family

The Xmas family.

I forgot to post multi-dad....that's what I told Pam she was.

another chapter, this is:

Chapter 15

Vickie’s Last Dance

We had some disagreements. I saw some things and she saw some things. I think comin’ into the building at the second semester you did a good job.
Doug Kyles, Principal

I was excited. I’d now get to return to the classroom. It was getting too cold out to work iron. Screamin’ Rodney had said one morning, “Get the fuck outta the way.” This really pissed me off. I started to walk off the job. But then I thought, No, I’m gonna make it the rest of the day. But I’m takin’ my tools home and draggin’ up.
And, a few minutes later, lunch time, there’s Scremin’ Rodney in the Davis company truck below me, chompin’ on his sandwich like nothing happened. I was still so mad, I couldn’t eat.
And, I know what I should’ve done. I should’ve handled it like Stu did when Scrubbie got after him his first day on the job—point at my crotch and say, “Here Rodney, suck on this.”
But instead, I took it all the way back to my truck. My anger. I’d just talked to a carpenter with whom I’d had a good discussion. The carpenter’s daughter, it seemed, wanted to become a teacher.
I gave it my usual positive spin but then Rodney ordered, for some reason out of nowhere, “Get the fuck outta the way.”
So I walked off the job. I called in sick the next day. I thought, Fuck that Screamin’ Rodney. I ain’t gonna work for that asshole no more. Then I had to do a reporting gig for the local newspaper which sent me to a hospital outside of town. So this was two days away. Then the Davis Superintendent, Jeff Davis, who called and wondered why I wasn’t on the job, Rodney running short of help, I told him about my reporting gig and I’d miss a couple days. He wanted to know if anything happened with Rodney. Not bein’ a snitch, I just said, “No, no problem.” But then I got done with the reporting job and called Davis. “Nope,” Jeff said. “They got ‘er all done. We probably won’t be needin’ any hands ‘til this spring. Just go through the hall.
“Yeah, ok.”
Well, I thought, that winds up that ironworking gig for awhile. Put away your hardhat.
******n
But OPS by that time had found me a place where I could hang my softhat.
“You can tell him as much as you want about the accident,” Heck said, when he called to inform me of my new position.
“Oh, okay.”
I shivered at the thought of going back to the BD classroom though I was happy to be out of the cold and teaching again. What would I tell the principal? How should I explain myself? What costume should I wear? And, like the Eliot poem, “And how should I presume?”
Heck-of-a-deal; and the OPS intervention squad still didn’t seem to get it.
******m
Heck skews
Despite the bind, despite recommendations from two neuropsychologists, my ed future was a march back to the BD classroom.
“OPS is so rigid,” Sue said again, exasperated, when I touched base with her a few days before I was to report. “Heck says that’s what you were assigned and you’re still on formal intervention. You can’t transfer until you’re off that.”
This was a huge slash into ed.’s bright balloon.
“Really? But isn’t that gonna set me up to failure again?”
“I know, I know. It’s too bad. But at least they were willing to work with you.
“Well,” I told Kath, leaving for the day, “I really don’t want to go back o Special Ed. I am so sick of it. Two years at Macy, five at the hospital, one at the specialty hospital, one in Lincoln, two here. Why can’t they just let me try English?”
Like many of their job-related discourse over the years, this was an old discussion loop we’d circled for years.
“Yeah, honey, I know.”
“But, if they give me a contract, I guess I have to get through it. We need, like you said, the insurance for the kids. Maybe if I get off FI I can transfer.”
“Yeah,” Kath said. “I hope they give you some help.”
It was hard to say if they would or knew how. I had my doubts.
“Well, then I called Tom Scates about the Corporate Cup that’s comin’ up, whether I’d be able to run it or not. You know because I was given a non-renewal notice and all that. He said ‘I don’t know anything about any t-shirt or anything but you’re still an employee of the district.’ All this time, I thought I’d been fired or was in some kind of limbo land. Why don’t they tell me these things?”
“I don’t know,” Kath said, pulling the baby close to her breast, “I can’t figure it out.”
“It seems like everybody talks so indirectly. Like that check for Dr. Korn that I supposedly got from Blue Cross Blue Shield. I didn’t get any check and here we get a letter from Sue, making sure we give the check to Korn.”
“Sometimes, those big organizations can get pretty screwed up.”
I thought of all the hospital records sent to the wrong Dr. Rankin. That had to be resent. And who was going to set up the appointment. No one really did anything until I reminded them again. Such incompetence.
“So many times, it feels like I’m talkin’ to them in circles.”

But, even though I didn’t like to go back to the BD resource, it was back to the classroom nevertheless. OPS had given me a chance. I’d see that I’d make the most of it.
Yes, the teacher’s place I was taking, Miss Smith, had her BD students in a row, front and center.
Day three, I was going over some of my expectations. I’m sure I did a double-take. I’m also sure my true cowardice came to the fore when Vickie Vaughn walked into the little classroom with her black satchel, striding confidently, eyes glint with determination, like always stealing across her brow as a shadow over what I construed to be my sunny landscape.
Like Mackiel, she doesn’t like to lose.
“Hi, Ron, how are you doing?” Vickie asks cordially, as if nothing ever happened, nothing had ever transpired in the previous 20-odd instructional months when she punched through my classroom door like a ‘revenuer.
I decided she’d make a good cop. She’d not answered her true calling.
“Fine.”
“Is it okay if I sit here, Ron?” she asked, motioning to a desk along the wall. As usual, from all the other months, she sits down before I grant permission.
“Sure, that’d be fine.”
Because this current classroom is almost one-fifth the size of the one at Parrish B, the observer is much closer. It’s almost like a crowded theatre sans popcorn, sans noise. The silence is near deafening.
Suddenly, the air is tight. I feel my voice tightening as I watch myself walk over to a student and lean over him and absurdly ask him how he’s doing, how he’s getting along: it’s Edwin Parrish B all over again.
He looks up at me, puzzled.
Vickie is getting out a pad and a pen.
“Larry Heck said I should come,” she explained before she left, allaying at least part of my fears that Mitchell et alia would also be reporting for duty, falling on each other’s heels and bumping into one another as they traipsed through the door.
Vickie, who calls people by their first names and slightly throws me off, i.e. Glenn to Dr. Mitchell, Larry to Dr. Heck, John to Dr. Mackiel, did her usual post-observation thing.
“Could I have a copy of your lesson plans?”
“Yeah,” I pointed, feeling my anger rising in captivity, “they’re on my desk.”
“Could I also have a copy of your grade book?”
“Uh-huh. It’s over there.” I wasn’t going to bow and stoop and scrape and get them for her.
I knew maybe this was a bit of dissonance on my part but I couldn’t help it.
“Have you posted any classroom rules anywhere?”
“No,” I replied, “not yet.”
She jotted this down.
Actually, I had already typed up a set of rules I’d shared with the students the day before. They weren’t the same as he had at Parrish. I was in the mood to try something different. I reckoned it’d be a start-up for students this second semester to know what was expected of them, how they’d be a little different from Miss Smith’s.
I didn’t give this sheet to Vaughn. I just wanted her to go about getting the copies made and be on her way, hoping the door wouldn’t hit her rear end on the way out.
“Larry wants me to come by once a week,” she said, moving through the door, turning to me. “That’s his direction.”
“Fine.”
I felt, while Mitchell and the gang would be showing up, more problems in the form of surprise visits and announcements would soon be coming my way.
I tried to maintain my composure. And saw how the rodbuster’s would be headin’ home for the day.

*******n
And, I was right. There was a meeting with the building principal Kyles, Vaughn, Heck at the TAC building a few days later at the new school, Morton Junior High. Tom Scates was also in attendance.
Vickie had to get it off her shoulders from the very start. After we all sat down in Doug Kyle’s office she turned and looked at me. “You need to hit ‘em with both barrels,” Vaughn said, during the first post-observation conference at the new school.
Her tone turned to a mini-lecture.
“The first day you should’ve had the rules posted so they know what to expect.”
The words “subdural hematoma,” “non-renewal notice,” “no less than three school board members,” “if I were you I’d resign” came floating like flotsam to the surface.
However, I remembered how the observation by Principal Doug Kyles had gone well. The students were focused and paying attention and doing their work. And this he noted.
Larry Heck went over the list, reading it like a sentence.
“The things we’re look at are planning, use of resources, how to teach the lesson. Communication was also marked as needing improvement.”
He looked around the room. He looked down at a copy of the four-page Formal Intervention. “There was feedback and some improvements made.”
He surveyed the small silent audience and continued.
“We are also looking at time management, teaching diversity, learning diversity. Now we need to look at the use of varied materials.”
Heck moved to the central point.
“In the area of classroom management, we will review observations of Vickie Vaughn for setting up a plan in your room, the rules, interaction with students. We also have needs improvement of the use of the lesson at the appropriate level, discipline plan, and record keeping.”
No one spoke. Everyone listened.
“Finally,” Larry’s glasses looked at me at his position at the head of the table—like an elaborate meal that was being offered up, me as the main course—“we have to look at the personal qualities, the U for demeanor as working with staff and students. You cannot appear to be defensive and frustrated with students and staff. If you’re challenged,” Heck advised, “you have to maintain a professional and positive manner.”
Of course, I’d heard it before. It was Mitchell’s evaluation now more than two years old but still sitting and warming itself on the Bunsen Burner deep in the reserve of the Personnel Office.
“Subdural hematoma,” “non-renewal notice,” “I think you should resign,” “at least three school board members.”
“We’d also like for you to see input from Vickie Vaughn and Doug Kyles. We would want another video taping (and here I wondered if Lou was going to be pulled out of retirement for the shoot. I don’t believe she ever got a wrap) and a summary evaluation by April 5.”
Vaughn, to my left, began to blink rapidly. She began, “I’ve been in Ron’s classroom three times for formal observation and post-observations,” she said. “I think Sandra Smith left a nice program to follow, that’s a nice system imposed.”
No one spoke. She continued.
“We haven’t done the post-observation for 1/25,” Vaughn said, her German mind laying all the cards out on the table and stacking them in order. As a teacher, she must’ve had lots of sheets to parcel out to the students. I’d get the sheets run off but forget where I put them.
“But the instructional time is a concern. Joe,” she pointed out, “was on task for 60 seconds of 90 minutes. There was no follow through on that. I’m very concerned that at the end of the lesson there was no follow through.”
She looked over at me. “You have to contact every five minutes with a strategy to get them refocused.
The room listened. “You tend to ignore it. You were interacting with others and maybe not as aware as you should be. You need to use time to your advantage and hold them accountable.”
She continued to shovel the coal of my doom. “You need to be the authority figure. Patrick did not want to fill out the choice sheet. But instead of redirecting, you called in security.”
I felt it was all slipping away, like I was landing into the nausea realm of Christmas Past when I was hit with TAC’s headache ball and didn’t show up for work the next day, the first day I’d missed the entire year.
“That’s not on-going,” I said. “I wanted him to know that I meant business, that filling out the choice sheet was very important and I wanted to leave the classroom with him to do that.”
Vaughn was having none of it.
“You need to maintain yourself as the authority figure,” Vaughn said, looking at me, then across the room. “He could’ve filled it out in the classroom.”
I was beginning to feel nauseas, a wave of deceit and despair again washing over me. I felt my breath getting short.
“Well,” I continued, “concerning the choice sheet, my letter that I had Doug Kyles okay and send to the parents outlining my classroom management strategy shows that I started to do that. Patrick would not leave the room with me. At Parrish, I always took the student out of the classroom to fill out the choice sheet and it worked. I’m cognizant on that not taking them out of the room at Morton because of my perspective of the dynamics of the building.”
Vaughn was taking no prisoners, not ready to lower her rifle.
“The first week at Morton was a fresh start for you,” she said. Her tone was almost scolding. She looked down at me. “In my first observation I was very disappointed that there was no behavior management plan in place. I was gone one week and gave you time to adjust but you still hadn’t introduced the Behavior Management System. It needs to be done immediately. We talked about the need to do that,” she said, her eyes beginning to blink a little more readily, “but it still wasn’t posted.
Vickie turned her head. Her eyes swept over the small assembly. She moved in for the kill.
“I asked a student and he said that there’d been nothing posted.”
Yes, she indeed was scolding. Should I extend my hand so that she could spank it with a ruler?
The dyed blond-haired lady affixed me with a steady gaze. Her hair was a shade lighter and she seemed to be blinking more. Otherwise, little had changed. from before. Like the Christmas debacle last year, I felt Vaughn was beginning to pick up speed, like a trial lawyer moving to through a summation. I could almost hear Scrub’s, “What is wrong with that picture?”
“I called and you said you had it posted but when I asked a student they said you hadn’t.” She drove the point home. “You just put the poster up because you knew I was coming the next day.”
Guilty.
I could feel myself getting hot around the collar. Like Scrubby’s always saying “Damn,” after a time I’d get nauseated, like I’d throw up if I heard him say it again. For some reason, I’d paid careful attention to those dates on the off-chance it might be brought up.
And it was.
“No, you’re wrong,” I said, looking her square in the eye. I almost felt giddy. “I had those posters up for a couple days. They just had to be laminated.”
I was pretty direct. I could barely hide my anger. It was too late now.
“I gave them the choice sheet,” I said. “We went over it every day. It’s the routine, the first thing we do each day.”
“And,” I went on, “I don’t know what student you talked to but they were up and they were responding to them but we decided to have them laminated. The posters were up. We just needed to have them laminated.”
Vaughn volleyed. “You told me that was the first day it was up.”
“No, you’re wrong.” I found myself liking to look at her in the eyes and saying “You’re wrong.” It had a nice sound to it. Maybe it was an addiction. Like the string of U’s from negatives from Garland and many others, it wasn’t hard for me to pick up momentum once I got started. “The posters were up the 12th, a Friday. I didn’t get them back until the next week.”
Vaughn, surprisingly, did not reply. I didn’t know if it was because she didn’t have time before Heck interjected or because she was momentarily silenced.
At this point, Heck interjected. “Ron, do you have in place a Behavior Management plan and students know about it?”
“Yes, I do.” He almost ended with “Your Honor.”
It was at that point the door to the Rodbuster’s right opened. Dr. Mackiel came into the room. Had he been listening?
“Well, there’s no sense arguing about dates,” Heck concluded. “But do you understand, Ron, what we’re trying to say?”
“Yes, I do.”
Vaughn was not quite finished. She’d been able to catch her breath. “I wanted you to work, not only on inappropriate behavior, but add that there’s no reinforcement when students are making good choices. Most BD teachers have an external reward system to reinforce. In my next post conference,” she said, looking at me, “we’ll talk about that so even your para Mary can see that.”
By this time I had simmered down. I said, in agreement with what I’m thinking must be TAC’s mentor to brain-injured teachers. “I praised this week and I’m going to make phone call to parents.”
Kyles, silent to this point, decided to lend me a hand. “I’m willing to let your students come to my office if they’d had a good day and be able to give them some baseball cards. This could challenge the students to have a good day.”
Vaughn chimed in again. “A combination of long-term and short-term gratification is most effective. I’d like to start seeing you institute some short-term rewards.”
“Great,” I said. “I’ll do that.”
And really, I was all for it. I remembered some advice from Tom Scates that I’d be better served having Vaughn work for me, rather than against me.
“You can use her as a resource,” Scates had said.
“I don’t make it too hard for them to learn,” I said. “There is an enthusiasm I give to them. But I’ll work to redirect them. I can see the power in that.”
Kyles then reiterated what he’d seen in his observation.
“Students need to be a little more on task, use a little more creativity when it comes to teaching. I think it’s important that they respond to a variety of methods of instruction.”
The collective body nodded.
“I observed today,” Kyles said. “I tried to leave Ron alone first weeks to get adjusted. He is adjusted.”
The NY Yankee fan continued. “I talked to your para Mary Bendon yesterday about her talking to you concerning your roles. She is competent and you need to dictate services needed. We want students to know who is in charge.”
I wasn’t ready for this addition. Actually, I felt nervous trying to take Miss Smith’s place, who handled the students and classroom so well, and here I had some small fires I had to put out.
“I did talk with her a little today,” I said. “I mentioned my role—to lead instruction. If she has any questions I would clarify them for her.”
It was at this point the Asst. Superintendent of Personnel, Jon Mackiel, came into the meeting and sat down across from me. I thought of the meeting the year before when Mackiel said, “We know you’re trying hard, Ron, but it’s just not processing.” This meeting was to formally announce that I’d not be given a contract for a third year of teaching. That more than half of the time being observed by various parties the last several months hand not worked.
Morton Principal Kyles looked at me. “We need to make sure we clarify her support role,” Kyles cautioned. There was a runner on first and I was falling behind on the count. I was, of course, trying to address everything from lesson plans to classroom management and all the rest. I really didn’t think much about how I had to work with my para from a strictly instructional standpoint. But I was willing to listen.
“Be careful,” Doug said, “not to use bullets right away. The ultimate consequence is the principal,” Kyles said. “Use other methods short of sending them to the hall or to us. Use counselors, use other teachers, use your para. Walk around the hallway. Walk around the building. These are methods short of exclusion.”
Klyes continued.
“The isolation for BD kids can be discouraging.”
I thought how his comments were on an entirely different delivery system than Doc Mitchell. It seemed like he barely disguised a mask of utter disdain for anything I did teaching-wise.
I nodded. Of course, they could feel like they were out of the mainstream
Kyles add, “In my observation, I identified some good instructional procedures. The rapport with the students is positive. The group worked well when I observed.”
Scates, to my right. Pushed his glasses back further on his face and continued to take notes.
More strategies on how I could meet, “District standards” were discussed. Everywhere from diversity and classroom control the rewards and time management. I listened with patience and thanked them all.
“I’ll continue to incorporate your suggestions.” I felt a calm came over the room. Into this calm came Dr. Jon Mackiel, sitting their patiently, taking notes, clarifying when future meetings would take place for the continued intervention.
But he also had something to say something about the initial firepower.
“I think we have to look at receptivity as an issue, Ron,” Mackiel said, looking over across the table at me.
Larry Heck, like it was rehearsed, chimed in. “Earlier I pointed out not being defensive. You had a tendency when Vickie Vaughn was sharing her observations with you, you became defensive. With all that aside, did you hear what was said on the observation?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I heard her.”
“Sometimes you get defensive so I don’t know if you hear.”
Mackiel weighed in. “The spirit here Ron is one of support. We’re seeing defensiveness gets in the way of communication. We’re not needing to debate.”
I grabbed a fig leaf. “I know, I’ve felt that way, too. I mentioned that to Kathy when I started at Morton School. I told her there is support. I said it’s different. I realize there’s good support.”
I now had wound the conversation back to me. “I need Vickie Vaughn’s input. regard it as valuable.”
This seemed to smooth a couple feathers.
The meeting was near adjournment.
“In nine weeks,” Heck said, “we’ll see where things are at. At some point, we’ll have a video tape of the lesson and by April 5 a summary evaluation from Mr. Kyles.”
“And any time call for assistance,” Mackiel said, looking at me. “Don’t hesitate.”
Hands were shook all around. It was different than before.
“I thought that went pretty good,” I said to Tom Scates as we stood before the tall state and U.S. flags before the TAC building.
Scates pushed his thick glasses back
“Well,” Scates said, reiterating one of the final points. “You got a little defensive there. Like I said, try to have those people work with you rather than against you. Use Vickie Vaughn as a support, have her help you through those things you’re not sure of.”
“Yeah, sure, okay.” It was hard for me to imagine doing that. After her telling me two years in a row “If I were you I’d resign” it was hard to think what I’d say. It was a hard won victory. I felt so good at winning even though it was but a small nugget in the mountain of doubt and despair. I know Scrubby took a different look after I stood up. Now maybe the FI team would.
And then things did wend their merry way. On April 1, her final evaluation, I thought how Vickie had lessoned the time she spent in the classroom. After running copies, she handed me an envelope. “You can read these; I just need your signature. I’m outta here,” she said, pulling herself rapidly through the hallways.
“Thank you,” I called after her, watching her thin blond straight hair fly down the hallway.
I didn’t know if she heard him or not.
Later, Kyles said that there were things that Vickie and he agreed on and things Vickie and he didn’t agree on.
There was not one single U littering the summary evaluation terrain.
With April came the usual showers. With April came the unusual contract. I was now a tenured teacher.
And summer ironworker.
It was a definitely a Welcome Back Kotter.