Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher’s First Year

Esme’s students stab a substitute teacher in the back with a pencil, injuring her enough that the paramedics are called in. When Esme asks why they did it, they tell Esme that it was her fault because she told them to live by the Golden Rule and treat others as you would like to be treated and the substitute teacher was unkind to them. Esme tries again to drive home the idea of kindness being offered in all circumstances but isn’t sure whether or not this idea sticks.

The students do a unit on Native Americans that features authentic dress, a visit from a local Native American who shares artifacts, and an entire day spent in costume. Though the students display a great deal of interest and retain information about the intricacies of each tribe, Ms. Coil tells Esme that she thinks “doing Native Americans” is best left to kindergarten.

Esme’s conflicts with Mr. Turner also ramp up considerably. First, Esme catches him staring at her breasts. A few days later, he calls her into his office and closes the door. Esme asks that he leave the door open or call another teacher in but he refuses. He then reprimands her again about her chosen name and yells at her, calling her defiant. Esme storms out of his office, prepared to quit her job, but another teacher calls Esme into her room. Though Esme doesn’t exactly think of this other teacher, Ms. Federman, as an ally, she decides not to quit, that she has come too far in the year with all that she’s done. She is also intrigued when Ms. Federman mentions a much bigger fight that Esme must face than dealing with Mr. Turner. Esme doesn’t know quite know what she means but figures she should find out.

Though she returns to her classroom, Esme is disappointed than less of her colleagues support her. She decides to get involved in the union as a way to guarantee some future protection for herself. In a quietly seething way, Mr. Turner reveals that he has found out about her new union involvement and is displeased.

The students, however, continue to buoy her spirits. When she notices them struggling with math, she’s certain a novel approach is in order. She decides to get out paper and convert multiplication into the cha-cha. The kids enjoy it and learn a lot in the process. She even gets a secret thank you note from one boy in her class who appreciates the extra instruction in both math and dancing.

Esme is sarcastic with Mr. Turner when he announces that the school has received funding from the Jordan Foundation, run by Michael Jordan’s mother, asking if “Michael Jordan’s approach to pedagogy was in any way congruous with Mickey Mantle’s approach to pedagogy” (177). She is again told just to abide by the rules for a change. Esme decides instead that she will follow the next school maxim to teach by the “Jordan rules” and teach her students how to slam dunk.

Esme continues to try out novel ways to get her students excited about reading. She buys numerous copies of contemporary youth fiction books and arranges the students in autonomous reading groups, giving the students full responsibility for organizing their book clubs. To teach them the fifty states, Esme gives them lessons in hand sewing and they create a colorful quilt of the fifty state flowers. She also continues working with them on their conflict-resolution skills. When two students, Zykerica and Kyla, have an altercation, Esme resists the temptation to jump in and solve it for them. Instead, she lets the peer mediation group work through it and is pleased by how effectively they use empathetic speaking and listening to resolve the issue.

Resolving her own conflicts proves more difficult, however. After school one day, Esme finds herself conscripted into helping Vice Principal Coil move some furniture in her apartment. On their car ride to this apartment, Ms. Coil lets a great deal of strange information slip, including that this is just her downtown apartment, a separate opulent space where she goes to work on her doctorate. She adds that she often plagiarizes in her academic writing, which she feels is not dishonest because “Dr. Martin Luther King” cut and pasted (126). Esme wonders why she has been chosen to help with this moving expedition, especially when they arrive at the apartment and it turns out that only one small glass table needs to be shifted around. But Esme gets her answer when Ms. Coil drops her off at home and asks if Esme plans to return to her job next year. When Esme is noncommittal, Ms. Coil encourages her to rethink her moniker of Madame Esme, as it bothers Mr. Turner. Unlike a field trip to the Historical Society that she takes her students on, Esme finds this trip with Ms. Coil to be irksome and manipulative.

Under the pretense of having “a casual chat,” Mr. Turner appears in Esme’s classroom one afternoon and beats around the bush some before asking what her intentions are for the following year. Esme expresses her interest in staying but is also clear with Mr. Turner that she is pursuing an instructional media endorsement with the hopes of eventually becoming a school librarian. Mr. Turner compliments her in a limited way, saying that she has talent and enthusiasm. Again, however, he brings up Esme’s trouble obeying the rules. Despite this, Mr. Turner announces that he is going to retain her. Esme feigns excitement but is disturbed by the information he relays in the same breath, namely that there are “going to be some changes, some upheaval” (133). It seems to Esme that Mr. Turner’s plans including culling the ranks of the existing teachers, many of whom Esme feels labor hard for a lot of heartache and very little pay.