Miss Bertram's First Teaching Job

All characters are at and above the age of 18 in this work.

*****

I couldn't tell you how excited I was when got the chance to interview for my first teaching position. I literally jumped for joy in a coffee shop when the e-mail came through. I had spent my days in the city, trying to look busy and keep busy, but the boredom (and the debt!) was sitting in. So you can better believe that I made every effort to follow up on this interview.

I hadn't been out of practice. I was getting sick of being a barista, at another coffee house, and then spending the rest of my evening at another. You could say that I was working on my people skills all day. I believed myself to be an educator already, just in all things caffeinated. I was already jazzed up on an espresso so it was delightful to get the instant gratification of an immediate e-mail reply.

"Great. Would you be able to come by tomorrow morning? First bell is bright and early, 8 AM. We'll see you then." Assistant Principal Raymond had replied.

I jotted it into my calendar app and synced it across all my devices. Then I jumped to the next tab, to my favorite part of the interview process, figuring out what I was going to wear!

***

The next morning, it didn't make a difference. I was actually really shocked to be in a sea of rushing students around me. My nude heels did help in towering above the crowded hallway, but I realized that if I wasn't moving, I was quickly relegated to the lockers. Luckily, the first bell rang and the corridors emptied quickly as everyone had made it to their respective classrooms. I could finally hear the click of shoes in the few steps I had left to the front office.

"Hi... Rebecca Bertram." The secretary took a moment to acknowledge my presence, and when she did, she didn't say anything. "I'm here to see Principal Raymond?" She looked me up and down, then looked to the office to her right. I had missed the eye contact they made, but a tall African American man stood from his chair and made his way out.

"Hey you must Miss Bertram." He held his hand out. "Jeff Raymond." Mr. Raymond gestured to his office and I followed. "Please, have a seat." I pulled down at my skirt as I sat, quickly feeling a little overdressed for the occasion. "Welcome to P.S. 304 of District 10." He held his arms out to his side in showcase. "Well, what do you think?"

I only glanced over the room and noticed the few trinkets. There were small trophies that I assumed belonged to Mr. Raymond. The leather chairs were comfortable and might seen a lot of uncomfortable students in their years. But it was the beige-painted concrete walls that solidified the stature of this place. "It's really nice!" I smiled through my teeth. I really needed this job.

"I'm glad you think so!" He finally cracked a smile. "Usually when we get this posting out, we don't get many takers since..." There was a tinge of shame in his voice but he recovered. "Well, since it's not the most glamorous place to educate. But I assure you what we may lack in resources, we more than make up for in achievement and heart."

"Oh yeah. I totally can see that." I nodded adding interest. "I know you all have always been renowned for your athletic programs."

"Yes, that's right." He relaxed. "In conjunction with my duties as Assistant Principal, I also serve as the athletic director. You could say I'm a little proud." He smiled again.

"As you should be." I grinned and looked around. "There's definitely a lot of character here."

"You would be correct on that. Not just in terms of the building itself, but the student population it serves. Tell me, do you have any experience working with an inner-city population?"

"Yes, I actually did some research on efficacy of special education programs in graduate school." I tried to sound informed but the research was only a paper I had to do for a final. "I understand it can be difficult to bridge some gaps, but I found it to be really worthwhile."

"Very good. I'm glad you're optimistic. This is a very trying population. Nearly 90% of our students come from a low socioeconomic background and 85% are black. Last year, we had hit an all-time low of graduation rates for our seniors and now the city is looking to cut our funding." Mr. Raymond drew a sharp breath. "So we need that optimism." He exhaled.

"I'm absolutely up to the challenge."

"Great. I shared your resume with the other principals and they were all pleased with your qualifications." He looked at the paper copy of it and then studied me. "They left it up to me to decide on the candidate. So you tell me, what makes you good for the job?" In his silence he shifted between my eyes and my chest, waiting for a response.

And it was my cue to sell. "I think it really goes back to my optimism." I gestured with my hands. "I try my best when it comes to a task that seems impossible." I leaned forward. "When it gets tough, I dig in," I pretended to shovel, "and I put in the work. I think you tell by my experiences that I am persistent in all endeavors."

When he finally took his eyes from my cleavage, Mr. Raymond put the resume on his desk and only nodded for a moment. "Well... I'm sold." He shuffled around the papers on his desk and produced a single sheet and handed it to me. "These are the terms of the position. You'll find the compensation there below." He pointed to it. "Please know that there's not much we can do as far as changing that figure. The city mandated some new policy on grant-related positions."

"New policy?" I had never of this before. I did know however that working for a school like this for a year or two would forgive a lot of my student loan debt. "I'm not familiar?"

"Since our graduation rates have dropped, the city is requiring proof of achievement to demonstrate continued funding to the programs. This position is contingent on that achievement. It's written there on the bottom that continued employment is based on performance."

This made me move around in my seat and suddenly I felt like that uncomfortable student. "Does that mean if the performance isn't met, then the position is forfeited along with the funding?" Mr. Raymond only nodded his head. "Oh... I see."

"If you want to think the offer over-" He started.

"I'll take it!" I blurted out and stood up with my hand out. I didn't know what I was getting into but I only thought about the debt forgiveness. When he shook my hand and showed me the door, I felt like a new woman. A gainfully employed woman.

"I certainly admire your spirit." He touched the small of my back to lead me out. "We could use some more folks like you here."

"Thank you Mr. Raymond. I really appreciate the opportunity." I smiled as the click of my heels stopped and he reached to shake my hand again.

"Please, call me Jeff. Thanks for coming in. We look forward to working with you."

***

The next week flew by really fast. I had almost forgot to let my boss at the coffee shop know that I was going to be leaving at the end of the week. Between the training and administrative hoops I had to jump through to get started, I was almost exhaust with the idea of starting my first day of teaching on a Friday. But the day came and I almost ran late trying to figure out what to wear. I remembered the looks I got the week before for the interview and decided to tone it down to something less distracting.

While it did help to be provocative when trying to impress the interviewer, I knew that it would be a huge distraction to dress the same in the classroom. A conservative summer dress would do the trick. I had found it on sale and it had all those little floral prints. I loved the way my shoulders looked with the thin straps and how it cinched around my waist in the back. And I suppose it goes without saying that I stuck to the dress code since the skirt fell right below the knee.

When I walked through the halls to my classroom, I could definitely see some of the side-ways looks I was getting. "What the-" One of the girls I passed said under her breath. I felt like, for a split moment, like I was a foreign exchange student. Only I was white and a little bit older. I mean, it wasn't even like six years since I had been out of high school myself. I moved swiftly this time with my wedge heels, silent and stealthy.

Unfortunately, I was so quiet that when I got into my classroom, no-one noticed me come in over the noise they were making. Students were up on chairs, laughing and calling out to each other. I think I even saw a pair in the back of the classroom hugging each other, if not more. When I cleared my voice, the clamor subsided and they finally quieted down.

"Hello class," I started surveying the faces and turned to the board with a dry-erase marker. "My name is..." I began to spell it out, "...Ms. Bertram." I was mostly met with blank stares, except for the girl in the front with corn-rows, who kept chewing on her gum. "I'm going to be teaching math this year, Algebra specifically."

"Yea we gon' need all the bras up in here." Someone called out from a row and the class erupted with laughter. I looked down at my chest without thinking, in shame, and felt worse. I ignored it to move on.

"A little later, we're going to take a short quiz..." They all groaned. "Don't worry, it won't be graded. I just want to see where you all are at, what you're working with. But first, let's go around the room. I'd love to know more about you all." Everyone shifted around in their seats and for once didn't make eye-contact with me. I looked to the girl with the gum and even she had her hand up, hiding her face. "Come on, let's start here." I pointed to my right in the first row while I leaned back on my desk.

They each went through sharing little details about themselves. A lot of them liked music. Some of them shared hobbies they liked to do like dancing and playing sports. Not one of them admitted to liking Math but one actively shared how he did not like the subject. We made it nearly half way through the room until the classroom door open.

Four jersey-clad, loud, young men filed in laughing among themselves strolled towards the back of the room. The last one, short and chubby, smiled and acknowledged me. "Ah man," He tapped at the guy in front of him and pointed to me, "Aye you didn't say hi to Miss Teacher here." They all took their seats and individually nodded to me.

"Well... it's nice of you all to join us." I said, unnerved. "We were just getting around to the row back there. Why don't you introduce yourselves?" I pointed to the student that had spoke up first.

"Aw well," He held his hand to his chest, "I'm Jamel." He looked to his right to the next student.

"I'm Rich." He said so softly that I hadn't heard him. He slunk back into his seat despite being the tallest of the four.

"Tremaine, but my friends call me Big T." He nodded his head and I could make out the muscles that had moved in his neck. He was definitely the most muscular of the bunch. Tremaine slapped his peer to the right who looked like he dozed off.

"Huh?" The big guy growled to attention. "Uh?" The others in the class looked at him, almost inaudibly encouraging him to get on with the introduction. His droopy eye finally looked at me. "DaRon." He breathed heavily. I nodded to him with a smile at the end of the introductions. His whole body had heaved at the desk in front of him. He was certainly bigger in width than Tremaine and almost nearly as tall as Rich.

"Great! Now that I've gotten to know a little bit about you all. What would you like to know about me?" I asked to them all.

One girl in front raised her hand. "Where you from?"

"I grew up in East Meadows and went to school up-town." I tried to give limited details, but I knew that the answer would paint me to be more upper-class than I'd like.

"You ever been on TV?" Another girl asked as she squinted her eyes at me.

"Nope." I chuckled. "I wish!" I got this question a lot since people seemed to confuse me with Minka Kelly all the time when I was more brunette. I ended up going dirty blonde just to escape that attention.

"What's your first name?" A boy asked from a middle row.

"Rebecca. But my friends call me B-tram." I looked for laughs but there was only silence. "Just kidding."

"OMG Becky," one girl called out in what I later learned to be a white-girl voice, "I love that dress." The rest of the class laughed. I took the opportunity to stand up and give a side to side, eliciting even a whistle from the back.

"You got a boyfriend? A husband?" One of the voices from the back row called out. It was Jamel.

"Yes." I tried not to let the answer skip a beat even though it wasn't true. Unless you considered a glass of wine and a blanket to be significant others. "Any others?" I looked around the room quick to change the subject.

Jamel raised his hand again. "Miss... uh, miss."

"Bertram." I pointed to the board behind me where it was written. "Yes?"

"I was just gonna ax how you pronounce your name. Bur..." Jamel trailed off.

"Bertram. It's like Burt and Tram. You all know what a tram is right? It's like a train, or a tram." I tried to explain but there were too many blank stares. "Or you can say it like the English people say it, burr-trum." I had begun getting the quiz papers ready as I turned my back to them for the moment.

"Oh I got cha." Jamel beamed, "Miss Butt-rump right?" The class roared and some of the girls shook their heads.

I chose to ignore it but it did make me self-conscious of being on display now. I shuffled the paper along to the front rows and laid them on each desk. It was surprise that they had all started working quickly. I put the last quiz on DaRon's desk and noticed he had fallen asleep. I leaned in to tap him awake. Just as he startled, I felt a sensation under my dress.

When I looked back, Tremaine stroked at my inner thigh. "Miss Buttrum, what this quiz for?" He stopped when I stepped back. I gave him a short glare.

"It's just a short test to see what you all know so far. Just to see what you're working with." I looked at him and then at Jamel who has been seeking the same explanation. I walked back up to the front of the classroom and could feel their eyes working up my legs.

There were maybe only ten seconds of silence before another hand went up. Jamel raised it high and I walked over slowly to the back so as not to disturb the class. "Yes Jamel?" I leaned over his desk to look at the paper that he was looking at. When he didn't say anything, I looked up to see that he was staring down my dress and was in mid-lick of his lips.

"Uh... oh yeah." Jamel traded glances between his quiz and my chest. "I'm gonna need a ruler."

"I don't think you need one for this quiz." I looked at the questions again to make sure.

Jamel studied me up and down again and licked his big lips again. "You wanted to see what I'm working with?" His fingers grazed at my knees. "I'm gonna need a ruler," he gave a gap-toothed grin, "you know what I mean?"

I pulled away and turned to the materials on the shelf behind me. I knew that my face had turned red and I desperately tried to hide it. A can of rulers were right there and I pulled one out. When I held it in my hand, I freaked a little and put it on Jamel's desk and moved back up to the front of the class. I clapped my hands.

"Okay class. Time's up. Please pass your papers up." They all started shuffling and gathering their things. They knew when the bell would ring. "Again, don't worry about how you did."

"We ain't." Tremaine called out above the clamor, "We seniors, we graduating anyway. Fuck all this!" They all laughed. It was only drowned out by the ding of the bell. In an instant, they had all shuffled out of my classroom.

It wasn't so bad for a first day, that's what I had thought. But then I had gotten home that evening and graded the quizzes. My first red pen had already started to run dry. When I couldn't find a back up, I ended up pouring another glass of wine instead. Almost all of the quizzes scored under 60%, the whole class was effectively on the edge of failing. That's when I really questioned what I had gotten myself into.

***

The next two weeks did not fare much better. I struggled at every class period to get the students to focus and stay on track. Usually there was at least one pair of headphones blaring throughout the instruction. Whenever I did reprimand a student, the rest of them would make a big scene out of it. To make it worse, their grades still suffered.

I knew I was half way through my four week probationary window. I didn't feel pressure from the administration to improve scores, but I noticed that my patience was also starting to wear thin. I even turned to some of the other teachers for help. The only one that offered some advice was Ms. Edna, an older black lady. She reminded me of Madea. "You gotta get to know em' girl." She told me, almost in a church lady voice.

So I took her advice to heart. I had lunch duty with her that day and we watched the students as they took their mid-day meal. "I thought they were loud in class." I told her.

"Oh honey please. They're nothing but wild animals don't you know better?" Edna laughed at me.

"But they have so much potential. Sometimes I think they don't understand what they can accomplish. Especially when they're not pushed academically." I reasoned.

"Potential?" Edna chuckled in disbelief. "Girl, look at them boys there." She pointed to a group of athletic types at a table together. "You know 10 out of 10 of them think they're gonna play pro ball. But only one might get a scout to come see him. And he might not even make it."

"So you're saying we should be trying to get them to think more realistically?"

"Realistic?" Edna was incredulous. "Do that look realistic to you?" I looked to see where she as pointing, but my view was still of the jocks. I followed the trail of her finger that matched with where the boys were looking. A group of girls were giggling and clapping as they played music. Two of them were standing nearly back to back, with their hands on their knees, squatting, and shaking their behinds.

Edna was shaking her head in disapproval. "What is that?" I asked.

"That, honey, is an exercise in realism." Edna said stoically. The girls were gyrating their hips and popping their backs along to the rhythms of the music. One of them was wearing tribal leggings, I noticed the pair because I had a pair of a similar pattern myself. You could tell she had practiced with the way she moved in vigor. I noticed that the boys had watched in a hypnotic trance. "They know what they gotta do to get what they want." Edna explained. "Putting in twerk. That's what they call it."

Before I could say anything, one of the boys had got up and walked towards the group of girls. The girl in the tribal leggings gave him a welcoming look and backed into him. She kept up with the dance and even turned it up a notch when she made contact with his belt. Edna gave a quick shout to them to quit just as the girl pulled up her thong to peek over the leggings. The boy looped his finger under the thong and walked off with her. "What just happened?" I was genuinely in the dark.

"You mighta thought he laid stake on her for himself." Edna said wisely, "But if you was looking close, the way she was working it? Yes ma'am, she lay claim to that boy. She got all the power there."

The sound of the lunch-room took over like white noise and I was lost in my thoughts. What did she mean that she got all the power? How did she do that? Was it hard? Was it easy? She had made it look effortless.

"Rebecca? Ms. Bertram. Miss. Bertram." A man's voice asked from behind me. I turned to see that it was Assistant Principal Raymond.

"Oh I'm sorry Jeff." I tried to recover from my absent stare.