I’m
outside my portable classroom with my brand-spanking-new students,
reviewing the material we’ve just gone over. It’s a good lesson,
creative, because it gets the kids up and about, but having to do
with the task at hand. That’s how I roll: reach them, teach them.
But
when I ask for a choral response, all I get is “Huhs?” and
“Whats?” and looks stuck somewhere between confused and just
plain “I don’t give a care.” After all these years, I’ve
ended up with a class of freshmen zombies, The
First Period of the Living Dead.
I
raise my voice a few decibels, but I might as well be speaking to the
proverbial wall. Nothing I do works. In fact, I start getting
pushback.
“This
is boring,” declare a few snarky fishes.
And
then my “favorite” insult comes from some lump slouching against
his homies: “This is so gay!”
Derisive
laughter rises from the throng. I can feel my blood pressure rising,
sweat pouring from under my arms like a tap’s been opened. I’m
ready to wade into the middle of them and take no prisoners. By
golly, this is the first day. I can't allow this!
Then,
fortunately, I wake up. Another anxiety dream! I guess it's no
surprise. A former colleague warned me after he retired the same
thing happened to him. After all, for a quarter-century I wore down
carpet or linoleum to threadbare church-mouse thickness, cajoling,
proctoring, mentoring — in other words, teaching — easily a
couple thousand high school students, mostly in majority poor
schools.
Of
course, no one's more surprised than I am that I actually made 25
years as a high school teacher. Some are born to teach. I was just
not one of them. I didn’t get into teaching because I'd an
overwhelming desire to be around teenagers. In fact, just the
opposite was true. I figured I could stand the little punks until
something better came along. But the truth is, as the years went on,
I began to feel truly blessed by being around so many fine young men
and women.
I’ll
always remember my first year, 1988, at Stroman High School in
Victoria, Texas, awaiting the usual baptism of fire reserved for new
teachers. But before I could even do that, I had to go through
mind-bogglingly boring in-services the week before school. The labors
of Hercules were a cinch by comparison.
During
that in-service week, I, a college graduate, had parts of the teacher
handbook read aloud word for word, as if I couldn’t do that myself.
On one particularly torture-filled day, I was barred from working in
my room because I had to listen to some motivational speaker’s
incredibly lame attempts at humor.
And
that’s pretty much what all teachers go through before the start of
school. I’m no prognosticator. I've no idea which of the 20-odd
Democratic candidates will win the nomination. But during these first
weeks of school, I can safely predict that the anxiety level will be
dangerously high for teachers. If you know one, be patient. That
person is passing through a circle in hell. It can all work out and
usually does, even if, at the time, that’s hard to believe.
That
first year, my last-period class was senior lower-level English.
Think Welcome
Back, Kotter’s
sweathogs, and you’d have a pretty good approximation of the bunch
I found waiting for me. Since it was the ’80s, all the girls had
their hair teased and moussed up to what looked like a foot or more.
They all wore black clothes and globbed on dark eyeliner so thickly
they could have auditioned for The
Bride of
Frankenstein.
My rookie knees were shaking. But as has fortunately happened to me
more often than not in my career, I grew to love that class.
Schools
all over this country, brimful with anxious teachers and nervous
students, will begin or already have begun. I had 25 years of those
high-anxiety beginnings. May this year’s crop of teachers have as
much luck and fun as I ended up having.
