Of course, there would be different bullshit, because bullshit is everywhere, as are idiot managers and coworkers you can’t stand. But at least it would be different bullshit. I don’t know—am I sick of teaching, or am I just sick of working here?
Every day I pretty much reach a different conclusion. No—I’m going to take a year off. No—I’m going to start my own nonprofit to help urban high school students with their writing. The whole school is pretty much a bummer right now because the kids know that most of the staff is leaving—as people’s grad-school acceptances and other job offers start to trickle in, those who reapplied for their jobs begin to tell the school to take this job and shove it, so now seventeen of nineteen teachers and two of eight administrators are leaving. This seems to activate some of the students’ abandonment issues, and the fact that no rules are being enforced seems to activate their desire to break rules.
Yet I walk into my classes, and great things still happen. I continue to see really fine autobiographical work from my ninth-graders. My seniors did really cool projects on Dante’s Inferno, and two of them are actually working hard on the big research paper I gave them. But is it worth it? Right now, for the first time ever, well, maybe for the first time since the dying weeks of Famous Athlete Youth Programs’ foray into truancy prevention, the other bullshit is overriding the joy I get from working with kids. Not only because it infects the class in a variety of ways—in my behavior and their behavior and the way we talk to each other, but just because everything that used to be good about this place—the feeling of community that I praised in front of everybody at the end of last year—is now shot to hell. So what do I do?
Luckily, I get an e-mail one day that clarifies my thinking. I have two e-mail accounts—three if you count the Lou Garou one—and one of them I have had since my Northton days, when I used it then to communicate with students who wanted to e-mail me a late paper or show me a college essay over a vacation or whatever. I keep it open now just in case any former students might be trying to contact me. I also use it whenever I’m buying something online. As a result, when I check it once a week, it is full of fascinating information about consolidating my debt, enlarging my penis, working from home and making $$$, and XXX hot teens.
So one day I log on and am in the process of deleting hundreds of pieces of crap when I see a familiar name in the sender list. It is one of my favorite students from Northton.
She’s just read the book I wrote about what went on in my brain while Kirsten was being diagnosed and treated for breast cancer, and she’s writing to tell me how much she liked it and how proud she is that I was her teacher.
I appreciate the writing compliment because I crave praise as much as the next writer, but what really strikes me as amazing as I read her very lengthy and well-written e-mail is that the time she spent in my class mattered to her. She was in the tenth grade then and seems, to judge by this e-mail, to have become a thoughtful, articulate adult, and while I don’t in any way take credit for that, I just think it’s remarkable that my job allowed me to come into contact with this person’s life and maybe have an impact on it. I am reminded once again that what I do is important, and I get a profound satisfaction from having been any kind of influence at all on somebody, and I think, well, yes, I hate the burnouts and moron administrators, and giving grades and having to not lose stuff, but this is a really great gig.
I’m not sick of teaching. I’m just sick of teaching at Better Than You. And I feel kind of bad for many of my colleagues. Many of them are leaving teaching, and they haven’t been teaching long enough to have any former students who became cool adults to remind them of why this job is great, of why it’s worth doing despite how much it can suck.
58
Having decided to continue teaching, I apply for teaching jobs and get a couple of interviews. One, at a small alternative school in Boston, goes really well—I get a very good vibe from the place and enjoy talking to the people. Later I find out that Zach also applied for this job, and again I am convinced that he’s going to get it instead of me. This time I am right.
I have a couple of interviews at another alternative program, but my alarm bells go off when they start grilling me with tough questions about my disorganization (which I stupidly answered was my weakness to the stupid “what is your weakness” question); it reminds me uncomfortably of my initial interview at Better Than You. Other than that, the interviews go well, but everybody is really enthusiastic about the program, and I think I am just projecting waves of skepticism. I’m in “won’t get fooled again” mode (only I’m hoping to God that the new boss won’t be the same as the old boss), and I just cannot allow myself to get excited about how innovative or special any school or program is. I don’t think I can believe in that anymore.
Of course I don’t say this, I try my best to feign enthusiasm, but I think my skepticism just pours through. I don’t get the job.
Right about this same time, the parents’ anger over all the changes at Better Than You bubbles up into a big protest at a board meeting, and there are finally a couple of newspaper articles about how everybody is leaving Better Than You, which we’ve been waiting and hoping for all year. But Big Daddy, as predicted, spins this to his advantage, saying that it is really great that so many people are leaving, because now he can hire more teachers of color.
I don’t think he really gives a shit about people being of color or not as long as they’re willing to kiss his ample ass—he’s just using race opportunistically—but still, it hurts. I know that I did a good job here and that I belonged here, but it just seems to be an article of faith among a lot of people (though, ironically, never the students themselves) that you can’t really do a good job in an urban school if you’re white. Well, fuck it. I’m through trying. So much for the Great Urban Educator.
I interview at a big school in a nearby town, in one of the best districts in the state. I get a good feeling, sitting around for about forty minutes with six people who seem to be kind, competent, caring teachers. Nobody grills me with “gotcha” questions—we just talk about teaching. It reminds me a lot of when I used to sit around with Jessie and talk about what we were going to do in the next unit—it feels relaxed, respectful, and good. When they ask me why I want to work there, I consider trying to come up with the enthusiasm to tell them that their district is the specialest district in the whole wide world, but I’ve always been a terrible liar, so I just end up telling them, “I just want to work with kids in a functional environment, and this seems like it is one.” I guess I’m setting my sights kind of low—I used to want to transform education, give something back to the city. Now I just want to work with kids in a place that doesn’t grind me down. Well, what the hell—I’ve never really tried it before.
I get the job, and people ask me if I’m excited. “No,” I say. “Relieved and happy, but not excited.” I guess I am still kind of numb, and it will be a while before I can work up any kind of school spirit again.
Speaking of school spirit, the tacky people who run Better Than You now are organizing all the end-of-year festivities. I kind of know that anything these people run is not going to work for me in terms of saying good-bye to my advisory, so I invite them all over to my house for dinner.
My downstairs neighbor is a Chinese chef of almost supernatural skill, so I hire her to cook a big feast for us. The kids come a little late, but eight out of eleven show up, which is a pretty good ratio. Will couldn’t get off work, Cam already had plans, and Denise, who didn’t speak to me two years ago, never acknowledges the invitation. So maybe she and I haven’t come as far as I thought. Anyway, the kids come over, and it seems like we spend the whole night laughing. Diana and Nychelle, who didn’t speak for two years, actually sit next to each other and start laughing about it.
“Remember sophomore year, and we all had to sit on separate sides of the room?”
“I couldn’t even say your name for a whole year! I just called you ‘her.’ Oooh, I hated you!” Everyb
ody laughs.
Karin does an extended riff on all the people that get on her nerves at her church, including a wicked parody of an overweight woman “getting the spirit.” I laugh so hard I can hardly breathe.
The food is incredibly delicious if maybe a little more exotic than what the kids are used to, and they do a fantastic job of pretending to love it as much as I do, which I find really touching. I really enjoy hanging out here. I am convinced that the kids are going to eat and run, because while I do feel close to them, I’m under no illusions about the fact that I am still a teacher and they are still students, and they probably have all kinds of interesting teenagery stuff they would rather be doing. I am pleasantly surprised, then, when they hang out for two hours, three hours, four hours, laughing and reminiscing. The party finally ends when Diana’s long-suffering boyfriend agrees to take four other people to the four corners of Boston and they all pile into his car. It’s a beautiful night, and I feel really happy. I wish this could be our official good-bye, but there is still the school-sponsored stuff to get through.
First comes the prom. I am a senior advisor but not returning, so I’m not asked to chaperone. Roberta and Olga are asked to do the honors, since they are returning (and are therefore now pariahs with the rest of the faculty). I used to kind of consider Roberta my friend, but now that she has gone over to the other side (including giving us some really smarmy party-line orders at a department meeting), I can’t stand to speak to her. I end up not being asked to the prom at all until two days beforehand, when Smiley Barracuda interrupts a class of mine (because, after all, I’m only teaching here) and says, “Can you come to the prom? We’re asking most people just to stop by but this is for dinner too, the kids would want you there, if you want to bring your wife you’ll have to pay, so can you come?”
“Uhhh … I don’t know, I mean, I’ll have to talk to my wife,” I say, because I was just raised too well to be blatantly rude to people to their face (in print it’s obviously quite another story), so I don’t tell her how incredibly tacky she is and how this last-minute bullshit invitation is so obviously not a real invitation but just a way for her to say that she invited me and I refused.
“Okay, then, you think about it,” she says, and literally snatches the invitation out of my hand. Alison, the other departing senior advisor, actually doesn’t get her invitation until the day before the prom.
Smiley Barracuda does similar stuff with graduation. She creates this whole system where faculty are supposed to have tickets to attend, so everybody has to go to her to ask for a ticket. Now, in the past, senior advisors have been part of the ceremony, but not this time, which I find out very late and which hurts. It’s part of the pattern of behavior from the cabal that runs this place now. They’re not satisfied to have won—they need to keep kicking us once we’re down.
Smiley tries to deny Alison, who’s also a senior advisor, a ticket. Alison has worked with these kids every day for four years, and they try to keep her out of the graduation ceremony. She sends the entire management team an e-mail telling them she hopes she raises her children to be better people than they are. I’m sure she will. Most people do.
Graduation comes, and I go and stand with the class for an hour while they put their caps and gowns on. I have been to graduations before, but this is different—I taught these kids this year, and I’ve been with my advisory for three years. I am just glowing. I’m unspeakably proud of them. And yes, of course the ceremony is going to suck, because graduations always do, but it’s important too. I’m glad to have this ritual to mark their transition out of here.
Chip has done a lot of behind-the-scenes infighting to allow the senior advisors to walk into the hall with the class, which is a classy move on his part. So we process into the hall, and in a tremendous display of irony Alison ends up sitting in a chair that says, RESERVED FOR [MS. BARRACUDA]. Hee-hee! The ceremony is boring, the hall is hot, and the graduation speaker is my state senator. Big Daddy spends about ten minutes introducing her, going on and on about all of her achievements but strangely not mentioning the five years in which she did not pay her income taxes or the six months she spent serving her constituents, of whom I am one, from a halfway house because she violated her probation after her tax-evasion conviction.
The citizenship and democracy part of this school’s mission was always bullshit, but having a convicted tax cheat as the graduation speaker is really the final nail in the coffin.
She begins by saying that her speech will be shorter than her introduction, but this proves to be completely untrue, and we suffer in the heat for what seems like forever but is probably only fifteen minutes through a series of graduation banalities that are unremarkable except for the one part where she praises Big Daddy and says how great he is and how “this school will continue to thrive under his leadership, because he expects the best, and if you’re not willing to work hard, you better keep on walking!” The hall is dead silent at this obvious applause line except for the frantic clapping of Julie, the English teacher; Mommy, the dean/college counselor; and, of course, Smiley Barracuda. The three women clap way too fast and way too loud and then stop kind of suddenly when it becomes clear that they are the only people in the entire auditorium who are clapping. I have worked my ass off for these kids for three years and am struck by the incredible disrespect inherent in these stupid women applauding this line from the criminal onstage. Then again, I really shouldn’t expect these women to suddenly develop class just because somebody’s playing “Pomp and Circumstance,” so I manage to decide that it’s not going to bother me tonight.
And then something strange happens. When my advisees start getting their names called and picking up their diplomas, I start to cry. Knowing what a terrible sap I am, I probably shouldn’t be surprised, but I am—I expected to be happy and proud of them, so those emotions don’t overwhelm me. No, what gets me is the sadness. I am just really, really sad to say good-bye to them. I know they have to go, and God knows I’m not staying either, but I miss them. Their names are called, and they are gone, I mean, you know, still in the hall, but gone really, and already I miss them so much.
I stagger out after the ceremony and hug my advisees and pose for pictures. Will gives me a really nice, sincere good-bye and thanks me several times. I don’t quite know what I did, but he seems like he can’t thank me enough. I appreciate it. Diana also thanks me, hugs me, and takes a picture. Chaka hands me a card with a very nice note inside. I hug Ralph and Chaka and Karin and Julia and Martine and a few kids who were not in my advisory but were in my English class, and I try not to cry, but it doesn’t work.
After the ceremony, Kathleen, who as a founder of the school always attends graduation, comes up and starts talking at me. She rambles on incoherently about her sons’ high school classes (her sons are both adults), and I am distracted by what is either a piece of gum in front of her bottom teeth or some kind of weird dental work. I had fantasized about telling her off, about telling her what a fraud she is for selling me this vision of a school that she wasn’t even willing to fight for, but in the end I just listen politely to her blathering and move on.
A bunch of teachers go out after the ceremony, and we all tell stories about the seniors and drink to them, and as we sit at an outside table with beers in our hands and empties at our elbows, Diana heads into the restaurant with her boyfriend. Upon seeing her, we are too drunk to be embarrassed about drinking in front of students, so instead we all raise our glasses and loudly toast her. She laughs and goes into the restaurant.
What follows is just a profound anticlimax. Friday is our last day of classes, and half my kids skip class and don’t get the good-bye letter I wrote them, and then everybody goes home and it’s just over. Strange. I keep waiting for the trumpets, for somebody to play “Pomp and Circumstance” for me, but it keeps not happening. I go home, and although in a way I’m elated to get out of this place, I’m also depressed. In spite of the fact that the weasels who founded the school
sold out the vision they probably never believed in in the first place, in spite of the fact that the bad guys won, we really did have something special. And now nobody is sending us off into the world with a piece of paper in our hands that says we did something special, and it feels weird.
I just about recover over the weekend, and then I have to go back in for final exams, which are all oral exams with members of the community there to watch and help grade the kids. We call them “juries.” On Monday I have Big Daddy’s wife as the designated outsider on a jury I’m running. I’m terrified, but she proves to be competent, professional, and quite obviously much smarter than her spouse, and it’s uneventful.
Tuesday I come in and clean out my desk. It’s a really spectacular mountain of shit, but it takes me less than an hour to clean it all up. I just throw everything away. There’s nothing here that I want. (Well, that’s not true—I created a lot of handouts and assignments and stuff, but I get Andres to burn me a CD that contains every file I ever created here, so I take that and throw out every scrap of paper.)
Wednesday I have more juries, and Kathleen, bizarrely, shows up as one of two designated outsiders on one of them. Once again I can’t bring myself to be rude to her. I just let her take over and talk too much, which is what she always did when she worked here, and which is apparently all she wants out of this process. She takes a shot at me at the end, though. She says good-bye to the other outsider, saying, “It was a pleasure working with you.” Then she turns to me and says, “Mr. Halpin … as always,” and I know her well enough to know damn well that the omission is intentional, and I say, because I feel the same way, “Yes.” It’s kind of a beautiful exchange in a sick way.
And then I’m done, and once again I feel sad, I feel strange, I don’t want to leave. I wander around the building for half an hour, saying to any friendly face I encounter, “Three years of my life. And now it’s just over.” I walk out, go home, get sad, and quickly find that not going to work on Thursday makes me feel a whole lot better.
Losing My Faculties: A Teacher's Story Page 23