The First Day in My Own Movie

(Continued from Wednesday, August 28, 2013 . . . )

The first five weeks in that seventh grade classroom in Omaha were straight out of the 1955 movie The Blackboard Jungle. Watching it as a college freshman, I’d thought that the unruliness and violence portrayed in the movie’s inner-city classroom could happen only among the really poor, those who had nothing to look forward to. Those whose rage boiled over because of poverty. I didn’t recognize the bias of that belief nor the naiveté.

         Now, five years later, I daily entered a classroom that vied in rowdiness with the movie’s—a classroom of young, middle-class, Catholic students whose lives seemed far removed from those of the high school students in the movie.

         Each day they gleefully dashed to their desks ready to intimidate me. The entry door was at the back of the room; my desk at the front. As I sat there, I could look to the left of the rectangular classroom and see three rows of desks parallel to the inner wall. The boys sat there. To my right, along the wall of windows, sat three rows of girls.

         On my first day in that classroom, I’d discovered, after everyone had quieted down, that they’d completed all the textbooks by Christmas. Hearing this, my mind went into high gear. “I don’t believe that you know everything that’s in those books,” I said. “I’m going to give you some written quizzes to find out. You’ll have to prove me wrong.”

         The challenge prompted them to take paper and pencil out of their desks and settle down. The day passed: a quiz or two; recess; another quiz; lunch; another couple of quizzes; recess; a final quiz.

         As the day progressed, I gave a twenty-five-question quiz on each subject area: English, geography, civics, science, reading, math, American history. Some answers would require a simple true/false or yes/no; others, a word or two; still others, a paragraph of explanation.

         Fortunately, I’d majored in English Literature in college with minors in history, philosophy, and math. I’d had a good education and so, simply by flipping through their textbooks, I thought of questions to ask.

         After each quiz, I had the students trade papers with one another. Then we’d discuss each of the questions to arrive at what might seem the right answer. But I insisted that we listen to other answers to the same question to determine if any of them contained some kernel of accuracy.

         A student grading a paper that had an answer that differed from the “right” one had to try and figure out why the other student had written that answer. Was it a feasible response to a question that might appear to have only one answer? A student could defend her or his answer if the grader argued with it. 

         They seemed to love to debate, although they often resorted to put-downs and yelling. But I’d remain silent, simply watching them or the clock. They didn’t seem to know what to make of me.

         At the end of the day, I collected all the papers and said I’d look them over and give them grades. That night, after getting permission from Sister Brendan to stay up late, I graded and then stapled together each student’s quizzes.

         The next day I asked Jenny, one of the seventh-grade girls, to hand back the papers. She sashayed down the boys’ aisles, humming. Suddenly she yelped, arched her body, and scurried down the row toward where I stood. But as she passed two other boys, she yelped again. When I asked what had happened, she looked down at the floor and muttered, “Nothin’. Nothin’ happened.”

         Walking purposefully down the aisle, amidst catcalls and hooting, I discovered that each boy had a math compass on his desk. At the far end of the row sat Ron—six foot tall already, broad shoulders, muscled arms and chest, smug attitude.

         I’d recognized him as soon as I’d entered the classroom that morning with Sister Brendan. He was the boy who’d done the bashing on the playground the Friday before.

         When I stopped at the side of his desk and put my hand out for the compass, he bragged, “No girl gets by me without tasting the sharp end of my compass.”

         All I said was, “Not any more.”

         From that time on, I passed out all the papers.

                           (. . . continued next Wednesday, September 11, 2013)

Poster and compass from Wikipedia.
Stack of books by Gualberto107 of freedigitalphotos.com

A Baptism by Fire

(Continued from August 21, 2013 . . . )

The fight on the Omaha playground took place on Friday. The next day, I expected to board the train for Walsenburg, Colorado, where I’d spend the rest of the school year. But that morning, Sister Brendan, the Omaha superior, summoned me to her office.

         I knelt by her chair as did all nuns when a superior wanted to confer with them. It was a sign of obedience to what would be said or asked.

         “Sister Innocence,” she said, “you won’t be going to Walsenburg. Instead you’ll stay here and teach a section of seventh graders.”

         I must have looked confused because she added, “The nun who’s been their teacher is returning to the Mount.” I nodded, still not understanding. She riffled through some papers on her desk and said, not looking at me, “She’ll be sent to Council Bluffs.”

         Leaving her office, I went to the basement to do the convent laundry. Sister Mary Norbert followed me. She asked what I knew about my new assignment.

         “Nothing really. Sister Brendan just told me I’d be teaching seventh graders because their teacher was being reassigned to Council Bluffs.”

         Norbert grimaced. “Not reassigned. It’s not a school she’s going to. It’s a mental facility. Saint Bernard’s. Run by the Mercy nuns.”

         Now I was totally confused.

         “It’s where the Mount sends all the nuns who’ve gone off the deep end,” she added. As she ascended the steps, her final words drifted down to me like wisps of smoke from dying embers. “She’s nuttier than a fruitcake. And she’s taught those seventh graders to be Nazi storm troopers.”

This is a psychiatric hospital in Michigan.

But if you’d like to see an early photograph of St. Bernard’s,

click here.

         On Monday morning I followed Sister Brendan up to the second floor of the grade school. She pointed out her eighth-grade classroom on the left and then motioned me to the door on the right. On its glass window someone has taped dark construction paper so we couldn’t see in.

         When we entered, Sister Brendan immediately removed the construction paper, and with seeming satisfaction, crumpled it into a ball and tossed it nonchalantly into the wastepaper basket. Then she strode to the front of the classroom.

         Meekly, I followed, gazing nervously at the fifty-five seventh graders sitting there. Seeing me, many smirked. Nudged one another. Gave one another a high-five. Rolled their eyes. Whispered out of the sides of their mouths.

         Out of those mouths had tumbled the violent words that had catapulted me into the middle of their violent circle the previous Friday. They’d certainly acted like Nazi storm troopers then. I saw the boy who’d done the bopping; I saw the boy who’d lain on the ice. He had two butterfly bandages on his shaved sculp.         

         “This is Sister Innocence,” Sister Brendan said as I stood next to her. “She’ll teach you the rest of the year.” When Ron asked where their “real” teacher was, Sister Brendan said, “She’s returned to the Mount due to ill health.”  

         Gleefully, twenty-eight boys and twenty-seven girls in six rows stared at me as if I were a hen to pluck. They knew, as did I, that I was a rookie. Easy pickings.

         My heart began to pound; fear inched its way through my veins. Sister Brendan smiled at me encouragingly and then walked out of the room, closing the door firmly behind her.

         Hearing the latch click shut, the seventh-graders hooted. Howled. Their din hurt my ears. “Quiet, please,” I said, over and over. I could hear the plea in my voice. The weakness. I trembled as their voices thundered round me.

         Bewildered, I sat down at the desk and simply gazed at them. One by one. They fidgeted. Shrugged their shoulders. Began to throw balled paper at me and to roll spitballs. Still I stared at them, saying nothing. Slowly quiet settled round us.

         Now began the task of teaching. This was to be, I feared, a baptism by fire.

                                    ( . . . to be continued next Wednesday, September 4.)

Psychiatric hospital from Wikipedia.

Violence on the Playground

(Continued from last Wednesday, August 14 . . . )

Bloodthirsty cries overshadowed the laughter of the fifth graders surrounding me on the icy playground at St. Peter and Paul Grade School in Omaha, Nebraska, on Friday, January 15, 1960.

         “Kill ‘im, Ron! Kill ‘im!”

         “Bash his head!”

         “Looka’ that blood!”

         “Bill, break his nose!”

         “Kill ‘im, Ron! Kill ‘im!”

         “Go for his eyes!”

         “Bash him a good one!”

         “Kill ‘im, Ron!”

         The words shocked me into action. Alarmed, I rushed toward a circle of boys gathered in the shadow of the school building. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, three deep around a center I couldn’t see, shouting, punching the air with clenched fists. Frenzied, I tried to move them aside.

         “Excuse me! Let me through. I’ve got to get through.”

         The boys, in their thick winter jackets, seemingly unaware of anything beyond what was happening in front of them, refused to budge. Their churning circle tightened. Contracted.

         I shoved. Pushed. Tried to pull them apart.

         They shoved back. Snarled at me. Cursed.

         Struggling to pull them apart, I edged forward toward the center of the shouting circle.

         “Keep bashin’ his head, Ron! Kill ‘im!”

         Hearing those vicious words, I instinctively looked to the left. A boy, blond hair flapping over his forehead, stared avidly at the scene before him. His body moved back and forth to the thumps coming from the center of the circle. Saliva dribbled onto his dirty white shirt. Most of its buttons had popped off so that it gaped open over his stomach, which pooched out over his tight belt.

         I followed his maniacal gaze downward to where two boys struggled.  One atop the other. Blood matted the hair of the one on the bottom. The boy tabled above held his opponent’s head between splayed fingers. He bopped it up and down, up and down, against the ice. The boy’s head thudded. Blood spurted.

         The eyes of the boy on the bottom rolled back. His limp hands lay at his side.

         “Kill ‘im, Ron!”

         Those words galvanized me. My hands gripped the shoulders of the boy doing the bopping. I tried to pull him backward.

         He punched out at me. Grazed my cheek. Socked my eye.

         His own eyes were glazed, staring unseeingly at the force trying to stop his crazed battering of the boy beneath him.

         “It’s a nun!” the boy with popping buttons shouted. “Don’t hit her! You’re be excommunicated!”

         The shouting stopped. Silence.

         The boy on top fell to the side and lay panting on the ground. The boy beneath him opened his eyes, tried to rise, fell back.

         Just then Sister Julian came running from around the back of the school building. “What’s happening?” she shouted.

         The boy with the popped buttons tried to head her off. “Nothin’s happenin’, Sister. Just a friendly fight.”

         She stepped aside, avoiding him, and headed to where I stood, surrounded by boys, their eyes downcast. She glanced at the two struggling to get up, turned toward me, and asked, “Are you hurt?”

         “He just grazed me.”

         Julian ordered me to go over to the convent and ice my face. She’d get my fifth-graders settled in their classroom.

         As I walked away, I could hear her voice demanding an explanation from the boys. Wondering how that boy had learned the word excommunication and whose classroom he and the rest of the boys were in, I felt grateful that I hadn’t had to teach them for two weeks. The next day I’d travel to Walsenburg, Colorado, and never see those boys again. Thank heavens!

                                                      (. . . to be continued next Wednesday)

Photographs from Wikipedia.

Memories of a Classroom

(Continued from last Wednesday—August 7 . . . )

Not quite fifty-four years ago—on Sunday January 3, 1960—I, a newly vowed scholastic, boarded the train in Atchison, Kansas, and traveled to Omaha, Nebraska, a distance of 159 miles. I wore my Sunday habit and the black veil I’d exchanged for the white one worn for the novitiate year. My suitcase held . . .

·      my daily black habit made of seven yards of black serge;

·      my daily scapular, the long rectangular piece of black serge that covered the habit both back and front;

·      several flat white coifs of pleated linen, which, when shaped and worn, would cover my neck, head, and the sides of my face;

·      two heavily starched and rigid white linen headbands;

·      two voluminous one-piece cotton undergarments that encased the body from shoulders to thighs;

·      two floor-length cotton nightgowns;

·      an extra pair of black shoes;

·      two aprons;

·      my monastic diurnal from which I prayed the Divine Office, the ancient Latin prayers said seven different hours a day;

·      my St. Andrew Daily Missal for use during Mass;

·      and a collection of readings used for Matins, the longest prayer of the day.

          There may have been more in the black leather suitcase, which my parents had given me just two days before, but I have no memory of toothpaste, toothbrush, shampoo, soap, shoe polish, or the other sundries that I’d carry today.

          Nor do I remember the three-hour trip. Did I stew about entering a classroom the next day to teach when I’d had no classes on teaching? Was I curious about the nuns I’d be living with at the St. Peter and Paul convent? Did I already miss my classmates who’d been left behind to start college?

          Was the scene beyond the train window that January morning bleak? Sunny? Windy? Snow swept? Did grain stubble pierce through the frozen black soil of Nebraska? Were the dark skeletons of trees, stark against the prairie sky, foreboding? I don’t know.

         This is what I do remember about the two weeks that followed: The next day, I entered the fifth-grade classroom of Sister Nicole who was being treated for cancer in a nearby hospital. From a pole high above the chalkboard draped an American flag. Bookcases, with innumerable children’s books arranged in alphabetical order, nestled beneath the windows of the far wall. A globe stood on one bookcase. The room was sunny, filled with the children’s art and posters about reading and hygiene.

         The children within that classroom were young. Innocent. Welcoming. Concerned about their beloved teacher. They asked each morning if we could say special prayers for her throughout the day. I was eager to meet the woman whom these children treasured. Thoughtfully, she’d left me detailed lesson plans so I’d know how to proceed and what to teach.

         The only other thing I remember from her classroom is Stanley. A tall, hollow-cheeked child with sea-blue eyes and tousled chestnut hair, he sat mute in the back seat of the row next to the windows, staring blindly ahead while lobbing a hardball into his baseball glove. A sorrowful river of tears flowed over his pale cheeks and plopped onto his worn jeans throughout each of the ten days I spent in that classroom

          Another nun told me that Stanley’s father had died in an accident over the Christmas holidays. The children and I respected his grief—we were, I think, awestruck by it—and grew used to the thud, thud, thud, of the ball as it hit his first-baseman’s glove. Those thuds, which became the counterpoint to everything said in that classroom for those two weeks, still resound in my heart.

         It was on Friday, the last day of my sojourn in Sister Nicole’s classroom that I encountered a group of older children on the icy playground during recess. That encounter changed my life and may have taught me all I ever needed to know about teaching.

                                       (. . . to be continued next Wednesday)

Photograph by Jomphong from freedigitalphotos.com

The Monastery Sends Me Out to Teach

Hello to all of you who may have found this blog after my being away for eight weeks. During that time, I’ve finally completed a first draft of a novel and driven to Minnesota and back for a two-week vacation.

         Now I’m ready to resume my Wednesday postings on this on-line memoir. In the coming weeks, I’ll post about my three years as a scholastic at Mount Saint Scholastica Monastery.

         Way back in the fall of 2011, I posted a series of convent stories. When I ended those posts, I wrote the following:

This posting concludes the stories about my life in the novitiate. I’m going to turn now to stories about my growing-up years and my life with cats. In a few weeks, I hope to return to the convent postings and take up life in a Catholic grade school in Omaha, Nebraska.

Twenty months have passed since I wrote those words. What happened to those plans is that in January 2012 I read a posting by Manzanita on social justice. Her words sparked a six-month series of my own postings about my involvement in social-justice issues. Then for over a year I wrote about my childhood.

Many of you read those 2011 postings about my first eighteen months in the convent, but a number of you are new to my blog since then. If so, you may have some interest in a summary of my life in the novitiate, which I entered after graduating from college in June 1958. The following three posts summarize that time:   

Daily Life in the Novitiate: Part One

Daily Life in the Novitiate: Part Two

Daily Life in the Novitiate: Part Three

In addition to those posts, I did three on the difficulty of deciding whether to make first vows.

Preparing for First Vows: Part One

Preparing for First Vows: Part Two

Preparing for First Vows: Part Three

Finally, on December 6, 2011, I posted the story of my making first vows and the wonder of that day.

Joyfully Professing First Vows

I appreciate how busy your schedules are as you try to read all your favorite blogs. So I suspect that few, if any, of you will have the time or inclination to peruse the seven postings listed above.

However, if you do have a wee bit more time, I encourage you to read the final posting about vow day on January 1, 1960, as it sets the background for the scholastic postings.

This photo was taken on the day I made first vows 

and exchanged the white veil of the novitiate 

for the black veil of the scholasticate.  

 The outside of the college chapel in which I made first vows.

The inside of the college chapel in which I made first vows.  

On Saturday, January 2, 1960, Mother Alfred called me into her office and told me she’d planned to send me to Walsenburg, Colorado, to teach. However, a sister at the Omaha mission had been rushed to the hospital the day before, so I would take her place in a fifth-grade classroom for two weeks. Then I’d go to Colorado.

On Sunday, January 3, 1960, I boarded the train in Atchison, Kansas, and traveled north to Omaha, Nebraska. There, Sister Brennan met me and drove me to the convent next to St. Peter and Paul Grade School, Church, and Rectory.

The next day, I began to teach. I’d taken no teaching courses, but the state allowed me to teach on the condition that I take classes in the summer and work toward a certificate. The fact that I’d already graduated from college helped.

That’s the background for the upcoming scholasticate postings. Next Wednesday I’ll share with you a story of violence on an ice-laden playground in Omaha.

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