EXCERPT:
What You Doing Here, White Boy?
“Yeah. What’s you doin’ here in the Bronx?”
This from two black boys in the front row. I don’t know their names. Leaning forward in their seats, they glare angrily at me as though they’d like to lunge up and punch me. The time is 4:20 p.m., September 8, 2003—my first day of teaching math at Central Bronx High School. Or at any other high school for that matter. This is the beginning of my final class of the day, a double period lasting until 5:46 p.m. … if I live that long. I’m a newborn high school teacher and this is my baptism of fire.
It gets worse. Room 213 has stadium seating so that a dozen of the 33 kids on my roster sit so far back they might as well be in Yankee Stadium, elsewhere in the Bronx. Now catcalls and wads of paper begin floating down to the front and land at my feet. The wide-open door leads to the deserted hallway. Most of the building has already emptied. The more than 3,000 children overcrowding CBHS have forced the administrators to create two shifts. Upperclassmen in the morning. Freshmen start around noon. Only a few classes remain in this huge, one city-block-wide, four-story edifice. This freshman algebra class sits toward the rear of the building. For all intents and purposes, I’m in this maelstrom alone with them—sink or swim.
“What now?” I ask myself. If these kids know I’m intimidated, they’ll get really bold. I try to ignore the comments and start taking attendance.
Oh—and there are abandoned lockers in the back of the room. Loud, vibrating clangs bring them into focus. The kids there are walking around, vigorously opening and slamming them shut.
“Sit down and shut up or I’ll call the police to do it for me,” I scream red-faced at them.
This is a bluff. I know there’s no help. I don’t have the key yet to the emergency telephone and my cell phone battery is dead. I’m truly frightened that these kids will get so out of control they’ll hurt each other and very likely me. But I am very angry besides being scared.
My rage exceeds their childish malice. Slowly and with a great show of disdain, the mischievous elves take their seats.
