{E.R. will explain to me later that this is indeed his code and that the kids delight in figuring this out.}
8:30
I enter teachers' room. E.R. is sitting at the main table apparently filling
forms (?attendance or grade). He does not pay explicit attention to me
besides a hello. Susan introduce me briefly to one or two persons. She goes
to sit at the round table. I sit on the couch under the window. Perhaps half
a dozen person are in the room.
8:32
E.R. moves to another room, along with all the other teachers for the morning
meeting. Eventually about 25 persons sit around a set of table arranged in a
big square. I sit myself at the back, outside the square. Susan introduces
me to two or three persons. Harry pulls a chair and organizes himself so that
he can talk to me. We talk about sociologists and anthropologists studying
New York City (a take off from an article in New York Magazine).
8:37
E.R. starts the meeting. He introduces me with the usual "anthropologist"
joke (we are his tribe, he should remember what natives to missionaries).
Mention of the birth of a teacher's child.
Mention of Jean McClintock's birthday
Exchanges about the success of a school team.
Reminder that green sheets must be turned in. Confusion about what they are and explanations.
E.R. looks at his watch: "It's 8:43, Let's roll!"
Everyone moves out. I follow E.R. as he walks to the class room where his "family group" meets. As we move through the corridor, he has at least two overlapping conversations with staff members. The room has chairs neatly arranged in rows. It is empty. E.R. reorganizes most of them into a circle. I help and he asks me to sit within the circle. He sits on the desk and checks some paper. He gives a form (about ethnic composition of classroom) with a comment about the many forms that people in NYCPS have to fill out. A girl appears at the door, E.R. walks out into the corridor with her.
{Susan has told me at other times that he prides himself on the fact that he has more students there than any other faculty--something like 30.}
8:53
A boy comes in (new red coat with new white cap). He sits outside the circle
on one of the few chairs that have not been reorganized.
{Nicky}
8:55
E.R. comes back in, addresses Nicky about sitting outside the circle. Nicky
does not move.
{I think that, quite later he will reorganize his chair to face the circle.}
8:57
E.R. makes a comment about the fact that he had been out the day before and "I
have a theory that the kids are punishing me" by not showing up today. Two
girls walk in (one of them is Tracy).
{This is the Tracy that Susan has had problems with.}
Tracy walks out again. E.R. makes a comment about "you girls are dressing in black today." He turns to the other girl (who sits within the chair, by the desk) and comments that she looks sad. He asks about the problem, she denies there is any. He persists. Eventually a long sequence is started that has to do with credits needed to graduate and the impact of a job. E.R. introduces me as "Susan's husband"--no particular reaction. He returns to Sophie's problem and gets her ("you figure it out"), in spite of her resistance ("I am not that good at math", E.R.: "that's why you figure it out"), to calculate the exact number of credits she is going to get (this involves some fractional numbers which she eventually always get, though sometimes after mistakes).
{E.R. emphasizes that this must also be an academic exercize and a quiet struggle ensues. It is not clear how well Sophy could do all this on her own but she is certainly not going to do as a matter of course, not is she going to give E.R. much explicit satisfaction by getting into the spirit of the thing. The mood is essentially "the sulk."}
(while the preceding is going on, E.R. takes care of at least two other matters brought to him by people who walk into the classroom and do not explicitly acknowledge that another activity is going on. During these intrusions, Sophy just sits)
9:05
Tracy comes back as the preceding ends. She sits outside the circle.
No formal ending was performed.}
9:06
A third girls walks in and sits in the circle across from Sophy.
{She has a scar from lip to jaw line.}
A fourth girls walks in and sits by Tracy (whose chair E.R. physically moves while she is sitting in it so that it half face the circle. He tells Sophy to ask g3 to explain what she has just learned. She refuses. After one or two retries, E.R. abandons. He addresses Tracy and asks her about her problem with Ramona (a history teacher).
{I have the feeling that it was not a serious request. Certainly E.R. did not make it in a way that would have made refusal conse- quential.}
A boy walks in.
Tracy explains that Rosa picks on her: "she disrespects me." "she tore my paper in front of everybody." "I was so upset I didn't come to school." "I am a very nice person, when a person disrespects me, I won't have anything to do with them."
These sentences come back several times as descriptions, explanations and comments.}E.R. agrees with her that this is indeed very bad behavior on the part of the teacher, asks Tracy about what she might have done to provoke the teachers, suggests that she go and talk to the teacher. Tracy says that she hates the teacher but always does what the teacher asks. She also says that the teacher is in fact teaching her certain things. During this sequence, the boy comments one's or twice that if one just did what one was supposed to do, one didn't get into trouble and one could think what one wanted. E.R. agreed that this was a good strategy.
E.R. sends g3 and Tracy to get to some presentation about secretarial jobs. Tracy resists, stating that she doesn't want to be a secretary. E.R. agrees with her but insists that she goes. Both girls leave.
G4 complains about Susan picking on her for putting her head on the chair for just a moment given how boring the class was. E.R. reminds her that she doesn't eat for breakfast. He notices that she is carrying a sack from Dunkin' Donuts and that this is good. Two or three exchanges with the boy about "you guys eating junk foods." The boy agrees that he knows it is junk.
A second boy walks in.
Everyone gets up and most help in returning the chairs to the lined position.
I follow E.R. out into the halls. We move through the third floor.
Discussion with teachers. E.R. shows a few a clipping from the NY Times announcing the marriage of a man with a very Jewish name. It seems that this man is a graduate from WSH, that he is making very good having founded a software development firm in New Jersey.
{it may be that he just attended for a while, and dropped out}
Confrontations with students regarding lateness, gold jewelry, wlakmen.
A sudden congregation with Murphy and two security guards about a student who may be harassing his girldfriend. The group moves fast in a chase. Student has disappeared. He is found with the girl. Mild confrontation. The boy denies. E.R. tells him that preventing someone from going to class is harassment. Both are sent to class.
More confrontations with students.
9:55
We are back in the teacher's room. E.R. talks to Susan about Tracy. She
shows him an essay Tracy has written. Both agree that this is very good.
E.R. comments to me (as he shows me the essay) about how remarkable this way
given where she was last year ("we were kindof thinking about shifting her to
another school").
{Susan tells me later that it is very rare for E.R. to spend so much time in the teachers's room: "we never see him there."}
Administrative conversation over walkie talkie.
Two or three one to one conversation with individual teachers. Low voices, no joking.
10:15
We walk down the corridors between periods. More confrontations with students
who are late. E.R. chases a bunch of girls from a bathroom. More multiple
conversations with staff (including the truant officer, a woman about whom
E.R. tells me that she is extraordinary, "will go to places you and I would
never go")
10:30
We sit in E.R.'s office. He cuts up a melon, offers pieces to me, the
secretary, one or two persons who walk in.
Several, sometimes overlapping conversations.
At the end of the period, E.R. walks through the halls again. As we do he gets a message that someone whom he doesn't recognize immediately wants to get into the school. That person is told to come and meet him in the corridor. It is a man in his early 40s that tells E.R. that he just wanted to say high, that he was on the mend, that he is going through Project Return and that he was offered a job that he would have gotten if he had been able to get to the place this morning. It is not clear to me why he didn't go. E.R. congratu- lates him and the man leaves again. E.R. explains that this is someone they had to expel from the school a few years ago because of alcoholism, wife- battering and such.
{I do not think that I saw one single addressee-con- versation between E.R. and anyone, student or staff, during these three hours. E.R. seems to be able to keep track and comes back to the explicit concern. The addressees generally wait during intrusions.}
We end up at the teachers' room which is about empty. We sit at the main table and have a conversation (mostly uninterrupted) about the draft of the paper I wrote with Rosemarie's work, her disagreements, what E.R. told her. He explains some of the problems he has had with the central board (the coming and going of special superintendents for alternative schools, how bad it was when F... S... killed this position "even though he was on our side," the political usefulness of alternative schools of the board). He explains how successful the school is, mentioning the two cases of success I witnessed that morning (the man with the software company, and the woman who is working in the school and is going on to a M.S.W). We make a lunch meeting to talk about my paper. E.R. gets up to walk the halls during inter-period again. I am more or less dismissed and I leave. It is about 11:30
{E.R. does not use the example the man who came in to thank him.}