Volunteering for a Purpose

As I walked across the parking lot of Jamestown Middle School, I felt as if I was beginning a new job. Only this one was temporary--very temporary, and I was to be compensated afterward with a small bag of hard candy and some crudely fashioned easter grass stuff that someone pulled out of the shredder, all bound in a small cellophane bag that the lady at the desk called "a snack."
I was to begin my day in the "Media Center". When I was a middle school student, that room was called the "Library." These days a library is a dying pile of bricks, books, some computers, and some homeless people all slowly slipping away into extinction. Today, it's a bright, shiny room with more wires than books. And now, a dozen or so fellow volunteers, some not much older than the students, some so old, they thought, "library" was cutting edge, gathered in one section of the room for the proctor indoctrination process. Several of us brought whatever liquids would help us focus at 8:00 in the morning. For me, it was a tall shot of Krispy Kreme caffeine. I had already turned three donuts into mush on the drive over, so I was good to go. We were all told to read a thin book of rules and etiquette for proctoring. I scanned the thing and found the gist of it was to keep the testing as clean as possible. Well, all I was gonna do was strike an intimidating pose in the room and hope to not end up taking a pencil shower and end up looking like a number 2 porcupine. It could happen, there was a surplus of potential missiles, and the teacher had me pass one weapon out to each student. They all took one from me as I slowly walked through the classroom. But there was one student, a black girl, who refused to accept my offering. Her belligerent demeanor spoke. I had a feeling we were going to have issues with this one. We did.

As I walked from the media center with my slip of paper scratched with the room number and name of the teacher, I flashed back to my elementary school years--not because the school was old, Jamestown Middle looked to be no older than a toddler, it was perhaps merely because I was in a school for tweens. Funny how our brains work. The concept and size of a school locker was still the same. I liked the ones that went all the way to the floor, so you didn't have to share the same space with someone who smelled like West Virginia roadkill. The room indexing didn't make sense. I was to go to room 807.  "OK, let's see, eighth floor..." No. There were only two floors in this thing. Go down this hall, take a left, through the double doors, then take another left and it should be down there somewhere. Found it. Ms. Miller's room. Only she's not Ms. Miller anymore, she's Mrs. Kelly, or something. Didn't matter. I was only going to be in there for 3 or 4 hours, right? Wrong.  Miss "I have a better pencil than you," made sure we were ALL there as long as possible.
There were 20 students, half of them boys. There were a few hispanics, a few asians, even fewer whites, and most were black. Then there was poor, strung-out Ms. Miller--desperate for another adult to occupy her little undisciplined cubicle. It was obvious that too many years in the public school system put the zap on her. On any other day I imagine the precocious hispanic boy in the back would be running the operation. Today, he showed restraint. Until he finished a four hour exam in two and a half.
This was the math part of the exam, and the test books came in four colors. I guessed it was four different versions of the test--another way to discourage one form of cheating. I passed those out, then I distributed the pencils and very fancy calculators which had apparently all been scrutinized by the district's computer geek to ensure there were no formulas or small wizards within.
Four students, one near each wall of the room turned his or her desk toward the wall. I thought this was to help them focus. Maybe it was, but all four were among the last seven students who did not finish in the allotted time. Our friend with her own pencil stopped with 3 questions remaining, and plenty of time to finish, but instead she stared, put her head down, and fidgeted for about an hour. Turns out, her boyfriend was sitting in front of her and may have been distracting her with visions of teen pregnancy and all the fun that goes with it. They both timed out and had to finish another day.

In the end, I was happy to have helped out. I got an education, but I will not do it again.
I could tell who was going to have a purpose and who was going to be shaking the fry bin for years to come. Then again, that is a necessary and tasty purpose.