I don’t envy the teachers with 5th period class. During the other periods of the day, one can set the tone of their lesson by how they walk in the door and address the students who are waiting there for them. But 5th period follows Break, which is neither lunch-time, nor gym, nor detention. It is all of those things in one, an unstructured 45-minute chasm in an otherwise structured day. If I were teaching the principle of entropy to High Schoolers, I would take them around to 5th period middle school classes and show them a little something about how heated particles behave in a confined space. In this transition from one period to the next, I’d like to focus on the role of the PE instructor. It is his job to herd the students from the concrete school courtyard—which serves simultaneously as athletic courts and cafeteria—to the classroom. When I was in public middle school in the United States, the students were taken from the class to the gym and then chaperoned back. We only saw the Phys. Ed. teacher for 45 minutes each day, and we were left to wonder how these middle-aged men channeled their recreational expertise the rest of the time. Mr. Ben, we knew, was also the school district’s Drivers Ed instructor who drove a silver Corvette and had a weakness for jelly donuts. He was famous for letting the occasional pupil drive the Corvette, but only so far as Dunkin Donuts and back. If we could be generous and call Mr. Ben hefty, we could not sugar coat Mr. D’s obesity. But to his credit, Mr. D was far superior as a teacher and as a role model outside of the gym; he was in a regionally acclaimed Irish folk band. In Egypt, the PE teacher is meant to strike a more fearsome pose. He is a hard man. An enforcer. When he is not out in the courtyard during PE, shouting out reps of thigh thrusts, he mans a permanent hall monitor station. He enjoys a monopoly in the trafficking of illegal bathroom trips. Above all, he is an arbitrary authoritarian. When the apex of your power is the confiscation of soccer balls and water bottles after 4th period, you will no doubt approach your responsibilities with a very token sense of duty. A perfect example is during Break. The PE instructors will spot a wayward soccer ball that comes close to disfiguring some poor old teacher who is on Break Supervision duty, hiding out on a shaded bench while she eats her lunch and counts the minutes. The PE teachers confiscate the ball, then assemble together in a circle on the side of the playground and start juggling with their feet. Then it’s headers only. Then it’s elaborate back of the neck traps. Perhaps two or three of the kids whose game they just disbanded will stand by and oooh and ahh. But the rest know the drill, they know the ball isn’t coming back any time soon and that they won’t get a chance to display their own juggling wizardry. So they find the next best thing, a half-pumped rugby ball. And again they start sliding around the slick concrete, this time trying to beat the living snot out of each other. Only now, there’s no one left to watch. When the bell sounds to signal the resumption of civilized activity, the PE teachers snap back into action. They round up the scattered children and assemble them into 12 lines, all bottlenecked at the entrance to the school. One by one, each class enters the building. The PE teachers blow whistles to urge them along, and employ a perfected backhanded slap at the back of the student’s cranium if they’ve been particularly bad during Break, or if they’re carrying new battle scars on their shins, knees or shirt collars. The boys especially are dripping with perspiration from all the activity and the midday heat. Inside their classrooms, the all-or-nothing AC units are turned up and ready to dump a Noreaster on their hot breaths and smoldering wounds. I wonder if some of the sickness going around recently can be blamed on simple thermodynamics instead of on swine flu. Ali and Ahmed are the two middle school PE teachers. Both are big, strong men in their thirties and forties. They are the only faculty allowed to wear T-shirts, sneakers and athletic pants. Once they’ve finished prodding the kids back into the classroom, they sit at little desks in the hallway, left to stare blankly at their handmade class schedules. Two weeks in, and these index cards have been doodled over and drilled with pencil holes. It’s much like what the students are doing on the other side of the wall, counting down the minutes until the next bell rings so the tedium can rinse and repeat one less time. This is where I come into play. I trudge up the stairs at 2:05 PM for my 2:10 class. In terms of combustibility, the 7th and last period is a close second behind 5th period. I know that I need to get there before the 6th period teacher leaves so that I can set the tone right away. I round into the hallway and there I see Ali, squinting at his schedule. “Mr. Jimmy, 7th period.†I’m thinking “yeah, I got it buddy. Do you think I’d be roaming the halls for fun?†Sometimes, when the other teacher has already gone and I’m there waiting in the wings, he tells me to wait five minutes. Then, usually five minutes into class, his sidekick Ahmed knocks and disrupts the grip I’ve worked so hard to achieve on my class. No words exchanged. I can never tell if he’s checking to see that I’m there, to remind me that he is the gatekeeper to my class, or to see if the class is behaving. Finally, when the final bell rings and I scatter to scribble down the homework to the tune of desks screeching and papers crumpling, Ali bursts in again. Just in case you didn’t know, Mr. Jimmy, class is over. BM The beliefs and statements of all Bikya Masr blogumnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect our editorial views.
