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Hard Tests
by Billy Pullen I suppose one of the steps that led me into teaching is that I have always liked being a student. I certainly loved being in college. Even after I received a BA in both English and theater in the normal four-year span, I decided to go back for an extra semester in order to certify to teach. I wasn’t quite ready for graduate school in theater because deep down I knew that I would never be a professional actor, nor was I ready for graduate school in English because my fingers were still numb from typing literary papers. Actually, I went back for a teaching certificate because I wasn’t quite ready to move on from being an undergraduate. I was content to stay where I was. Nevertheless, my student teaching was a pleasant surprise, and when I finished that semester in December, I accepted a teaching job for the sole reason that it was twenty-five miles from the Norman Rockwell-like Arkansas college town where I could still live. This decision made me feel secure, because I could still have one foot in college and the other foot in the “real” world. The job was to teach four sections of senior English and one section of speech. I found out later that the school district had to hire a teacher who was certified in both English and speech, a rarity in those days. In other words, I was probably the sole applicant. After they hired me, the principal gave me a folder left by the parting teacher who got that call from God that told him to leave the classroom and to become a missionary in Zambia, not wait until the end of the school year. At least, that’s what they told me. Anyway, the folder contained the usual information about the curriculum he had covered, and a couple of class leaders in maybe three of the five classes. (Turns out, there were no class leaders in those other two classes.) For one class, he left the briefest note: “All my creativity ran dry with this group. Good luck! And God bless you!” I assume it was the same God that told him to get the hell out of that Arkansas classroom and run off to Africa. It was just the bait that an idealistic, naïve teacher like me swallowed and never bothered to chew. “You must be firm and flexible,” the principal told me. I assume he meant for me to be demanding but nurturing, or maybe to be compassionate but to always carry a big paddle. I don’t know what he meant, but I do recall a professor in the teacher-certification classes repeat, “A good teacher must always be flexible.” What was it with the f-word? The first test of being flexible involved the pronunciation of my name. It was more of a test on patience and perseverance. The “n” was never articulated in my name. Instead of Mr. Pullen, I became “Mr. Pulley.” Here’s a brief scenario of the first few days: “Hello, my name is Mr. Pullen,” I announced proudly and I wrote my name on the board just with the best teacher-like penmanship that I could muster. “Mr. Pulley, what time we get outta here?” Valenica, who was named for the orange, asked. She volunteered the information regarding the orange after I had politely asked her if “Valencia” were a family name. “Mr. PulleNN.” I corrected her. “Mr. Pulley, when the bell gone rang?” Valencia inquired. “Mr. PulleNNN,” I was almost singing. “Mr. Pulley, where you from?” Cidney, as in Poitier but whose mother couldn’t spell, wanted to know. “I grew up in—that’s Mr. PulleNN.” “That’s what I say, Mr. Pulley,” Cidney was convinced. “Mr. PulleNN.” “You a nice teacher, Mr. Pulley,” Areta, not Aretha, smiled. “Mr. PulleNN.” I really wanted to win the first round, but bigger battles were raging. For the first three weeks, I did a strenuous review in grammar. According to the file, they had not used the grammar books, and according to what they knew about grammar, it appeared they had never used them in the history of their twelve years in school. However, I proceeded in subject-verb agreement, pronoun-antecedent agreement, case usage, even parallelism from what is now considered an ancient textbook, the old Warriner and Griffith Grammar and Composition Series. I was on a soapbox. I knew this stuff and was rather ostentatious with my use of colored chalk, “sophisticated” bulletin boards, and theatrical spontaneity of making up sentences using the students’ names, such as “Natasha like chocolate milk.” I was so smart in leaving out the “s.” Yes, they would learn the correct use of present tense. “Does anyone see the grammatical error here?” I even waited a few seconds. “Or is it correct?” I inquired. No response. “Should it be Natasha LIKES chocolate milk?” You should have heard me emphasize the “s” in “likes.” “L. I. K. E. S,” I spit that S out like a rattlesnake. Annie Sullivan, eat your heart out. “Natasha ain’t here, Mr. Pulley. She take her baby to the doctor,” Jeremiah, who was not a bullfrog, volunteered. One day I thought it would be fun to diagram sentences, a decision that some might call suicidal. Ambien would not have worked any better in getting these students in such a comatose shape. The cockeyed optimist in me was grateful for no discipline problems, because they were either asleep or fighting to stay awake. When a couple of students were awake enough to ask, “When we gone do ‘litterture’?” By that time, I had stopped correcting any mispronunciations. I was now sanctioned “Mr. Pulley.” As to literature, why not? I thought teaching Macbeth would be some kind of cosmic solution to my dilemma. I approached teaching the Scottish play with my usual gusto. The students actually remembered to bring their “litterture” books out of gratitude for leaving the grammar books in their lockers. I was excited about the witches because I thought that any teenage would be excited about the witches. I showed photos and posters of the witches and then I launched my “lecture” about the role of the witches in the play. I did all my spiel about Shakespeare complimenting King James with the use of the witches, the whole take on the word Weird when referring to the Weird Sisters, the explanation of “Wyrd” from Beowulf, and the whole concept on fate. I was all over the board and running out of colored chalk. “So, class, just what is the role of the witches in this play? Is it sheer entertainment? A compliment to King James? Do the weird sisters have something to do with destiny?” I was really into asking lots of questions in those days. “Come on, no one has anything to say today?” Silence. And then a minute or two later, a six foot six, two-hundred-and-fifty pound football player Cordarius Gillespie raises his hand. “Yes, Cordarius.” “I tell you who them witches is.” “Oh?” “Miss Thompson, Miss Hall, and Miss Smith.” All three of these seasoned teachers were notorious to my students. These teachers had tortured all the minority students with false accusations of stealing their classroom scissors, staplers, and even their pencil sharpeners. I didn’t immediately laugh at Cordarius’ answer. I held my breath and raised my eyebrows, but I exploded in laughter and then gave Cordarius and the rest of the class a facial gesture communicating, “You have a valid point, Cordarius.” They did not laugh when I laughed, but when I gave them that “look,” they guffawed. That was an unusual way of bonding with the students, but that bond launched the beginning of a rather successful semester. A sense of humor and simply being human became an effective teaching tool. Sometimes, I was the sole person to find humor. A couple of weeks into the semester I gave a ridiculously difficult grammar test in which the students were given pages of sentences that might contain grammar errors. The test takers were to circle the error and then correct it. Some of the sentences contained no errors, but I did not reveal the number of sentences that were correct. I was diabolical. Sweet Valenica stared at that test for several minutes and suddenly yelled, “Mr. Pulley! What we supposed to be doin’?” I explained in a tone like Mr. Rogers of television fame: “If you find an error in the sentence, circle the error, and in the space below, rewrite the sentence with the appropriate correction.” Valencia nodded. She scrutinized a few more of the sentences. She silently mouthed some of the words. She circled nothing. Then suddenly, Valencia proclaimed, “Mr. Pulley your testes be too hard.” I froze. I held my breath. I wanted to laugh. Why weren’t the students laughing? Did she say what I thought she said? Was the intercom on? Surely, Valencia wouldn’t be that graphic. I gazed at the class. They were all still trying to take the test, a single test. Their plural of test was “testes.” Why wouldn’t I know that? I stayed at that school in rural Arkansas for a year and a half. Eventually, I received a phone call from a school in Memphis summoning me to teach speech and drama. It wasn’t a call from God, but I yielded to the attractions of the big city. I was not only able to teach, but I could also act and sing in community theatre where I repeatedly told the tale of the testes to fellow actors. After a long sabbatical from the theatre, I lost contact with most of those actors but recently, a fine actor who had laughed most infectiously at my tale was smitten with terminal throat cancer. Unable to speak, he enjoyed emailing and texting his actor friends. I hesitated when I first contacted him. What do I write? I sent a feeble message with something like “hello.” He immediately responded: “Mr. Pulley, your testes be too hard.” |
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