Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 13, 1993 TAG: 9306140334
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"I'm coming," Janet Claytor says, never annoyed.
She corrects a paper on a student's desk, reaches for another, and keeps the other kids on track as they work on essays, reports and the reading of textbook chapters.
This is teacher hell.
Not for Janet Claytor.
"This is like a home for me, and for the students, too."
She is nearly every student's favorite teacher. Guys automatically remove their cherished hats - symbols of their independence - at her classroom door.
Colleagues call her the Mother Teresa of the Alternative Education Center - the most dedicated, self-sacrificing one of all.
She believes in the young people sent here by the city's middle and high schools.
"They need some love. They need to know that you care, because they can decide if you are phony or if you are real. They need to know if you have faith in them."
She's in motion from the moment she arrives in the mornings until she races out the door to her own three children in the evenings. She helps students apply for college. She runs field trips.
Perhaps the most important thing she does is maintain a line of communication with dozens of kids. If she's too busy to talk, she recharges with a touch of a young man's wrist, or her hand resting on a girl's shoulder. Rarely does a student glide by her in the hallway without Claytor flashing a smile or somehow registering her awareness of the person.
Over about six conversations in class one day, she hears a guy say a bad word.
"Carlos?" she says, in a tone that gently calls him on the obscenity.
"I didn't cuss," Carlos says. "I said `mother's uncle.' "
"I hear very well, Carlos," she answers calmly, as she keeps on working with another guy.
She corrects them when they curse. "But also," she says, "I realize that in the streets, it is a defense mechanism."
Students get noisy as they compete for attention.
"As you will notice, they are loud. To a lot of teachers, that is offensive. To me, it means, `I am here! Notice me!' "
"She's patient," student Carlos Gravely says later. His buddy Nathaniel Smith agrees. She manages to keep up with students working at drastically different levels. "She tries to make sure you got it before she moves on."
Claytor has been at the Alternative Ed Center most of its seven years.
She teaches government, U.S. history, as well as English for ninth-, 10th-, 11th- and 12th-graders. Two nights a week, she teaches at William Fleming High School.
"One year, hopefully," she says, "I will be able to concentrate on English. Or government. Or history."
Other Roanoke schools try to lure her away, but she's stayed with Alternative Ed.
She boils down her approach at Alternative Ed: "Basically, I talk to them, and they talk to me."
Even more basic: "I respect them and they respect me."
"That's the nicest lady in the world," says former Alternative Ed student Jason Beale, a rising sophomore at Norfolk State University.
Her respect for kids is obvious. "You can't help but just give it back," he says.
For all her tenderness, center director George Franklin says Claytor has broken up fights. "They don't want to hurt Mrs. Claytor."
One day in her class, a young man has his head on his desk. He's a senior. The next few weeks will decide if he will graduate.
Unless he gets to work, he won't finish. "We can't let that happen," she says, standing in the hall. "We will put the pressure on." (Later, he's put on the list of students expected to graduate Wednesday.)
She goes in and shuts the door. "Be nice to each other," she tells her students.
She shushes them all day long - quiet, short shhhhh's, so many times her lips must get dry.
She is never satisfied. "I feel like at the end of the day I haven't done what I needed to do."
In the hall, she runs into a former student, now in beauty school. At 20, the young woman has three children.
The young woman confesses that she was put out of the beauty school for a day because she acted up.
Claytor advises her: "That's OK . . . Go on back with a better attitude. You know - just be real diplomatic."
In a spring staff meeting, teachers decide which kids will be allowed to go on a field trip. Only so many can go, so they read off students' names and vote on who to eliminate because they'd cause trouble.
When hands fly up on one kid's name, Claytor shakes her head and says his name, with a question mark, as if to say, "Why wouldn't they like him?"
She doesn't give up easily on any student. Everybody knows that.
When even the forgiving Claytor votes against a couple of kids, the teachers burst into laughter. Those kids are so devilish, even Claytor won't go on a trip with them.
That means something.
by CNB