Why Did I Get a B? by Shannon Reed

Author:Shannon Reed
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2020-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

There had been problems between Mr. Calvin and the faculty at THSB the year before, and they worsened my first year. Soon, some of the veteran teachers managed to file complaints with the UFT (the United Federation of Teachers, our union). Mr. Calvin called a faculty meeting and told us that since we saw fit to file a complaint, he had no choice but to institute a disciplinary system for the students. This was conveyed in a wounded tone, as though we too should have been appalled that it had come to this solution: a SAVE Room would be opened. (SAVE was an acronym for New York’s then current school safety law.) We would now be able to send students whose behavior presented a serious disruption (“Only a serious disruption!” Mr. Calvin reminded us) to the SAVE Room for the remainder of the period. There was pleased murmuring among the teachers. Mr. Calvin continued to look at us sadly, shaking his head.

Although Paulie’s physical behavior was terrible (running at full speed around the room, flipping chairs, going through other kids’ bags, shoving stuff off desks), his real gift for disruption was his mouth, which was bad enough that the other kids, a group that used the N-word like it was a comma, were insulted by it. Paulie made many, many trips to the SAVE Room. Not just from my class. From every class. Every day. We should have put his nameplate on one of the desks in there.

One class, I was trying to help Nancy write a monologue while the rest of the class worked on writing scenes. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Patcho punch Paulie in the arm, and silently congratulated him on handling whatever problem had arisen by himself. But then there was a squeal of outrage from the other side of Paulie’s desk, and Monica was on her feet, hands on her hips.

“What is wrong with you?” she said to Paulie, but her eyes snapped over to include me too. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I control Paulie? I raised my eyebrows, and she pointed at him. “He called me a cunt!” she said.

“Please step into the hallway, Paulie,” I said, following the latest disciplinary protocol. Mr. Calvin wanted us to try to “talk things out” with students before dismissing them to the SAVE Room.

“Nah,” he said.

“Paulie,” I said.

“I’ll go to the SAVE Room,” he said. “Write me a pass.” He walked up to my desk, yanked open my desk drawer, and grabbed my stack of passes out of it. I blinked.

“Go on. Write me a pass, come on.”

Trying to gather some sort of authority, I scrawled out a pass, making a note in the Remarks section about what had transpired—“Called Monica a very bad word”—and then phoned for the building’s security guards, who were supposed to escort students to the SAVE Room.

“I need an escort in room 237,” I said.

“This Ms. Reed?”

“Yes.”

“Is it Paulie?”

“…Yes.”

“Uh-huh. We’ll send someone.”

But someone never appeared.

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