Every word was written in large letters and neatly arranged on a straight line. Each rule was written in a different bright colored marker, hard to miss. The poster hung by the blackboard where it was easily noticed. 

She searched my room with her eyes from wall to wall just in case some unwelcomed guest was lurking in a corner waiting to hear her unbearable news. Well, don’t tell anyone. I haven’t said anything to the principal yet. She said and turned her back swiftly looking at me over her shoulder with a smile and an ambiguous look of pride mixed with satisfaction as if she had just inherited a million dollar and this job was no longer needed.

Ms. Sommers, another new teacher, dropped in for a short visit to look at my room. She looked at every barren white wall and wrinkled her nose. She wasn’t sure what to comment on until her eyes landed on my bright-colored classroom rules poster. She stood in front of it and examined its content for a long time as if some well-hidden, well-known painting was traced underneath the few hand-written words and her staring would make it reveal itself. Unexpectedly, she laughed. Those rules are called ‘dead man’s rules’. Only a dead man can’t eat, talk, or move out of his seat, with that remark, she turned her back to me and strolled out.

Oh, that wasn’t the first time I had seen that room emptied then cluttered with boxes full of books and teaching materials. I had seen it vacate over and over. I heard the click clack, click clack of their heels as they promenaded with heads high up, lips protruding forward as if they were telling the walls, Kiss my ass. The double doors flopped behind their back flip flop, flip flop, and they never seemed to be interested in looking back. They wanted to forget everything about our school: the smell of sweaty bodies running up and down the halls; the clamor bouncing off the bright, white walls of the corridor; the tall ceilings with the fluorescent lights buzzing and staring at you while you were on your journey to the other side; the solid, wooden doors; the large windows in each room; even the mountain view facing west of the building. None of it mattered any more.

No suggestions were offered and I couldn’t come up with a few rules that were short, precise, and weren’t directed at a dead man. I wanted my special ed. students to be able to glance at the list of rules and understand them without any difficulty; after all, they were functioning below grade level probably in every area, and particularly in reading comprehension.

I can still remember the first day I entered the building, the first step I took, the time I met the principal who was an attractive African American woman with a pair of hazel-colored doe eyes and a kind smile that revealed a set of straight porcelain white teeth. She spoke softly and gave a strong firm handshake. During the interview, she asked me, What do you think about ‘zero tolerance’?

Orientation lasted for a week, where new teachers were supposed to organize their rooms, write up lesson plans, and do whatever was necessary to start the year ready to teach our children.

I was taught in school that ‘zero tolerance’ was not a good method to implement in schools because while you were teaching, they were probably outside flattening your tires. It’s not a good method because while you’re teaching, they’re outside flattening your tires, I said with a smile, just the way my professor in college had explained it.

I sat in my room rummaging through desks, cabinets and drawers hoping to find anything equivalent to a textbook or a curriculum that I could use for my subject areas, science and social studies, but to no avail. Asking other teachers about curricula or textbooks was like speaking a foreign language to them. Textbooks!  What textbooks? Curriculum! What curriculum? Ask Mr. Duran; he might know.

You think so? she asked smiling broadly.

I decided to look around the storage room for a set of textbooks I could use for social studies and science. I found some out-of-publication textbooks dating back to 1970s, nothing current. I started with those and hoped for some new editions soon, but none ever materialized.

I had a gut feeling that ‘yes’ wasn’t what she was looking for, but honesty is bliss. Yes, I do. Punishing kids is not such a good strategy because we’re modeling bad behavior for the kids, I said and abruptly stopped talking, knowing if I kept going some unpredictable, terribly unprepared comment would slip out of my big mouth. I was the type of person who owned a mouth that did not do well under pressure. My mouth would take over without permission as if jinn possessed it. The worst part is how my words are strung together during stressful situations. Most of the time, people stare and scratch their heads trying to comprehend what it sounds like English but not intelligible enough to be executed by a big mouth like mine.

I sat in my room, felt the heat rush through the naked, tall windows. Sweat slowly dripped down my forehead into my eyes. I blinked and wiped the sweat away. A strong wave of euphoria took over me. I got a job and I no longer needed to depend on my family’s financial support.

She shook my hand firmly and promised to call me back after interviewing several other qualified applicants. I shook her hand back, feeling that that was the last time I was going to see her. But fortunately, she did call back, and unfortunately, I accepted the job.

Chapter Three

Shiniqua

LISTEN TEACH, YOU DON’T bother me, ain’t gonna bother you. Yeah, my name is Shi-ni-q-ua, not Sha-ni-q-ua. You listen teach, I don’t like it here. I’m here ‘cause I had to come. My aunt won’t leave me alone. She pull me out of bed every fuckin’ morning. I’m tired of this shit. She won’t leave me the fuck alone. My sister Jazmin don’t like her, too. She think my aunt is a bitch.

I’m here, but I don’t wanna be here, you hear me, Ms. Da-shit? You’re so short! Ain’t you embarrassed from being so short? I be. You look so ugly being short. I like your hair, you need to let it grow, Ms. If I had your hair, um, um, um, I come to school every day with a new hairstyle. Pull it up, keep it down, or braid it. My hair thick. You see? Touch it. But I have to put all that shit on it to keep it in place. You don’t worry about that. You just wash it an’ come to school. That’s why I don’t like to come to school, it take me too long getting my hair done.

I told you I don’t like my aunt. Don’t ask me about her. She’s a bitch; you know that? Do you like my fingernails? I do ‘em every month. I glue all that nail and paint ‘em. I like doin’ my nails. How come you don’t do your nails? You’re ugly, Ms. You need to let your hair grow and do your nails. You look great comin’ in here with a new hairstyle and beautiful fingers, um, um, um.

I wish I was livin’ with my parents, not my aunt. My daddy in prison and my mama, too. They did drugs and sold drugs. All my sisters and brothers in foster care except for me and my sister Jazmin. We ended up with my aunt, the bitch.