Last Thursday, I experienced what was easily the single most ludicrous event of my entire life. While I know that a good number of people at the New York City institute have already heard this story, I will attempt to retell it here one final time in the hope of preserving a single, definitive account of the event.
Let me do some brief set-up. The scene is last Thursday, July 16th, 2009, in my classroom in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It’s about 9:40 am, and I’m in the first half of my lesson. The students have been really tense throughout all of Emily’s lesson – she’s presented her content really well, but the entire room is in a funk. There seems to be a little resentment simmering among the kids. They’re completing their work reluctantly if at all.
Hoping to exorcise the demons from the room, I start my lesson by declaring that I want the kids to write for five minutes – about anything. I just want them to write about whatever happens to be occupying them, and I tell them that they can dispose of the paper afterward or hand it in to me or send it to a pen pal or whatever, I don’t care. I just want them to write for five minutes.
So what I’m attempting to do at this point is reel the class out a bit. We’d had them in tight – they’d been following highly structured (but necessary) activities, so I allowed them a little free time to placate the desire for independence and control that seems fairly typical of the North American High Schooler.
It works pretty well. The kids seem notably calmer, and I begin to proceed with my lesson – transition words. Not riveting material, but certainly important, and I plan on covering it pretty quickly so the kids can move on to the drafts of their final essays.
And then it happens.
What I want you to do, reader, just briefly, is to imagine the opening notes of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.”
Whrruuuuuuuuuuunng~~~~!
WHRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING~~~~!
WHRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!!!!
For some reason, my students begin raising their sleep-sodden heads from their desks one by one with a degree of enthusiasm that suggests some stimulus other than transition words.
I glance around the room. My instruction trails off as I attempt to detect the object that has so suddenly commanded my students’ rapt attention. A giggle or two. I squint, looking for a note being passed or a cell phone.
Fortunately, my confusion is quickly resolved when a student yells “THAT LADY NAKED!”
As a herd of my fuzz-stached 15 year-old boys stampede across the room, I glance out the window to my right ever so briefly and instantaneously determine yes, indeed, that lady naked. There is a 20-something blonde hipster sitting, fully nude, in her window some twenty feet away from my classroom windows. I’m not talking about accidentally passing in front of the window, she’s sitting in it. Like, motionless. And I’m not talking topless, this is full-on, 100%, National Geographic naked.
“SHE NAKED! SHE NAKED! LOOK, THAT LADY NAKED!”
“OH SH*T! LEMME SEE LEMME SEE LEMME SEE!”
“EWWW SHE NEED TO PUT SOME CLOTHES ON! LOOK AT THAT, SHE’S JUST CHILLIN’!”
“WAVE AT HER! WAVE AT HER!”
…
There have been previous situations where I’ve lost control of my class, and it’s generally a nerve-wracking and profoundly draining experience. Now, I had no reasonable expectation of getting my kids’ attention back, and for a moment I allowed myself to revel in the utter absurdity of the situation. Out of all my institute training, there have been no Naked Lady In A Window sessions. I look to the back of my classroom where two other corps members are observing my lesson and both of them are agape, hands clasped over their mouths.
Seeing little other alternative, I let the circus continue for about a minute before trying to raise my voice above the din of frenzied adolescence. “ALRIGHT – ALRIGHT, I KNOW THIS IS – I know this is completely ridiculous. I know it’s Thursday and your weekend starts tomorrow and I know there’s a naked woman in the window. Yeah yeah yeah. But I really need everyone’s attention back – we’ve got too much left to get done. I know that naked lady is tremendously exciting, but that doesn’t compare to transition words, right?”
Oh, the uproar.
“Come on,” I said, “I know most of you have cable TV. It’s not so exciting. C’mon now, eyes back up here.”
Remarkably, a fair number of my students managed to get back on task after a few minutes, despite the fact that the woman remained completely naked, chain-smoking in her window for the next half hour. One or two kids, though, were utterly transfixed, and thrust their heads under the hastily-closed windowshades when they reckoned I wasn’t looking.
I confronted one kid, Andre, who is really bright and persuasive and also a perpetual disruption in class.
“Andre,” I said, “I know this is completely ridiculous, right? I know. It’s not like I’m going to pretend a naked lady sitting in her window is normal by any stretch of the imagination. But you really have to get to work. I don’t want to assign this stuff for homework and I know you know how to do it. Lemme see a little self-control.”
Andre looked at me with utter, piercing sincerity.
“Mr. C, – dawg, that’s a naked white lady. How often you think I get to see that?”
I just – I – wha – I mean, you – what? Pshffrrgfffhhhttttt…what? What?
How did this become my life?
And am I allowed to laugh at that?
YES YOU’RE ALLOWED TO LAUGH!!!!!