MR. HAGEN'S CLASS

. . . by now you must be wondering why so few of these  stories  have a real ending – why they just seem to leave the reader dangling and guessing what’s going to happen next like something from a bad Batman serial. These stories don’t have an ending because they’re just the beginnings – the first glimpses into the lives of children whose stories are still being written. That’s what makes writing them so difficult. There is no closure only a brief pause before turning to write the next page . . .

One hundred years from now the butterflies in my gut Will have long ceased their flight. Ten years from now I may look back Through the overestimated Wisdom These experiences are supposed to bring And laugh out loud at my own Timidity. Ten months from now I may release The sigh heard ‘round the world And Jones for the cycle to begin again. But ten hours from now is what matters Because it’s then that I’ll hold the fate Of twenty-eight lives in my sweaty hands. Close your eyes, Mr. Hagen And pray, For your future awaits . . .

A week before school started I was in my classroom working when I  heard a gentle knock on the door. Standing in the hallway was a pretty, petite and visibly pregnant woman with two small children. She held one child, about three years old, in her arms while the other child, a little blonde girl, was trying her best to conceal herself behind her mother. The woman introduced herself and informed me that the shy girl’s name was Jessica, and that she was going to be in my class this year. Jessica had never had a “boy teacher” before and she was very nervous about it, so her mom decided to bring her in to meet me. Her mother and I spoke for a few minutes and I tried to ease little Jessica’s fears but she wasn’t having any of it. Despite my best efforts to make her feel more comfortable she was genuinely afraid of me. She wouldn’t even look me in the eye. There’s an old expression popular among teachers that you shouldn’t let your students see you smile until Christmas. Sternnes...

His previous teacher told me Carl used to fall asleep in class because his parents kept him out at the bar all night. I didn’t want to believe it. He was coming to school every day. He was usually on time although he didn’t get much work done. One day Carl and I sat together on the bus for a field trip. He asked me if I drank. I said that yes, on the weekends I might have a few beers. He smiled and shouted “my dad gets d-r-u-n-k!” I didn’t think much of it at the time. His grades were sinking fast and I was more focused on saving him than his father. I thought I would just try to control what went on in the classroom and ignore what happened at home. And I may have succeeded too - that is until Carl fell asleep in my class . . .

Her father got stabbed this week and as she told me I couldn’t help but stare into her big brown eyes and wonder how much violence it would take to pollute them forever . . . He can barely read but he keeps a 300 page book on his desk at all times. It’s from Alcoholics Anonymous. The question is: will it prevent him from going down the same dark road his mother traveled, or will he use it as a training manual?

We lost our second child today. With so many others still around clamoring for attention you wouldn’t think that one less would make that big a difference, but it does. His name was Xavier, and he came into my world just a few months ago. There were complications from the beginning. He wasn’t like the others. He arrived late. He never cried, but he rarely smiled either. Xavier came into our fourth grade class as a transfer student from another school. He was a handful. He didn’t want to work and rarely finished anything. He was disruptive and easily distracted. He would have been a challenge for anyone. But I was a new teacher and he’d already found out how to push my buttons to maximum effect. Yesterday, I found out why he’d been absent the past few days. His parents had moved unexpectedly. Sure there are worse fates than moving. It happens every day. But this is his third school this year - and it’s only November. How many other schools has he been in so far? I can’t say because his...

NEXT CHAPTER TITLE: "PLEASE OFFICER, DON'T TAKE MY DAD AWAY" OR: "MOM'S RESTRAINING ORDER" Children are fragile - the world may come and kick in their doors quickly enough. Will parents be there for protection, or will they be the ones doing the kicking? What a vulgar thought. What a vulgar reality . . . The titles above are based on true stories that happened this week. Don Juan’s mother has a restraining order out on her as a condition for her release from jail for God only knows what. And Angel’s father got drunk on Thanksgiving night and had the cops called on him. Wounded. I guess I’m feeling a little bit wounded. As a teacher I feel like I’m responsible for carrying the weight of the world and it’s wearing me down - like I’m expected to have the strength of Atlas, when I have the vulnerability of Achilles. And if you trip while carrying the world on your shoulders you’ve got one hell of a mess on your hands.

According to his personal file the new student’s name was Joseph Weinberg. My first thought was that that was an awfully grown up name for such a little boy. I couldn’t help but picture a paunchy, middle-aged Jewish man. Old Mr. Weinberg. Joseph. Or should I call him Joey? His personal file probably weighed more than he did. That’s not a good sign. The day Joseph’s records arrived I asked Ms. Miller, the teacher who provides services to the students with special needs, to read over the files and give me the Cliff’s Notes version of Joseph’s story. From there I conveniently forgot about the two manila folders that bore the boy’s name. But this afternoon when I returned to my classroom after dismissing the students there were the folders again along with a note from Ms. Miller neatly folded on top. I ignored it. I washed my chalkboards. I rearranged desks. I actually attended to some minor record keeping tasks that I would have otherwise avoided like the plague. Desperate to avoid delvi...

The following stories were originally written for an audience of one. They are part of a personal journal I’ve been keeping for nearly twenty years. In high school I had an English teacher who required all of her students to keep a journal, and while I resented this intrusion into my private life, I reluctantly did what she asked. But instead of using the assignment as an opportunity for quiet reflection and introspection as she had intended, I used it to keep track of my latest successes at the local pool hall and the box score of bases stolen on the weekends with my high school sweetheart. The journal was a joke to me and would have most likely continued to remain a joke for the rest of the semester except that was the year that my father died. It seemed school didn’t matter to me anymore so I began to skip classes. My friends couldn’t relate to my experience, my girlfriend couldn’t either and I gradually began to withdraw from everyone. Over the course of the next several months I w...