"He's Cheating Himself"

Here is another story from the now defunct Great Stories website. I don't know if this translates into everyday life, but in 9 years of teaching I've never laughed this hard, so if that counts for anything...

The time I laughed the hardest while teaching occurred about 6 years ago.

I had been teaching for about 3 or 4 years. Every year that I'd taught, I had a couple of lower level, "inclusion" Geometry classes that I co-taught with a special education teacher, Mike. I was at the point in my budding career as a teacher where I was finally reconciling the fact that I would be no Jaime Escalante, that I wouldn't get to teach Calculus all day and open young minds with it. (Now, five years later, I do teach Calculus, but I digress.)

Anyway, co-teaching with Mike had started to loosen me up a little bit. It wasn't that he didn't take his job "seriously". It was more that he'd been doing it for a few years and he saw the job for what it was. Mike was always the guy to start up a fantasy football league among the guys in the department, always striving hard to figure out the best prank to play among the other teachers. He related well to the kids he was there for as well.

So Mike and I had started to develop a rhythm with our teaching. We co-taught the same course together for a couple of years straight, and two sections per year. We would switch off explaining things, and Mike seemed to have a way to simplify concepts for the kids who were real low academically, that I couldn't seem to simplify things enough for. With one of us explaining while the other circulated the room, things were running as smoothly as can be expected. Our classrooms were always filled with a hodgepodge of lazy screwoffs and otherwise good kids who just weren't very good at math and learning in general. So, there was only so much learning that could be expected.

This particular year, in the front row of one of our classes sat, from our left to our right, some kid who wasn't there half the time, a complete goofball "Phil", and a burnout kid who wasn't very swift named "Jerome". Why the alias Jerome then? You remember Jerome from that 80s classic Summer School...?

Shoop: Hey, I remember you. Where have you been?
Jerome Watkins: Bathroom.
Shoop: For the last six weeks?
Jerome Watkins: My zipper got stuck.

Sorry, go sidetracked. Anyway, Phil was so ADD that he had to sit in the front to prevent him from staring out the window, dazed, at whatever was happening, or else from trying some conversation with somebody around him. Despite this, he was extremely affable, though rarely on the right side of passing. For similar reasons, burnout Jeb also sat in the front row. Phil would often, in a very likable way, try to chat with one or both of us teachers about... well, anything else... during class. Often, his hand would shoot up and something random would come out. What did we think of the Giants game last weekend? Did you guys know that if you are driving without your seatbelt, you could get a ticket? Hey, I was watching wrestling this weekend and I was thinking of our lesson about, you know, squares and stuff. You get the point.

So one day we're giving a test. Jerome happened to show up that day and, like Jerome from "Summer School", in all likelihood got the best grade in the class. We're about ten minutes into the test and it's really quiet. But quickly, it becomes evident that Phil did not feel comfortable with the material. Phil starts looking up to see if we're looking at him, and if not, he gives the old "yawn, cough, and head-turn" about as obviously as a 13-year-old boy on a first date. Jeb, who was uncharacteristically awake on this particular day, was always worse off than Phil in terms of being aware of one's surroudings, and he didn't even catch on that Phil was attempting to get Jeb to help him out somehow. Jeb is looking at Phil, puzzled, and then looking back at his paper. Occassionaly, Phil then tries somehow to look at Jerome's paper, but Jerome is indifferent to all other students and is working at an angle where it is clear that Phil won't be able to see much in that direction. Soon Phil's stage-whisper-like attempts to cheat became comical to the point that everybody else in the class is starting to look at Phil.

Mike and I catch eyes and we decide, unspoken, that one of us must say something and it's going to be Mike. Mike nods and walks closer to Phil. Usually, in situations like these, teachers will quietly "re-focus" the student or deal with it discreetly. But Mike, in his unique style, stands in front of Phil and says loudly enough for the class to hear, "Phil, why are you trying to cheat off of these two guys? This guy [Jeb] is asleep half the time, and this guy [Jerome] hasn't been here in three weeks."

A number of things happened spontaneously and simultaneously. I looked down at my attendance book, which happened to be open in front of me, and it confirmed that yes, Jerome hadn't been there for about three weeks. Jerome, who had been hard at work, looked up puzzled at what was happening. Phil smiled a big goofy "you got me, wow, how did you know?" look at Mike. Jeb laughed self-effacingly at the fact that he was a burnout who never knew what was happening and was half-asleep often. Several students chuckled.

A combination of strong feelings, both positive and negative, about my situation of teaching this class which I had been telling myself was way "below" me, all arose at once. And, looking at these goofball faces in front of me from left to right, I lost it. I started laughing so hard that I literally fell down to the floor. Once students saw me like this (and I was usually all business, I never was like this), it started them laughing. Just as I was controlling my laughter, I looked up at my students, caught eyes with Phil and Jeb's goofy faces again, and lost it even more. I had to leave the room and laugh to myself for about 3 or 4 minutes straight. Finally, I composed myself, went back in the room, and we all chuckled for a little bit.

There was an implicit understanding, I'd like to think, on the part of all the students and on our part as teachers that we were acknowledging our own goofiness and the goofiness of the situation in general. Phil always took our joking on him well, especially when Mike did it, and he was laughing as well. Finally, we all focused and got back to work.