I've already posted on this
blog the preface to a book I'm writing called, COME SEPTEMBER, the
Journey of a High School Teacher. Here is a sample chapter, which I hope
you will share with friends and family. Right now I'm working on Chapter
14 and hope to complete the book by the end of next summer. JB
Chapter
6:
Free Condiments
Independence was on my mind more and more, especially
at breakfast, when Mom would set the bowl of hot oatmeal with banana or
strawberries, coffee, and orange juice before me at the dining room table, not
my table, but my parents’ table. I felt in some ways as though I were
still in high school myself, not as a teacher, but as a pupil. The old
patterns were still in place, and I was beginning to crave a drastic change in
venue. Most of my friends had their own apartments, which made me
desirous of sitting in my own living room, listening to music on my own radio,
eating in my own kitchen, driving my own car. I loved my parents and was
grateful for all the help they had given me, but that sophomore line, “When I
break outta here” was becoming more personal for me as autumn came and Indiana
trees began to turn gold, scarlet, and amber.
After taxes and my pension deduction, my first pay check
was for exactly $226, of which $50 went back into the book rental envelope to
replace the money I had borrowed from it. My parents, knowing my wish for
a place of my own, refused the $75 I was scheduled to give them monthly for
room and board. That left me with $176 to put aside toward an apartment,
but I would need to wait another two weeks for another pay check before putting
a deposit on even a studio apartment, but that thought gave me something to
look forward to.
Meanwhile, school days moved into the very welcome
cooler weather, as the school building was not yet equipped with air
conditioning. One afternoon in early September, when temperatures on the
second floor had soared into the nineties, school was dismissed for the rest of
the day. Part of the problem was that the building had been designed to
accommodate air conditioning with sealed windows throughout, windows that could
not be opened. When the sun hit the south side of the school, rooms on
the second floor often became terrariums of heat and Indiana humidity from Lake
Michigan. The job of teaching and that of learning both became quite
challenging in a steam bath atmosphere, that by one o’clock sometimes had
students draped over their desks, facing instructors, whose neckties were
loosened, sleeves rolled up, and who were seated on teacher desk tops, fanning
themselves with Manila folders.
The board of education, along with other powers that
be, had to decide whether the $150,000 set aside for air conditioning should be
used for the installation the year before in 1968. The decision had been
made to use the fund instead on lights for the football field. Priorities
became perfectly clear. Breathing and remaining conscious in classrooms,
it seemed, were not as important as bringing the community together for sports
events. Such was the value system when I began teaching, and so it
remained for all the years I taught, sports events taking precedence over
music, art, or theater events, which existed to a great extent on private
contributions and bake sales. Maybe that’s because competition with other
schools was used in order to flare up “school spirit,” that synthetic version
of ancient, tribal loyalty that would raise adrenaline for release of excess
teenage energy at those thunderous pep sessions in the gym before basketball or
football games. It should be remembered that basketball in Indiana is
truly a religion, as in practically no other place in the world. In
fairness, I should add that even in high school I was a stick in the mud about
crowds on bleachers, screaming their lungs out in preparation for a game that
mattered to me about as much as the world’s record for the biggest ball of
string.
Still euphoric from the board-breaking,
boredom-smashing sophomore class period from the day before, I was brought back
down to earth by an incident in the cafeteria during my lunchtime supervision,
when I was making the rounds to make sure all lunch trays were being taken to
the return window. Suddenly from the other side of the room, came the
sound of dishes hitting the floor, and the deep grumbling of two male
voices. Students were already standing on benches and even tables, all
their attention directed to the north side of the room, where there was a
commons area facing the courtyard garden. At first unable to see anything
wrong, I ran toward the commotion, where I found, writhing on the floor,
two senior boys, both huge football players, locked together in what appeared
to be mortal combat.
As was so often the case, when there were physical
battles between students, the noise level was such that a teacher’s voice could
not be heard, or even if it was, didn’t matter one tiny bit. Both boys
continued throwing punches and screaming things like, “She’s my girl, not
yours!” While poor Miss Robinson stood by saying, “Now boys, this won’t
do at all,” I went down on my knees to grab an arm to try pulling one of the
boys away from the other. This was, on my part, a useless move, as each
boy weighed over two hundred pounds, and the passion of their combined rage
blotted out any hope of either boy hearing or caring about anyone’s protest to
stop the fighting. As is often the case with boys when they fight, saving
face meant a lot too. As I was to learn over the years as a teacher, when
girls fight, saving face has nothing to do with it. The object is always
simply to kill the other girl.
When I saw a spatter of blood on the tile floor, I
knew that I had to do something, and fast. While Miss Robinson stood
there shivering with fear and continuing to yell, “Enough, boys, enough!” I ran
to the condiment table for plastic bottles of ketchup and mustard. Then
rushing back to the fray, I tried once more to scream my message that the two
separate, “Now!” When there was still no response, and blows continued to
be exchanged, I pointed both bottles at the boys and let them have it,
squeezing almost all the contents onto their faces and all over their
shoulders, right after which one of the boys yelled, “Oh, my God! I’m bleeding!”
“Get up,” I said. “It’s only ketchup!”
Both finally stood, covered by the taxi cab yellow of the hot dog mustard, and
the deep red of the ketchup.
There were gales of laughter from crowds of other
students as the two seniors headed for the main office, while I pushed the P.A.
button on the wall to notify the staff there to nail a couple of big guys
covered in condiments. As soon as the bell rang, the crowd from that
lunch shift went on to fifth hour, and I headed for the nearest comfortable
chair in the teachers’ lounge. I skipped lunch, as my appetite had been
somewhat compromised by doing battle myself. Both boys received three
days of out-of-school suspension. A week or so later, one of them came to
thank me for breaking up what he thought might have become a homicide.
His mom’s only complaint was that the ketchup stains were not coming out of his
shirt. Nowadays, I’d probably be thrown in prison. But that was the
worst of it, and there seemed to be no hard feelings from either boy afterward
toward each other or toward me. For the rest of that school year, I was
known as "the mustard and ketchup guy" by students who weren't in my
classes.
Another English teacher, Glenn, who over my years at
MHS would become a good friend, used to keep a small bucket of fresh water in
his classroom, in order to break up fights that couldn’t be stopped quickly any
other way. He told me never to try breaking up fights between
girls. “They’re usually in it to the death,” he advised me. “And
considering those fingernails, and the fact that girls often bite, you could be
julienned in seconds.” It was advice I never forgot.
The problem of Johnny Madison continued to dominate my
thoughts about sixth period. Over the coming years, it was not uncommon
for one student in a class to commandeer my concern, often taking my attention
away from others in the group. It may have been that my vanity about
being able to help turn a kid’s attitude around became too much the focus of my
efforts. Maybe my almost evangelical zeal came from my sometimes
unrealistic view that “I can do this!” Unfortunately, I was not always a
success in my attempts to be an Albert Schweitzer or Mother Teresa to students
who simply did not want to be helped.
One thing I learned with great difficulty about
teaching was that though perseverance was a noble thing, there every once in a
while came a case for which even all my efforts were just not enough.
Even now, I think that “No Child Left Behind” fails occasionally to take into
account those rare but real examples of students, who were not left behind, but
rather leaped from the train or never boarded in the first place. The
pretense, hypocrisy, and even idealism of public expectation about learning are
occasionally blurred in their serious collision with reality.
When I assigned a one-page essay to my freshmen, it
was to convey their views on school and being a freshman thus far, expressing
too what they wanted to see changed about the current system. This is
typical of first-year teachers, and I was no exception. I’m fairly
certain that my opening that door of freedom was very common among new
teachers, who want their students to feel they have voices that matter.
The result of that assignment, besides my learning that freshmen were deficient
in their knowledge of paragraphing, grammar, spelling, and punctuation, was
that their collective plea was for less homework. I still don’t know why
I was surprised, but it didn’t change my belief that the responsibility of
regular homework was important. The first sample of their writing showed
me just how much work we all had ahead of us.
It was Johnny’s paper which, yet again, managed to
stun me. It was two pages long with the title “School.” The shock
came in seeing the content itself of, “School is stupid, stupid, stupid...” the
word, “stupid” repeated enough times to fill the rest of the first page, and
all of the second. Johnny had actually spent a lot of time and effort
making his point, one that showed a huge amount of angst. All I could
come up with for a reason was that his mother had told him I called. My
feeling at that stage was also that the Madisons had probably received many
phone calls from other teachers over time, whose comments had perhaps not been
as relatively gracious as mine had been but that Johnny had lumped them all
together so that any call from school must automatically be a threat of
punishment.
During my conference hour seventh period that day I
phoned Mrs. Madison again, hoping that this time there might be an actual
conversation that could point toward mutual cooperation for Johnny’s
sake. I let the phone ring ten times before giving up. Those were
the days before answering machines and voice mail. I even considered paying
a visit to Johnny’s home, but my vision of walls filled by gun racks gave me
pause, so that I decided to wait. Instead, after school I decided
to talk with Johnny’s other teachers at a scheduled faculty meeting at which
the topic for the first twenty minutes was whether cartons of milk in the
cafeteria should cost ten or twelve cents. I began to chew the eraser off my
pencil in frustration at this apparent waste of valuable time. Despite
the seemingly endless forty minutes that had nothing remotely to do with
teaching or my problems with Johnny, I managed afterward to catch two of his
other teachers, one for biology, and one for algebra. They both told me
that he had done nothing in their classes either and that he would probably
fail. Like me, they had both mailed deficiency notices to his parents but
had heard nothing in response.
Johnny’s biology teacher added that she thought Johnny
might be very slow, but I told her that I suspected he was quite intelligent,
showing her then the drawing of me I had saved. At first looking at me as
if I were speaking Swahili, she then stifled what could have been a hearty
laugh and asked me to contact her if I heard from Johnny’s parents and told me
she would let me know too if she heard from them. I thanked both teachers
and walked over to Bob, who was waiting near the door, obviously more than
ready to leave.
That evening at dinner, Dad told me about an apartment
he had heard about that was walking distance from the school and was going for
$150 per month.
Though I love Colorado and the bright sun on the snow (LOTS of snow),
I was growing tired of using the snow thrower and shovel to keep the
walks, deck and driveway clear. The northern exposure in front of the
house means that if snow is not removed immediately after a storm, it
will compact and remain in those shaded areas until Mothers Day. My
friend Chuck, also from Northwest Indiana, bought a place in Florida as a
winter home, where I paid a visit and was delighted by the balmy and
sunny weather, the abundance of flora, even in parking lots, where
landscaping is just as elaborate as in gardens. I was startled
pleasantly by the light colors indoors, wherever I visited, colors that
reflected light and gave an airy feeling of freedom from not being
confined by walls. There is light everywhere, and even the shady, cool
spaces are just as sensuous.
