My first impressions of Netta are fragmented. Hers was a name on my roster that I rarely marked present.
When she did show up during the first quarter, it was hard to get a read on her. At times she seemed withdrawn, introverted, like she preferred to be left alone. She sat in the back, by herself, and I didn’t often hear her speak. In fact, the sounds I usually heard from her were the sounds of deep contented sleep — the rhythmic breathing that is not easily disturbed, the kind that causes others around her to turn and look, to say, “Man, she is knocked out!”
I stopped fighting the sleep battle long ago. I have no idea what is going on with my students outside of my classroom, so if I nudge them once and encourage them to “come on, you’re here, you might as well get something for your efforts,” and I get no response, I am prone to let them sleep. Maybe it’s the only rest they’ll get today.
So, Netta was a show up once a week kind of gal who often spent that day in slumber, face pressed against the desk, eyes closed behind the very thick coke-bottle lenses of her glasses.
I didn’t know her well, but I got the impression that she wasn’t a meek, shy, introvert. No, she seemed more like a sleeping bear — completely content if left alone, but disturbed? You’d better run for your life.
Every so often during that first quarter, she would blow into the building like a force. Her hair would be done, her clothing would be intentional, she would sit up straight in class, she would feverishly take notes, and she would demand that I answer her questions about the assignment, never mind that she had missed the last two weeks of school.
It didn’t make sense to me. Why such apathy followed by such intentionality. Then I heard the rumor that Netta’s probation officer was scheduled to show up on that particular day, and Netta was going to make sure to leave a good impression.
I never did see the probation officer, and Netta reverted to her status quo.
I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t have my hackles up just a little bit every time she showed up. The fact that she was often reserved coupled with the fact that she could occasionally show up like it was game day put me off balance, and occasionally I’d see her — rather hear her — move through the hallway, strings of expletives bursting from her like machine gun fire. I presumed, if provoked, she could tear me to shreds. I wasn’t planning to provoke her, but I couldn’t be sure no one else would. So, I was often just a little hyper-vigilant when she came to class during that first quarter.
For some reason, she showed up on the first day of the second quarter, the day that I characteristically give each student a printed summary of their academic performance so far. It’s a simple sheet from PowerSchool that lists the student’s current grade, how many assignments they completed, how many times the student was tardy, and how many times the student was absent. I do this to provide information to my students — to allow them space to reflect — but also to reward what I have seen. If they have earned an A or a B, if they have had fewer than two tardies or fewer than two absences, I give them a “Rathje Ticket” that they can use to purchase items from my class store.
On this particular day, I was calling special attention to students who had been chronically absent — who had more than two absences per month for the first quarter. Raising attendance has been my classroom goal this year, and although attendance had definitely improved from previous years, students like Netta still had a way to go. So, because she was in class on that day, I handed her the report that I had marked with yellow highlighter, showing her double-digit absences and noting that she had been “chronically absent.”
Netta, typically quiet [or sleeping] Netta, said quite loudly, “Mrs. Rathje, this is terrible! Imma do better.”
And do you know what? She did.
She started coming to class, just in time for the unit on personal narratives. I wanted students to show themselves in a scene or several scenes that revealed to the reader who they were, what was important to them, or what their strengths were.
Netta dove in. In fact, she asked to move to the front row, smack-dab in the middle. She read the models I provided. She did the brainstorming, she chose a prompt, and she began to write.
I can see her now, totally honed in, bent over her desk, face inches away from the paper as she wrote and wrote.
“Mrs. Rathje, can you read this and tell me how I’m doing?”
The writing was rough — very rough — the kind of writing you might have if you only went to school one or two days a week for several years. The penmanship, the spelling, the grammar — not anywhere close to what I would call standard. But as I read, everything else in the room fell away. She was writing about the fact that her mom had died — during Netta’s birthday week — six weeks before the start of her senior year. Six weeks before she started sporadically showing up in my class to sleep in the back of the room.
“Wow, Netta. This just happened?”
She nodded, looking through those thick lenses into my eyes.
“This past summer?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I’m so sorry. Thank you so much for sharing this. I’m so glad you chose this topic. I want you to write more. Give more detail.”
“Mrs. Rathje, I know it’s a mess. I want to make it better. Will you help me?”
“Of course. We’ll work on it together. That’s what this assignment is all about.”
And that was the beginning. Of Netta’s engagement in my class, of Netta showing up four to five days a week instead of one, of Netta communicating (if at the last minute and out of desperation) with our social workers before her next probation officer visit or court date.
She hadn’t ascended to a straight A student by any means, but I was watching her transform before my eyes.
Now, she NEVER enters my classroom quietly. No. How do I describe the self-confident force of nature that is Netta, that boldly proclaimed during our Intro to Racism unit this past week, “I know what my unconscious biases are, and I’m not changing them!”
“I guess you might say they are no longer unconscious then, am I right?” I grinned at her.
She crossed her arms, gave me the side eye, and said, “They are not. I am fully aware of my bias. And I am keeping it.”
She is not afraid to tell a classmate, “Shut the hell up, you talk too much, and you sound stupid,” and although I check the outburst, I can’t often disagree with her assessment.
On Friday, late in the afternoon, she was walking down my hallway and she shouted at me, “Mrs. Rathje, you would be so proud — I didn’t cuss at all in that class.”
“That’s amazing, Netta,” I said, smiling, as I watched her walk into a classroom.
Two. seconds. later. I heard the most profane stream of words come from her mouth halfway down the hallway.
I walked down to the room she was in, popped my head in the door, looked her in the face, and said, “Netta, did you not just say I’d be proud of you for not swearing?”
“Mrs. Rathje, I had to get it out of my system before this class started.”
I smiled, shook my head, and walked away.
Earlier that day, she had come into my room, dressed as though she had something important going on after school, sat down, and handed me a paper she had pulled from her purse, “You wanna see my momma, Mrs. Rathje?”
“Of course!” I said, taking the funeral program from her hand. Her mother’s face was on the front, and I said, “Netta, you look like her. This is so precious. I had forgotten that this just happened last summer.”
She looked at me, putting the coke bottle lens back in the broken frame of her glasses, “I don’t read the obituary,” she said. “It makes me cry.”
“Of course it does,” I replied. “I love that you carry this with you. Your mom would be very proud of you.”
“Yes, she would.”
We move through the class, past fires to put out, questions to answer, demands to respond to and then it was almost 3:15, time for me to take my post at the end of the hallway to make sure that students don’t leave their classrooms before the bell.
I saw a door open and then Netta as she stepped into the hall.
“OK, Netta, back it right up, the bell has not rung,” I say.
In slow motion, she puts herself in reverse, maintaining eye contact with me, and retreating into the classroom.
The action of it cracks me up. I laugh, and I say, “I just love you, Netta.”
“I love you, too, Mrs. Rathje.”
And who needs more of a gem than that?
Next Chapter 