Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 6, 1993 TAG: 9302080240
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
THE HALF-WAY MARK
During the school year, staff writer Joe Kennedy is writing periodically about Salem's Andrew Lewis Middle School. This is his fifth report.
On Monday, Rita Shoemaker stood in her classroom at Andrew Lewis Middle School in Salem and considered her first semester as a full-time teacher.
"It went pretty well," she said. "I learned something new every day."
She learned that her eighth-grade students generally liked computer literacy better than the math courses she taught. That "discipline is something you always have to work at harder, especially when you're new." That it's easy to underplan your days, which can mean trouble in the classroom. And that some days the students simply don't want to be there.
"That's a shock at times," Shoemaker said.
Monday was much like any other day at the school. Youngsters slammed lockers and strode briskly through the hallways between classes. Troublemakers were dispatched to seats outside their classroom's door.
Mindi Caldwell, a seventh-grader, sat at a table near the entrance to the school auditorium and wrote answers to questions about the Civil War on a social studies test she had missed. She took time to reflect on the semester past and concluded that the best part was that she started going out with her boyfriend.
Upstairs, Jodi Sisler, a student teacher from Roanoke College, sat on a chair in the hall outside Sally Budd's sixth-grade science class. Her grade book rested on the small table in front of her, and one by one, students came out and listened as she explained how they were doing and why, and encouraged them to continue or improve.
On the third floor, Mary Hill, the Teen Living teacher, waited outside the boys' bathroom while a student checked to see if a boy really had climbed out the window onto the roof. (Apparently not.)
"I think we had a very good first semester," Jerry Campbell, the principal, said during a pause in his first-floor office.
Teachers and staff worked hard to make students see that education was their reason for being there, he said.
The little things took most of their time. The big ones demanded their immediate attention. There were joys and there were sorrows.
"We feel like parents," he said. "We don't want anything to happen to these youngsters."
So the death of a former student hit hard.
And finding that two female students had run away from home in late September put everyone on edge.
"It's not unusual for a child to run away from a place and appear at school," Campbell said. The teachers and administrators kept an eye out, but the girls didn't show up. Eventually, both returned home, and to their classes.
If Campbell had his way, he would spend most of his time on matters related to curriculum. Instead, he found himself dealing with a thousand other things, including many for which he had received no academic training.
Some days, he handled nothing but discipline.
"In a school of 890 students, you're going to have pushing and shoving, fights and things of this nature," he said. "Fights have been minimal this year. . . . If it's a real fight, we're going to deal with it with some kind of out-of-school suspension."
Fights happen when students are unsupervised, he said. The school day at Andrew Lewis is tightly structured, but there always are people who flare under the gibes of their classmates, and bumps in the hallway that lead to bigger things.
Saturday detention sessions, instituted last March, are a bit of a deterrent, Campbell said. Twelve to 15 students manage to earn their way into them each week. Fighting is just one of the routes.
Tom Chester, a technology teacher, paused in the hall between classes and said last semester was noteworthy in one way: "I had the worst class I ever taught in my life."
Smiling and choosing his words carefully, he said the 18 boys made for "an interesting mix of students" who "got along too well."
He managed to get them to produce cars powered by C02 cartridges and to make and sell hatracks - but not without calling some of their parents on the phone and keeping some of the kids after school.
Generally, "I try to earn their respect rather than hit them over the head," Chester said, a bit ruefully. "It didn't really work too well in that class."
When the the sixth-graders came to the middle school for the first time in September, many were apprehensive. On Monday, most seemed at ease.
Joshua Clark said yes, he was nervous at the start, but now, "it's just like a daily routine."
The first semester "went pretty good" for Brandon Jordan. "I made good grades in math."
"I thought it was going to be hard - a lot of homework, that the tests would be hard," said Jill Pinkney. "It hasn't been so bad."
Megan Reeves had a bit of trouble that first day back in September.
"It took me 20 times to open my lock," she said, "and I put it on backwards."
Now, "everybody's nice, and I have friends. I thought the eighth-graders would be really mean, but some aren't mean. They're nice."
Matt Ogburn's early misgivings disappeared once he started classes.
"I had heard bad things about the school, that the teachers didn't give you a fair chance," he said. "But that's not true."
He got straight A's last semester. At least one thing did not go perfectly for him.
"I've had some disagreements with two of my teachers over my binder. They say it's not neat enough."
In fact, he said, they threw it away and gave him zeros for his homework. But his parents appealed, and the matter was resolved.
"I'm not real organized," he admitted. "My locker, when you open it, if you don't open it right, everything falls out."
These are some of the things that were said and done as the new semester began. There were others, like the eighth-graders filing into the auditorium to choose their electives for the term, and there will be many more to come.
"I don't think anybody who doesn't spend a great deal of time in any school building can imagine the number of things that administrators, teachers, aides, cafeteria staff and custodians deal with," Campbell, the principal, said.
At lunchtime, a student named Claude Campbell sat at a small table against the wall. His classmates whooped it up at the long tables nearby, but Claude ate quietly by himself.
A teacher had nabbed him for running in the hall, he explained. It was a bum rap. Two boys had been throwing books at him. He was only trying to get away. When they saw the teacher, "they took off down the hall and got out of the way."
He told her all that, hoping to get sympathy. Instead, he got detention.
Ninety-two down, 88 to go. Another day in the life.