Native Speaker

I have a really serious case of tartingles this morning. “Tartingles” – a term coined by a friend of mine – is embarrassment felt for another person. This morning that person is Dani, a well-dressed young woman from Kansas. She wears all black except for a green, blue, and purple scarf; her hair recalls the style of Uncle Jesse from Full House. She is dressed in her job interview best because no one has told her that, as a native English speaker, she could show up in ripped jeans with an exposed thong and a marijuana leaf t-shirt and still get the job. The fact that she speaks English and wears clothes makes this guest teaching a mere formality.

I sit in the back and watch her teach my fifth graders. As the person she will replace, I am ostensibly here to evaluate whether or not she is a capable, qualified candidate. It's a farce. I know that unless she kills a student – or I tell her the awful truth – she'll be doing my job on Monday. I wonder if I have a moral obligation to say to Dani, “Run for your life! Save yourself!” Do I run back into the burning building for her? I'm not a firefighter. If the school can't replace me by Monday, will they return my passport? (The school's lawyers have been in possession of my passport, visa, and birth certificate for over a month as they try to make me a legal resident.) Which one of us do I save?

Should I tell her that we have no text books, no paper, and no dry erase markers because doing without them means more profit for the owners? Errr... I mean because we're a “green” school. Should I tell her that, even though we are an environmentally and financially conscious school, the classrooms are encouraged to make their Halloween decorations as obscenely extravagant as possible because the owners have declared a contest and the best class wins a trip to Six Flags? Should I calculate how many dry erase markers could be purchased for the price of the brand new iPhone that will be given to the teacher who wins “best costume”?

Dani teaches her trial class on the “global village” and fills the students with facts and figures regarding the world's population. To check the students' English counting ability, she writes the number one on the white board and points to it. “One!” Cries the class. Dani writes a ten and the voices call “Ten!” She writes again. “One hundred!” And again. “One thousand!” The students count all the way to one hundred million, at which point Dani pauses. “Or” she explains, “another way to say that in English is one billion.” She writes “one billion” next to 100,000,000.

I try to catch the eye of one of the two other teachers in the room. Did they hear that? Do they see the board? Am I making this up? No one says anything. I feel the onset of tartingles. Dani asks the class if anyone knows the population of the world. No one does. The guesses range from a few thousand to incredible invented numbers. Then the boy who waits to be called on when he raises his hand – which is why I still don't know his name – guesses six hundred million. Dani looks amazed. “Yes! Six hundred million... or six billion. Wow! Did you know that or was it just a good guess?” Now I look amazed.

Six billion and six hundred million are not the same number! Are you sure? Completely, one hundred percent sure? Yes, of course I'm sure. She sounds so confident though. And she's said it twice. I can't believe I'm even thinking about this. Am I going crazy? Maybe this is an act. Maybe she's not a real teaching candidate. Maybe the school is trying to make me feel so badly about abandoning the students to this new teacher that I'll stay.

Six hundred million people in the world? I've seen six hundred million people since breakfast. That's like half the population of Mexico City, right? As if reading my mind, Dani asks the kids if they know the population of Mexico City. For eleven year olds estimating the population of their home town, the students make surprisingly poor guesses. None, however, miss the mark as badly as Dani, who responds, “Nope. Good guesses, but the population of Mexico City is actually twenty-five thousand.” Twenty-five thousand? Greenfield, Massachusetts has nearly twenty-five thousand people. Mexico city has twenty-five million. I am so embarrassed for her I feel myself blush.

Do I interrupt to correct her? She would be mortified. She already looks nervous. Her back is touching the white board; her hands move like babies' feet the first time they try to support weight. But what if the students are actually paying attention? They appear mildly alert. What if this is the one piece of information they remember from my class? I see Sebastian climbing into his Hummer this afternoon and proudly showing off his new knowledge, “Did you know that twenty-five thousand of the six hundred million people in the world live in Mexico City?!” The chauffeur laughs so hard that he loses control of the recreational tank and causes a sixteen car pile-up in the school's parking lot. Various children are killed, and when the chauffeur explains to the authorities what caused the accident, they release him and charge me with involuntary manslaughter. The schools' lawyers represent me and agree to a plea bargain of ten years house arrest and community service, which I will serve by working unpaid for the school.

Back in reality, the class is ending and I am standing up. There is Sebastian, obnoxious as ever and wonderfully alive. In the hallway, Mary Carmen – the supervisor of English instruction – touches my elbow to have a word with me. “What did you think? Do you think Dani can handle them?” No, of course not. Nobody can. But if she thinks she can, then hire her quickly before she knows any better. She might be the perfect person for this job. She seems to have some sort of delusional super power that allows her to magically reduce massive numbers by moving decimal points. Perhaps she looks at a classroom of twenty-five fifth graders and sees only two and a half. I respond to Mary Carmen with a question, “What does she think?” I think that the school will hire her no matter what I say and no matter what Dani says – as long as she says it in English.