The Rise and Fall of Me – Part 12

January 11, 2013

Okay.  Part 12.  An even dozen, although I prefer the “baker’s dozen.”  At the end of Part 11, I had finished a relatively successful year and met some new friends, but I was keeping in touch with friends from my previous school.  My relationship with one friend would eventually affect me more significantly than anything I have discussed thus far.  It would impact me more than the false police report that I was having a relationship with a child, but this chapter includes an unintentional cliffhanger.  The full brunt of this chapter’s events will not culminate until about four or five chapters ahead.  However, this event will echo not only throughout every following chapter but eventually the entire state of NJ.  If that doesn’t make sense, please trust that it eventually will.  Also, trust that you don’t have to tell me that there are trends in my behavior.  I’ve noticed.

cliffhanger

One of my duties in this new school was monitoring a study hall, a period during which students were to sit in my classroom, complete homework, read, or do any acceptable school activity.  I had only four students whom I met only two or three times.  They were advanced kids who would spend study hall in the library instead of my classroom.  Some people spend free time wisely.  Not usually me.

My best friend at the time was still Dave, the teacher from the previous school who took a group of teachers to a strip bar, which caused enough trouble for me to get fired.  “Dave” had a different name in part 11.  For reasons I won’t explain (but you might conclude), I am changing his name to “Dave” for the rest of the series.  So, that extra time gained from the empty study hall was used for two main things:  Producing the school yearbook and e-mailing Dave.  The yearbook was produced almost 100% on the computer, and my e-mail was almost constantly open.  Dave had free time at the same time as my scheduled but empty study hall.  Our e-mail was almost constant.  The topics were roughly the same that most men might share sitting in a bar, on a beach, at a barbecue, or anywhere else:  women and sex.

Although we were about 30 miles apart, we were just two men having conversations.  We were teachers and talked about education in general, our specific schools, students with which we were having trouble, mutual friends, and new friends.  He was married, but I was single, dating rather often and many stories that he loved to hear.  Having been married a long time, Dave liked to live vicariously through my experiences.

monsignor_15797_38844I will get back to Dave after I bring in another character.  A real person, but still a character I will call Dr. Mass was and still is the superintendent of this school district.  Previous to his role as a school superintendent, Dr. Mass was a monsignor in the Catholic Church.  While he was a monsignor, he fell in love with a married woman in his congregation.  Eventually this love grew into something stronger than both marriage and the Catholic Church, and Dr. Mass did two things:  He resigned from the church and convinced the love of his life to divorce her husband in order to marry him.  I could not offer concrete evidence of these two actions, but the people who told me about it were among the most knowledgeable and longest present in that school district since long before the former monsignor arrived.

One thing that seems to characterize the Catholic faith is guilt.  It drives followers to confession, to communion, and back again every Sunday.  Guilt also drove the former monsignor to find other sinners to persecute in order to ease his own conscience about his own “sin.”  It is easy to find sinners in church because they basically come to you.  Well, not “you” personally.  It’s more of a rhetorical thing.  Anyway, the problem for Dr. Mass was that sinners no longer came to him, so he needed a way to go and find them.

Dr. Mass and I had a mutual friend named Lena, a secretary at a nearby college.  I met Lena while attending a professional development class at the college.  I previously admitted to being a horrible flirt.  When people say “horrible flirt,” they really mean a very successful flirt.  I found Lena’s e-mail address through paperwork for my class at the college, and my first contact was strictly business.  After that, not so much.  It did not take long to convince her to meet for dinner.  Subsequently, it did not take long to, well, remember the part about 1.5 dates before things were physical?  Some dates were below the 1.5 average.  The following day, and for a while beyond, Lena and I continued to exchange e-mails that involved explicitly detailed discussions about what we had for “dessert” after dinner.  Also, I had e-mailed my friend Dave and shared some of the same details, and most of this e-mailing had taken place during that study hall class that was actually about 90 minutes of free time when combined with my lunch period at school.

i read banned booksRemember Chuck, the union guy from part 11?  Roughly a week after dinner with Lena, Chuck informed all staff that the superintendent, Dr. Mass, wanted everyone to know that he was reading our e-mail.  I did not like that, and my response to Chuck was, “If he wants to read my e-mail, great.  I’m not ashamed of anything in there, but he might be a little embarrassed if he reads anything of mine.”  My reaction was based on being an “open book.”  I enjoy sharing my life’s details.  As you have seen through this whole series, I don’t hesitate to tell you all about myself.  If you want to get to know me, you should know all of me.  Friendships are facilitated by common ground.  The more cards we show, the more likely it is that we have similar cards, thus it is more likely we can appreciate and regard each other positively.

That is my philosophy, but it does not apply universally.  With adults in a bar, it is acceptable to discuss sneaking beer into the bleachers during high school football games.  However, I recommend you skip that part when applying for a position with Mothers Against Drunk Driving.  After having struggled through a very oppressive (maybe that’s too strong) marriage, I was finally learning who “I” really was.  I was very happy with who “I” really was.  Putting all of that on a billboard is a different story.

Shortly after being warned that the superintendent was reading our e-mail, I e-mailed Dave about it.  I also mocked the warning and probably made statements that seemed to challenge the warning.  I did not have the foresight to see the big picture.  I did not have the ability to remind myself how I lost my previous job, which was by being too visible.  I forgot about what Dave called being “a ghost.”  I was pretty much on a soapbox instead.  In addition to e-mailing Dave about the warning, I also told him about Lena, the woman I had met at the college.  What I did not know was that Lena was also married to – and separated from – one of Dr. Mass’s best friends.  The e-mail included taking Lena to dinner and then home for “dessert,” and Dr. Mass was reading all the details when snooping through my e-mail.

Dessert!

Dessert!

My “dessert” is not vanilla ice cream.  I hope that you are following the implications, but I tend to get very creative when preparing dessert.  I have watched a lot of video on preparing and enjoying dessert, and I have incorporated many variations and have attempted many new recipes with other dessert chefs who also had pantries that were well stocked with ingredients.  And not only was I good at making dessert, I was also known to share the details of my recipes with others, especially Dave, and especially through e-mail.  Yes, I’m sure you have been able to follow the bread crumbs right to the witch’s house in the woods.  And right next to the witch’s house is a dog house.  And in the dog house is a trap door.  And the trap door opens a path into a vat of acid.  And there’s a dragon that eats the acid and shits it out into a cauldron of molten lava.  Snot-flavored lava.

An hour or so after I sent a very detailed e-mail to Dave, my password stopped working.  I then sent a text message to Dave informing him that I was locked out of my e-mail.  Later in the day, he replied that he was also shut out of his e-mail.  Shortly after that, someone arrived at my classroom door instructing me to immediately appear at the superintendent’s office.  I knew what was going to happen.  I knew I was gone.  I knew it was my last day working in that school NOT because I believed that what I had done was horrible or even bad.  I knew because schools in New Jersey don’t need a reason to get rid of you when you have not yet reached that fourth year.

When I had been told about the boss reading our e-mail, I was focused on the fact that I not only did not care about him seeing what I wrote but I almost dared him to read what I wrote.  What I had not focused on was the idea that I could be fired for that.  The official reason was connected to using school resources for personal activity instead of school activity.  I was given an attorney to contact if I wanted to challenge the firing, but I did not call because I knew the inevitable.  I knew that I could win the battle and lose the war.  I knew that even if the attorney were to save my job, I still would have been fired, which meant I would lose the opportunity to resign.  Resigning was big because it allowed me to honestly say, when applying for my next job, that I had never been fired from a job.

Fortunately, I was – as before –suspended for the rest of the year with pay instead of without pay because, by resigning, there was no hearing or determination that I had done anything wrong.  A few days later, I delivered my resignation letter to the superintendent and expressed a useless apology.  I expected to simply shake hands and leave, like closing a book and returning it to the shelf.  Instead, there were two surprises.

GuillotineFirst, the superintendent informed me that he had sent my e-mails to the local police.  Luckily, the police concluded that I was an idiot but had broken no laws.  Rarely have I wanted to punch someone, but this was a strong one.  He wasn’t satisfied with firing me.  He wanted me arrested.  For what?  Is talking about sex illegal?

Second surprise:  the superintendent (NOT Cheryl Smith, NOT of Cherry Hill, NJ) of Dave’s school district was currently searching all of their e-mail.  Thanks to my reckless, short-sighted, ignorant bravado, Dave and four other teachers were also suspended.  That investigation spread to three other schools.  Additionally, several teachers – including Dave – appeared in newspapers with criminal allegations attached.  As for school employees with names in the newspaper, it seems the esteem superintendent, Dr. Mass, has had his own problems with that.

Although I had been roughly (and deservedly) kicked between the legs, those other teachers were having their legs broken.  My legs would eventually reach the chopping block, but not for another ten years.  These and other amputations will be explained in part 13.

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The Rise and Fall of Me – Part 11 of _?

January 7, 2013

Before I begin Part 11, let me first ask you all to say a hearty “Hi” to my ex-wife who regularly reads (or “stalks”) my blog.  A few days ago, after I posted Part 10, she called me up, and it went something like this:

6375650-woman-in-horror-looking-at-the-laptop-screen

not my ex

Her:  I was going through our daugther’s e-mail and I noticed that thing you write.

Me:  Huh?

Her:  She gets an e-mail every time you write something.  Like she subscribed to your stupid blog thing.  And that thing you last wrote was upsetting.

Me:  So you read her e-mail?  Just like you read her text messages, right?

Her:  No, I was not reading her e-mail.  I just happened to see her e-mail, and I just happened to notice something.  And I wasn’t really reading it, but I happened to sort of see a few things.  And you shouldn’t send that stuff to her.

Me:  I don’t send anything to her.  She subscribed to it, I guess.

Her:  Well, you have to stop her from reading it.

Me:  I can’t.  You’re the one who looks through her e-mail, so you can unsubscribe from it.

Her:  I don’t know how.

Me:  Me neither.

Her:  Well you’re the computer guy.  You figure it out.

Me:  I don’t go into her e-mail like YOU do, so YOU take care of it.  And I’m sure she doesn’t read my blog anyway.

Her:  Well, it’s wrong for you to write about one of your friends wanting to kill me.

Me:  It wasn’t serious.  It was a joke.

Her:  Well, your daughter doesn’t know that.

Me:  You said she doesn’t read it.  You said you don’t read it, but if you don’t read it, then how did you know someone offered to kill you?

Her:  Well, I didn’t read it.  I just happened to see that one sentence.  Also, it’s not a good idea that you write about sleeping with 50 women when your daughter might read it.

Me:  You said she didn’t read it.  And you said you didn’t read it.  So if you didn’t read it, then how do you know that I wrote about sleeping with 50 women?  Also, I never said I slept with 50 woman.  I said I dated 50 women.  Perhaps you should be more careful when you don’t read e-mail.

Her:  I didn’t read it, but that part happened to catch my attention.  And that’s not the point.  Do you think it’s a good idea for your daughter to see that?

Me:  Let me ask you this.  At one point, you told our daughters that my father and my brother were child molesters, which is a great lie.  So which do you think is worse?  That you lied to our daughters about her uncle and grandfather being child molesters or that I dated 50 women?  Because from my perspective, what you told them is not only a lie but is also much worse than what I wrote that they probably won’t even see unless you’re the one who shows them.

Her:  Well, that’s not my point…

Me:  Yeah, but it’s MY point.  See, I get to have “points” too.  Not just you.

Her:  Okay, I don’t want to talk about this anymore.

Me:  Yeah, I didn’t think so.

That’s not the conversation verbatim, not exactly word-for-word either, but the theme and scope are all fully intact.  I reminded her that my blog doesn’t have my name on it, and her actual name is nowhere to be found, but she didn’t care because in her disillusioned world, she thinks that random Internet surfers will stumble upon this and know without a doubt that I’m writing about her.  Therefore, I will make damn sure that I do NOT post her name, phone number, or mailing address on this or any other blog.  Definitely not.  No way.  And don’t even try to check back soon because you will not see that information here.  So relax, Ms. Ex-wife.  No personal information seems to be here.  Not that I can tell.  Looking.  Looking.  Nope.  Not yet.  However…

Okay.  Enough stupidity.  Let’s get to Part 11

……………………..

When we left Part 10, I had again been fired for something unfair, in my opinion.  Yes, I was in a strip bar, not a crime, but teachers are treated differently than other people I guess.  Yes, I was in an “establishment that served alcohol,” but nobody would have cared if I were a plumber.  No offense.  Certainly, most people could say that I could have fought this somehow.  Unfortunately, in schools, it’s different.  Yes, I could have fought this battle, but I would have lost the war.  When you have not yet reached that magical first day of your fourth year, you are worthless.  That left me facing another summer of applications and – with luck – interviews.  Before I left Maple Shade, the superintendent - Ms. Cheryl Smith – NOT of Cherry Hill, NJ - seemed to have done a great favor for me.  She sent me a letter that stated that the reason for my release was because there was going to be a reduction in students.  On paper, that showed that my release had nothing to do with my behavior or anything.  It said I had been a good teacher but was the victim of a population decrease.  I thought, “Wow, that was nice of her.”  What I was not aware of were the grimy wheels that turn inside the vile brain of Cheryl Smith – NOT of Cherry Hill, NJ.

the actual cheryl smith

the actual Cheryl smith

Cheryl Smith is a decrepit, bitter old bitch, a vengeful, deceitful hag who gains personal glory from stabbing nice people in the epiglottis.  I was not aware that Cheryl Smith – NOT of Cherry Hill, NJ, had a history of releasing employees, writing a glowing letter of recommendation, but totally trashing them when a prospective employer asked about the candidate for whom she had written the recommendation.  I had attended several positive interviews.  One was Salem High School, which told me that within a week they would call back the top three candidates.  Not even ten minutes after I had left the building, they called and invited me for a second interview the very next day.  About thirty minutes later, Salem called again and said that they were sorry but my interview was cancelled.  I later learned that they were calling my references, which included Cheryl Smith – NOT of Cherry Hill, NJ, who completely trashed me.  When I say that “I later learned,” it would be several years later, but I’ll expand on that in Part 12 or 13 because not only did she kick me out of her school, which she has the right to do, but twice later in my teaching career she tracked me and other teachers down and caused big problems in other school districts.  Don’t let that smile fool you.

September arrived without a teaching position, and it felt awful.  After 18 years, it was the second time I was sitting home on everyone else’s first day of school.  I scoured the newspapers and online sources and found an interesting job that would help me later in my career – reading and scoring the essays that kids write on standardized, state tests.  Those same tests that I hate, that have ruined education, were sitting in a pile for me and about six other people to evaluate.  Sure, I was a certified teacher with 18 years doing exactly what needed to be done, but what about the other people?  Who else was entrusted with making critical decisions that could greatly influence the educational direction of thousands of students?  There were a couple of college students who constantly checked their cell phones, an elderly gentleman who kept falling asleep, two women who could not stop talking even if you had sewn their mouths shut, and a guy in his 30’s who barely spoke English and likely would have been screened out of line at most airports post 9/11.  No offense.

paperless-home-office-4For about three weeks we sat at a table, plucked essays from one pile, scribbled a score, put that essay in a second pile to receive a second score, and then went back for another one.  It sounds rather conceited to say that I knew that I was doing a great job with it, but I had been trained to score these essays over the years.  I’m not so sure about the rest of the group.  It greatly disappointed me to see who was responsible for scores that could significantly help or hurt both individual students and entire school districts.  In New Jersey there is a definitive “passing” or “failing” score that determines if student are permitted to take certain higher-level classes or forced to take remedial classes, thus affecting a student’s ability to continue at a higher level that could also affect a student’s college options.  There are cumulative scores that dictate which schools must spend millions on supplemental classes and after-school programs.  That absorbed funds that schools might need for sports, arts, and other programs.

I was not happy, but a brief reprieve arrived when I was invited to interview to replace a teacher called to military service in a scrappy town called Penns Grove.  While sitting in a lobby awaiting my interview, I read a Time magazine article about legislation called “No Child Left Behind,” (NCLB) a program largely copied from a British plan called “Every Child Moves Ahead.”  Though assembled by Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, NCLB was mainly credited to President George W. Bush.  I had just enough time to read some of the details before it was time to meet the superintendent.  During interview, I did two things:  I greatly impressed the boss with my knowledge of NCLB while trying not to look at the dead squirrel of a wig that sat on the man’s head.  It was a challenge.  Luckily, the man was a big supporter of Pres. Bush.  Although I was not pro-Bush, I was still able to convince him that I was right for the job.  A week later, still reading those essays, my phone buzzed.  I had a feeling it was Penns Grove wanting to hire me, and I was right.  After finishing one more essay and checking my voicemail, I left the building and drove home without caring to tell anyone.

renderI began at Penns Grove High School in December and had a relatively quiet rest of the year teaching freshmen and sophomores.  I took over the school yearbook the next year not just for extra money, not just to impress the administration to keep a job, but also because their current yearbook was about as exciting as a dictionary.  I received great accolades for redesigning everything and adding some style, color, and some sharp uses of graphics.  The compliments were something I had not been accustomed to hearing because my career thus far had been rather bland.

There were three scary incidents that year.  First was when I heard a scream and turned to see students patting out a fire on a girl’s head.  A boy later explained that she had so much hairspray and other products in her hair that he wondered if it would light up, so he clicked a cigarette lighter behind her head and found out that yes, it would light up.  Second was a problem with an angry student who did not like me for reasons I forget.  We got into several disagreements over the course of several months that culminated when he said, “I have a gun at home, and I know how to use it.”  I gave the class an assignment so I could type an e-mail to the principal in which I detailed what the boy had said.  About thirty minutes later, the principal arrived and asked for the student by name.  The boy left with the principal and I never saw him again.  I was impressed, thinking that it was a school with integrity and I would enjoy being there.  The third problem that was more significant than a kid talking about a gun.

There were two female students whose names I don’t remember, so I’ll call them Laura and Donna.  Donna was an excellent student, a quiet girl who did her job, never bothered anyone, and always had good grades.  She didn’t have many friends and talked to few people.  She was neither sociable nor unsociable, just focused on her grades instead of the total school atmosphere.  Laura was the opposite, always involved in discussions, and seemed to know and get along with everyone.  Donna wrote poetry, asked if I would read her work, and brought me a notebook full of writing after school.  I made some revising suggestions, told her that in a few months we would be covering poetry in class, and that I would be glad to more closely review her writing at that time.

A few days later, maybe a week, I received an e-mail to meet with the vice principal.  She was a very friendly woman and interesting to talk to because it was fun to hear her occasional Canadian accent.  It was not fun, however, when her accent asked if I were having a personal relationship with Donna.  Shocked, I asked what could have provoked the question.  She said another student, whose name she could not divulge, confided to her about the possibility.  When I asked what caused the anonymous student to suggest it, the vice principal could not divulge that either.  At that point, there was nothing I could do or say other than, “No, I’m not having a relationship with Donna.  She was in my sophomore class and recently approached me after school to read her poetry.  That’s it.”  The vice principal thanked me for coming to her office.  When I asked if there would be any further questions or investigations, she said, “No.  You told me you weren’t having a relationship, and I believe you.  That is all there is to it.”  I wanted to scream and throw something, but I realized that she was not the right person to suffer that, so I left the office and found my building union representative who was also the union president to discuss the matter with him.

I will call him Chuck, the union president.  I didn’t know Chuck well but well enough that he had asked me for rides to and from school when his car was being fixed.  When I told him about the meeting and the accusation of a relationship with Donna, he said he was already aware of it.  What shocked me was when he said that a student had approached him with the suspicion of a relationship, and it was he who had sent the student to the vice principal.  The student was Laura, the socially outgoing girl from the same class as Donna.  The number one job of a union president is to protect the rights of the union members.  I asked Chuck why he did not come to me first with the accusation instead of sending Donna to the vice principal, but I don’t remember his answer.  I again wanted to scream and throw something, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good.  The next day I asked Laura to stay for a moment after class and asked her why she told the vice principal that she thought I was having a relationship with Donna.  She said that she saw us talking after school and assumed that’s what was happening.  I could not believe how casual she was about it, as if saying, “Yeah, no big deal.  I thought you two had something going on because you were talking, ya know?  So I told someone.”  Without anything else – just seeing two people talking – this little snot made a great assumption that something inappropriate was happening.  Then, when she asked Chuck – not just another teacher but also the union president – what to do, he sent her to administration instead of coming to me first.

UntitledI was somewhere between furious and nauseous, not sure if I were going to puke or pummel something.  The rest of the year was uneventful, but I could not shake the grossness and anger covering me.  To deal with it, I spoiled myself that coming summer.  I bought a golf membership, played about five days a week, and improved greatly.  I was still friends with the teachers from the previous school, and we did a lot of BBQ-ing, bar hopping, and beer drinking.

When September arrived, I was determined not to let the previous year’s events affect me.  I would be less outgoing, keep to myself, and do nothing to draw attention.  Sadly, it did not work, and – just like a few years earlier – something happened that would not just get me fired during the school year but has followed and affected me to this day.

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The Rise and Fall of Me – part 6 of 9ish

December 2, 2012

03.06_school.1950

Slight review – My first year teaching was at Freehold High School in the Freehold Regional High School District, a collection of five high schools working in one system.  For the second year I was transferred to Howell High School, also in that district.  For my third year I was splitting time between both schools with classes at both Freehold and Howell.  It would be my last year in that district.

______________________

The English Department at Howell was a great unit with an excellent leader, a former Marine named Dennis Cleary, but unfortunately for me he resigned at the end of my second year.  Had he still been there for my third year, I might also still be there.  Dennis was loved by teachers and hated by administrators because he did things his way and he did things successfully.  He knew how to respect people who respected him and how to help people who needed it, even when they didn’t ask.  He never stopped smiling because his career had been good, he bought a vineyard in California, and he was going to make his own wine in his retirement.  As soon as he was out the door, the building administration went to work.  The assistant principal Rose Traficante hired one of her best friends, a rather manly woman by the name of Maryann Banks, to dismantle the English Department.  By the end of the year, everyone from Cleary’s English troupe was either transferred to another school or released.  In New Jersey public schools, your job is protected if you make it to your fourth year in one school district.  I was one year short, I would be gone in June, and there was nothing I could do about it.

In a well-run school district, the board of education will not fire someone unless the school principal and department supervisor can prove that they’ve worked with the targeted teachers in order to help them improve and avoid being released.  In a poorly-run district, they’re happy to get rid of you and save a few bucks by hiring a new person who will be about three years down on the salary ladder from where you were before they kicked you out.  This was not a well-run district.  In fact, they went out of their way to get rid of me, and it bothered me that it was never directly explained why.  I don’t mind if someone doesn’t like me as long as they can at least state so in a polite way.  If you think I’m bossy or pushy, just tell me and be prepared with examples.

Before a teacher reaches that magic fourth year and getting a pretty much iron-clad lifetime position – also known as “tenure” – the school board can fire you for absolutely any reason or no reason at all without any proof or evidence at all.  They can just say, “We don’t think you fit well in our school.”  For me, they wanted to at least have half a leg to stand on, and that starts with finding flaws in job performance.  Usually those flaws are found during observations, when an administrator sits in your room for a full period, takes extensive notes, and writes whatever the hell they want.  I’ve read observations for teachers in which not only was the wrong name on the observation form but everything described was not only inaccurate but impossible.  Those impossibilities are sometimes just typos and clerical errors, but that is enough to disqualify a poor evaluation.  For me, my job performance was fine, but they still found a way.

santa

Teachers with tenure usually get one or two observations a year.  Non-tenured teachers get at least three.  My first one that year was about a week before Christmas.  My second one was the very next day, and that wasn’t a coincidence.  After the first observation, the supervisor gave me a bunch of recommendations for things I should do differently.  She came in the following day, too soon for me to have made all of her changes, but she gave me a very poor evaluation because of exactly that – I had not employed her recommendations.  On the day before the holiday break, she told me that I would be gone at the end of the year.  There’s a “stocking stuffer” for you.

My teaching day was split, with Howell for the first four classes and Freehold for the last of the usual five class periods for high school teachers.  When I asked about monthly staff meetings at Howell, I was told to just attend meetings at Freehold because everything was the same since it was all the same school district.  That didn’t stop the supervisor from downgrading my evaluation on the basis that I never attended any staff meetings at Howell.  Sneaky bitch that Ms. Banks.  I tried to defend myself at the “Soooo sorry to see you go” meeting at the end of the year with the principal and supervisor, but it didn’t matter.  My representative told me ahead of time not to waste my time putting up a fight.  When they want to cut you loose, they can do it without a reason.  And they did it.  It was my first time being fired but not the last.

One last note about Howell:  I had an interesting discussion one day with the principal, a very smart but slick guy named Matt Herman.  It was right about when all high schools were hit with a statewide test called the HSPE – High School Proficiency Exam.  I didn’t know much about it, but Dr. Herman said, “This new test is going to ruin education.  Just you wait and see.”  In a later chapter I’ll explain how right he was.

____________________

WOKMS_CONTEMPORARY_03

The following year I was unable to secure a full-time teaching position, but I was able to snag a job as a replacement for a teacher who was taking the year off to have a baby, also known as “maternity leave.”  That was at a middle school in Hillside, NJ.  Here’s how Hillside was described to me:  “If you can make it out of Newark, you go to Elizabeth.  And if you can make it out of Elizabeth, you go to Hillside.”  So it was about on the third level of bad cities in the state.  It didn’t take long to find that out.

The teacher I replaced was a well-loved grandmotherly type, so it wasn’t going to be easy for a short, big-mouthed white guy to replace her.  Skipping ahead, I can tell you that I was asked to stay another year when that teacher announced she wasn’t returning, but I turned them down.

That year was the only time I ever had a student bring a gun to school.  Well, the only time of which I’m aware.  I’m sure there have been other times, but those kids kept them hidden and nobody knew.  Although I’m not certain, there’s a good chance the kids who weren’t caught with a weapon were smart enough not to bring a rifle.  Not the kid in my class.  He walked into the room with a backpack on and the barrel of a small rifle sticking in the air like an antenna.  I was amazed the kid had made it up to the third floor of a school with nobody seeming to notice.  I watched as he strolled to the back of the room and hung up his backpack on a hook in a long coat closet before taking his seat.  First, I sent a kid down to get the principal.  Then, I walked to the closet, took the backpack with the rifle, and carried it up to my desk.  When the kid saw that I had his rifle, he panicked, ran to the window, and climbed up on the ledge.  It was one of those older, more traditional schools with the tall, narrow windows.  He put one foot on the outside ledge.  I yelled, “Wait!”  Everyone froze.  “Look down,” I said.  “You see a red car?”  He shook his head.  I said, “Okay.  Class, take out your homework.”  The kids were shocked that I was ignoring him.  He was shocked but also sad and returned to his desk.  Wasn’t long before the principal arrived to escort him away.  Never saw him again.

By this time, my wife (future ex-wife) had graduated college and was also teaching, but it wasn’t a major problem when I told her I wasn’t going back to that school when June arrived.  I applied to many other schools and was very lucky to land the best teaching job I ever had, which I would then hold for the next six years until, like an idiot, I walked away from it.  Yeah, I’ll explain, don’t worry.

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There are two main reasons you’ve likely heard of Seaside Heights, NJ.  One is for the stupid TV show Jersey Shore and its cast of idiots.  The second reason is Hurricane Sandy and the devastation it brought to the expansive boardwalk there.  You’ve likely seen the image of the rollercoaster in the ocean.  I spent many summers working on that boardwalk during my college years.  Just north of Seaside is Ortley Beach, a small town full of hotels, motels, and bars.  North of Ortley is Lavallette, a lovely little town that just happens to have a great beach.  Take away the beach and it seems like any other small town with a handful of great restaurants.  Joe Pesci has a home there.  When I left Hillside, I interviewed in Lavallette, and things went well enough that I was called for a second interview, but there was a tough decision to make before that interview.

school1

I had relatives with a summer home in town, and my uncle spent many summer nights at a local bar with most of the members of the board of education.  Seemed like a no-brainer to call up Uncle Ray, let him know that his bar buddies were interviewing me, and he’d take care of the rest.  The problem was that my uncle was kind of an Archie Bunker type.  You just never know when he might shoot his mouth off about something.  The guy was always great to me, but I wasn’t sure how well received he was by the bar buddies.  What if he just happened to piss someone off on the day before I called him?  I decided to keep quiet and either win or lose the job on my own.  Luckily, I won.  On the first day of school, two board members walked into my classroom and said, “Why didn’t you tell us you were Ray’s nephew?  It would have saved us all a lot of time.”  That’s a double-edged sword with public education.  Lots of teachers, maybe 50%, get their job because of who they know and not what they know.  I can’t complain.  It has worked in my favor on a few occasions.

I grew up going to the beach for a week, sometimes two weeks every summer.  I waited a long time every year to have my nostrils filled with that unmistakable ocean air when we hit the bridge that reached over to Long Beach Island, and at some point I promised myself that I would do whatever I could to be able to smell that ocean every day.  Working in a school only one block from the ocean was pretty close.  It was a wonderful school, nice kids, great teachers, all in one building that ran from kindergarten to 8th grade before sending students to another town for high school.  To this day, I occasionally go to their website and read the staff directory to see the people I worked with, great people, friendly, helpful, everything.  Some of the staff are now former students, and I like to think I had something to do with their choice to be a teacher.  I sometimes think about taking a drive and visiting, but then I’d just feel really sad for having walked away.

One person who is no longer there was Roger Caruba, the best principal/superintendent I ever worked with.  When I had a run-in with a parent because I had the “audacity” to give her the first B of her educational career (it was 7th grade), this mother wanted me tarred and feathered, but Mr. Caruba told her that I had the final say, and if it’s a B, then it’s a B.  When I learned about the heat he was taking from the parent, I offered to change the grade to an A, but he wouldn’t let me.  When I wanted to expand the school newspaper into a classroom assignment and make it a regular part of the 8th grade English curriculum, he said, “Great.  Let me know how it works out.”  And when the angry father of one of my female 8th graders came into the school wearing a gun on his hip, Roger was there to greet him at the door.

The following year – huh, what?  Oh, right, yeah – the angry father with the gun.  Okay, fine, but there really isn’t much to it.  It’s a beach town, and most kids go to the beach on most warm afternoons when school lets out.  One particular day, a girl walked past her father in her bathing suit, which was small enough that it showed some kind of a mark on her shoulder.  When her father, a prison guard, asked how she’d gotten a bruised shoulder, she flippantly said, “My teacher hit me.”  He immediately called the principal and stormed to the school in uniform, including the gun.  I was told he was coming but not why he was coming, so I really wasn’t prepared.  I practically pissed myself when the principal arrived in my room first and prepped me for the meeting.  I had absolutely no clue what the man was talking about, and I explained as such when he squeezed through the doorway into the room.  He demanded answers, I had none, and you can be sure I did not like that my non-answers only angered him more.  His daughter was at his side, perfectly quiet, until the father turned to her and asked her again how she got the bruise.  She then, rather sheepishly, admitted that it was not me who had hit her but her boyfriend.  The father turned to me and said, “Oh, sorry.”  And they left, and that was all the apology I was ever given.  And for the next three months I had to look at that little bitch of a kid and think about how her father seemed ready to shoot me, and after her little bitch lie was on the table, all he had to say was “Oh, sorry.”  I asked the principal to remove her from my class, but it wasn’t possible because the school was so small that there was only one class for each grade level, so there was nowhere to move her.  Kyla Graham.  Little lying bitch, and I don’t care that I didn’t withhold her name.

My teaching career was great.  I was the baseball coach, in charge of all of the school computers and network, having run most of the cables throughout the building with the help of a custodian.  I had various other roles that brought in extra income so I really could take summers off – because most teachers work all summer, contrary to popular belief.  I loved the school and the town.  I had my first child, a beautiful daughter who is now at Boston University, and we had enough money for my (then) wife to stay home with the kid for a couple of years.  Just when everything seemed great, I made a dumb-ass decision that sent everything to Hell.

Hell_Fire

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The Rise and Fall of Me – part 5 of 8(?)

November 19, 2012

To review the end of part 4, I finished my first year teaching without really having a clue of what I was doing.  The second year didn’t get any better.

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The Freehold Regional District was a total of five high schools, no elementary schools.  Manalapan, Marlboro, Howell, Freehold Township, and Freehold Borough were the five high schools in five towns, each town having their own, separate elementary school system.  Within the five high schools, teachers were regularly shifted around without having any say in the matter.  After my first year in Freehold Borough, I was moved over to Howell, an upper-middle class town with a world-class golf course within walking distance.  Teachers often ran out of the building at the end of the day, grabbed their golf clubs from the trunks of cars, and headed over to squeeze in as many holes as possible before dark.  I was moved without an explanation, but it didn’t matter though because I was happy to be employed.  Many years later I learned about an unwritten practice called “Pass the Lemon,” in which schools will move problem teachers to other places so as not to have to deal with them for more than a year.  It happens with principals too, but in this case it likely could have been the reason for my move.  Regardless of the reasons, I was happy about it because I was working with a much more user-friendly staff and made a few good friends but also a couple of enemies. 

First and foremost was Bob Wheeler, a very happy, round, premature-gray haired guy who could talk about movies for hours, and we did.  Since I was thin and balding and he was round and  gray, we were usually referred to as “Siskel and Ebert.”  It was business as usual for a teacher to get up and leave the faculty room, roll his or her eyes, and mutter, “Siskel and Ebert are at it again.”  We argued and debated many films but also agreed on one very important thing:  seeing a bad movie was better than no movie at all.  We both taught English, so we spent a lot of time together and, I think, we even shared a classroom.  Bob influenced where I bought my first home, in Lakewood, NJ.

Someone who did not admire Bob was a social studies teacher, Frank Sninski.  Frank didn’t like Bob for one very important reason.  They were both Vietnam Veterans but with very different approaches.  Frank spoke often about his war experience, even bragging about the number of enemy soldiers he killed.  Bob did not kill anyone, at least not that he was aware of.  Bob was so against violence that he did not hesitate to tell how he often shot at cocoanuts in the trees instead of where the enemy was hiding.  He said he would only shoot at a person if that person were openly charging at him.  Frank felt that Bob’s attitude might have cost some Americans their lives, and he’s likely correct, but it wasn’t for me to decide.  Frank was rather sadistic at times.  He wore a very large college ring and would occasionally turn the ring so the stone was on the inside of his hand.  Then he’d stroll around the room and pat kids on the head with a little extra strength and an audible “knock” on the skull.  Frank didn’t like Bob and didn’t like me either, probably because I was friends with Bob.  Frank was obsessed with the JFK assassination.  Every year around mid-November he’d facilitate an assembly in the auditorium during which he’d show – frame by frame – the Zapruder film on a large screen and explain the details of what happened, according to the Warren Commission.  Frank held to the theory that it was an inside job and not the work of one wanna-be Communist.  I tend to agree with him, but that’s not important.

Aside from teachers, there were three notable students from my second year of teaching, two of whom I can remember names, but I’ll start with the boy whose name escapes me.  I noticed in his creative writing that he spent an unusual amount of time describing females.  He used many words to detail their physical appearance as well as their clothing, and I had to remind him to get to the story and spend less time on the visuals.  It didn’t appear important at all – until the day it mattered – that he sat right behind the one high school cheerleader in class.  She was the stereotypical pretty, blonde, and dumb cheerleader, which we all know only exists in movies and TV, right?  One random day I was lecturing a sophomore class about The Scarlet Letter when I noticed the boy behind the cheerleader.  He had loose-fitting sweatpants on, and he had his hand in his pants, and he was masturbating.  I can’t imagine my first thought, but my second thought was to keep everyone’s attention on me.  He was in the back left corner of the room, so I moved to the front right corner.  I let my voice grow a little louder and got a little demonstrative.  Instead of having the kids take turns reading, I started reading aloud and made efforts to act out what was happening in the story.  I know I looked silly, and the boy looked sillier, but the last thing I wanted was for others to see him.  If they did, and if they freaked out, it would have scarred this kid for life.  He’d be talked about and ridiculed to no end.  I don’t know if he deserved it, but I just knew that I had seen something like it before, and I didn’t want history to repeat.  In one of my earlier entries I mentioned a kid who was falsely accused of masturbating in school, and it totally changed the course of his life, so I thought about that and kept all eyes and ears on my until finally the whacking boy reached orgasm and collapsed on the desk in exhaustion.  Kids turned around and looked at him, not realizing what had prefaced the collapse, and they asked him if he was okay.  He looked at me.  “Can I use the restroom?”  I wanted to say, “You should’ve thought about that ten minutes ago,” but of course I just sent him out.  Later that day I told his guidance counselor and never heard another word about it.

Another student, also sophomore, was a wide-eyed, innocent kid named Ricky.  He liked to work on cars and tried hard to make friends, but he only did well with cars.  He didn’t have great grades and often missed his homework, but he was a good, genuine nice kid.  People made fun of him sometimes because his eyes always seemed to be popping out of his head.  Ricky tried hard enough to make friends that he’d do almost anything anyone asked.  Later that year he went to what was probably his first party, and popular at the time was something called “huffing,” when you’d fill a bag with gas from something like a whipped cream can or spray paint can, inhale it, and basically get a dizzy and temporary high.  If you inhaled too deeply, it could stop your vital functions.  That’s what Ricky did while just trying to fit in.  He passed out, and other kids just thought it was a case of a lightweight who couldn’t pace himself.  They figured he’d wake up eventually, and they just stepped over him and pushed him to a corner, not realizing he was dead.  Obviously, that’s the worst part, but what fueled me further was the reaction in school.

It’s common for schools to bring in grief counselors when a student passes away or suffers something traumatic.  After Ricky’s death, kids were visibly upset and crying in school, seeking to leave class and meet with these counselors, but it was all phony.  These kids just wanted to get out of class and get a little attention for themselves.  Not uncommon are copycat deaths, in which other kids see how much attention the deceased is getting, and their own instability drives them to commit suicide even though they’re not around to actually get the sympathy.  That didn’t happen, but what did happen was me yelling at students for their bullshit act.  I told a room full of kids that absolutely none of them, not one of them even knew Ricky’s address or even his birthday.  I told them they were all just little shits who wanted to gain a little attention from Ricky’s death and that if any of them even cared one ounce about him, they’d have stopped him from huffing because they would have known the boy probably never drank a beer in his life until the night he died.  Then I challenged them to go ahead and be one of those copycat kids, to go kill themselves, find Ricky on the other side, and go apologize to him.

The last student is probably the most regrettable moment of my 25 years in the classroom.  It was the last day before our Spring Break.  I often talked about what was happening in the news during class but not with essays, just with friendly discussions.  There was a murder case in New York in which a teenage girl was invited into the neighboring home of two or three boys.  They attempted to rape her, but instead they killed her when she put up too much of a fight.  They hid her body in their basement while authorities and volunteers searched the area for a few days, only to eventually find the body.  Although the boys denied any involvement, they later confessed.  So, just before Spring Break, I talked about that case and begged the students, especially the girls, to be careful during their week off.  During that week off, concert tickets went on sale for the band Bon Jovi, which was just becoming one of the most popular acts in the world, never mind the country.  In the local news was a story about a girl who was waiting overnight to buy tickets when they went on sale in the morning.  In the middle of the night, a guy shows up and tells some kids that he has tickets already, bought them in Pennsylvania where the rules are different and the tickets had been on sale the previous day.  All anyone had to do was walk over to his car and he’d sell them the tickets.  A girl waiting was naïve enough to believe him and followed him, only to be raped at knifepoint.  Beyond sad, but I made it worse.

The following Monday, after the break, I stood in front of the class and lectured them again, asking if they’d seen the story and shooting my mouth off.  “Didn’t you hear what I said last week?  Didn’t I tell you to be careful where you go and who you go with?  Look at this story about this poor girl and what happened to her.  Blah blah blah,” and on I went, all the while semi-noticing one girl with her head down.  I figured she was tired, partied too much during the break.  After class, she got up and left like most other kids, except one girl who stayed behind and looked at me confused.  “Didn’t you know?” she asked.  “Know what?”  “Didn’t you see Jen with her head down the whole time you were talking?  She was the girl who was raped.”  I don’t think I ever felt more stupid, not before or since, as I did at that moment.  Of all the things I’ve ever done that I wish I could take back, that’s likely at the top of the list.

Probably the only bright spot, aside from the friendship with Mr. Wheeler, was a trend that began and lasted to this day.  I noticed that there were certain kids who occasionally would come to my room after school, at lunch, or at random times during the day just to sit in my room, talk, or do nothing.  The troubled kids, the ones who were often in detention or cutting class would want to bring their situations to me for my opinion or just a sympathetic ear.  For some reason the bad kids looked at me as someone who could help or at least just listen.  It likely started when I overheard a conversation one day about hockey.  When I threw in my two cents, they were surprised to find out that a teacher knew anything about their sport.  When I told them I had been playing since I was about 10-years old, they were impressed and asked me if I could help organize a school hockey team.   That wasn’t possible, but a club could easily be done.  Not ice hockey as that was too expensive, just street hockey, sometimes called ball hockey.  We had an unofficial school team and played pick-up games a couple of afternoons a week, nothing official, but a bunch of kids staying out of trouble after school.  After the games, we’d hang around and just talk about anything, and it was the only bright spot I had felt.  They weren’t bad kids, they just needed direction, something to do, a focus or purpose.  Nobody paid attention to them.  I didn’t realize back then, but it was a clue to what

was going wrong with education.  Schools were focusing on information and tests instead of focusing on kids.  They seemed to forget that kids were people, not just names in a gradebook.

The plan was to expand the school hockey team and get a teacher in the other four schools in the district to organize a team, and then we could have a five-team high school hockey league.  I would have coached the Howell team, and I say “would have” because at the end of that year I was transferred back to Freehold, and I bet that’s not a surprise.

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Up next – the part when I get fired.  Nobody dies, but someone gets slapped.

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The Rise and Fall of Me – Part 4 of 6-ish

November 18, 2012

To review the end of part 3, I graduated college and obtained a teaching certificate.  That’s when the trouble started.

My First Year of Teaching

I went on a handful of interviews for teaching positions after graduating college.  From what I was told, everyone wanted to be an English teacher, but I couldn’t imagine why because, for me, English was about the most boring class I could recall.  All that sentence diagramming and grammar drilling was annoying, but I had no way of knowing how well that would eventually pay off.  What I didn’t know were two things:  1. Most teachers love to kill time.  2. It was easy to kill time in English by just giving an essay to write.  Something going on in the news?  Write an essay.  Something locally?  Write an essay.  Hand out lined paper, sit back with the newspaper, and wait for the bell to ring.  Today, it’s even easier because in addition to assigning essays, you can also just show a movie.  English teachers can get away with that more than anyone, but that doesn’t stop other teachers from showing movies too.

In my daughter’s school, they’re watching movies constantly.  In math recently they were watching Finding Nemo.  In her Ceramics class they watched The DaVinci Code.  Totally true.  Years ago, it was only in English/Language Arts/Communications class that we showed movies regularly because of how they correlated and illustrated the books we had read.  We’d read Romeo and Juliet and then watch West Side Story, things like that.  Most English teachers I knew would read a book and then watch the movie version.  I’d ask them, “Why show the same movie?  You’re only telling the same story twice.  Show a different movie that’s related in some way.”  That’s just one of many reasons why most other teachers did not like me.

Of all the interviews, the only one that counted was in the Freehold Regional High School District, offices in Englishtown, NJ.  I interviewed in mid August and was one of three finalists, but the job was given to someone else.  Roughly a week later, the woman who was given the job had to give it up in order to move across the country to be with her sick, elderly mother.  The guy who was second for the job had already taken another position, so they were stuck with me and I was stuck with a career path for which I was clearly not ready.

Freehold Borough High School

How amazing it was that my first teaching position was at the same high school attended by Bruce Springsteen.  I sought out a few older teachers to ask about Springsteen’s time at that school.  There was an art teacher who not only remembered specifically how Bruce would sit in the back of his classroom and pick at his face, but the guy had kept all of his gradebooks in his time there and brought one in for me to see Springsteen’s name and grades scribbled on those familiar pages of green and white bars and columns.  A science teacher recalled how Bruce would cut class and sit with a guitar beneath a giant tree in the middle of the U-shaped school, playing and singing, and nobody bothered him.  The school had since closed the U into a box through needed expansion, and sadly the tree was no longer there.

On my first day in the building as an employee, prior to the first day for students, a group of new teachers were touring the building with one of two vice principals when we heard the glottal voice of a large man in shorts not quite his size yelling “Dick!  Dick!”  The vice principal looked at us.  “Anyone named Dick?”  For reasons I don’t need to explain, I’ve never known anyone with my first name – Richard – who preferred the name Dick, so I didn’t imagine the large man was referring to me, but he was.  The loud, overinflated man was the English department supervisor, Bob Leonard.  Nice guy with sausage-thick fingers and a slightly effeminate drawl in his voice.  He had very little interest in what I was actually doing in the classroom because he was hanging on from the days when students did what they were told because their parents made sure it happened.  Those days were fading, especially in towns like Freehold where more attention was paid to muscular instead of mental performance.

I had a rookie principal, tall and mild mannered with a slow, deep voice.  Frank Penn was very easy to talk to provided you showed the respect his title deserved.  I only recall seeing him upset one time.  It was shortly before Christmas (aka “winter holiday”), and Mr. Penn brought in a Christmas tree to help decorate the main office.  He started to assemble it early one day, but as first period approached, he asked the three office secretaries if they wouldn’t mind finishing the project.  One of them rather rudely looked at him and said, “We’re Jewish!”  Thus declaring she would not assemble the tree, nor would the others.  Penn looked at them oddly.  He didn’t intend to insult anyone’s religion and only wanted to bring a festive look to the school.  I imagine he might have insulted them more if he instead asked, “Ladies, since you’re Jewish and likely won’t assemble the Christmas tree, can you find some Christians to finish it up?  Thanks.”  The ladies were not wrong in their refusal to build the tree, but they were wrong in their response.  Usually, it’s not what you say but how you say it.  They didn’t say it well.

As for me, I knew nothing about earning respect, and I earned none.  I earned so little the I was actually punched by a student, and a girl at that, but there’s a circumstance here.  Her name was Joann, and she had a black eye.  I knew she had a boyfriend who was an angry bastard, and I correctly suspected he had punched her, but I didn’t yet know that when I saw the eye.  Her explanation was that she was brushing her friend’s hair, the brush got stuck in a knot, she pulled, the knot slipped, and she ended up punching herself in the eye.  I did the wrong thing.  I kept pushing.  In my own stupid way of trying to help, I called her a liar and told her that I’d bet anything her boyfriend knocked her a good one.  Eventually, with all my bothering, she extended an arm and popped me in the middle of the chest.  I had a decision to make, and my plan was to get her in a great amount of trouble for hitting a teacher until another teacher intervened.  He called me up and asked if I was really going to pursue the matter against the girl, and yes, I was.  The gentleman explained to me a few things about the student’s background, homelife, and whether or not I was reacting to the embarrassment of being punched as opposed to what’s best for the student.  I thought about it more, about the role that I played in it, and whether or not I deserved to be punched.  Nobody deserves to be punched, but the punch certainly would not have happened without be being annoying – so I decided to drop the issue.

There are three other notable students to discuss, and one is “Froggy.”  Let me start by saying that I only knew Froggy about two years before he died.  I had to look at him several times when I first met him in order to totally understand what I was seeing.  Froggy had a disease called “ectodermal dysplasia,” the result of which is that he did not have working sweat glands which causes the body to age rapidly.  His hair was very thin and sparse, his teeth not well, and his skin looked like that of a wrinkly elephant.  His voice was also affected, thus the nickname Froggy.  What was amazing about him was how positive a person he was despite knowing he likely wouldn’t live beyond 17, but I guess he had already dealt with it a long time ago, and it was more of an issue for others who met him, like me.  He was a great baseball fan, knew everything about the New York Mets, and possibly liked me more than he should have because he thought I looked a lot like Mets catcher Gary Carter.  I had him in class freshman year, and he died about three years later.  He was the first student I had who had died but unfortunately not the last.

There was another student in the same class as Froggy, but I sadly can’t remember the boy’s name.  I can picture him as well as anyone – blonde hair, wire frame glasses, average size.  What wasn’t average was how he reacted the first time I called on him to answer a question and he had no answer.  He froze up and turned red.  When I tried to talk to him about relaxing and not worrying about not having an answer, he turned purple.  Other kids got involved, rubbed his back, and spoke softly to him while I stood in the dark.  I later learned that he had a serious condition in which he would easily get nervous and embarrassed, which would then tighten his chest and practically stop his heart.  I knew nothing about it, but that was back in 1987.  Today’s rules and laws would likely have me well aware of him before ever meeting him.  Probably.  Unfortunately, he died about the same time as Froggy, and it wasn’t a happy time at that school.

not actually Thomas Battle

The last memorable student that first year was Thomas Battle.  He was a sophomore in my freshmen class because he was not a great student and had failed English the previous year, but not a great student doesn’t mean not a great person.  When the class would get a little loud and out of control, Thomas would straighten them out.  He’d stand up and tell them to “show some respect.”  His exact words that I never forgot.  I didn’t deserve respect yet, or at least I hadn’t yet earned it.  Back then, education classes in college did not spend much time on classroom management.  Thomas was a star on the football team, and it’s very likely that his coaches instilled that “respect” idea within him.  I always wanted to thank him for what he tried to do, but to thank him would have been to admit that I had no clue what I was doing.  I did not want to admit that, but I also did not like not acknowledging his attempt to help.  Last year, 25 years later, I was at my younger daughter’s high school graduation and listened as they announced names of students, and I heard “Thomas Battle.”  I looked up and saw one of the very few black students in not just the school but the town.  I realized now I didn’t mention earlier that the Thomas Battle in my class was black, as were most of the kids.  When I saw this Thomas Battle, I immediately did some math.  Back in ’87, my Thomas Battle was about 15 or 16 and would now be about 41.  The kid at graduation was about 13, so it could easily be the son of the student I had.  I looked for him in the parking lot after graduation and saw a guy who looked a great deal like the student I had, but I didn’t approach him.  I have no idea why, but I wish I had.  Fortunately, I can easily find out if that student is still in school in town, which would likely mean his father would still be around for me to find and ask if he’s the same Thomas.  I hope he is, and I hope I have the guts to approach him and say “hi” and “thanks.”

________________________

Up next:   Good People and Getting Fired

-30-

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The Rise and Fall of Me – Part 1 of 3 (or 4)

October 16, 2012

Inspired by true events that were based on something that may or may not have happened.

I was recently asked to write about my college years.  That can’t be done without explaining the ass-backwards circumstances that got me into college in the first place.  Regardless, I thought Ron‘s request, in conjunction with a suggestion from Shimon, was both flattering and interesting.  So, after turning 50 about nine minutes ago – I give you part 1

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The Rise and Fall of Me – Part 1:

How President Jimmy Carter Crushed My Dreams

I grew up wanting to do one thing:  fix cars.  My uncle owned an automotive garage right in the middle of the main street in town, right across from the biggest church and the best bakery (Mazur’s Bakery) and a decent fast food place.  That garage was where I spent many childhood Saturdays because my father often picked up some extra money helping out on weekends, and me, being the oldest boy, naturally followed Dad when possible.  My father and his brother were fun to watch.  Two Italians arguing over what’s wrong with the car as if two brothers were debating over provolone and mozzarella while a kid with red hair and freckles tried to stay out of the way.  And I did.  I was good at staying out of the way, and it paid off well because staying out of the way meant two things:  1. I didn’t get yelled at, and 2. I found the mother lode of Playboy magazines, but that’s a story and an addiction for another day.

Staying out of the way meant I would usually wander around the two main parts of the auto shop.  The front was a supply store, where gruff men with greasy hands would ask for fan belts and gaskets and things which I knew nothing about other than I wished that I could one day know the name and function of every shiny metal whatever or black rubber something that sat on the hundreds of shelves or hung on nails around the dusty shop.  My cousin, only a year older than me, was trusted with selling parts and minding the store while his father and mine butted heads and wrenches out in the garage.

Above the shop were several apartments, one of which was where my cousin and uncle lived kind of a bachelor life.  They rented out the other apartments, and that, combined with being one of two main places to get your car fixed in town and having an excellent location by the church and bakery, and also being connected to most every cop in town, helped them make a pretty good living up there.  Of course I didn’t know about that stuff.  I just wanted to know enough to help fix cars, and I thought about my cousin and I taking over and replacing his father and mine when they would sit in lawn chairs out front, watch traffic go by, and argue about whether that blue Ford was a ’98 or ’99.  Out back, in the garage, Cousin and I would argue over suspension and brake calipers.  That was my dream, but it was all ruined by President Jimmy Carter.

Back in the 70’s, there wasn’t as much attention paid the career-planning in school as there is now, or maybe there was and I just didn’t pay attention.  I mean, maybe they tried to ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and maybe they even tried to steer me towards things, but I must have been out that year.  The only thing I remember about high school and career was that I liked to draw stuff, mainly the different spacecraft from Star Wars and Evel Knievel on a motorcycle jumping over stuff.  Oh, and I could reproduce NFL football helmets perfectly.  As senior year of high school approached, there was a nuclear arms race that was stirring up a second Cold War with Russia.  In a move to send a “peaceful” message, Pres. Carter let it be known he was going to sign a Proclamation 4771, a Selective Service Bill that would require all males born on or after January 1, 1960, to register at their local post office for a possible military draft.

First and foremost, I’m a pussy.  It did not take long for me to research how to avoid the military.  I had no plans to flee to Canada, but I had been playing hockey since I was about 8, so I quickly washed my Toronto Maple Leafs jersey.  I learned that males in college were taken after those not in college, and I made sure I applied right away for higher (and non-violent) education.  My sister was in college, so I was sure she would put in a good word for me.  I immediately apologized for hooking up a secret telephone extension and listening in on her boring phone calls that weren’t really worth listening to as well as the time I hit her in the head with a rock in 8th grade.  I also promised not to tell about the time she was smoking pot in her bedroom, although I tried it too.  I think.  Not sure.

Regardless, I had a choice.  Automotive repair dreams with the risk of being drafted into a nuclear war with Russia or bullied into college to stave off the army for at least round one of the draft.  I had to suck it up and go to college.  I had no clue what classes to take at William Paterson College, now touting itself as a university.  All I knew about myself besides cars was that I like to draw stuff, so I started with an art class with Professor Wollock.  I didn’t do well in art class because, although I liked to draw stuff, I never had an art class before.

In high school I signed up for art freshman year, and they said only upper classmen get into art.  Instead, they gave me drafting.  It involved pencils and paper, so it was close.  We spent a year drawing 3D boxes, making up plays for the high school football team, and not making fun of Mr. Burns’ toupee.  The only cool thing about that class was that both my older cousin, from the auto garage, and my older sister were also in the class.  Taking attendance was fun, and it was the only class in which we were allowed to play the radio and sing along.

Sophomore year I tried for art again but I ended up in metal shop with some of the largest guys I’ve ever seen.  One was Timmy Marrone, the heavyweight on the high school wrestling team.  Look up the song “Telephone Line” by ELO.  You’ll never hear anyone sing it as well as Timmy, then he’d kick ass on the wrestling mat as if the pain from that song were driving him to revenge.  Tried again for art class junior year and ended up back in drafting.  Senior year I didn’t even bother.

So, college art class, first day, people are unloading all kinds of supplies and things, and I’m sitting there with a sketchbook full of Star Wars scenes and motorcycles.  The teacher said to take out our “pastels.”  I saw other students with things that looked like crayons without the paper around them and thought something was strange, and it was.  Me.  I didn’t belong in an art class, and I did not do well, but I was up front on nude model days.  Well, most of them.

I had a literature class called Methods of Critical Analysis.  There were some really smart geeks in that class, and the geekiest of teachers who looked like the Stay Puff Marshmallow man, that is until the third class when I realized it was the Stay Puff Marshmallow woman.  I had no clue what was happening, so I sat in the back, against the wall, and kept a paperback of the Lord of the Rings trilogy inside the text book.  Of the very few things I learned in that class was that I was actually capable of getting an F.  That was new to me because I was voted Most Likely to Succeed only a few years earlier.  Go figure.

I had a math class, statistics, and I failed that too, but it wasn’t fair because I was a victim of technology.  What I mean is that it was 1980, and I had one of the first calculators that could also play Blackjack.  I didn’t get much work done, but I ate through lots of batteries on that calculator.  Another F, by the way.

At the end of my first year of college, my grades were two F’s, two D’s, and a handful of C’s for a grade point average of 1.25, which is barely a D in regular grade terms.  Go me.  My second year didn’t begin any better, and after three semesters I still had a 1.25.  Not only that, I received a special letter letting me know that my grades were so low that if I didn’t increase significantly, they were kicking me out.  I had visions of marching through Europe behind trucks carrying ICBM’s.  Sure enough, my grades were not much better in the fourth semester, and I finished up my first two years of college with a 1.44 grade point average, or a D+.

Believe it or not, there was a bright spot because I had my first ever creative writing class.  It was called “creative writing.”  No shit.  It was with Dr. Cioffari, nice Italian guy who looked a lot like Hugh Hefner but back before Hef became a vampire.  It was what I have come to learn was a typical writing workshop.  Each week a few people would have enough copies of their writing for everyone.  We would take home their work to read and critique, and the following week the writer would read it aloud to the class, the rest of the class would give their two cents, and then the teacher would give his comments.  I specifically remember a guy writing a story that seemed like a Springsteen song, a guy pursuing a girl that he can’t seem to win over.  I remember a woman writing about going through divorce counseling.  I’d listen to what others had written and think about how good it was while thinking that my writing was nowhere near what they’d done.

Until recently, and certainly back then, I never thought much of what I wrote.  I had the beginnings of a medieval story in which there was one knight who had the title of something like “Lord of Knights.”  Can’t really remember what he was called.  The concept was that the “Lord of Knights” possessed a powerful sword, lighter and sharper than anything anyone had ever seen.  The only way for anyone to become the Lord of Knights was to kill the current Lord and take his sword.  But whoever was the current Lord was always being challenged to a fight because everyone wanted to kill him and become the new Lord, not realizing that each time a new Lord is named, he is immediately a marked man.  I was greatly surprised at the praise I received for the story, which I never really finished, but I think I will in the very near future.

It was the greatest class I could have imagined, and it was the highest grade I had ever gotten – a proud B.  Lot of good it did me though, because I was no longer welcome at WPC, and they kicked my ass out immediately after that semester.

(pictures by Roy Wright, except those that aren’t)

coming soon – part 2:

“How an Idiot Accidentally Became a Teacher”

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Posted by brainsnorts

“Bleachers” by John Grisham. Scalp the ticket while you can.

June 29, 2012

Item 7 of a 3-part series

Bleachers by John Grisham

(re-posted, because you never read it before)
There’s a commonly known formula, or at least it’s commonly known to me, that lies in almost every John Grisham novel. Either the government, a nationally feared law firm, or a conglomerate of a company is doing something wrong, usually doing it to regular people. Nobody can stop them, nobody except either a rookie lawyer or even “rookier” law student. The Pelican Brief, The Firm, The Associate, The Client, etc.  Maybe I got one or two of those wrong, but there are others that can easily fill in.  I look for Grisham novels that avoid this formula, but they’re not easy to find. The first book I ever read of his was A Time to Kill, a fabulous book. Also avoiding the formula that I have read are A Painted House ( pretty good), The Last Juror (also fabulous), The Broker (not fabulous), and Bleachers (far from fabulous).
Bleachers centers on Eddie Rake, a dying high school football coach. He was a tough, no-nonsense field general who commanded his players to give more than everything to the team. Various players, some collegiate stars and some just stars in their own home, have gathered to pay respects, catch up on “who’s done what” since way back when, and relive the glory days that have faded along with their personal pride. Former players include a convict, a car thief, a Heisman hopeful, a bank executive, a sheriff, and a homosexual. These ex-players are about as stereotypical as you can expect. It’s the history of the Heisman hopeful that occupies most of the story, but it’s not really a story. There’s nothing hanging in the balance, nothing that drives us to wonder of the results or predict the outcome. There’s nobody I care about enough to want to know what he or she is going to do.  It’s just a pile of reminiscences. Stress on pile. I’ve spent a lot of time on football fields, especially high school ones, and I’ve yet to see a movie or story of any kind get it right.
There are hints about an incident that happened between the coach and his star quarterback Neely Crenshaw, the Heisman hopeful but has been. Crenshaw hasn’t spoken to the coach since his last game senior year in which something erupted at halftime when the Messina Spartans were uncharacteristically having their heads handed to them. After the halftime explosion in the locker room, the team took the field with no coaches. They stood away from the field and watched as Crenshaw guided the team to one of its greatest victories ever.
And really, that’s about it. We eventually learn what happened at halftime, but it’s rather anticlimactic compared to everything else that has happened. There’s a reuniting of Crenshaw and Cameron, a former girlfriend, that is built up to be a long-lost lover reunion, but it fizzles into nothing and is rather poorly written to the point that I wanted them to just tell each other to get lost. Crenshaw tries to apologize for having cruelly dumped the girl during their junior year of school. She keeps telling him that it’s not a big deal, they were only kids. Yet, she punctuates the conversation with the fact that it took her ten years to forget about it. That’s not very consistent. Hey, Sister, make up your mind. If it was really not a big deal, then why did it take you ten years to get over him?
Another problem was with the dialogue. Most of these characters are muscle heads, or they used to be, without much of an education. However, they toss a lot of big words around, phrasing sentences like a textbook instead of like someone who rarely brought home a textbook. Unfortunately, I listened to the book on CD, and I wasn’t able to play all the CD’s again in order to find examples of the poor dialogue. However, if you’d like an example of a writer paying a misguided, random homage to his hometown sports program, this is probably what you’re looking for.

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Posted by brainsnorts

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