“I’m the new art teacher,” Lina said, assuming a professional tone. She moved toward Mrs. Jacovitch and reached out her hand.
“Whatever you do with them, please be sure to keep these kids quiet. I’m one class down and I’m very sensitive to noise.”
Lina waved goodbye, closed the door on Mrs. Jacovitch’s concerned face, and turned around. She took in the scene before her: so much unused energy, the students buzzing around like atoms above a Bunsen burner. This was not good.
She knew how Mr. Devin began the year: handing out textbooks and asking the students to paint a replica of the Monet on page 16 or the Monroe on page 19. Instead, Lina picked up a chunk of chalk in her shaking fingers and drew a figure on the blackboard.
“What you drawing?”
“It’s a ladder,” one boy surmised.
“Skeleton,” said someone else.
“It ain’t all that,” said a girl. “It’s a building. It’s a map of the school.”
“Shut up, Holes.”
Lina looked at the girl, whose name tag readJune. Her beady eyes were not afraid to meet Lina’s. Her hair was coiled tightly on top of her head, her tights scarred with stitches. Just as Lina herself had been, June was poor and bold. She gave the girl a high five, confirming her hypothesis.
“Itisa map,” June repeated, excited.
“Why you drawing a map, Lina?” asked Walter.
“Miss Rodriguez Armstrong. And I’m only going to explain it once,” Lina said.
She waited while the students corralled one another into silence.
“A lot of you know me from around the neighborhood, but now summer’s over and we’re here in school. How many of you like school?”
One or two began to raise their hands—June included—then quickly shoved them down.
“How many of you hate it?”
Hands shot up across the room.
“And how many months each year do you spend in school?”
She saw minds working.
“Nine,” a student said, and then corrected herself. “Ten. Or, like, almost ten?”
“There are almost ten months of the year in school and only two months of summer. So why do you spend ten months of the year at someplace you hate?” she said. “What’s the sense of that?”
“We can go?” asked Walter, pointing to the door. The others laughed and watched Lina. They’d never heard a teacher sanction their hatred of school.
“If you’re going to spend ten months of the year in this building, it has to be meaningful, right? You have to feel like you’re doing something important and interesting. Maybe it’s not fun all the time, but you have to feel like it’s worth your attention, right?”
They eyed her, unsure. She pointed to the blackboard. “This here is the shape of your school. The floor plan. Now take a piece of paper, some markers or pencils, copy this structure on your paper, and fill it out for yourself. Show me what a good school would look like.”
It became clear to them they had been lured into an assignment, but some appeared willing to give it a try, and the rest followed suit. They each took a sheet of easel paper and began copying her model from the board.
“You can’t hate school without telling me what a good school looks like. What doyouwant? Walter, I know you like the pool. So what you gonna do about it? Turn our stairwells and hallways into a water ride? Row to English on a canoe?”
The kids laughed. One student drew spaceships launching from the roof; another, a class where students learned to construct toys; and Walter, a reward station where they could win prizes like at an arcade. June drew teachers with faces as black as her own, and Veronica, a garden where her grandmother could train students to tend flowers and plants. A quiet boy named Hank wanted a row of dormitories in the school building.
By the end of the period, Lina had collected dozens of drawings and was elated at her success. Then Assistant Principal Mrs. Romano called her into a second-floor office.
“Miss Lina, we are happy you are here. But I must ask you to keep your class quieter. Mrs. Jacovitch is very sensitive to noise and already has a migraine.”
