One year in a school: Keeping order no easy task

Benjamin Grove

Tuesday, May 18, 1999 | 2:29 a.m.

This is the third 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 teacher John Pendry is moving his class to a different room -- part of the roving lifestyle of students in a crowded school. And the classroom's troublemakers continue to make trouble for everyone.

Friday, Sept. 11, 1998

It's Moving Day.

At Helen Jydstrup Elementary, a year-round school, one fourth grade class has to "rove" throughout the year. This year, it's teacher John Pendry and his class.

Pendry, who has no classroom of his own, has to pick up and move every three weeks or so as part of a big game of musical chairs with classrooms.

Crowded Jydstrup has five fourth grade classes, but only four fourth grade rooms. So every three weeks, all year long, Pendry moves his students into the room vacated by the class that is out on a three-week "track break" vacation.

(Later in the year a sixth fourth grade class is created at Jydstrup. That teacher roves from room to room in the school's portables.)

Pendry is literally stopped dead in his tracks, thinking, standing in the middle of the classroom. Another fourth grade teacher, who normally occupies the classroom, is back, sitting at her desk. For the first three weeks of school, Pendry has been using her desk and her room. Now she's back to reclaim both. On Monday, her students -- who have been out on track break -- return.

"How can we do this?" he asks, thinking aloud. "What are the logistics of this?"

He hatches a plan as thunder booms dramatically in the distance. (It's been an unusually rainy week, and the odd weather stokes the nervous energy of the children, who also are revved up because it's Friday.)

"Everybody gather up everything," Pendry announces shortly after 2 p.m.

He's been preparing his students for the move, so they have an idea about what is happening. They've seen other classes do it in years past. One class of fifth graders is roving this year, too. In another part of the building, it's moving time for them.

It's been decided that Pendry will move to the room across the hall. The class in the room across the hall today begins a three-week vacation.

After Pendry announces it's pack-up time, the classroom becomes a swirling mass of activity. Students fish everything out of their desks.

Pendry tells them to stack their textbooks on their desks -- those stay in the room. Everything else goes.

"Gather up everything -- papers, erasers, pens, pencils, notebooks, backpacks, scissors, library books," Pendry yells above the din.

Some students just don't get it. Nick stacks everything in his desk on top of his desk -- his papers, textbooks and school supplies included.

"Uh, no," Pendry tells him, separating the textbooks from the rest of Nick's pile.

Pack the snake

Students loaded with their materials sit in a line on the floor and wait for the actual move. Shannon T. offers to pack up Elena's stuff because Elena is absent. This reminds Pendry to appoint someone to pack up for other absent students or students who left early today.

Ray asks Pendry if he can take the science tubes full of green liquid during the move. "No," Pendry says, without hesitation.

"Can I take the snake?" Ray asks.

"Ah, also, no," comes Pendry's quick response.

Pendry gives Amal directions to clean out his desk. As Amal walks to his desk, Pendry senses he may not have been clear enough.

"Amal -- do not dump your desk out on the floor. Pull your stuff out by hand," Pendry says, satisfied he averted another small Amal disaster today.

Pendry takes stock. "I feel like a M.A.S.H. unit," he says. "We are," Ray confirms.

Finally, all the students are gathered with their stuff, seated on the floor en masse in front of the door. Meanwhile, the teacher across the hall has gathered her students together, with all their belongings.

Pendry's students then pour into the hallway and wait. The other teacher's students stream across the hall into Pendry's room, where they will wait out the final hour of the day.

Pendry's students then move into their new temporary classroom.

Pendry examines the surroundings. The place has been decorated wall-to-wall by the other teacher. A huge paper castle takes up much of one wall. A giant wizard is plastered in another corner.

"Make your desk your own. Move in, go ahead," Pendry tells the class.

He will let them sit anywhere as long as their behavior is good, he tells them.

A fresh start

"It's just like the first day of school," Pendry says. Mostly, boys sit with boys and girls with girls, although Darius, Ronny and Nasser sit with girls.

The desks are arranged in six small clusters, not rows. At one cluster, Amal, Nick, Richard, Roberto L. and Orwell arrange themselves in what is effectively a power troublemakers conference.

"I can see that's not going to last long," Pendry observes.

The move has gone fairly smoothly and is over in less than a half hour.

Then an announcement from principal Nielsen on the intercom: "Due to the weather the buses may be as much as half an hour late."

Pendry has to be at his second job by 5 p.m. He feigns crying.

The students play hangman for the last few minutes of the day.

Shannon T., one of two Shannons in class, leads the hangman puzzle on the board. Her puzzle turns out to be, "The snake is very friendly."

Shannon, a bright class know-it-all, relishes adding body parts under the hangman's noose when students talk out of turn. "Quiet, please," she scolds.

"Easy there, Teach," Pendry says.

Luckily, the buses arrive just in time for the final bell at 3:16 p.m. Pendry has hall duty, overseeing the exodus of children from the building.

Then Pendry gathers up a few things, including Stacy, a cute blonde first grader toting a red backpack that is a little too big for her. She is also Pendry's neighbor.

Stacy's mother takes her to school, and Pendry drives her home as a favor. The two of them head for his pick-up truck, ambling side-by-side.

"What did you learn today in school?" Pendry asks. Reading again, Stacy answers. "Reading again -- are you still working on that?"

Tuesday, Sept. 15, 1998

Another substitute. Randall Thompson. He works with Pendry at the sporting goods store where Pendry works some nights and weekends. He's been subbing a couple days a week for about a year to earn a little extra money.

Pendry warned him about Amal, so Thompson has his eye on him from the time he calls his name during attendance.

The students are still sitting at the same desks they claimed on their first day in the new room. The substitute gets the pupils started on today's boardwork.

Amal gets an early start prodding the substitute to test his limits.

Amal makes noises by putting his hand in his armpit and, in a departure, cups his hand in the back of his knee to create a similar effect. This fascinates Nasser. "How do you do that?" Nasser asks several times, a look of wonderment on his face.

But Thompson steps in and tells Amal to knock it off.

"Do you have an issue you would like to resolve in the principal's office?" the man asks Amal.

No, Amal replies, laughing. Nineteen minutes into class, Thompson moves Amal from his desk to the table with the snake. Amal acts as if he really is upset about it.

Four minutes later, Thompson sends Amal to the office for being disruptive. The class is rowdy from the get-go. But Thompson calms them after a few minutes and they start in on the daily boardwork, although a hushed murmur simmers in the room.

What's a continent?

Darius, who often seeks out new ways to avoid schoolwork, is taping his pencils to the inside of his desk.

"I don't think tape is necessary for boardwork," Thompson tells him.

Nasser is entertaining Holly and Jennifer. He goes through a chorus of throat noises. Then he teaches them the missing thumb magic trick, an optical illusion that makes it seem like his thumb is cut in half.

Maria gets to the daily geography question: "Name the seven continents." What is a continent? she asks.

"These large land masses -- there's seven of them," Thompson answers, pointing to a map of the world.

As the pupils work, Thompson sketches a makeshift seating chart, which he uses the rest of the day.

A stack of one-page essays the students wrote and revised last week sits on Pendry's desk. Students wrote about interesting experiences in their lives. Several wrote about visiting the beach and the hospital.

Shannon T., the class's pretty and conscientious know-it-all, wrote about the time her mother and grandmother got her report card.

They had laughed, and she mistook it for something bad and ran away for a few hours. When she got back, her mom made her clean her room.

"It took me like a hour but when I was done I was so happy," she wrote.

Melinda wrote about a trip to Wet N Wild Theme Park. "Wet and wild is on the Strip. I went with my brother and his girlfriend and their daughter and my brother's girlfriend's sister."

Dean wrote 12 sentences, most of which begin with 'Then.' "Then we went to the beach. Then we went home. Then my friend came over. And then we played Sega." One interesting sentence: "Then we went to the park and saw guns." No further explanation.

Ramon wrote about getting stitches and at one point wrote a line of dialogue in Portuguese as he recounted a conversation he had with his mother about the hospital.

Out of shape

Later, it's time for physical education class with Mitch Mezzulo, which the students have once a week. He sports Wayfarer shades and longish sun-bleached hair that hangs over his neck, black running shoes, Reebok T-shirt and athletic shorts.

Mezzulo takes two classes at a time, so he and his aide are responsible for 70 to 80 pupils a class period.

He laments the short amount of time he gets with the students. He talks about how out of shape they are, especially after the summer.

"Even if all we did were conditioning (runs) in this class, they still wouldn't be that fit," he says.

The class heads out of the physical education room to the school's field for a run. The goal: one mile.

The students assemble by a backstop where Mezzulo lines them up for the run, warning them that it is a timed event -- he wants to see how far they can run in 10 minutes. He tells them to pace themselves and to go slow at first. But when he yells "go!" the pupils all take off in a sprint.

They are exhausted and walking about 20 seconds later. A few eventually start to jog again. Nasser is the only one to actually run around the field once, but even he walks the rest of the time.

None of the students cover a mile in the 10 minutes.

"It's the one-mile run that kills them," Mezzulo says, twirling his stop watch. "They can't do the run. These kids just don't want to exercise. It's all computers when they go home. When I was a kid, we raced home and then we were running until dark."

Underlining nouns

Back in class the substitute leads a spelling/language arts lesson. He gives them an assignment that requires them to write 15 sentences from their textbooks, underlining the nouns.

Hannah starts her work immediately. So does Ramon. He finishes first, and pulls out a Berenstain Bears book to read.

It takes the rest of the class about 10 minutes to get started. Holly fiddles with her bright orange watch. Ray covers his entire paper with highlighter. Thompson moves Amal again for talking.

Finally, it's lunch time.

"My philosophy is like Pendry's -- 'As long as nobody dies in the classroom,'_thinspace" Thompson says later, as he is escorting the children to the lunch room. "I know he is not grading their work when the sub is here."

Thompson tries to keep the students in line as they walk. Ramon is leaping through the line.

"Subbing is one of the toughest jobs you can do," he says. "It's brutal."

Monday, Sept. 21, 1998

Monday. The class is buzzing. Pendry is in the middle of a social studies lesson on Nevada. All fourth graders study their state during social studies lessons in the fall.

Pendry's students are reading a passage about the state grass, Indian rice grass. Some have trouble reading and then answering questions, even with the answers clearly visible in the reading passage.

Five students come up to Pendry to ask for a definition of "ecology," a word in one of the questions.

Pendry explains it to the whole class. While the students work, Pendry calls Ray to his desk. The boy's hands, arms, shirt and even his pants are all covered in florescent yellow marks.

"You got a highlighter?" Pendry asks dryly.

Ray misses the sarcasm. "Yeah," he deadpans.

Pendry shakes his head. "Go get it."

No easy out

Ray obliges, and Pendry confiscates the highlighter.

Then the class goes over the answers about the Nevada grasses. Pendry calls on Darius, who has been hyperactive today. Pendry's question is: Why did the native grasses disappear? The boy shrugs and says simply, "I don't know."

But Pendry won't let him off the hook. Find the answer, Pendry says. Darius scans the passage.

Little by little, Pendry coaxes the answer out of Darius.

"What trampled the grass?" Pendry asks.

Animals, Darius answers.

"What kind of animals?"

Cattle, the boy answers.

"What were the animals doing here -- were they on vacation? Who brought them?"

People, Darius says.

"What kind of people?"

Now Darius is truly stuck. Ramon answers the question: settlers.

"I want cash," Ramon demands.

The school has instituted a new currency system in the classrooms using fake paper money. Students started with $250 last week. If they have behavior problems, teachers take cash away.

Twenty dollars is a typical fine for talking or messing around. They get $10 for completing homework. They cough up $10 when they don't do homework.

A few days into the new money system, Ramon, Teresa Lee and Amal are broke. Students also can use the currency to buy goods, such as T-shirts, at a student store at the school.

Pendry fires Nevada trivia questions at them, flicking phony bills at them when they get a question right.

Pendry finishes the Nevada lesson, then seamlessly segues to a math lesson on rounding. He grabs their attention by drawing what he calls a roller coaster on the board.

Pendry puts 5, 15, 25, 35 ... on the peaks and 0, 10, 20, 30, 40 ... in the valleys of the roller coaster.

"If I put a marble on a number such as 37, where would it roll?" he asks.

Down to 40, Hannah answers.

Pendry is using the marble and roller coaster image to get them to visualize rounding, and it seems to work. Most students seem to grasp the concept. Some say they learned rounding last year.

Darius has some trouble understanding the lesson but suddenly exclaims, "Oh! I like that!"

"You're supposed to like it, it's easy," Pendry says.

The students behaved well last week, except for the day of the substitute. Assistant principal Charles Anderson sent Amal home that afternoon. He was sent home Friday, too.

Amal's mother had been angry with Pendry and principal Nadine Nielsen for sending the boy home. Amal's offense was writing the words, "F--k you," over and over on his screen in the computer lab.

"He said it was an accident," Pendry says. "He had written it 150 times! I told him I just couldn't ignore that."

Playground judge

Recess always proves interesting. Dean strolls up to Pendry and announces that he has girlfriend problems.

"We've all got those," Pendry says.

Dean insists, "No -- real problems. Smoochy, smoochy."

Pendry shakes his head.

A girl from another class comes up to Pendry and announces that Ray said bad words.

"What kind of words?" Pendry asks. The girl is reluctant to say.

"He said he would kick my bleep, bleep."

"Your bleep bleep?" Pendry asks. "What is a bleep bleep?"

The girl doesn't want to say the words, so she uses first letters.

"He said he would kick my F, A."

"Your F, A?" Pendry asks. "Go get him."

The girl is delighted to go get Ray.

Ray finally comes loping up to Pendry. Pendry asks him what he said. "Nothing bad," Ray says, lying badly, his eyes looking off onto the playground.

Pendry calls the girl back. "What did Ray say to you?" he asks her again in front of Ray.

"He said he would kick my F, A," she insists.

"I said 'butt!' " Ray shoots back, scrambling now for a defense.

The boy launches into a five-minute explanation of what he said, contradicting himself several times. Pendry considers this, then says, "I don't think so, Ray. Consider yourself verbally warned."

The two children walk off, seemingly content with the ruling in playground justice court.

Back in class. It's a FLES (videotape Spanish lessons) day. Pendry has found a way to focus the students' attention on the TV screen. He uses a marker to draw horns and a beard on the FLES instructor, writing right on the television screen.

Pendry wipes the marks off as the show starts, and the students seem to watch and listen, at least at first.

He encourages them to pay attention. He turns the tape off at one point to ask the class why the instructor had just listed 20 countries (She had explained in simple Spanish that they were Spanish-speaking countries.)

"Because they are countries," Darius answers, half-right.

Lily, a bespectacled, quiet child, who always does her work and rarely makes a sound, replies with the full answer.

As the instructor on the videotape dances a little dance, some of the kids break out in dances of their own.

"Don't dance," Pendry says. "Her dancing is bad enough. She's got, like, two moves."

When the second the tape is over, Pendry jerks them back into an English lesson on plural nouns. He goes over the rules on how you make words like toy, cat, berry, bench and child plural.

Unruly Ramon, again proving that he is among the brightest children in class, gets a tricky one right -- the plural of moose is moose.

"Nice job, Ramon," Pendry says.

The boy looks at his teacher. "Can I get $20 for that?"

WEDNESDAY: Pendry welcomes the parents of his students to the school.

archive