By his own admission, T.J. Simpson is ”a classic case of teacher burnout.”
For the last two years he had taught English at Du Sable High School, a South Side school with 2,082 students that serves one of the most impoverished and violent neighborhoods in the United States.
Simpson had planned to leave Du Sable at the end of the school year and move to northern California, a decision he made after watching 15-year-old Dartagnan Young die of a gunshot wound in the chest in the stairwell around the corner from Simpson`s classroom.
”I never saw so much blood,” the teacher said shortly after the Oct. 14 shooting. ”There was a river of blood flowing down the hall. Kids were screaming and crying. It was absolutely crazy. I just felt numb with shock, and the image of seeing a kid collapse and die like that, it still stays with me. I`ll never forget it.”
Simpson, however, changed his plans and left Du Sable early, after he was threatened by a knife-wielding student in May.
A 35-year-old native of Bangor, Me., Simpson said he had gone to work in the Chicago public school system because he wanted to ”teach students the pleasures of reading and literature.”
But his admitted inability to relate to his students and control their behavior made that almost impossible. Simpson is not a disciplinarian-and that, he admits, was his downfall.
”You can`t teach these kids unless you get their respect and attention, and I spend 90 percent of my time on discipline,” he said, standing in his littered, graffiti-covered classroom at Du Sable, 4934 S. Wabash Ave.
”Other teachers have an easier time getting the kids to settle down, but for some reason I just wasn`t able to do that. They are always yelling, fighting, goofing off. They didn`t seem to care about learning, and I couldn`t connect with them. Teaching at Du Sable has been the most depressing experience of my life.”
As part of a seven-month Tribune examination of the Chicago public schools, Simpson agreed to keep an audiotape diary of his experiences at Du Sable over an eight-week period.
Simpson was not an exceptional teacher. The school principal gave him a satisfactory rating, the lowest acceptable, and the teacher had difficulty in controlling and communicating with his students. When students misbehave, Simpson sent them out of the classroom, allowing them to wander the halls. At some point, he said, he lost faith in the idea that every student can learn.
Excerpts from his diary: Period 8 is the most rambunctious of all my classes, and it has the most immature pack of 16- and 17-year-olds one could imagine.
I was trying to give them some new spelling words on the blackboard, and every time my back was turned, one of them let out with some banshee-type noise. And this kept going on and on and on, and things were being thrown around the room. I would turn my back and a wad of paper would bounce off my head.
So finally I just had had it. About 15 minutes before the class was to be over, I just lost my temper and I told them-I screamed-that this was the most immature class I`ve ever dealt with. I see people acting like retarded 4-year- olds, like you would embarrass retarded 4-year-olds. I really chewed them out and said, ”Okay, I`ve had it.” And they just kept on. The ones who were in the back just kept on laughing.
Jason told me my face was turning purple, and I said, ”Good.” I said,
”I`m damn mad right now, and I`m glad it`s purple. It`ll show everybody just how mad I am.”
So I said to them, ”Okay. I`ve had it. I was not hired to teach special- ed kindergarten. I`m quitting.” And I walked toward the door.
Every kid in the class jumped out of their seats and ran toward me, begging me to come back, begging me not to quit, that I was their favorite teacher and all this stuff.
They made me come back into the classroom and said they`d behave if I came back in. I came back in and they behaved for the rest of the class. I thought at least things would be better the next day.
THURSDAY, JAN. 7
I came in and Reginald was moving around doing his usual stuff, bothering girls, grabbing their breasts. So I threw him out.
Then George and Alfonso were acting up just like fools, as usual. Aaron and Melinda were practically wrestling on the floor. I turned around and a workbook came whizzing by my head.
So I threw Alfonso out, hoping that it would quiet things down. Things didn`t quiet down. George became more and more obnoxious and loud. He tore the cover off a workbook. That made me furious, so I threw George out.
FRIDAY, JAN. 8
I came in this morning before division (home room), and there was a fight in the hall in front of my room. This was a serious one. This wasn`t just fooling around. These kids wanted to kill each other, and I went out to try to break it up.
I might as well have been an invisible person because they couldn`t care less that a teacher was around telling them to break it up. Other teachers tried to close their doors, ignore the thing. I asked one to call security.
Most every kid managed to get out in the hall to watch the fight. There were about 100 kids standing around watching the fight, and eventually one teacher, who`s about 6 feet 7 inches tall and weighs about 300 pounds, came along and managed to break it up.
THURSDAY, JAN. 14
It never ceases to amaze me what the kids don`t know.
We were studying the ”I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King this week. I was trying to explain the text of the speech to them, trying to get them to understand what all the words meant. They were very interested, and they were getting excited about some of the things that were being said.
First I asked them if they knew what the civil rights movement was all about. I got some very strange responses.
A bunch of kids started talking at the same time, saying things like,
”That is when you people made us sit in the back of the bus,” or ”That was when you were throwing rocks at us.” And I said, ”I was not throwing rocks at anyone.”
No one really seemed to know much about the Civil War. I had some kids saying that they thought it was a war between the whites and the blacks and the blacks lost. I brought up the fact that it was the North fighting the South.
At one point I talked about how I could remember vividly the night (in 1968) that Martin Luther King was assassinated. I was sitting there watching
”Ironsides” and they came on with the announcement. And this one kid says, ”How can you remember that far back what happened?` And I said, ”You remember things like that. Like when John Kennedy was shot I was only in 5th grade, but I remember that vividly. You remember things like that when they happen, because they cause like a big shock.”
And I said, ”You probably remember where you were when you heard that Mayor Washington died.” And a girl said, ”Yes, I did. I wasn`t shocked.”
And I said, ”Well, I was.” And this other kid says, ”Well, the other white people knew all along that he was going to be poisoned. You should not have been shocked.”
FRIDAY, JAN. 15
Well, I should have known that they wouldn`t do that great on the test on the Martin Luther King speech.
In some cases I got the most absurd, ridiculous answers. Many of the kids put down just words at random in the speech. Question: ”Who is the great American who is referred to in the speech?” Answer: ”And then they came to.” And I got all kinds of things like that. Just like random phrases from the text.
From the papers I skimmed through today, I can see very few that would get a passing grade. I would have hoped that this was one test they would have wanted to try to pass. And again, it was an incredibly easy test if they had simply bothered to read or pay attention to anything in the class there.
It was very disappointing, to say the least.
TUESDAY, JAN. 19
I don`t know what to do with Alfonso. Normally a kid like that who causes that much trouble I just would keep out for good. But then again, he`s such a little squirt, and I just feel sorry for him. I can`t get it in my heart to just totally keep him out for good, and he can do his work.
I have given him work to take home, and he has done that. And he`s not hopeless, I don`t think. That`s probably why I put up with his antics.
It`s also become some kind of a game too. He`s not going to give me a hard time the way someone a lot bigger will. Someone a lot bigger will refuse to move, and I obviously can`t do anything to move him. But Alfonso is a little kid. He knows I can pick him up if I have to. So he`ll move. But, boy, what a little goof he is.
So it`s like a game, a show. It`s like the Alfonso and Mr. Simpson show. Okay, let`s see how long Mr. Simpson will put up with Alfonso today, you know, until he gets thrown out. And when I do throw him out, the rest of the class roars with approval. So I`m not sure which one is the straight man in this routine, but I`ll wait and see what happens tomorrow.
WEDNESDAY, JAN. 20
Constance, who is a nice kid and a little strange, comes up with some bizarre things from time to time. Today she asked me if we had slavery where I came from. And I explained to her, ”No, I`m from Maine. It`s in the Northeast. We didn`t have any slavery.”
So then she asked me if we had kings and queens there and who was the king or queen? I said, ”No, we don`t have kings or queens there. It`s in the United States.” I didn`t quite get through to her, and then she asked if we had princes or princesses. I said, ”No. It`s the United States. We have presidents just like you do here.” And she said, ”Who is the president there right now?”
THURSDAY, JAN. 21
As far as Thursdays go, this one wasn`t as bad as the last few, but it still was the craziest day of the week. There`s something about Thursdays, the anticipation of Friday, that makes everybody so crazy.
Reginald, the one who likes to bother the girls and hang out in the girls` bathroom, showed up for the first time in a couple of weeks today. The very second he walked into the class, he yanked a pencil out of the hand of one of the best students in the class, who also happened to be one of the quietest, and started calling her names.
I don`t even think he knows this girl. I told Reginald to get out of the room and give her back her pencil. He shoved her and then threw her pencil in the wastebasket. I guided Reginald out of the room.
However, about five minutes later someone walked by. The door was closed but unlocked. Someone walked by and threw a lit firecracker in the room that exploded about 2 feet from my head.
The class went wild and thought it was hilarious. I`m now out the door, trying to chase down who had done it to no avail. I couldn`t find the culprit. When I came back everybody was laughing.
”Did you see Mr. Simpson scared? Mr. Simpson`s scared of a firecracker. . . .”
I told them, ”Look, I remember a few months ago I heard the gunshots and then watched a student die.”
And all these people started laughing-ones I wouldn`t expect to show such a ghoulish behavior.
And I got kind of mad and I said, ”Look, what`s so funny about hearing gunshots and watching a student die? That`s what you`re laughing at. Do you think that`s funny?”
For a second there I had a flashback of that day (when student Dartagnan Young, 15, was shot three times in the school on Oct. 14, 1987. A 16-year-old student-who police say was a member of a rival street gang-was arrested in connection with the slaying and charged as an adult with murder).
When I hear pops or explosions, that`s the first thing that comes to my mind. They thought that was very funny. They thought that was hilarious that Mr. Simpson could be unsettled by a firecracker or even a gunshot, I guess.
WEDNESDAY, JAN. 27
Every time I turned around there were two or three (sound of kids tapping on their desks) all in the same beat, all in the same rhythm.
And I turned around again and it sounded like there were 10 more. And it went on constantly, like from some Jimmy Cagney prison movie in the cafeteria scene, like the cups banging. So I turned around again and at least half the class was going (tap, tap) very loud.
To look at all these kids in unison, grinning and staring at you like demons, almost. At the same time, you know they`re just kids, and I told myself, ”Okay, don`t let this get to you here.”
So, okay, what do I do? I wasn`t sure what to do. I thought if it`s so loud, the whole floor-the whole second floor-is going to hear this. So I opened both doors and I said, ”Okay, let the whole second floor hear. Let the whole school hear just how foolish and crazy you are.”
And they stopped.
I don`t know exactly why that worked. Maybe they became self-conscious. Who knows? I don`t know.
TUESDAY, FEB. 2
Today was rough.
The kids in every class were horrible today. But since I was absent on Monday, there was no reasonable excuse for today. Usually the kids are better behaved after I have had a day out. Today they were just horrible. Maybe I`m just being so burned out.
I had to call in sick yesterday because I hadn`t been able to sleep. I hadn`t been able to eat. I couldn`t even sleep or eat this weekend. I`m sure it`s from stress and anxiety.
There are times when I think I am going crazy. I just dream of going back there every day. When I`ll take a nap or if I try to sleep, I`ll have the faces and voices of those kids, especially Derrick and Damon and Alfonso, in my mind constantly as I`m trying to nod off.
I was talking to another teacher who is around my age. We were talking in the English office. He`s been having a lot of stress problems too. He said Thursday after school he went home and just started crying. Here`s someone who is married and has kids. And because of the job he`s stressed out and doesn`t know what to do either. He just went home and broke down crying for an hour because the stress in the job had gotten to him so much.
I think it is getting to me too.
–
Simpson left Du Sable on May 18 after a 17-year-old girl burst into his classroom to talk to another student and threatened him with a switchblade when he asked her to leave.
”That was the last straw, the thing that pushed me over the edge,” he said. ”I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown after that incident.”
”I read a textbook when I was in college that said the most common reason teachers quit is teacher burnout. That passage stuck in my mind. I swore that it wouldn`t happen to me, at least not this fast.”
