One year in a school: Making room for one more

Benjamin Grove

Monday, May 17, 1999 | 10:54 a.m.

This is the second day of a seven-day series that chronicles the lives of fourth graders in a classroom at Helen Jydstrup Elementary School. Reporter Benjamin Grove closely followed the class during the first three months of this school year and has monitored the students' progress since then. The Sun changed the names of the students, their teacher and substitute teachers to protect the children's identities. Names of other teachers are real.

Today a substitute teacher struggles to control the students. Later Pendry returns and welcomes another new student to his classroom in the transient school.

Thursday, Sept. 3, 1998

Substitute. The very word says raw meat to 9-year-olds.

Today John Pendry's class has a sub for the first time.

Tension hangs in the room. The sub, Robert, who says he was among the first disabled students in Clark County to be mainstreamed into "regular" classrooms in 1983, is in charge today.

Robert recently lost his job as a carpet salesman. He has a college degree, which is all you need to be a substitute teacher in Clark County.

It's his second day subbing ever. "So far, so good," he says, a few minutes into class.

The room is eerily silent. Pupils are doing their boardwork, which Pendry has the class do every day. Pendry uses the boardwork to engage students from the moment they walk into class.

Boardwork usually consists of eight or 10 problems hitting all the major subjects; math, science, social studies, language arts. (Pendry calls it Daily Oral Math (DOM), Daily Oral Language (DOL), etc.)

Robert is in a motorized wheelchair, and the students are awed by it. Richard gapes.

Robert also has a speech impediment, but the students seem to understand a lot of what he says. He doesn't explain his disability, and strangely the usually forward students don't ask.

They had plenty of warning from Pendry to behave. "I know it won't do any good," Pendry had said a few days earlier.

Pendry left the words "Be Good" in big letters on the board.

It seems the students aren't quite sure what to make of their substitute.

At one point, Shannon explains to Robert how 35 plus 0 equals 35, apparently believing the UNLV graduate doesn't understand simple math.

The quiet calm lasts about a half hour.

Sub loses control

As they finish the boardwork, pupils get antsy. So Robert tries to introduce the spelling lesson for the day, creating a word scramble with the spelling words.

But the children are confused. They're expecting to immediately review the boardwork answers, as they typically do.

Shannon T. and Darius leap up and take control as Robert watches. There's an eruption of noise, and Robert loses control for a moment.

Shannon T. and Darius seize the moment and begin leading the class in going over the answers. Robert goes with the flow.

They go over four of the boardwork problems, leaving half for later.

Robert then tries to regain leadership, but the students keep coming at him. He has already asked a number of students to sit down.

Amal gets up a lot. He watches the sub closely. In several moments where it looks like Robert has lost the class for good, Amal -- ironically -- shouts, "Shut up."

Robert tells Amal that he can handle it. "He's a trouble maker, isn't he?..." Robert mutters.

Again, the sub tries to focus the class on the spelling assignment. But he doesn't explain how to create a word scramble, and the students flounder in their confusion.

Shannon T. seizes the moment again. She runs to Robert's side to explain a spelling word race game that Pendry uses. Each of the classroom's rows race against the others, with each student writing the word on a piece of paper. First row done wins.

"Is that what you normally do?" Robert asks, to no one in particular.

But the class is a step ahead. They are already organizing the race. Robert goes along.

The race is on

He gives them a word, and the race begins. But it's not clear who won. Instant arguing ensues. Robert calms them down enough to give the next word.

Another race, another argument. A third word, another race, another argument. Part of the contention: Shannon T. has deemed herself official scorer so she doesn't have to play.

Nasser picks up on the trick by the second word. Neither is participating, giving their teams a one-player-short edge. Robert ignores it.

Later Robert has the students read aloud from a book. Everyone reads at a different pace. The slow readers, including the substitute teacher hampered by a speech impediment, drop out early. About a page in, only five or six pupils, the best readers in class, are still reading. Hannah's voice sets the pace.

Afterward, students are supposed to work on a short worksheet about the story. Students do everything but work.

Several students plunder a neat stack of homework assignments on Pendry's desk. Others take 10 new nature magazines Pendry had piled by the classroom computer and begin tearing out trading cards of various animals. Amal, aided by Nasser, makes a stack of trading cards, puts a staple through it and hands it to the sub, who gives him a confused look.

Darius tapes his mouth shut and bulges out his eyes. He tries to get Hannah's attention, but she barely glances at him. He shrugs, seeming to admit it's not his best effort.

Ray draws a black Mohawk haircut on a dinosaur in a workbook. Jorge, a quiet pupil with a quick smile, reads ahead in his book. Several of the girls in class color on a get-well card for a relative of LaTasha, despite barely knowing their new classmate.

Mercifully, it's time for lunch. Robert breathes a deep sigh. "Whew," he says.

He mentions several times that the students in the first class where he subbed had asked him to come back.

"I'm pretty happy about that, at least," he says.

Wednesday, Sept. 9, 1998

It's about 20 minutes before school starts. Pendry is in the hallway outside his room talking to the newest addition to his class -- his 36th pupil, Cheyenne. (Michelle, a tall, round-faced blonde girl, wandered in a day or two ago.)

Cheyenne seems painfully shy. She has thick, long braids that almost reach the waistline of her green shorts with a flower pattern. Like some of the other girls in class, she wears platform tennis shoes. Cheyenne's are still bright white.

Cheyenne comes from Walter Bracken Elementary, a West Las Vegas school where 94 percent of the students get free or reduced lunch, a key indicator that leads school officials to label the school "at-risk."

Pendry introduces Cheyenne to Orwell and several other students on the playground before school starts. The teacher begins a relentless tease.

"Are you married?" Pendry asks the girl, who smiles. "We'll try to find you a husband today."

He tells her that if she doesn't have fun today, he will punish Orwell. Orwell shouts, "What?"

Finally, Pendry asks Cheyenne if she thinks he's weird, and she gives reluctant nod. "OK," Pendry says. "Good."

Pendry escorts Cheyenne into class before the 9 a.m. bell and makes room for a desk for her. She stands tentatively by the door, alone.

"How about sitting by girls? That good?" Pendry asks.

Before the bell rings, Pendry talks about the last few days. The students have been better behaved since the substitute, he says.

Robert, the substitute from last week, had melted down in the afternoon. He totally lost control. Another teacher had to come in and help him out.

Somewhat strangely, Robert wrote in his report that overall "The day was a resounding success!"

Pendry scolded the kids on Friday for giving the sub a hard time, but it will do little good the next time there's a sub, he says. Students eat subs alive. (Later in the year, the students will make an elderly substitute cry. She refused to come back again.)

Snake wrangler

Amal continues to dominate Pendry's attention in the crowded classroom, but his behavior has improved the last two days.

Pendry talked to Amal's mother after he left a message Wednesday. She called him at home, they talked for an hour. She defensively explained that she doesn't want Amal back on medications.

"Tell me what I should do," Pendry had said. "What would be a good motivator for him?" She talked about how Amal was an animal lover.

Pendry told her about Gizmo the snake, a classroom pet. They agreed to try to use the reptile in their favor.

"He's my snake wrangler now." Pendry says.

Later this morning, Pendry lets Amal clean the cage and briefly hold the snake while the other kids are reading "silently." Many watch Amal instead. In the library that morning, Amal checks out a book called "Snakes."

With the new motivator, Amal has calmed some. He has joined the classroom cluster of desks again. He bothers the students next to him but is not disruptive while Pendry teaches.

For the first time, on Tuesday, he had made a valiant effort at doing the boardwork in his boardwork journal. Today, only pieces of answers, badly misspelled (Hustin for Houston and Adipolis for Annapolis) make their way into the book.

Still, Pendry sees potential. He takes Amal aside, alone, before lunch.

"What do you have to do to keep this job?" Pendry asks.

"Not talk."

"And?" Pendry asks.

"Not bother everybody."

"And?"

The boy is stumped now.

"And do your work," Pendry says sternly.

"And do my work," Amal agrees.

"I'm going to wrangle that boy," Pendry says later. "It might take until Christmas, but I'm going to make him a productive member of society."

Student teacher

Another addition to the class is an education student at UNLV working on what is called a practicum. It's one step before student teaching.

For three hours credit, she mostly observes Pendry and will teach a few lessons. She will be coming every Monday and Wednesday morning until November. She hopes to be student teaching at a year-round school by summer and full-time teaching in the fall.

Meanwhile, she balances her job doing manicures with 16 hours of college coursework. She has subbed part time for about a year.

The young woman is keenly aware that this is a large class that can be difficult to control.

"If I hadn't been subbing, I'd be a nervous wreck in here," she says.

She never smiles, except when joking with Pendry. After Pendry runs to his car, leaving her in charge for five minutes, she tells him she isn't supposed to be alone with the students even for a moment.

During the morning boardwork, students have no trouble coming up with antonyms for the word "big." Almost all students raise their hands to answer today's word association problem: egg:tadpole::tadpole:]. (answer: frog).

Today's geography question: Name the capital of Texas. The teacher glances at Cheyenne, who doesn't raise her hand. Then he calls on Michelle, one of his newest additions to the class. "Austin," she answers correctly.

The class corrects grammar mistakes in several sentences written on the board. Richard has no idea what is wrong with the word "isnt."

Pendry fakes a sneeze, belting out the word "apostrophe." Richard doesn't get it.

"Where does it go?" Pendry asks.

Richard is silent.

Pendry writes the words "can't" and "don't" on the board, with giant apostrophes. Richard is stumped.

Pendry coaxes him.

"Between the N and the ..." Pendry says, trailing off.

Richard finally says, "Oh. The T?"

Pendry congratulates him. Pendry shakes his head. It's taken several minutes to walk Richard through the concept of contractions and his classmates are restless.

Pendry moves on with boardwork corrections. He pauses to remind Ronny to put his hearing aids in his ears. The boy reluctantly inserts them.

Career options

During a break later, Pendry discusses his career goal of becoming a principal. Pendry is nearing the end of a year of night classes as part of the district's principal training program.

His name enters the principal's pool in November. His salary would jump about $11,000 if the district made him an AP -- assistant principal.

"I like mixing it up with the kids," Pendry says. "But I like the idea of being a principal, too."

(Several months later, Mary Peterson, Nevada's schools superintendent, laments that the state's districts sometimes have difficulty keeping good teachers like Pendry in classrooms.

("That's too bad he's leaving," she says in an interview about the Jydstrup class. "We need good administrators, too. But if a teacher would just as soon stay in a classroom, we should be able to find a way to pay him better.")

Pendry also mentions that during the Labor Day weekend he played golf with several friends who are new principals. They told him he was committing career suicide by allowing a newspaper reporter to hang around.

"They spend most of their lives trying to stay out of the paper," Pendry says.

TUESDAY: As Pendry moves his class to a different room, the troublemakers continue to make trouble for everyone.

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