I didn’t get it. Hadn’t Gerard explicitly told me that Benjamin was to be treated with special care because his mother was a board member and because his family were very good friends of the school? Damian held his hands up in mock surrender and backed out of the room. See me later in the faculty lounge, he mouthed. He’s full of shit, he added dramatically, pointing irreverently at Zimmerman. I couldn’t help but grin.
“Inappropriate,” Gerard grunted, still furious. “I’m going to talk to Blumenfeld about him—he should not be trusted with any new faculty. Now I have to stay here with you the whole time and go through the rest of them.”
Oh, no.
Two torturous hours later, Gerard finally announced that we could continue my “orientation” tomorrow. I bolted out of the room and headed toward the high school faculty lounge. I had to find this Damian Oren. Strange as he was, I had a sense that he would be a voice of honesty in this world I apparently knew very little about. Gingerly opening the door to the faculty lounge, I was surprised to see that it was packed. Some faces were familiar, though I couldn’t remember any names. A few curious glances were thrown in my direction, but I was largely ignored.
“ANNA!” Damian was at the other end of the room in a large reclining leather chair. “Hey.” I smiled. “I thought I would take you up on your generous offer.”
“Oh, yeah?” He smiled back, drumming his hands over his lean abdomen. “Have a seat.” He gestured to the soft sofa next to him. The whole room was decorated in shades of neutral beige. An espresso machine and a tray of chocolate chip cookies rested on a corner table. I could get used to this!
“Damian, don’t corrupt her,” a friendly voice admonished, and I turned around to face an absolutely gorgeous woman. She seemed to be in her mid-forties, but Christie Brinkley forty, not your average forty.
“Hi, I’m Sarah Waters, ninth-grade biology.” She smiled and extended her hand.
“Anna Taggert, seventh-grade English,” I offered, quickly learning that Langdon Hall was big enough that teachers could easily get lost.
“Yeah, as if I’m the source of corruption here,” Damian sniggered and rolled his eyes. “Hey, Sarah, I met Anna this morning getting the old file talk from Zimmerman.”
“Oh, you poor thing! Don’t pay any attention—we never actually read those stupid things unless we have a serious problem with a kid. Don’t feel like you have to memorize them,” Sarah offered helpfully.
“What about the Langdon Friends publication?” I asked, still reeling from Damian’s dark shortcut tip.
“Okay, that we do look at,” Sarah admitted. “It’s hard not to be curious.”
“Doesn’t it make the kids whose families can’t, you know, make massive donations feel like—”
“Shit?” Damian finished my sentence. “Probably.”
“Then why do it?” I pressed.
“It creates a sick competition,” Damian explained, suddenly serious. “Families try to one-up each other with donations. And what better way to make the exact amount they give public knowledge to the entire Langdon community than to publish it?”
Before I could ask another question, a palpable silence pervaded the room. I followed the sidelong glance of teachers and located the source: an impossibly thin, attractive brunette had flown in and headed straight for the espresso machine. She hadn’t said a word to anyone, and was instead listening intently to whomever she was speaking to on her BlackBerry. This girl—model?—was all angles. Rail-thin legs were poured into skintight, stovepipe jeans that spelled out DOLCE & GABBANA in rhinestones on the butt pocket. The tight white tank, several skull necklaces, and massive Chanel glasses perched on the top of her head all screamed Vogue. Her oversized Marc Jacobs tote had already slammed into three teachers, who had simply shifted away in disdain without saying anything.
“Yes. Yes. Of course. I understand. Visual learning is key. Oui, je parle français.”
“The French teacher?” I whispered to Damian.
“Mais non,” he responded, smiling widely. “I’m actually shocked to see Randi in here—a rare treat and a perfect way for me to begin the Langdon Hall behind-the-scenes lecture!”
“Damian,” Sarah warned, but he looked too thrilled to care or be restrained.
“That is Randi Abrahams, and she teaches seventh-grade history. You’ll be teaching the same students.”
From the look on Damian’s face he was clearly just getting warmed up. Why was she speaking French? What was up with that outfit? I opened my mouth to prod him further.
“Wh—”
“She bats both ways,” Damian announced, clearly enjoying himself. I was shocked. I knew that phrase! She was bisexual! After an afternoon going through the files, I couldn’t help but wonder…were there files on the teachers? I would have done anything to get my hands on hers!
“Not what you are thinking,” Sarah interrupted quickly. “Damian has a special way with words that is amusing only to his juvenile students. What he means is that Randi, in addition to teaching at Langdon Hall, is probably the most in-demand tutor on the Upper East Side. When she’s not here, she’s in some Park Avenue penthouse tutoring a private school student.”
“Langdon Hall kids?” I asked incredulously, my eyes glued to Randi, who was now downing an espresso as if it were a tequila shot.
“No, we’re not allowed to tutor students who go to this school. She tutors kids from all the other schools.” Sarah glanced at Randi again and continued, “It’s not like she offers us this information, though. Frankly, she’ll deny it if you ask her. Don’t ask her, by the way. She’s not very nice. But everyone knows because our kids have friends in all the other schools, and they tell them and then obviously it all leaks out.”
“Yeah, next truth about private school world: everyone knows everything—teachers included—about two seconds after it happens. Nothing’s a secret, so be careful,” Damian warned.
“Damian, don’t scare her! It’s not like the Mafia! Honestly. Anna, just watch what you say and how much you choose to gossip, that’s all. It’s really not that bad, and the kids…”
I prepared myself for the worst when a soft, hypnotic smile spread across Sarah’s face. “The kids are just amazing,” she said earnestly. “They’re brilliant and sweet and interesting. Truly.”
This was the conversation I had dreamed of having all summer with another teacher. It almost made me forget for one brief minute about the files and even the Langdon Friends booklet. Until I noticed Damian furiously mouthing another message to me.
Sarah takes Prozac. A lot of it.
6
They put that kind of stuff in files?” Bridgette put down her peach Bellini and stared at me in horror. I was trying to stay focused on the conversation, but the place Bridgette had picked for my “celebration dinner” made anything aside from people-watching pretty impossible. Looking around the room, I felt like I was backstage at the MTV music awards with a sprinkling of E! I tried desperately not to fall into Bridgette as waiters shoved past me carrying trays of tiny little pasta dishes. The Gastineau girls were holding court at a corner table and I did a double take when I realized it was Harvey Weinstein sitting at the table across from them. According to Bridgette this restaurant was “the chicest” spot in Manhattan.
“Yeah, isn’t that crazy? Do you think they had files like that on us in our high schools?” I wondered out loud. I could only hope that FBI-like student files were purely a Manhattan phenomenon.
“How interesting,” Bridgette murmured. “Little Miss Teacher is uncovering some dirt in her perfect Teacher World.” With a self-satisfied smirk, she downed her Bellini. Mine lay untouched. It was fourteen dollars. If Bridgette wasn’t paying for this dinner, I would have to officially file for bankruptcy.
“Listen, Anna, I hope you don’t mind. I invited a few of the analysts from my program over tonight—I think you know one of them ’cause she went to school with us,” Bridgette trailed off, suddenly looking oddly uncomfortable
.
“I thought it was just the two of us!” This evening was already going downhill and we hadn’t even been seated. “We haven’t hung out in so long, and I have so much to tell you!”
“You can still tell us everything,” Bridgette replied, but she was looking around the room. “You’ll love them. And you already know one of the girls so….”
“Who is she?” I asked suspiciously.
“Belinda Bailey.”
No way.
Not her.
St. Arthur’s fraternity Belinda Bailey—the girl who had wooed me because she thought I had the “right look” for St. Arthur’s, and then had dropped me the minute I admitted that there was no way my father was shelling out the monthly dues. I had spared her his exact words: “I’d rather buy a BMW a semester than pay to have you live in that Riverside prepster cult.” My brother had chimed in, “Yeah, I heard one of their members committed suicide by hanging themselves with a ribbon belt.”
Worst of all, Belinda had gone to Langdon Hall. Now I taught there. I was the help. The staff. We had both gone to the same college but apparently Belinda had moved into the glitzy world of investment banking and I had taken a step back—literally—into the world of high school. Her high school. For the first time, I wondered about my father’s “you’re going to regret this” comment.
“Anna, you’re not mad, are you?” Bridgette asked.
“No, of course not,” I lied. I was lying a lot lately. We stood there in an awkward silence in the middle of the boisterous restaurant and when a waiter gestured near an empty table, I thankfully turned in his direction. Sinking into my seat, I ran my eyes down the menu and grew increasingly faint as I saw the prices. Not only was I dreading seeing Belinda, if she looked anywhere as chic as Bridgette did in her black halter dress (or slip?) with her blonde hair slicked back into a tight ponytail, I would die. When Bridgette had told me to “dress cool,” I had pulled out my staple jeans and black bar top. My bag was a fake Prada, and I had already caught some disdainful glances in its direction from the other flawless female patrons. They could smell a fake.
“Bridge?” A sexy, throaty voice interrupted my miserable thoughts.
“Ohmigod, Belinda, hi!” Bridgette got up and squealed (squealed?) and hugged Belinda tightly. Belinda wore a simple white strapless dress with zero jewelry and sported a tan that screamed St. Tropez. She looked more like Keira Knightley than she had in college. And thinner. She turned to me.
“You remember Anna Taggert, right?” Bridgette asked quickly.
“Um, sure. Hey.” Belinda was making no attempt to hide her confusion. I was getting increasingly angry at Bridgette. This was supposed to be my celebration dinner! Why did Belinda look confused that I was there? And why were Bridgette and Belinda suddenly best friends?
As soon as Belinda sat down she and Bridgette huddled together and began whispering furiously about the boys who would be joining us. I looked longingly at the sidewalk and had a wild impulse to run, but it had been so long since I had gone out with Bridgette that I was not about to give up so easily.
“So, Belinda, what have you been up to since college?” I asked brightly.
She ignored me. Maybe she hadn’t heard me?
“Belinda! It’s so great to see you!” I said louder, forcing a big smile. Belinda looked up and gave me a tight…smile? Bridgette, to my utter shock, didn’t even look at me.
“I’ve been great,” she responded coolly, then turned back to Bridgette. They clearly didn’t want me here. I had nothing to do but pretend that the menu was the most fascinating reading I had ever encountered in my life. Somewhere between the forty-dollar Caesar salad and the sixty-dollar penne, four tall guys wearing suits walked in and smiled broadly when they spotted Bridgette and Belinda. I might have been invisible, but both girls appeared to have a radar for anyone they considered worthy. It rivaled anything Homeland Security could hope to own.
“Here come the guys,” Belinda squealed, lighting a cigarette (apparently the no-smoking rule in Manhattan did not extend to this restaurant). Bridgette waved coyly and “the guys” ambled over to the table in a blur of gel, cologne, and blinding silk ties (think Donald Trump). I quickly excused myself to go to the bathroom. Neither Bridgette or Belinda seemed to hear because they were busy reaching out to hug “the guys.”
Only I didn’t go to the bathroom. I made a purposeful turn at the bar and headed to the entrance of the small restaurant. In a moment of utter madness, or self-preservation, or both, I bolted from the restaurant and walked down West Broadway as quickly as I could. Actually, I ran. My cell phone started to ring and I knew it must be Bridgette but I ignored her. Crap, she must have seen me bust out of that place. Fourteen-dollar Bellinis. Forty-dollar salads. Belinda Bailey with a cherry on top. Three scoops of a sundae straight from hell. I found the nearest subway station and took the 6 train all the way to 86th Street, and then walked the two blocks to my apartment.
I was tired and embarrassed and I had school tomorrow. Trudging five flights of stairs in utter defeat, I stumbled into my apartment. Not even bothering to wash off my makeup, I kicked off my heels and curled into the mattress. I was a foreigner at Langdon, and tonight I may as well have been from another country with my supposed best friend. The last thought I had before I went to sleep (and I hated myself for it) was that I would have done anything to have had money and belonged tonight. Anything.
The remainder of orientation was spent preparing my room, typing up lesson plans, and attending inane department meetings and faculty workshops with titles like Deep Down We Are All Visual Learners and Your Student, Nanny, and You: Finding That Right Balance. I had assumed that a school like Langdon—springboard for the Ivy path, education bastion of the elite—would have a rich language arts curriculum.
I was wrong.
“You don’t have an English curriculum?” I gasped when Harold Warner, head of the middle-school English department, dropped a grammar and spelling textbook on my lap with a vague “I’m sure you’ll feel your way around it.”
“I wouldn’t say that, Anna. No, I wouldn’t say that at all.” Harold looked more than a little irritated. “As I’m sure you were briefed during the orientation process, Langdon is a progressive school. We cultivate a new kind of learning strategy. If there is a war in the Middle East, then we talk about that. If our students are curious about a book they are reading, we discuss that. Sometimes we do some creative writing based on our discussions. It is all about discussion, Anna. That’s what makes our curriculum so rich and deeply profound.”
It sounded like bullshit to me. I wasn’t alone. According to Damian, Harold was famous for doing absolutely nothing at Langdon Hall. He would ask his students to do three-month-long projects—“Go make a list of all the famous books written in the 1950s”—and send them packing to the library while he happily drank coffee and did his crossword puzzles. Like Sarah Waters, he was hugely popular among the parents because these long projects all received As and their students needed minimal outside tutoring. In fact, his Decades of Literature project was hailed as one of the shining examples of fine progressive education at Langdon. When I had pushed Damian and asked him how a teacher could avoid even grading, Damian had shaken his head and said two words: “Oral reports.” Did the parents who paid Langdon’s astronomical tuition ever bother to wonder what happened in the actual classrooms? I refused to be dictated to by such an obviously jaded man, even if he was my supervisor!
Easier said than done.
I quickly learned that Harold was going to do everything in his portly path to stop me from actually teaching any classes. When I showed him a lesson plan of which I was particularly proud—it consisted of leading my future class through all the modern-day references to Romeo and Juliet—he shook his head sadly.
“Harold, I really think this would show my students that Shakespeare is still relevant and alive,” I argued.
“Anna, this is too teacher-directed a lesson,” Harold disagreed, cri
nkling his nose as if my lesson plan gave off an unpleasant smell. “We can’t have you having so many teacher-directed lessons. It makes the whole department look bad.”
I was devastated. The lesson had taken me the better part of the morning to prepare, and what had kept me going was the anticipated excitement on my students’ faces when they learned that my classes were going to be “cool” and “fun” as well as educational.
“Well, what should I have them do as a wrap-up for the Shakespeare unit, then?” I asked hopelessly.
“An independent project,” Harold stated firmly. “Have them go up to the library. Give them a week to do it.”
“What do I do while they’re in the library?” I pressed.
“Plan for the next unit,” Harold responded, looking a little bored. “Honestly, Anna, we have to teach our students to be independent learners. If we’re always teaching them in the classroom, how are they going to become free thinkers? You have to let them go. Freedom. The freedom of a progressive education!”
More bullshit.
There was no way I wanted my students to traipse all over the building working on a pointless project. I had lessons I wanted to teach! I wanted to be in the classroom with them! Wasn’t planning for the next unit something we were supposed to do when we weren’t teaching? Disgusted, I got up to leave the English office.
“Oh, and Anna, one more thing. Remember we don’t give grades at Langdon.”
I stopped dead in my tracks. Nobody had told me this. I hadn’t learned about this in my interview. Or on any orientation lecture. Even Damian had not informed me of this radical new way of assessment…or lack thereof.
“Damian said you give letter grades on your Decades of Literature oral reports,” I challenged. What the hell did this guy mean, no grades? I was at a school, wasn’t I?
“Oh, yes, we certainly provide our children with letter feedback on individual assignments. But the reports we submit to their parents never have grades. Ever. It goes against everything we stand for as a school.”
Schooled Page 5