Room 214 has thirty-two desks, one teacher’s desk with a drawer that sticks, and a radiator under the window that knocks three times every forty minutes like somebody wants to come in. My first year, I thought it was a student playing a joke. By the second year, I used it as a bell.
The room faces east, so in the morning the sun comes straight in over the parking lot and lands on the back row. The kids who sit there squint through first period and put their hoods up, and for most of my first year I read that as a message. They did not want to be there. They did not want to hear about Gatsby or iambic pentameter or anything I had to say.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to buy blinds. The first morning after I put them up, two of the hoods came down. I am not saying teaching is only about blinds. I am saying I spent a year assuming the worst about kids who were squinting.
This is as far as the free sample goes. The rest of The Back Row Is Listening is waiting for you.
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