WHY JOHNNY CAN'T TEACH

Miami Herald, The (FL)
Sunday, June 29, 1997
Author: JOHN DORSCHNER Herald Staff Writer

At 8:05 a.m., as I emerged from the shower, the phone rang. ``This is Frederick Douglass Elementary. We need a sub today.''

"Uh . . .'' I had just become a licensed substitute teacher for Dade County Public Schools, but this was my first call, and my churning stomach told me I wasn't ready.

"We're near the Miami Arena. Do you know where that is?''

Yes, a tough neighborhood. An inner-city school. I remembered the chaos in the old movie Blackboard Jungle and winced.

I threw on my clothes and asked my second-grade son for advice. He confirmed my fears. His class ran roughshod over subs and turned classrooms into wild playgrounds. "Be strict, Dad,'' he admonished.

As I raced through the streets, I tried to recall what I had been told during my "interview'' for the job. The qualifications weren't hard to meet: Two years of college, fingerprints so they could determine I hadn't committed any egregious crimes, peeing in a cup to prove I wasn't a druggie. I'd watched a 15-minute videotape and had had a 10-minute session with a personnel man who gave me a few pointers.

The ones that stuck in my head: "Don't leave the classroom under any circumstances. . . . Don't hit a student. . . . Have a bag of tricks in case the teacher doesn't leave lesson plans.''

My "bag'' consisted solely of that morning's Herald. Since the kids were close to the arena, I figured I could talk about the Heat. Maybe discuss how hard work and determination had made Alonzo Mourning a star. Good for five minutes. That left . . . six hours and 25 minutes.

Violating the Prime Directive

I had gotten myself into this because I wanted to see public schools from the inside. I had heard parents complain that whenever their kids had a sub -- which was frequently -- it meant a wasted day. A middle-school student told me about a sub falling asleep at his desk. My sixth-grade son told me he'd witnessed a sub ignoring a group of girls jumping rope in class.

I knew from my own school days that subs were not exactly treated with respect, but the horror stories I'd been hearing went far beyond spitballs and giggles. Were these tales of near-riot exaggerations? Or was it true that children have ranged wildly out of control in recent years? Do today's kids have less respect for authority, or are teachers failing in their jobs?

Such ruminations seemed woefully abstract as I walked into the school. Announcements droned over the loudspeakers. I felt as if I was stepping off a diving board without knowing what, if anything, was below.

A secretary pointed down a corridor. "You're Portable 5.''

Outside, I found a maze. I wandered about, uncertain which was No. 5 until a green-shirted security man waved from a doorway. I walked into a room full of smiles and applause. What had I worried about? Great group of kids, I thought.

Only later would I learn that their enthusiasm translated, roughly, to: "Hooray! Fresh meat!''

"What grade is this?'' I asked the guard.

"Third.'' He pointed to a girl. "You can trust this one,'' he said. "Press this button if you need help,'' he nodded toward a metal button near the front door. With that, he was gone.

As if on cue, Miss Trustworthy jumped from her seat: "J--'s hitting people.''

That led to a chorus of protests from kids pointing to a large-boned boy near the back. "He hit me!'' "He hit me!'' J--'s mouth puckered, as if he were about to cry.

Miss T. dashed to the blackboard. Under the chalk image of an unhappy face, she wrote down the names of three boys. The boys immediately ran up, erased their names, and wrote other names. Amid howls of protest, more kids rushed to the blackboard, wrestling for the chalk.

"Please sit down,'' I said, showing a nervous little please-like-me smile. "What subject is first?'' I asked Miss T., who pointed to a large sign on the wall showing the day's schedule. It was Friday: At the top of the list was Library.

"He's hitting me!'' sobbed a doe-eyed girl, pointing at a blubbery boy who stared back at me defiantly.

"Cut it out,'' I said in what I hoped was a calm, reasonable tone. "Where's the library?''

"I'll show you,'' Miss T. volunteered. "We're already late, mister.''

Squealing, the kids burst through the door and dashed out, threading their way through the portables. I ran to catch up. As we crossed a street, Miss T. pointed to J --, who was racing the other way. I saw a security man and told him that J-- was on the loose. He rushed after him.

Somehow, the rest of the class made it across the street and we entered the neighborhood branch of the public library. A woman was lecturing another class on the importance of Black History Month. This group was sitting quietly. My gang was dashing around, pulling out books, shoving each other, shouting and squealing.

"Quiet down,'' I shouted, to no effect.

When our group was done checking out books, a librarian riveted me with a disgusted frown and helped shepherd the students outside, where we met another teacher arriving with her class. As soon as she saw my wild bunch, she barked at them like a drill sergeant, and the kids formed a line against the wall.

She counted heads. "How many are you supposed to have?''

"Uhhh . . .''

She sighed. "You don't even know how many you have?''

Suddenly I remembered something from my brief orientation: Q: What is the one thing you take with you if the fire alarm goes off? A: The attendance book.

First rule of being a teacher: Don't lose a child. Leave with 25. Return with 25.

"P.E. is next,'' Miss T. announced. She pointed down a sidewalk to the concrete playground. The kids fanned out, yelling.

Exhausted, I slumped on a bench. It was not yet 10 a.m. I wanted to lie down, but I realized that if I wanted to get through the day, I needed to connect with these kids. Forcing myself to my feet, I joined a skinny boy in an oversize white T-shirt. He had been one of the least responsive when I'd tried to shush the students in the library, but now, as we shot baskets, he laughed happily. A new friend.

As we played, a woman appeared, pulling J-- along by the arm. "I'm his mother. They called me from the office. I'm very sorry. This won't happen again, I promise.'' J-- clutched a hall pass indicating he could be re-admitted. His lower lip was still trembling. I was amazed by how quickly the administration had dealt with him, though I had a sinking feeling that his mother's promise of better behavior might be somewhat less than iron-clad.

As we headed back to the classroom, a matronly woman appeared. "I'm the art teacher. They're late for art. I'll take them back to the classroom. You look like you need a break.''

Did I look that haggard? I stumbled off to the teachers' lounge, where I tried to strike up a conversation with a teacher who was blankly staring at the wall. She plucked a potato chip from a bag, munched, took a sip of Diet Coke, and nodded vaguely at me without removing her eyes from the wall.

Another teacher appeared who was a bit more communicative. I learned J-- was a long-time troublemaker whose case was before a committee to decide if he should go to a special school for troubled kids. "But that committee takes a very long time.''

Forewarned is forearmed. I walked back to P5 with a renewed spring in my step. Then I opened the door. Chaos. Kids were climbing on desks, screaming, throwing sheets of construction paper, clicking the lights on and off. The art teacher's eyes were glazed. "I have called security,'' she said. "I'll wait with you till they get here. Sometimes they're a little slow.''

I later discovered something about the art teacher. A sub.

I yelled for the kids to sit down. They ignored me.

Now, recollecting my videotape briefing, I tried to go back to basics. I wrote my name on the blackboard and read it aloud in a firm voice that was totally lost in the din of shouting children.

"A little slow'' didn't adequately describe how long it took for security to appear. It was only several minutes by the school clock, but by any internal measure, it was interminable. The two men, one in a dark suit and one in a T-shirt, shouted commands. The kids instantly quieted down.

The man in the suit asked Miss T. who the troublemakers were. She pointed to a half-dozen kids, including J-- and the kid I had shot hoops with. The man signaled each -- except J-- to move out the door. As the offenders left, other kids kept pointing at J--. No, said the man in the suit. "We've had him out of here already once today. He'll stay.''

As soon as they departed, Miss T. announced we were late for lunch. Another line, more chaos. I dared not eat lunch myself because I knew I'd lose kids. On our way back to P5, we spotted a couple of our bad boys, now teary-eyed, being led into a first-grade class.

"Oh!'' said J--, astounded by this awful two-grade demotion.

"Let that be a warning!'' I said with a new-found sternness.

After lunch, perhaps because the kids were tired and their stomachs were full, I got in a bit of teaching. It was time for science, and the teacher's book was opened to a section on oil and coal. I read a page about mining and drilling, then led a discussion about how these fuel sources create electricity and how electricity is important to our lives. This took all of 15 minutes.

Time for English. They were supposed to write a paper about Chadwick the Crab, but now that lunch was digested, they had energy. Several kids wrote a couple of sentences, but others began running around, poking enemies, laughing with friends. I yelled. They ignored me.

It went downhill from there as I became an inept firefighter, dashing about the room, trying to douse flare-ups. A boy grabbed a spray bottle off the shelf and made it into a squirt gun. Another plucked scissors from a holder on the teacher's desk and dashed about, brandishing his new weapon. Textbooks flew across the room.

Briefly, I tried enlisting J-- as my ally and enforcer. He liked being teacher's pet for a while, but then I saw him holding a kid by the arms while a buddy punched the helpless boy in the stomach. I had vowed not to touch a child, but I ran over and pulled the kids apart. Soon, wrestling and punching were breaking out everywhere.

One of the worst offenders pressed the security button as a joke. When the office responded, I stuttered, "Uh . . . it was pressed by mistake, but I guess I could use security here.'' No one responded. I could have pressed the button again myself, of course, but I didn't. What would I ask for? That all the kids, with the exception of Miss T. and a few others, be removed from the class?

Disgusted, Miss T. suggested I turn on the TV (suspended from the classroom ceiling) to a cartoon show. Well, any port in a storm. All pretensions about imparting knowledge had left me. The TV quieted them down -- for perhaps five minutes.

By the end of the day, I was hoarse. A Dade sub gets $75 a day, and in my mind it wasn't nearly enough. When the final bell rang, I slumped in the teacher's chair. "Do you think anybody learned anything today?'' I asked an earnest girl who stayed behind to pick up the litter from the floor.

"No,'' she said crisply.

Never Let 'Em See You Smile

That night, I awoke several times with feverish visions of classroom mayhem break-dancing in my head. These kids came from an impoverished area and they desperately needed all the help the school could give them. I hadn't even managed to provide basic physical security.

In my quarter-century with The Miami Herald, I had never had a more awful workday. But what had I learned? I had no idea.

I began calling veteran teachers for advice and information. Every time I recounted my experiences, they responded with spontaneous, knowing chuckles. Many told me they spent much of their time simply trying to maintain control. They found it delightful that a journalist was going to write about how difficult teaching could be.

A lot of public-school teachers, it turns out, started as subs, and it is often a baptism by fire. A middle-aged male with a rock-solid demeanor confessed that his first experience as a sub was so awful he almost broke down crying.

Shirley Yaskin, now a widely respected journalism teacher at Palmetto High, has her first experience as a sub tattooed on her brain: She turned her back to write something on the blackboard and when she swung around to look at the students, virtually all had vanished. "I didn't turn my back on a class for 30 years.''

A woman with a master's in education told me, "I'd rather wait tables than go back to being a sub.'' A former principal said this about being a sub: "At best, it's terrible.'' What happened to me, he added, wasn't unusual.

So what should I do next time? "Never smile,'' several teachers advised me. "A stare is as good as a shout. Students hate to be stared at.'' I should find a repertoire of mind games, puzzles -- and rewards. "They go nuts for stickers.'' Or food treats.

They advocated all the rules I used to think were the province of control-freak authoritarians -- seating students according to a chart, requiring straight lines and insisting students raise their hand before asking a question.

Finally, with some trepidation, I phoned Margie Hildalgo, the teacher I had subbed for. I knew she had much better control of the classroom than I: She dared to leave the scissors atop her desk, and had survived. (After near-disaster, I had slipped them into the bottom of a drawer.) Still, she quickly admitted that even after four years, she, too, found teaching to be exhausting, demanding work. "There's some real acting out at the beginning of the year, and you have to deal with it fast, or you're in trouble. I have learned to be very strict.'' She said she sometimes returned home so drained she needed a nap.

One morning, I returned to watch her work. The kids greeted me with shy, angelic smiles that I interpreted as signs of apology or guilt.

For an hour, I watched her keep order during a discussion of earthquakes. "You need to raise your hand,'' she admonished an overly eager student. Another she ordered to sit down. A girl answered a question and was rewarded by having her name written under the Smiley Face.

If a student got enough Smiley Faces, Hildalgo would give out a ticket. Enough tickets and the student would get a prize. It's this kind of long-standing reward system that regular teachers have established -- and punishments like keeping kids after school -- that subs can't match. Hildalgo suggested I might learn more by observing Mr. Joseph, the pool sub who was at the school daily.

Nathaniel Joseph, a former University of Arkansas football player subbing until he found a career job (he hopes to be an FBI agent), was the school's unofficial enforcer. "When there's a wild bunch that takes a substitute hostage,'' he said, "then they bring in Mr. Joseph.''

Mr. Joseph showed me how to take control in a class of second-graders. Two boys were talking quietly in the back of the room. On my radar screen, this wouldn't even have been a blip, but Mr. Joseph marched up to the offenders and glared down at them. Then he picked up a boy's pencil, put it two inches in front of the kid's eyes and snapped it in two. The kid jumped.

Every student in the room stared open-mouthed as Mr. Joseph slowly walked to the front of the room and deposited the remains of the pencil in the waste basket.

"Now,'' he said firmly, "we will practice our lines. I take my lines very seriously. You will not go to P.E. unless you have a good line.'' He showed the kids how to line up silently, staring straight ahead. When a chubby boy tried to elbow his way to the front, Mr. Joseph punished him by sending him back to his seat. The boy sobbed.

After these preliminaries, Mr. Joseph asked the students to do 15 minutes of silent reading in The Fisherman and His Wife. Every student obeyed. The room was utterly quiet.

Hoop Nightmares

After my first disastrous experience, several weeks went by. No schools were calling. A former principal guessed that many administrators would not want to invite a journalist inside their school on the theory that my presence could only cause trouble.

Finally, I went to Henry Fraind, a deputy superintendent and the system's main media man. He agreed to get me into any schools I requested. I picked a cross-section around the county.

My first stop: Nautilus Middle School, Miami Beach. As I drove there, I could feel my stomach churning once again. Several teachers had warned that middle-schoolers made third-graders seem easy. Karen Herzog, now a veteran teacher at Braddock High, confided that, when she had subbed at a suburban middle school at the beginning of her career, "I thought I was going to slit my throat by the end of the day. I'll never go back to junior high.''

I vowed through clenched teeth that, even if it meant the students would see me as a monster, I would not lose control of the classroom. Dared I break a pencil in front of a middle-schooler's nose? This was war. I would if I had to.

The day's assignment: Five periods of seventh-grade language arts, regular and gifted. On the teacher's desk was a meticulous array of seating charts with the names of two trustworthy students in each class, along with the school's "Procedures for Successful Substitute Teachers,'' the most important of which, as I was to learn at Nautilus and elsewhere, was an instruction to be sure that the students were in their assigned seats.

"Sub!'' a student shouted as he strolled in for home room. Another boy arrived dribbling a basketball. He grinned wickedly at me and sat down, spinning the ball on a finger. Other students giggled.

Here it was: Test No. 1. Fail this and another catastrophe loomed . I walked over to Michael Jordan Jr. and looked down grimly. No little smiles from me today.

"Hey!'' he smirked. "I've just got it for gym class next period.'' Dared I wrestle the ball away from him? I didn't have to, because my stare made him so nervous the ball slipped from his grasp. I scooped it up. Victory. After that, home room went smoothly.

In first period English, I found two boys sitting in chairs where my chart said girls should be. Buddies wanting to gossip. "Get back in your seats, or I'll mark you absent.'' They got back.

The teacher left plenty of work: a chapter in The Call of the Wild and some essay questions. I found I could stop chatter just by walking over and standing beside the gossips.

In second period, after I got the students in their proper seats, a girl rushed up crying. A boy had ripped a corner off her dollar bill. She wanted him to give her a new one. I told her I'd take care of it later, then hurried to put out another fire: a couple of laughing boys playing with a device designed to strengthen the grip. I grabbed it away. "Hey,'' said a boy. "Please give it back. I'll do anything.''

Words a sub loves to hear. I promised he'd get it back if he behaved himself, and that was the last I heard from him. Back to the dollar: I took the easy way out, pulling a clean replacement from my wallet and giving it to the girl.

Three gifted classes came next. A veteran teacher had warned me that gifted kids can be "really rough to deal with, because they're very manipulative in complex ways.''

But once I got some wanderers into their assigned seats, the classes went smoothly, until late afternoon, when the kids were tired and restless. I confiscated notes being passed around and ordered the students to quiet down.

"No!'' a boy shouted. "We're verbally gifted! We have to express ourselves.''

I walked to the door and blocked it with an arm. "Since this is the last class of the day, how about I keep you all an extra five minutes for every time I have to admonish you to quiet down?''

Good impulse. Bad execution. As a vet told me later: "Rule 5 of Subbing: Never ask a question you don't know the answer to.'' He could have added: Especially in a gifted class.

"Sir!'' A diminutive boy with a rattail hairstyle jumped up. "According to the student handbook, you must give 24-hour notice before a detention can be served.'' All the students nodded. They knew they had me. Gulp.

"OK,'' I said, hoping I looked confident, ``so I have to inform your teacher that you need a detention, then she notifies your parents, then you serve the detention.'' The class quieted instantly.

I walked proudly back to the teacher's desk, feeling somewhat gifted myself.

Sticker Shock

Next stop: Second grade, Jack Gordon Elementary in the southwestern suburb of Country Walk. I started by showing my new weapon in the sub wars.

"Green stickers for good behavior.'' They nodded eagerly. They'd had stickers before. "Red stickers for bad behavior.'' There were ooooo 's of amazement. They weren't used to bad stickers. At the end of the day, I told them, the table with the most green stickers, minus red stickers, will get a special prize. They nodded happily. No one asked what the prize would be.

I groaned when I saw the schedule: P.E. was first.

"I take my lines very seriously,'' I told the kids with a somberness that a month before I would have found absurd. "If you do not have a good line, you will not go to P.E.''

They nodded earnestly and, without much prodding, formed a straight line by the door. I counted: 28 students. We trooped out to the sprawling green lawn in good order, and the P.E. teacher took command.

Thanks to the stickers, the rest of the day flowed smoothly. Kids clapped when their table received a green sticker, and they shushed when I approached with a red sticker on my thumb. Green stickers for doing contractions correctly, green stickers for keeping a clean work area.

I had become a better teacher, but I wondered if maybe these kids were simply well behaved on their own. During 15 minutes of silent reading, I heard barely a peep.

After lunch, from 11:50 to 12:30, according to my sheet of handwritten instructions, came "Definition of first 10 spelling words.'' When I ordered them to write the definitions, they groaned. "We never write down definitions.''

OK, we'd say them out loud. A green sticker for every correct definition. As the students ran through the words, I looked at the math assignment coming up: multidigit subtraction. Then a girl stuttered over the definition of boys. "A boy is someone who has a . . . uh, uh . . . uh . . .''

My mind was on subtraction, and only after she fell silent did I look up to see her strained face and realize the potential for disaster.

"So,'' I said quickly, seizing the first thought that leapt to mind, "boys are kids who eat bugs and do silly stuff.''

The kids giggled, and rather than get into the definition of the word, girls, I launched a spelling bee, for stickers of course. And so it went, through math and then a social studies lesson on Martin Luther King Jr.'s concept of nonviolent protest.

Only a couple of times did I mete out red stickers, and each time I did, the offender's table mates berated him.

When we finished a science discussion 15 minutes early, I reached into my "bag of tricks'' -- trivia contests I'd downloaded from the Internet. The kids learned that a leap year has 366 days and February is the shortest month. They squealed with delight each time their table scored a correct answer and received a sticker.

At the end of the day, I gave the winning table small yellow legal pads. They stared at them in amazement. Legal pads? Puzzled, but still happy.

When the bell rang, several kids came up to me. "Please, Mr. D., can you come back tomorrow?''

Even though the kids had been well behaved, I felt like an exhausted actor after hours on stage. Still, I left riding an emotional high: Seeing these beaming faces, feeling that I had imparted bits of knowledge made me understand how people could love teaching.

The Party Room

After another noncatastrophic day as a math teacher at Miami High, I was flirting with the notion that maybe this teaching biz wasn't so hard after all. Then came Thomas Jefferson Middle School, I-95 at Northwest 147th Street.

At the classroom door, a glum band of students waited for me. "Oh no,'' I heard someone say as I unlocked the door. "Another sub.''

On the teacher's desk was a handwritten note: "Dear Sub -- Welcome!'' It was written for the previous day. Apparently, she had planned to be absent one day, not two. In a messy stack were the students' exercises from the day before. I saw no seating chart, no schedule. All I had was a brief handwritten note from the school secretary, dictated by the teacher over the phone, listing math exercises for the students to do.

In first-period algebra, I passed around a sign-up sheet and told them to do the exercise. At least half ignored me and gossiped with friends.

"Quiet!'' I ordered. They idly glanced at me and went back to talking. Drawing on my experience, I began patrolling the room, standing over gossips. No sitting for me today.

A short-haired girl demanded a hall pass. I knew from my Nautilus instructions that passes were a no-no. When I refused, she huffed and charged out the door. "That girl left class without permission,'' I shouted to a security guard, feeling the day slipping away from me.

In second-period algebra, I noticed a girl gossiping and did a double-take: She had been gossiping in first- period algebra. "Oh, this is my real class,'' she claimed. "Last period was a free period.''

Middle-schoolers don't get a "free period.'' I glanced at the attendance sheet my students had signed for the first class. Among the attendees were sports stars Emmitt Smith and Deion Sanders.

Over lunch, as I wolfed down a sandwich in the teachers' lounge, a woman walked in rubbing a red spot on her forehead. Some boy had burst into her class and, as she'd struggled to eject him, her head slammed against a door. Several colleagues urged her to see a doctor, but she refused to leave school.

After lunch, four students came in a half-hour late. I barred the door with my arm. "Go to the office for permission slips,'' I yelled. Another group opened a window and chatted with friends on the lawn. "Keep that window closed or you get detention.'' That focused their attention. No more messing with the window.

Despite these small victories, the noise went on unabated. When my attention was directed to one side of the room, a group of girls behind me made preternatural whoop-whoop sounds, but when I swung to look at them, they were innocently studying their textbooks.

"Hey, sub!'' shouted one student. "This your first time at Thomas Jefferson?'' When I said yes, he smiled. "Didn't you hear about us? Someone burned down the auditorium. A security guard got arrested. We have the lowest stanines.''

Well, I knew there were schools with lower stanines, but as an adolescent, he seemed to take pride in being the baddest of the bad.

"Pretty noisy,'' I mumbled to a girl as I showed her how to reduce the fraction 6/15.

"Yesterday was worse,'' she said. "That sub just sat behind the desk and didn't do anything.''

By my last period, the class size had mushroomed to 40. The noise level approached that of Pro Player Stadium during a Dolphins game. Kids arranged their desks in clusters, better to talk with their friends. When I prodded one gossiping girl to do the assignment, she stared at me: "Oh, I'm not in this class.''

"Well, what are you doing here?''

"I'm, like, a tutor,'' she said huffily. With that, she turned back to her gossip-mate.

I was later told by another teacher that I had become host to a "party room,'' where kids come to take advantage of a sub. I should have kicked the girl out immediately, but I was worn out, and every second seemed to bring a new crisis . I kept rushing around, confiscating items being tossed around: The teacher's hand lotion (which a boy took from her desk), a globe, a Buzz Lightyear doll, a pound bag of coffee (used in hair, I was told, "to make it grow'').

Several times, I considered calling security, but I kept guessing (hoping, praying) that the class was nearly over. It wasn't.

A skinny kid, wielding a pencil like a knife, occupied me for quite a while. "I'm going to poke your eye out,'' he said to another kid. I contemplated grabbing the pencil and breaking it in his face, but decided not to: In this atmosphere, breaking one pencil might invite imitations and escalations. Instead, I persuaded him to sit down.

As soon as he did, a boy and a girl burst in the door. I started to kick them out, but they gave me a vague explanation about having been involved in some recycling chore elsewhere. Before I could decide what to do, two girls headed for the door. I blocked it. They pleaded to be allowed to see the new boy they somehow knew was hanging out in the corridor. When I refused, they remained by the door, pouting.

Well, why not be creative? I made the girls a deal: Do two fraction problems, and you can have a peek. They did, and I swung the door open a foot. They squealed when they saw the new kid (pretty buff, apparently), and then returned happily to their desks. Amid the chaos, I felt a minor sense of accomplishment.

You could play all of this as a comedy, except for one painful image: In the midst of the zoo, a few students were hunched over their math books, working diligently. When I glanced at what they were doing, I saw a lot of wrong answers. I crouched beside their desks, offering explanations, but it was hard to make myself heard.

First Aide

Each time I entered a school, I received a new, inside glimpse of life in a community that journalists -- and most parents -- usually see from a distance, filtered through secondhand account and rumor. I was realizing that each school's atmosphere was not merely a reflection of the affluence or neediness of the community surrounding it, or the ethnic or socioeconomic status of the students, but a complex interplay between parenting, teaching and administrative skills.

The best example of how skillful educators can push back the forces of chaos I saw at my last school, Thena Crowder Elementary, on the edge of Liberty City.

I arrived a few minutes after the bell rang. As the secretary led me to a third-grade classroom, we came upon the principal in the hallway. "Who's this?'' she demanded. The secretary introduced me, and the principal gave me a five-second stare. This was not one of the schools I had requested, and she didn't know I was a journalist, but she saw something in me that made her come to an instant decision: This man needs help.

Within 10 minutes, as another teacher was introducing me to my students, Glenda Saunders, who has been working as a teacher's aide at the school since 1989, came in. She knew these students by name, and began barking commands.

For much of the rest of the day, Ms. Saunders ran the class, and I served as her aide, stapling work sheets together and such. She didn't hesitate to boss me around. During math, when she went off briefly to the bathroom, I gave students pieces of paper to draw on as they finished their assignments. "Oh no,'' she said as soon as she saw what I was doing. "This is not art time.'' If they saw they could have fun drawing, she explained, they'd turn in their math papers without finishing them. "When they're done, they can read a book.''

(Good idea. In fact, the value of aides who know students and come from the school's neighborhood has recently begun to be appreciated. One national program, run by a private foundation, is attempting to capitalize on this resource by subsidizing aides while they earn college teaching degrees.)

Throughout the day at Thena Crowder, help always seemed to be around. When the kids went to P.E. class, a couple of other women appeared to shepherd the lines. An adult volunteer was helping on the playground and in art classes. When Ms. Saunders was busy overseeing lunch, another aide arrived to help with my class.

Still, these weren't easy kids to control. Both Ms. Saunders and I were shouting frequently. In the teachers' lounge, a veteran of two decades moaned: "This is the worst year I've had.'' She blamed the kids' upbringing for the lack of respect for authority. She mentioned a single mother of one of her recent students. The woman had a late-shift job. "What that meant,'' said the teacher, "was her son played those Sega-Nintendo games from 3 to 11 every night.'' This wasn't baby-sitting by television and Fred Flintstone. It was baby-sitting by Mortal Kombat. "That child was uncontrollable at school.''

Pencil Pusher

In talking to veteran teachers around the county, I found that virtually all agreed: Kids are tougher to control today because they have less respect for authority. John Taylor, a teacher and administrator for almost four decades, told me after I recounted my sub tribulations: "What you experienced is the norm.

"It is very frustrating for any teacher to work with kids today,'' he said. ``Youngsters are using every ploy they can come up with to avoid being taught.''

Even students, it turns out, are upset. One national survey found that seven of 10 students thought disruptive classmates were a serious problem.

The core of the problem, many teachers told me, is that there aren't sufficient ways to punish students. "What consequence is there for these kids if they misbehave?'' one long-time teacher asked me. "There is no consequence.''

The girl at Thomas Jefferson who barged out of my class without permission was back within a few minutes with a permission slip from the office. If kids don't like studying, forcing them to spend time in the office does not fill them with misery.

When I told one teacher about my "party room'' at Thomas Jefferson, he replied: "The problem is what's the penalty for skipping a class? I try to call the parents, and so much of the time, they're not home, or the phone has been disconnected. If you can't get the parents on your side, then you can't make it.''

Beverlee Rosen, an administrator at Thomas Jefferson: "Some parents think that the school should do everything. We're battling a hard battle.'' When a student was picked up for carrying a weapon and she called the father to come pick him up, the father replied huffily: "I'm cooking right now. I don't have time.''

If discipline is a challenge for regular teachers, it can be an insurmountable problem for substitutes. That's particularly worrisome because of the time subs spend in the classroom. Though the school system keeps no direct statistics on how often students have subs in their classroom, at Tropic's request, officials calculated an estimate based on annual expenditures for substitutes. It works out to subs sitting in Dade classrooms 8.31 percent of the time.

Given that, the system's baptism-by-fire for temporary teachers -- watch a brief videotape, get thrown into a classroom -- draws considerable criticism from administrators. Thirlee Smith, an assistant principal at Frederick Douglass, is one of many who wishes the system had a "general orientation process'' so that subs could visit a school for three days, see what is going on, where the cafeteria and library are located, and observe regular teachers before they are ever entrusted with a classroom.

The problem, of course, is cost. Substitute training is not in anyone's budget. For three years, grants funded a program that concentrated on the most dire need, training subs for inner-city schools, where teachers tend to be absent more and experienced subs are often reluctant to work. As a result, the most demanding subbing jobs often fall to neophytes. The grants paid for eight days of training. Administrators and subs loved the program, but the money is gone.

Eaten Alive

Now that I've finished this story, I can't really afford to take days off to serve as a substitute teacher. But, for some reason, I haven't gotten around to removing my name from the roster of available substitutes. There's something in the back of my mind that makes me just want to . . . get it right.

Except I realize now that there's not a single right way. I think back to a revealing conversation with Billy Birnie, a school system director for teacher training, who emphasized, "Teaching is an art . There are a million ways to control students.''

The trick is to find what works best for you. Many educators, for example, told me that they would never break a pencil in front of a child's face -- too traumatizing -- but they stopped short of criticizing Mr. Joseph for doing so: He knew his audience, and he knew what worked for him.

Me, I'm still finding out. As I finished this story, I just happened to pick up one of my sons' pencils. I tried to break it. Strained every muscle in my arms. Couldn't do it.

And then I had a sudden, nightmarish vision: The classroom spinning out of control, Mr. Dorschner pulling the last-resort pencil out of a kid's hand with an angry flourish, and . . . failing miserably to break it.

They would have eaten me alive.

Section: TROPIC
Copyright (c) 1997 The Miami Herald