Poop?

It was only the third day of school, and I was already dreading fourth period. “Today will be a better day,” I told myself over and over again. They were too comfy on day one. There had been no honeymoon with this bunch. But, my students had their warm-up packets, they were to come in silently and get straight to work. But, no.

Standing in the back of the room, watching my animals trickle in (that’s what I call them, not to their faces of course, but in conversation with colleagues), I felt a strange smell start to tickle my nose. Vomit? No, not quite. Really rotten cheese? No. “It smells like SHIT in here!” Ah, yes, the unmistakable smell of shit. And there went my chance at a perfect day.

Immediately, I went into action mode. Inside I was frantic. How would I control the chaos that was taking place before my eyes? Outside, I was calm, collected, and in control. “Brenda, come here. We don’t speak like that in this room.” “Kevin, outside.” “Jorge, take out your warm up packet.” “Destiny, warm up packet.”

“Miss?”

“Yes?”

Oscar, nodding to the student next to him, whispered, “Can he go to the bathroom?”

And there it was: the overwhelming smell of poop wafting off the body of 15 year old Francisco.

“Yes.”

Once poor little poopy Francisco was out the door, the animals settled into their cage and got down to work. It was silent. I took role, and planned my speech. Hopefully I could get it out before the little poopster returned. No, that would make life too easy. He returned, still lightly smelling of poop. What was I supposed to do? I was not equipped to handle this situation. Drunk students? I can handle that. High students? I can handle that too. Pregnant girls? On it. Students on probation? Been there, done that. But poop? Isn’t that for elementary school teachers to figure out?

Poopy McPooperstein returned, and there was a light giggle in the back of the room. I delivered the death stare and it ceased. When it was clear that we were done with our warm up, I gave the speech. You know, the speech about transitioning from a child to an adult, how we all mature, and when there is a situation, adults learn how to move on, silently, and carry on with our work.

We worked our way through the agenda, into my relatively interactive activity about connotation (which helped me make up my mind that this class no longer needed interactive anything). There were many wisecracks and interruptions, and on each occasion we stopped until there was a deafening and uncomfortable silence. “Just make it until the final bell rings,” I told myself over and over again. We were finally under control when…

Yes, there’s more.

Outside my window, at the bus stop, there was a loud fight, the type of fight with a light shove and some of our language’s most colorful expletives. “Just don’t let any stray bullets come through my window,” was the only thought to go through my mind, until Jorge leapt out of his seat and started to bee-line towards the window. “Jorge, sit down!” I said in a voice that was as close to yelling as one can get without yelling. And then his body did the strangest thing. It was as though he was in The Matrix. His body wanted to continue to the window, but his mind was telling him to sit down. Two other bodies shot up, and I quickly got them to sit down. “But that’s my homey,” he protested. Good lord. People still say homey?! “They are uneducated fools, and we are here getting our educations so we don’t end up looking and sounding like the imbeciles outside, so sit down.” And of course, this is four minutes before the bell, and I just want to let these animals out of the cage to run loose on the world, but I can’t release them when the bell rings.

We make it through the end of our activity, after the bell rings, and they are dismissed. And I am left, still held captive in the cage.