Mnemosyne, Muse of Memory

I was called to the cafeteria one day last week. I grabbed my intercom and keys and headed out the side door of my office, which puts me directly in the hallway. As I came nearer the cafeteria, I saw my VP with one of the boys in tow. He looked beaten up.

I later found out from the two boys that the one of Italian descent was bossing around the Korean boy. The Korean couldn't take it anymore and got out of his cafeteria by saying he had to go the bathroom with a pass and went instead to the other cafeteria. The teacher, at first, wouldn't let him in but he said he only wanted to talk to the other boy. He went to the Italian boy and punched him several times in the face. The teacher pulled the boys apart and had them separated while trying to call the office on the phone when the Italian boy slipped from her grasp and came around behind to hit the Korean in the head several times.

Both boys were bruised, swollen and bloodied. He examined one and the other refused. He was upset because he knew this behavior was going to get him suspended. He was right! We called his mother and she picked him up.

The Korean boy had a father that didn't speak English too well, so we had a Korean girl, one of our brightest students, call him and explain it all in his language. Unfortunately, we later found out that the VP of Italian descent mispronounced the boy's name to the Korean girl and she, in turn, relayed the mispronumciation to the father. The mistake produced the sound of the father's oldest son, not the one in high school, so he took off to the community college to find his oldest son. We could not reach him for three hours after that.

It was getting on 3:30 and I had to make a decision. I sent a police officer to his house to find the Dad, but no one was there. The nurse told me I couldn't drive the boy home, he had a possible head/neck injury, so I had to wait for the Dad or take the boy to the hospital in an ambulance. Finally, I had no choice, I called the ambulance and they strapped the boy on a board with these foam blocks on either side of his head. I followed the ambulance to the hospital and almost got hit by people returning to the traffic lane behind the ambulance.

It was caos at the emergency ward. We were told to go the pediatric emergency and we rolled his gurney into a bay next to screaming toddlers that had fallen or something. The boy was very uncomfortable on the hard board they strapped him to. A female doctor eventally came to see him and to chastise me for not having him in a neck brace since the fight. I asked to use the phone to try one more time to reach the father and I did get one of the older brothers on the phone. He could understand English well enough for me to tell him to get a hold of his father and pick up his brother at the hospital.

So here I was with a boy I hardly knew in a hospital that looked like M. A. S. H. when the wounded arrived, and wishing I could have gotten home at a decent time this day. I was feeling pretty sorry for the boy and myself when I was finally sent home by the doctor. The father, I later found, did arrive about thirty minutes after my departure and the boy was released to him without having to have an x-ray. I was so mad at the father for being so confused, but it was not his fault as I learned.

Yesterday we had the re-entry conference with the father. I had served in Korea during the Viet Nam war because the colonel of my outfit in Fort Hood, TX didn't send Infantry Lieutenants that wore glasses to a war zone. I was fascinated by the Korean written language, but I did not have the time to lean much. But when the father came into my office I said good moring to him in Korean (An yeang ha say oh). He tried to explain things to me in English and did fairly well. He began to tell me he was an artist and that he did caricatures for a living. He then unrolled two 36" by 24" prints of one of his caricatures. It was a collage of over a hunded musical composers. I couldn't believe the detail! He wanted a pencil to sign the pieces; one for me personally and one for the school! I said he didn't have to give me anything, but he insisted, so I told him my name and he signed it. I thanked him in Korean (Com up sum nee dah). I showed my music teachers and they identified as did I some of the more famous composers from Back to Shotakovitch.

Later that day the Korean girl told me of the mistake in the names. She felt so badly. I assured her that it was alright; after all, I received a wonderful gift from the whole affair. So sometimes you do get rewarded for going the extra mile and seeing that a boy is safe. In education, you never fully know what an effect you have on people. It is like strategic bombing at high altitude; you do your job and you may find out much later the effect.

As you can see if you have read some of my previous entries, being a principal of a high school is a crazy thing to do. When I began my teaching career the last thing I ever wanted to do was be what I am now. Yet, here I am. I know I can't do this alone. Yes, I have secretaries and teachers and a superintendent, but God pulls me through the day. I have proof.

As I near my school driving East on Route 80 I turn off the books on tape or NPR and thank God for getting me here. I ask His forgiveness for my lack of faith. I pray for the students, the teachers, and for wisdom so I can administer the school. I also pray for my wife, my daughter, and my son.

Yesterday I needed God's wisdom. A violent hispanic girl accused two other girls of writing something foul about her on one of the stalls in the girl's bathroom. She was out to get them. I intercepted her and asked her for the names. She quickly gave me the names of the girl's that she was convinced did it and the name of another girl that saw them come out of a stall together. I told the hispanic girl to go back to class and asked her to trust that I would see to the matter.

I had an aide go into the bathroom and confirm that what she claimed was, in fact, on the stall walls. It was. I then summoned the custodian to clean it off. I went to the cafeteria and brought the girl that could supposedly witnessed the incident to the girl's bathroom. I asked her to go in with the aide to identify which stall the girls came out of. She picked the wrong stall. If God hadn't given me the wisdom to make her do that two girls would have been punished needlessly. Instead, I called back the hispanic girl and with the laision police officer and the Vice Principal convinced her that she couldn't assume someone was guilty, and that there wasn't sufficient evidence. We also pointed out to her tha she was on probation until she graduated because she got in a fight with another girl before and she could be home schooled for the rest of her high school experience if she were to fight again.

Immediately she calmed down and said she wouldn't be a problem. I don't know if that was a sincere response or a calculated move to ease our minds, but the result was that no violence occurred.

Did God give me wisdom in this matter? Well, I don't know where the idea of having the girl identify the stall came from. It just popped into my head. I didn't plan it and it came to me when I needed it. Principals have to make split-second decisions all day long; I wonder if I'm not the only principal that prays on the way to work each day?

That's a good question. As a principal you try to be one step ahead of the kids, the teachers, the custodians, the secretaries, and the deadlines. That keeps you lean because you don't have time for a coffee break or lunch.

When I was a teacher I thought the principal did nothing until he tormented me, but I was wrong; he was tormenting all the other teachers when not doing something to me.

Back to the day after, I arrived to find a parent waiting for me with her son and the cell phone he was to return. She was from the islands and had a beautiful Jamacian accent. She made her message clear, however. She wanted the kids that tormented her son to suffer some some consequences. That wasn't a problem with the vice principal I had who loves to discipline kids in spite of what he may say.

I had an administrators meeting with the other principals and the superintendent in thirty minutes and had to complete a report on the Home Language of all the students in my school. While trying to complete the survey through the database and making a spread sheet of the results, a guidance counselor needed to see me, a student, my secretary and a teacher. So I took all my notes to the meeting and hoped for the best.

Before the meeting I had to participate in the suspension of the boy that spat on another yesterday. We got that done and the news spread through the school fast. Later I met with a parent of a difficult student and told her that we would have to put her daughter on a restricted pass and change her schedule to keep her out of trouble.

I finished the day by updating the sign outside the high school. finally, it was time to get in my car and head home. I stopped to get some food on the way home and listen to my most recent book on tape. Time to relax and prepare for another day of battle.

Well, it began early. We had entered a contest with other high schools sponsored by the Hackensack hospital to see who had the most students arriving at school wearing seatbelts. We posted ourselves, the student volunteers and teachers around the different entrances to the parking lot and tallied up the statistics. This started about 7:15; after I had raced to school from 60 miles away.

As soon as I came into the building from this exercise, the VP told me that the people giving the military career test were running late. We had no margin of error for delaying the test since we had lunches to do and the test was scheduled for the cafeteria. The counselors and I strategized as to what we would do when the phone rang and the driver of the testing group said they were lost. When they finally arrived we told them it was off unless they could test in the auditorium, which they agreed to. We then moved all the kids there and set the lights and sound for them.

Things seemed to settle down, so I observed an Algebra I class. I was back in the office squaring things away when the VP came in with a plan to change the times for lunch for next year. I listened with interest when I heard noise outside my office and realized that the testing was almost over. We had the juniors being tested move to the cafeteria for lunch and bid goodbye to the testing people hoping they would be able to find their way back to Brooklyn when the lights suddenly went out.

It was abrupt and decisive. All the computers down, the phones dead, we were cut off from the world and the classes. I grabbed walkie talkies and headed to the hallways where the emergency lights went on. We calmed the kids down and saw that the cafeteria was serving lunch in the dark. Fortunately, the classrooms had plenty of light. We learned from our DARE officer that a tree took out a power line with all the gusty wind we had been experiencing. They could not tell when the power would come back on.

I had the students go to classes after going to each class and explaining what we were to do. We had to rely on students who had watches to tell when to move since the clocks were out. The superintendent came over and told us that we were the only school that had a power outage. We got through sixth and seventh periods without incident and without power either when my old VP told me he was going out to get something to eat. I couldn't believe he would leave at this time.

I decided in his absence to keep the kids in seventh period and not move them one more time since the backup lights in the hallways were to go out at any minute. He came back furious that I had done that. He has a problem. He wants to have things his way, then leave the building. Don't we all.

During all this a boy was caught using his cell phone. He was asked for it and refused to give it up, so the crusty VP told him he would have a three-day suspension. I drove him home. The boy would not give up his phone because he said it was the only way he could reach his mother. I checked his home and sure enough he didn't have power or a hard-wired phone that would work. I gave him back the phone and told him to promise to give it to me first thing in the morning. He agreed and I left to go back to school for a meeting with the superintendent.

We had our bi-monthly meeting scheduled. I was a bit frazzled, but I couldn't cancel the meeting. I didn't have much to say and he told me a few things. I then raced up to the tech room where the servers had to be re-booted. The Tech Coordinator was sick today and I had to do it. With that done, I could finally go home; my desk a mess but I had to go home and depleate my reserve of tequila!