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RIGOROUS DISCOURSE
- Monthly Issue Contributor
- Apr 28
- 10 min read
By: Peter Nemenoff
April 2025 ISSUE
SHORT FICTION
Editor: Christian Pan
It seemed hypocritical to Mr. Silver.
In one breath, his evaluator Ms. Rodriguez said that, since coming back from COVID, the students weren’t talking or engaging in discussion in class. Then, in the very next breath, she grilled him on why he wasn’t creating more rigorous discourse in his classroom. The reason being, of course, that no matter what Mr. Silver did, what probing questions he asked, how much technology he used, or how “fun” he tried to make his class, he just could not get those kids to talk.
At all.
Mr. Silver experienced this interrogation during his post-observation meeting, part of his formal evaluation to determine whether or not his contract would be renewed for the following year. Ms. Rodriguez had observed his class earlier that week when he taught a unit on narrative poetry. Having no volunteers, Mr. Silver had read the Robert Frost poem, “The Road Not Taken,” aloud, then attempted to engage his students in some discussion. He ended up writing down a number of the poem´s themes and structure on the board, essentially talking to himself, before giving them a small in-class assignment they could accomplish in small groups. Mr. Silver had been painfully aware of the fact prior to his observation by Ms. Rodriguez that his kids did not talk. They hadn’t all year, in fact. Not like they were great conversationalists prior to COVID concerning poetry, literature, rhetoric, or anything, but since remote teaching was introduced my classes had become downright mute. On the plus side there were many fewer disruptive behaviors to complain about, though those incidents did make teaching a little more exciting from time to time.
Mr. Silver, in an effort to solve this problem, created some in-class group work for his period of observation by his superior. The kids were assigned to small groups, and each student given a role. He made sure that the kids whom he remembered actually participating in class from “the before times” were assigned the role of group speaker. These were the ones who spoke on behalf of their group to discuss what they had all discussed in relation to the assignment. Thankfully, just as Mr. Silver hoped, each speaker did their job.
Nonetheless, Ms. Rodriguez still found fault in her observation.
“I noticed the same four kids speaking over and over again,” she said. “What about the other kids? Is there an opportunity for them to engage as well?” She sat behind her desk looking down at Mr. Silver in her less than glamorous office, surrounded by exposed brick walls. Her ugly desk took up most of the space inside that room which had probably been a book closet, originally.
“Those were the group speakers,” Mr. Silver politely pointed out. “It was their job to speak on behalf of the others in their group.”
Ms. Rodriguez nodded.
“I understand, but even before the group activity I noticed the same four kids were the only ones to speak. What are you doing with the other kids in class to get them to participate?”
Mr. Silver stroked his goatee and went “Hmmmmm,” hoping that the gesture would read as though he was thinking about her question deeply, when in reality he was simply buying time hoping a brilliant answer would come to him. In truth, nothing came, and his mind was a complete blank.. The truth was, he didn´t have an answer for his evaluator. Nomatter what he tried, Mr. Silver could not get those other kids to talk. He triedstaring a kid down once, with a bright light, but nothing happened. The two of them just ended up looking at each other in awkward silence until either the bell rang or Mr. Silver couldn’t take it anymore.
He had hoped for some compassion on the subject. When he first arrived outside Ms. Rodriguez’s office she was talking to another assistant principal in hushed voices. He knocked on the door and said “knock, knock,” making his presence known in what he hoped was a friendly and easy-going way. Both of them were educators, right? Both wanted the same things to help these kids learn. Ms. Rodriguez apologized to Mr. Silver for making him wait, although actually he was a few minutes early. When the other administrator scuttled off, Mr. Silver entered the cramped space.
“How’s it going?” Mr. Silver asked as he sat down.
She sighed and brushed her long dark hair back over her ear. Ms. Rodriguez then took off her glasses and dropped them on the table before her before speaking again.
“Honestly, it’s been a long year,” she confessed. She then admitted that she and the other administrator had just been complaining about the school year–the students, their apathy, the lack of support from their higher-ups, everything . Hearing her speak so candidly was surprising, but it also made Mr. Silver feel better. He saw her as human, someone who was also struggling with the difficult situation they and every other teacher was currently facing. , But that empathy, that feeling of camaraderie, ended up being short-lived once Ms. Rodriguez began interrogating him on why he was unable to make hisstudents talk or be able to engage in any kind of meaningful discourse.
But then Mr. Silver thought about the pressure she must be under too. Working in a school that continually fell below the expectations of the state, trying to make the most of a nearly impossible situation. The pressure Ms. Rodriguez must feel from her own evaluator, not to mention the principal, must be immense. It dawned on him she must have to find something to critique him over. How would it look if she came in, and said, “Looks good! Change absolutely nothing,” when in fact, everything was not good and the school absolutely needed something to change. Privately, he wished that she could also find something productive to critique him about, especially given her admission that everyone was going through the same challenges, and no one had a solution to the whole thing. He was in the process of just letting the matter go when Ms. Rodriguez´s next words shattered his feeling of sympathy and understanding.
“And that is why I can’t check you off as proficient in this area yet,” she said, looking down at her notes.
“I’m sorry. What?” His attention was fully back in the conversation now.
“As of right now I can’t say you’ll be marked as proficient. I still need to check off that I’ve seen you engage in rigorous discourse with each one of your students in the classroom, as well as see their ability to engage in rigorous discourse with one another.”
Mr. Silver was about to ask “How?” But then something inside him thought better of acting on that impulse. Internally, he vented about how stupid the rating system for teachers was, at least in the state of Colorado where he was currently employed. Each year teachers were given a new rubric to abide by, and with each formal and informal observation a teacher’s evaluator marked off their score according to whatever was the current standard. Then, once all of the boxes were checked off, each teacher discovered whether their final grade was either proficient, or (with any luck) exemplary.
Sounds simple in theory: get observed by a fellow educator, and be praised for their hard work as a teacher. Except for one little asterisk. Each year the rubric that the school used got completely erased. Washed clean, like an etch-a-sketch. Mr. Silver might have been more understanding if he was a first, or even a second year teacher, but this was his third time going through allof this. And this year was crucial. He needed one more year of being deemed “proficient” to be immune from future threats to the non-renewal of his contract; need to jump through this annoying little hoop before he could even begin to have a thought towards qualifying for tenure, or at least the equivalent for teachers in Colorado. He was still subject to evaluation, of course, but hoped he would be given at least a little more consideration, under the circumstances. Now, though, it appeared that his entire future might be precarious; he might have to start his three years of proficiency evaluations over again, all because the students were apathetic due to their response to a global pandemic. And not just in his poetry class, but in all of his classes. In the entire school, for that matter. Maybe even the district, the state, even the country!
So again, Mr. Silver thought, “How? How am I supposed to solve a problem nobody else has been able to solve? Why am I am being held to a higher standard than everybody else?”
Again he thought this, but did not dare utter the words.
Instead he asked, “So what are my next steps?” Mr. Silver hoped once again for some understanding, for the empathy he received earlier in the conversation. Perhaps now that Ms. Rodriguez had gone through the motions, so to speak, she could get real with him. Tell him that was what she “had” to say, but since he had proven himself year after year, not to worry about it. Surely she knew he was proficient in this area and would be able to mark it off based on his track record as a good teacher within this school.
Instead, she said, “I think more observations are in order.”
Not ideal. Not the worst, either, but definitely not what he wanted to hear. Although it wasn’t as heinous as her next comment.
“Would you be interested in some coaching?”
Absolutely not, he thought to himself. The last teacher he knew who received coaching left after the end of the year due to humiliation. Apparently, the coaching entailed him standing in the front of the class with an earpiece in, while an administrator stood in the back with a headpiece and microphone, issuing instructions to him in real time. The thing was, though, the teacher could clearly hear the instructions from the back without the help of any of the technology being used. So could the students , which only added to the absurdity when the administrator would bark orders like, “Tell Johnny to get his pencil out.” Or, “Reward Jennifer for having her homework out and ready.”
Then the teacher would say, “Congratulations Jennifer. You started your work first, without any further instruction.”
Prompting Jennifer to say, “I know Mr. Tan. I already heard him say so.”
So no, Mr. Silver was not interested in any “coaching.”
“Let’s start with more observations,” he politely said. “Should I invite you to a lesson?”
“Yes, when you plan a lesson that engages in discourse send me an invite and I will try to come.”
Mr. Silver did not have a chance to invite Ms. Rodriguez. He had every intention to, but his boss beat him to it. Within a week he found her walking into his 6th period class, unannounced, clipboard in hand, with another administrator following behind. Not the principal, though, some other assistant principal, he thought. Maybe she was being observed while she observed him? Who knows? Maybe they were both just doing their observations together. He had no idea, but either way there were two administrators in his room. Lucky him!
Fortunately, the students were silently working on something when they came in. It wasn’t exactly an example of rigorous discourse, but it was an activity that all the students were engaged in nonetheless.
As it was close to the end of the school year, Mr. Silver had planned an activity where his students, who happened to be freshmen, looked back on their first year of high school and wrote letters to themselves with any advice they might have after a year of gained wisdom. It was a pretty fluff activity, but the students were enjoying it, which made Mr. Silver grateful that his surprise observation took place that day.
However, the amount of discourse that was occurring was obviously limited, given the solitary nature of the activity. This did not stop Ms. Rodriguez from going around the room to talk to students, however, to see if they could tell her what they were doing. No doubt in an effort to show Mr. Silver, and the other administrator, how to properly engage with the students while in class.
Unfortunately for Ms. Rodriguez the first student she talked to was Nancy. Nancy was a particularly salty student. She wore the same black hoodie every day, had part of her head shaved, and the other part dyed a different color each week. She mainly paid attention to her phone, and only really engaged with Mr. Silver to attempt to get into a power struggle with him, like trying to sit at another desk beside her rather than her assigned seat, or try and argue her way out of doing her work.
To put it mildly, Ms. Rodriguez made a mistake.
Mr. Silver and Nancy had an understanding. She didn’t bother him so long as he didn’t bother her. She turned in some work and he in turn gave her a passing grade. It was a working relationship that benefited both of their sanities. Ms. Rodriguez, obviously, was unaware about this agreement. She also did not know much about Nancy herself apparently, despite being an administrator in the school who should interact with every freshman student, whether in the hallway during lunch or directing them to class during their passing period.
Instead, she went right up to Nancy and said, “What are you working on?”
Even with her headphones on, Nancy somehow heard her. She looked up, and in a terse tone screamed over her music, “Huh? What do you want?!”
Ms. Rodriguez, undeterred, or unwilling to give up, gestured for Nancy to remove her headphones, which in all fairness Nancy did. It did not, however, make her more polite.
“What?” Nancy barked.
Ms. Rodriguez continued in as sweet a voice as she could.
“I asked what you are working on, sweetie?”
Again to Mr. Silver’s surprise, Nancy answered her, this time even with a little less attitude.
“We’re writing letters to ourselves to tell us what we learned our freshman year of high school.”
Ms. Rodriguez nodded in approval and took some notes on her clipboard.
“And what did you learn this year?” she asked.
Nancy’s eyes went dark.
“I learned that I fucking hate this place.”
Ms. Rodriguez froze. So did her evaluator. The classroom went silent as everyone waited to see how the two AP’s would respond. Would they blow up? Yell at Nancy? Drag her out of the classroom, never to be seen again?
No, they didn’t do any of that.
Ms. Rodriguez, when she got her composure back just nodded, and went, “Ok.”
Then she and the other administrator quickly left the room, apparently finished engaging in discourse with the other students. Mr. Silver shrugged and the other students went back to work. He was curious if he would be dragged into her office later that day to be spoken to about the rude behavior of his students.
But he never was summoned. Instead Mr. Silver noted that his evaluation had been changed to proficient later that day. He signed off on it and none of it was ever spoken of again.
Peter Nemenoff
Peter Nemenoff is a playwright and short story writer based out of Denver, CO. Most recently his one-minute play “Doodles and the Apocalypse” was staged as part of the Gi60 20th Anniversary Show. He has also worked as a special education teacher since 2014.
For more information:
House of Grief
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