Deborah Fletcher Mello - Tempted By The Badge

She twisted the cap back onto the red pen she was holding and slid it and the test papers from her previous class into her desk drawer. Rising to her feet, she returned the gesture, greeting each student warmly as she moved to stand by the door.

“Mr. Parsons, good morning! Miss Hayes, how are you? Take a seat, please, Mr. Tolliver!”

The energy in the room was palpable, everyone anxious about the test they would soon be taking. This was one of the honors classes, the students all exceptionally bright and especially motivated. Over half had already been notified of their early acceptance into college, with most of them headed to Ivy League institutions. They were considered the elite of their graduating class. They challenged Joanna to insure the curriculum was one that would not only boost their individual class rankings but also kept them interested; boredom was easily the kiss of death for any teacher.

The test they were taking was on the early Industrial Revolution in England and Wales, with the emphasis on the plight of women during that time period. Joanna had no doubts most, if not all, would pass with flying colors. There were one, maybe two exceptions determined to buck the system, no matter where they were in life.

The last student through the door was one of her more challenging pupils. Standing a foot taller than most of the class, Damon Morrow was one of their star athletes, playing varsity football and basketball in the fall and baseball in the spring. Keeping him off academic probation had become a full-time job all on its own and, despite his obvious intellectual genius, his was an issue of effort, or rather lack of. He was smart and talented, but he was lazy as hell. Damon Morrow was content to fly through life on his dashing good looks and the trust fund he would inevitably inherit when he turned twenty-one.

“Mr. Morrow, good morning,” Joanna said warmly. “You studied, I hope.”

The young man shrugged broad shoulders. “Do we have to take this test today, Ms. Barnes?”

“Yes, we do,” she said matter-of-factly. “Everything under your desks, please. And get your pencils ready.”

Damon sat, still scrolling through messages on his cell phone instead.

“Phones away,” Joanna said, tapping her nails lightly against the desktop. “If I see any phones during the exam, I will confiscate them. Your parents will have to come get them from me at the end of the semester, and I mean it.”

Damon shot her a quick look. “Hey, Miss Barnes, did you hear?”

She blew a soft sigh. “Did I hear what, Mr. Morrow?”

“Everyone’s talking about it!” another student interjected.

Joanna looked around the room, her eyes scanning their faces as she mentally took attendance. “Has anyone seen Mr. Locklear?” She gestured toward the only empty seat, going off topic for a brief moment.

There were shrugs and looks of disinterest, no one seeming to care that one of their own was missing.

She shook her head ever so slightly. “So, what is everyone talking about?” she asked, her eyes shifting back to the student staring at her.

“One of the teachers is getting fired,” Damon stated. “Someone’s been giving it to a student on the side,” he said with a snide laugh and an inappropriate hand gesture. He slapped palms with the boy beside him. “I bet it was Coach Peterson. Which one of you girls has been giving it up to him in the locker room?” he quipped.

Laughter rang around the room and the noise level rose slightly. Joanna winced, unable to fathom how any adult could even consider taking advantage of a student’s trust. That her kids were piqued by such an abhorrent rumor didn’t sit well with her. It didn’t sit well with her at all. She shook her head. “That will be enough of that, thank you.”

“He’s serious,” a young woman named Shannon Heigl said. “One of the teachers has been having an affair with a student and the student reported it to the administration.”

Another student added her two cents. “They’re going to press charges and whoever it is plans to sue the teacher and the school district!” she exclaimed.

Joanna’s gaze skated from one face to the other, everyone suddenly looking at her to either confirm or deny the rumors she was hearing for the first time. A string of expletives suddenly rang through the air, Damon cursing as he continued to scroll through his phone. “This is so effed up!” he said with a snide laugh.

“Mr. Morrow! Watch your mouth!” she chastised. She held out her hand for his cell phone. “I said no phones.”

The young man eyed her sheepishly. “I was just shutting it off. I swear,” he said as he shoved the device into the top of his book bag and the book bag under his desk. He dapped the palm of her hand and gave her a wink of his eye.

Joanna met the look he was giving her with a stern stare, her eyes narrowed. She shook her index finger in his direction. “You’re walking a very fine line with me, Mr. Morrow. You do not want to test my patience.”

As she turned, she saw him leaning to whisper to the boy beside him. “The student is male! The teacher’s a woman!” he quipped, the two giving each other a high five as if that was something to celebrate. A titter of laughter and hushed whispers swept through the room.

“All right, that will be enough,” Joanna said as she moved to the front of classroom and began to count off test papers at the head of each row. “Let’s focus on something useful, please. It doesn’t matter who did what to whom, regardless of gender—if such a thing happened, it’s wrong! Let’s not waste any more of our energy on unsubstantiated accusations. Spreading rumors only serves to hurt people unnecessarily. You all should want to be above that.” Her eyes connected with each student, finally coming to rest on Damon Morrow’s face. He was still grinning from ear to ear, his chest pushed forward arrogantly as he and his desk mate whispered one last time.

“Take one and pass it back,” she said to the students at the front of each row.

Minutes later their heads were down, pencils scribbling away as they diligently tackled question after question. Joanna moved back behind her desk and took her seat. She’d been teaching since forever at Riptide High School, the Chicago, Illinois, staple rich with history. She’d also been a student here back in the day, the senior class president of her graduating class and a cheerleader. Her parents had both been graduates, as well, and before them, her maternal grandfather, one of the first to integrate Riptide classrooms before it had been court mandated.

Joanna came from a long line of educators, beginning with her paternal great-great-great grandmother, who’d taught other slaves on a Georgia plantation how to read and write. Her mother had taught English at Riptide’s rival high school for most of her career, only recently retiring from her assistant principal position to tend her beloved gardens. During the spring and summer, she grew the fruits and vegetables she intended to can in jars while catching up on her reading when the weather turned. Joanna’s father was a math professor at the local community college, determined to trek to his day job until they laid him in his casket. Both loved what they did, and so did Joanna.

She had always known she would be a teacher, even preferring to play classroom instead of house as a child. Despite the challenges of students who were self-absorbed, more abrasive and less focused, she enjoyed everything about sharing her love of history with the students who came every September and were gone by June.

And Joanna loved history. She found it fascinating that if you examined the past closely enough you could find a precedent for most current situations. She loved helping her students discover that for themselves. It was thrilling when she could show them a correlation between their own challenging academic environment and the courts of the Italian Renaissance, giving teens philosophies on how to survive in their dog-eat-dog world. When there were questions of integrity they studied Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Thomas More and people who, through the ages, epitomized the fight for what was right. When students bemoaned their home situations, she made them research life in the Middle Ages and its lack of comfort and convenience. There were lessons to be learned from the past and Joanna enjoyed everything about exploring them.