First Person: Beyond Books

Some lessons aren't learned in a classroom.

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When I began teaching, I worked late into the nights, packing my lesson plans with "do nows," "rotating dyads" and other gimmicks guaranteed to streamline my students toward intelligence. I had 270 minutes per week to transform dozens of Pop-Tart-munching PlayStation addicts into smart, productive citizens. The pressure was enormous: My lectures had to be incisive, my transitions seamless, my instructional activities efficient.

And then, one January night halfway through my first year, my job whisked me from my whiteboard outlines and rubrics into the fluorescent aisles of an Allsup's convenience store. Having grown up in Santa Fe, I was comfortable with the setting-more than one of my teenage nocturnal adventures had ended before those ubiquitous chimichanga sneeze guards-but this night, it was not grease and caffeine I was seeking, but a bubbly 13-year-old seventh-grader, whom I'll call Lucinda. She'd been missing since that morning, and an all-points bulletin was out.

We'd learned from her friends that she'd left campus with her boyfriend, Miguel, a plump, baby-faced young man from Central America who'd come by the school on occasion to pick up his brother or drop off his buddy at our evening ESL (English as a Second Language) classes. Respectful and street-smart, he was the kind of guy you'd want close in a brawl and far from your daughter. He was also at least 18 years old, which meant that taking Lucinda for a ditch day was more than Ferris Bueller truancy; it was kidnapping. Lucinda's mother, who'd forbidden the relationship, was in a panic, and when the couple had not shown up by the end of the school day, our principal called the police. They snooped around the school, radioed in and sent us home, pits in our stomachs, to wait.

Around 10 pm, as I sat in my living room worrying over minutes 15-23 of the next day's class, the principal called. The police had found nothing. He was going to the apartment where Miguel lived with his family, and asked if I would meet him there with a fellow teacher. Though I didn't like the idea of facing the next day without my lessons planned, I put on my coat and drove to the apartment to find Miguel's mother crying, his brother wringing his hands, the overloud television distracting nobody. Miguel had called to confess he was with Lucinda, but had not said where they were or what they intended to do.

I stepped outside to think. The air was cold, the sky pitted with stars, reminiscent of those nights my friends and I-a little older than Lucinda-spurred by some underdeveloped lobes in our adolescent brains, had snuck out to cruise the Santa Fe streets. Naturally, the memory brought me to Allsup's, and at the same instant I remembered that Miguel's ESL buddy worked graveyard at the store nearby. A hunch, but my colleague and I headed that way.

The couple was not there, but Miguel's buddy was. He seemed unsurprised, even relieved, to see us. He dialed into the counter phone and handed me the receiver. It was Miguel. His voice was low, conspiratorial. He and Lucinda loved each other. They were going to California, where they could live without her mother's interference.

I swallowed hard, then asked him if he wouldn't stop by Allsup's before they left.

He hesitated, agreed and several minutes later pulled up-alone-in a souped-up Dodge Neon, midnight black, lemon yellow racing stripe painted expertly up the hood. He shook hands with us, assured us Lucinda was safe and then, with businessman etiquette, asked me into the car.

My colleague, a five-year veteran teacher, shrugged. I followed Miguel into the plush faux leather of the passenger seat, where Paula Abdul danced mutely on the dashboard TV.

I had no idea what to do. If I'd had time to write up a lesson plan, the desired outcome might've been "Student's boyfriend will understand and articulate the negative consequences of kidnapping." But the procedure? The attention-grabber? The reflective writing prompt? I looked at Miguel, who clutched the steering wheel and stared into middle space, and wondered why I'd ever left home.

And then he began to talk. He talked about restrictive parents, societal expectations, the difference between life in the US and his native country. Mostly, he talked about love. And a strange thing happened: I forgot I was a teacher. Like any human being, I listened, asked questions, shared some experiences of my own. When my colleague knocked on the window, we let him into the back seat and talked it all over again. We convinced Miguel to pick up Lucinda, and then the four of us sat in the car and talked some more. We looked at the situation from every angle, admitted there was a lot we didn't know and tried to predict consequences.

Around 1 am, we reached a group conclusion: If they truly loved each other, they'd make it to California someday. For now, it was time to go home. Miguel sped off into the night and Lucinda went home with the principal, who'd been waiting tirelessly at the apartment.

Back in my living room, I encountered the lesson plans strewn across my table. Though I was tired, something hazy suddenly became clear. Teaching, I realized, is not about efficiency. Despite the Jetsonian dreams of early education theorists, it doesn't really work to conveyor-belt children through a sequence of scientifically organized 90-minute improvement sessions. Whether the topic on hand is splitting to California or splitting infinitives, teaching is a messy, trial-and-error process. Organizing class time is necessary, but so is listening, helping young people pose questions, letting them make decisions, and

providing space and structure for reflection. At the heart of every lesson are the students, not the plan, and there are times when the only procedure that makes any sense is to step away from the whiteboard, sit in the passenger seat and listen.

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