Word: talked
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...above all, a sense of humor. While the kids downstairs eat cheese fries, half a dozen science teachers gather in the third-floor faculty lounge over leftovers from home. These 27 min. are more like a sanity break. When they enter the lounge, they get to be adults. They talk about everything from weekend plans to the lack of staff parking to the difference between sweet potatoes and yams...
...teacher in the 1990s, they say, means to have one's authority challenged daily. It's not just the kids who talk back. Some students curse at them; others don't bother to come to class on time. Teachers may send them to the office to be reprimanded, but the kids usually return the next day with a grudge. Some teachers, they say, don't even bother to assign homework because the students won't do it and will flunk the class. And if teachers have high fail rates, school administrators come down on them...
Today they are doing their regular Monday autopsy of the weekend, trying to figure out whether someone was wearing a thong under her toga at a party last Friday. When talk turns to college, most admit they haven't a clue where they're applying...
...really come into their own yet." At the next table are some African-American boys, and next to them is a table of preppy sophomore and junior girls. To her far right sit the seniors, divided into the In crowd and the "in-between" crowd. ("They get to talk on the phone with the In crowd but are not invited to their parties...
Phillips, a sharecropper's daughter, is one of those magical teachers whom you could imagine in a hundred roles: talk- show host, prison warden, poet laureate, mayor of a midsize city. She teaches some of the best kids in the school and some of the worst, but like many teachers, it's the ones in the middle she is concerned about. "In trying to be something for everybody, we're not doing an intensive job for any group," she says. "There's something noble about this mission, but it doesn't always serve students well...