Alejandro Escudé, 6/9/2014

Current Occupation: High School Teacher
Former Occupation: None
Contact Information: Alejandro Escudé is the winner of the 2013 Sacramento Poetry Center Award. His first full-length poetry collection, "My Earthbound Eye," is now available on Amazon and at www.sacramentopoetrycenter.com. Alejandro is originally from Argentina. He is a high school English teacher and lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two kids.

 

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The Standard

       

Fox knew he was down. He’d checked the runner in the morning and watched as the number indicating his value as a teacher had taken a tumble.

“Four points,” he muttered to himself, as the cacophony of the students of Valley Ridge High School filled the yard.

Fox Praiseworthy was the best teacher in the school and the numbers confirmed it. His closest competitor, Leonora Steadman, couldn’t even come close. A four point drop hurt: it meant that his investors would take notice and that a worrisome trend might unfold.

Todd Snodgrass saw the drop. He was working at the law firm as usual, his corner office reflecting the skyscrapers of Century City. Every morning, he had the same routine, coffee at The Bean, mocha latte with soy, before checking his TeacherTrade account, which included Praiseworthy and Steadman. He predicted Steadman would surpass Praiseworthy as soon as finals hit.

Praiseworthy had never gone through a major drop before and he was thinking about that when he mistakenly entered the wrong standard, one of the state lesson guidelines– 2.17 instead of 2.16–on the electronic board in his classroom then proceeded with his lesson.

The students entered and quickly copied down the standard and were thus programmed to proceed with the topic, aligned with the state guideline. Fox began his lesson, rolling up his sleeves and leaning over his podium. Each student had their pad computer and diligently called up the recorder app. They all knew Mr. Praiseworthy’s biggest pet peeve was spotting a student who had forgotten to call up his recorder app. He liked to be recorded. He liked the sound of his voice as he strolled the hallways, students playing back his lectures to get a jump on their homework between classes.

As he began, he noticed he didn’t feel the usual thrill as he spoke. The realization that Leonora Steadman was now even closer to reaching him was too much to bear. He began to slow down, forgetting to stop to enumerate key terms which were always a starting point for the brief digressions some of his colleagues labeled genius. Fox’s university teaching advisor had said he was one of the best teachers she’d ever had the pleasure of training. But that was back when he was starting out, before the entire world had changed, before teachers became publically traded entities.

Fox began to dither in his lecture. He knew he was cutting it close and so did his students. Some of them began fidgeting. They started to turn their heads. One of the students even dared to ask another a question.

“Why is he talking about this?” Tommy asked.

Cami turned but did not answer. No one ever stopped their recorder to ask a question like Tommy had. But Tommy didn’t care if he caused the Waver to pick up the change in the classroom and turn a murderous shade of red.

The Waver was a rectangular eye that was hung on the wall in the center of the classroom, where the old clocks used to go. It was as large as a wall clock but rectangular in shape and solid and the eye part was actually a slit that normally remained black. Only a tiny light at the bottom of the machine alerted school maintenance that it was operational.

The Waver’s eye was black. It remained black throughout the class, but one student swore he saw it blink red shortly after Tommy asked Cami the question.

That was all it took for the signal to be sent to the main office where Mrs. Tyler, the Principal, an African-American woman in her sixties with a limp that gave her slightly awkward in appearance, was alerted with a series of lights, much like a volume control– green wavering lights on the verge of turning red.

She leaned over her controls, swiped up the volume, and listened. Fox didn’t sound like his confident self, and she also immediately recognized that the standard, which was listed on her database, was not the one he was lecturing on. She pushed her office chair back in a hurry, sped through the door and down the hallway.

Fox was experiencing a kind of meltdown. But he had felt this before. He knew what it was, the feeling of slipping into a kind of trance that seemed to slow time down so that the class period would never come to an end. He had always soldiered through this though, but today was different. Suddenly, he realized that this was not the usual slipping away into unconscious teaching: he had listed the wrong standard.

“Mr. Praiseworthy,” the Principal said, edging into the room. This was an anomaly, given that teaching was never to be interrupted, just as a CEO would never be interrupted handling a conference call or a quarterback conferring with his team in a huddle.

“Yes, Mrs. Tyler.”

“May I speak to you for a moment?”

The students held their breath. This was unprecedented in Mr. Praiseworthy’s class. They might have accepted the situation somewhat if the teacher were just starting out, but Mr. Praiseworthy was the top grosser in the entire school. They knew how rich he’d grown from planning nearly perfect classes, following each and every standard, and most of all, they knew that they would all score very high in the weekly state exams.

“You’re off the standard,” said Mrs. Tyler.

“Yes I know, I must’ve read the wrong directive for today’s classes. It will never happen again.”

Fox knew this was the equivalent to a businessman losing a big client on the phone by sheer incompetence. He knew this sole act would drop him another four or five points, which meant he had lost at least ten thousand dollars in revenue.

“Finish your class as best you can; this time on the right standard and please come see me as soon as the period is over.”

Praiseworthy finished class and put his head down on his desk. This loss coupled with the other four points he’d lost recently could signal the beginning of the end of his lucrative career at Valley Ridge High School.

Every classroom door Fox passed on his way to see Mrs. Tyler was like a year of his life at the school, worn yellow, each classroom sheltering a teacher like animals in a zoo.

Fox never made it to the Principal’s Office. On the other side of town, the Praiseworthy stock tumbled. Snodgrass took a sip of his coffee, clicked his tongue, and began scrolling down the list of other available names, up and comers who were innovators in their subjects and flawless performers.