Tenacious Teacher

Pearl is the kind of writing student who really, really cares about her synonyms. She always wants the jucier, the pointed, adjective or verb. Pearl’s characters never walk into a room. They amble, saunter and sometimes sashay. Deliciously descriptive, Pearl’s characters slouch in slovenly dress. They gobble meals, if they’re hungry. If they balk at the beans or sour at the souffle, they’ll meander around the plate, like an errant pea.

Pearl is 12 years old. I had professional writing classmates in graduate school (none of you who I’m Facebook friends with, duh) who couldn’t hold a candle to her talent. They’d use platitudes like “hold a candle,” and various other lazy writing techniques.

Pearl’s not lazy, but if her character was, she’d have a much better word for it. Like lethargic, languid, slothful, or sluggish.

So, you can see how disgusting, how repulsive, how unconscionable, how unforgivable it is that my indolent manager failed to replace me – at all – for Pearl’s class. Two weeks in a row, after my departure, Pearl showed up for class, her journal in the tote bag she painted and, likely, the story I assigned my last day with her, to be read and graded by the new teacher.

Guess this answers the question, “Did SMA pass along the notes I left for her new teacher?”

Now, I’m a firm believer in filling the universe with as much positive energy, and as little negative energy as possible. Unless I’m having the kind of day where people keep cutting me off in traffic, then I plot their untimely demise. Point is, I don’t do things for the sheer purpose of hurting someone or something.

But  I’d very much like to put SMA - with its still-posted Spring 2010 schedule and no email account, and a manager, who, kind as she is, has yet to return Pearl’s mother’s repeated calls – out of its misery. Bummer that Pearl’s mom couldn’t leave the manager a message. You see, my ex-manager still hasn’t set up the voice mail on her Blackberry. She’s had it for two years. Maybe longer.

When I was a kid, I used to think it was so sad when some movie character would shoot a wounded animal to relieve it of its suffering. I understand this now.

I don’t need to be the bullet. But I need to learn from SMA so I may continue to be the reflective educator whom I would want teaching my kid.

And to be clear, my heart goes out to SMA instructors like Michael and both Andrews. They’re there because they love teaching and they’re great and the kids who have them are fortunate. But I’m incensed that they’re victims of the worst kind of mismanagement I’ve ever been party to.

It’s emotionally criminal.

Not to mention super unfair to the parents who are paying SMA for, what many times turns out to be, a two-hour block of game playing or worse – an empty classroom.

Am I worried that coming out publicly against my former employer will preclude me from ever – EVER – obtaining a full-time teaching job? No – because the kind of school that I want to work for would appreciate the fact that someone who is as committed to her kids and parents as I am, would call for change.

Am I crazy? Delusional? Misinformed? Foolish? Fanatical? Outrageous? Extreme? Passionate…

On a flight from New York City to Los Angeles today, fresh from training for my new full-time journalism job, I sat amid hope and hell – Education Hope and Education Hell.

Next to me sat a 20-something teacher beaming from a job offer she just received from a Catholic school  in the Bronx. Next to her, a veteran educator so bitter she made my mouth pucker.

At first, I was just eavesdropping. Education Hell asked Education Hope what she did for a living. Admittedly, my teeth clenched when the young woman smiled widely and excitedly explained that she was a senior at USC who would be teaching elementary school in New York beginning this summer.

The jealousy consumed me. Here I am, fresh from a marathon two-day training session where I’ve totally re-immersed myself in an equally admirable profession, and I couldn’t help but wonder what literature books she would teach. What her bulletin board would look like. Whether she preferred table points or individual incentive stars.

“I’m a retired teacher, 30 years,” Hell interjected. “The kids aren’t like they used to be in my day,” she groused, each syllable dripping with haughty disdain. “They’re horrible now.”

Here we go. Five-and-a-half-hour flight in front of us. We three teachers in a row: the excited classroom teacher,  the battle axe straight out of central casting and me, the teacher whose excitement has yet to reach a self-contained classroom of kids for one whole year.

“It’s really not fair to call them ‘horrible.’ Kids have all kinds of problems today that they weren’t dealing with, perhaps when you started,” I said, mentally patting myself on the back for restraint that rivaled that of a Biblical character.

“Oh, please, you new teachers,” she said, her Long Island dialect refreshed from a visit to The Big Apple. “You make so many excuses for these kids.”

Sitting between us, Hope’s head turned left and right, back and forth  like she was watching a tennis match.

“Excuses?” I quipped, octaves rising. “You mean like Attention Deficit Disorder and other identified behavioral disorders?”

Leaning across Hope, Hell rambled on about a kid in her class who was diagnosed Opposition Defiant Disorder. Each finger jab in the air punctuated another point about “this thug,” who didn’t need special education, but rather a healthy dose of bootstrap pulling.

“Or maybe a good belt in the mouth?” I suggested facetiously, to which she responded affirmatively. And she was serious.

“You buy goggles for every student, right? Brand new goggles. And what do they do? The thugs pour white out into them, ruining them. All these goggles, ruined!”

I couldn’t resist.

“I’m sorry, how did you not notice a handful of kids pouring white out into goggles? Were you walking around the classroom, stationed near the desks of the known trouble makers?”

It was official, Hell hated me.

She went on and on, excuse after excuse, attack after attack, bemoaning how despite having been a representative for a goodly part of 30 years, she got zero backing from her union in the lawsuit she brought against her principal. Nothing. Nada. An equal measurement of what she last gave to the kids, I’d imagine.

Finally, Hell wrapped up her monologue with the fact that she was let go following a “witch hunt.”

Hallelujah! One down, thousands to go.

This woman needed to retire the minute she stopped entertaining new ideas. The second she excised innovation from her vocabulary. The moment she stopped evolving as an educator. She personifies the ballast that needs to be dumped overboard so that new teachers, passionate teachers, teachers who modify their lessons, teachers who bring more than one skill set to the classroom  and – wait for it – actually like their students – can take their place.

It must be exhausting to be that bitter because not long after take off, Education Hell fell asleep, defeated, actually, by the overhead light.

“Stewardess! How do you turn on the light? Where’s the light?”

I flashed a Cheshire grin, grabbed my laptop, logged on to the in-flight WiFi and updated this blog, under the warm glow of my overhead light.