FINDING A TEACHER
I don’t want my teacher to LOOK like a teacher!
I want him to look like the guy they hired because
they couldn’t find a real teacher who LOOKED
like a teacher. It’s OK if he went to a teacher college
as long as he didn’t go there to learn how to teach ME!
I want him to teach the girl in front of me
and the boy behind me, so I can watch him doing it
and figure out what he is doing, then sort of tag along.
Sometimes, I don’t know the names of those in front
or back of me but figure a good teacher will
think they must be teachable.
– Charles Brady
(“Leaves Falling Gently on Brown, Sullen Earth,” 2015)
We in this great country treat our teachers like – well, pretty much like petty servants! We do give lip service to their needs, and our sons and daughters seem to like them pretty well, yet we don’t go out of our way to make them feel secure and appreciated. Right now, San Francisco is frantically trying to find enough certified teachers to begin the new year.
Growing up in the south in the 1930s and 40’s, I attended more than twenty elementary schools and five high schools, two of them twice. Because I was seldom at a school for very long, I would just show up, tell the Principal my age and/or grade and take a seat. I did manage a year and a half at my final high school. Despite all odds, as they say, I graduated.
Back then it was simple. You went to one available school and were handed some outdated and well-used textbooks and were taught by THE teacher. The adult in front of the room was your teacher, and that was that.
From those days, I recall a few good teachers and a couple of great ones, but most of them, from the brief time spent with them and the long time since, have faded into the void.
I had one fantastic high school English Teacher – Faye Darsey. She was still young when she taught me but went on to teach English at the same school for fifty years. One day, Mrs. Darsey was advising a student during a free period when a student not yet in her class walked in and asked, “Are you finished with Barbara yet? ME and HER are going to lunch together?”
I was standing in the hall by the open door and I heard the Icy words I knew were coming: “My dear girl, sit down and tell me your name. I am about to “LEARN” you some English!
Shortly after retiring from the Army and serving as Principal of the K-8 Zuni Indian School in New Mexico for six years, I thought maybe just maybe, I could teach young people.
But my entry into the world of high school teaching was not easy. After deciding to try to handle small classes at an exclusive school for girls, I was exhausted after a couple of months. One morning I was standing in front of fifteen more or less attentive students and busily teaching the “subject” of English the way I thought I should be doing it, Exhausted, but in a moment of clarity, I stopped and looked around. I asked the students: ”What in the hell (gasps!) are we doing here? Why are you not screaming at me and throwing things? Aren’t you bored out of your minds?”
They were momentarily stunned, but mostly amused. I decided later that they had known I would come around sooner or later and find myself. That day, I grabbed an empty student chair, formed all of us into a circle and asked, “Where are we and what in the heck are we doing? “
So began a dialogue that my students and I kept up for about 25 years. Gradually, I began to see myself as one of many guides through the hard work of learning and life, but mostly as a “Teacher of STUDENTS,” not of English or creative writing or any other “subject.”
The hard work that followed, the weekends and summers of planning and grading, and the overall demanding life of a teacher, kept me contented and off the streets.
But, I always suspected that I was fooling everybody, that it could not be that simple! Year after year, students seemed to learn something, the administration went along, and parents were supportive and apparently satisfied. I was never threatened with bodily harm or jailed!
I figure I taught about fifteen hundred students at the Convent of the Sacred Heart High School in San Francisco. They and I had long and short struggles with English Grammar, American Literature and Creative Writing, and we survived. Nearly all became good college writers and nearly all graduated from College. Today, I stay in touch with many of them, (mostly on Facebook), occasionally reminding one or two that a word overheard in a bar may be LAZY writing. (I never say VULGAR but sometimes I may say “inappropriate.”) They are doctors and lawyers, engineers, architects, Police Officers, stay at home parents and every other possibility. I am proud to say that most are involved in issues of the day, from all sides of those issues and of all different political persuasions. They have intelligence and MINDS of their own, and I am most proud when they disagree with me or with any prevailing issue! Many more than one would think are teaching young children! They are Elementary, High School and University TEACHERS.
Most who teach have gravitated toward the teaching of the little ones, and isn’t that nice? I enjoy their lives, their spouses and their beautiful and successful children.
I once wrote about a teacher who was a bit like the teacher I found myself becoming. He was so busy teaching STUDENTS that he may have missed a few too many meetings or deadlines or warnings about “curricula”, and thus had been given a final notice. Here it is, from 1999.
To The Principal: I Plead Guilty (With an Explanation)
Monday:
I had just begun Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,”
but Jessica’s Mom called and said
her collie, Penelope,
had her thirteen golden furball pups
behind their hot water heater,
and she had left home before daylight,
so we helped her worry about
her brother getting to hold them
before she got home.
Tuesday:
I meant to lead the class in their search for
Blank Verse and the Iambic line,
but Kitty’s boyfriend
had stuck a mean message on her windshield
about something she’d said last night
that she’d forgotten all about, but it hurt him anyhow.
Now she is hurt also, and her eyes look like spigots,
so somebody had to sit and talk to her.
Soon, I’m telling them all about me and
Mary Shoemaker back in Switzerland, South Carolina.
Wednesday:
I had meant to finish the last five chapters of
“The Scarlet Letter,”
but that was before
Cathleen asked about Allie Rose and Kayla,
and I talked about how they loved Disneyland,
and how they rode the elephants
at a fair last Summer in Oklahoma
…and then the bell rang,
and of course we hadn’t gotten to the salvation of
Reverend Dimmesdale, holding hands with
little Pearl and her weird mother Hester.
Thursday:
With absolute conviction, I led off with
Emerson and Thoreau and “Transcendentalism,”
and it was going right along, I would say,
but the Blue Angels were flying passes
above the Golden Gate Bridge,
and that young Marine pilot had told Liz
that he would dip one blue and gold wing
for The Convent Girls
outside our library window
(which he did – as we all cheered
and then they all went out for Chemistry.)
Friday:
While I was struggling to paraphrase “Thanatopsis”
and the difference between Blank and Free Verse,
Masaki asked me about my student Jennifer
who had named her fingers and had them marry
and have baby digits of their own,
and before I knew it
we were telling each other secret stories about
our strange families
and crazy aunts and uncles our grandparents
kept locked up in closets.
One Day This Week:
I promise you that I did fight to cover the SAT Booklet
just prior to the test,
but that day Bergen lost a contact lens
bending over during earthquake drill
and laughed so hard as she thought about Autumn’s
always wanting to wear fluorescent yellow lenses
and scare people on nights when the moon was full,
and naturally Halloween came up,
so we thought up a field trip to Half Moon Bay
for pumpkins.
Later, I Forget Which Day
Sorry I missed the disciplinary hearing,
and I know it was my last day to explain,
but the basketball team
had two tough games coming up with University High
that very night,
and we were already down to six players,
with Michelle having two fingers broke,
and we needed somebody high up in the bleachers
to hold her down
in case she got mad
and wanted to wave her bloody cast above her head.
Today
I had meant to clean out my desk
for the new teacher
and to be out of the building before the class arrived,
but Erin and Mia had both called last night
about help with their ethics papers,
and Cynthia wasn’t sure that her sonnet was very good,
so I met all of them in the early light,
and long before we were finished,
the rest of them poured in
and I naturally forgot
…and pulled up my chair
…and opened up my old copy of
“The Scarlet Letter.”
