Schoolville: Chapter 15
Almost cut my hair, it happened just the other day.
It’s getting’ kinda long, I coulda said it was in my way.
But I didn’t and I wonder why,
I feel like letting my freak flag fly,
cause I feel like I owe it to someone.
–Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young
Chapter Fifteen
It was Friday afternoon. Beth and I were sitting in her room after school. She always had time to talk and celebrate with me. As I first year teacher, I was always celebrating. The kids were emerging from the sea of faces into individuals. They were respectful and life was settling in. A good day was a day in which I didn’t see Jessica Miller or Sara Getty. Today had been a good day.
Beth looked over at me several times. I could see that she was working up to something.
“What’s on your mind, Beth?”
She smiled back at me sheepishly. “Tell me why a guy would leave a high paying sales job to become a teacher, Tom? I’m still trying to figure that out.”
I leaned back in the chair and put my feet up on a student desk. Lacing my fingers behind my head, I looked out her window at the football stadium, which was already beginning to open up for the faithful. I found it hard to explain to anyone else.
“Do you want the quick and easy answer, or do you want to understand the real story?” I asked as I glanced sideways at her.
“Tell me the long version.” She smiled at me as she straightened out her desk. “We aren’t going anywhere for a while.”
“Well…” I rolled my eyes up and looked left and right. “I don’t really know where to start. I suppose that I should lay the blame for all this on Meniere’s disease. But as I think on it, I was sick of selling pharmaceuticals and looking for a change anyway. So maybe I need to go back a decade to find the starting point.
On the other hand, I really shouldn’t have gone into pharmaceuticals in the first place. They only hired me because they had always wanted to hire an alumnus of my university, and one had never applied. Who was I to disagree?”
“Where did you graduate from?”
“Trinity.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Nice school.”
“Yep! Well anyway, back then, pharmaceutical companies made a point of trying to hire ex-Army officers: “JMO’s” we were called, which stood for Junior Military Officer. I had completed my four-year Army commitment, and I was exactly what the company was looking for. So, I maybe this all began the day I entered ROTC in college. But, I had entered college to avoid having to work for minimum wage in this town, where minimum wage is considered good pay.”
“So, you must be from Texas.” Beth smirked.
“Right again. Now where did I leave off? Oh yeah, now I remember. Maybe this didn’t start with me entering ROTC. Perhaps it all started when I filled out my college admission papers. However, if I follow this reasoning, then this story really began when I graduated from high school. But, I had to do that so that my parents wouldn’t sell me on the slave market in Algeria, or Bolivia, or wherever they still do that.”
Beth glanced wearily over at me. “Tom, is this going anywhere?”
“Well, you did ask for the long version.”
“Indeed I did! Puh-leeze continue…” She shook her head.
“So, if I follow this reasoning, this started the day I entered school as a young first grader. But, then again, if my parents had never laid eyes on each other, would that have ever happened?” I leaned back further in my chair and giggled.
“It is always a special moment when I can blame my life on my parents rather than accept responsibility for it.” Beth rolled her eyes.
“Seriously Beth, I can’t tell you why I became a teacher, but I did make myself a promise that I would work very hard to become the teacher that I had always wanted, but never had. Does that make sense?”
Beth nodded. “I think we all flatter ourselves that way, when we start teaching.”
“My high school teachers didn’t really help me prepare for college, and I did even less than them as far as preparing myself. I paid for my ignorance during my college career too.”
“Why do you say that, Tom? How did you pay? It sounds to me like you did very well.”
“In some ways, I guess I did.” I thought about that awhile. “Yes, I suppose you might say that, but after being commissioned as an officer in the Army, where I wasn’t all I could be, I settled into pharmaceutical sales. I stayed with that for twenty years. I enjoyed the first ten.”
I stopped speaking. I had said enough, but Beth wasn’t through. “But you still haven’t told me why you became a teacher.”
“Well, I suppose spending a lifetime jumping after fleeting opportunities, taking promotions that were offered, whether I really wanted them or not, or were prepared for them or not, wasn’t worth it anymore. I needed to earn money to support a growing family. I almost — but not quite — convinced myself that I should feel fortunate to have a high paying job, rather than planning a career that might actually have been a good match for me. So, I hustled twice as hard as my co-workers. I have been driven by this neurotic fear that I had to be better than everyone else, or I wasn’t going to be good enough to keep a job that I really didn’t want anyway.”
I shrugged. “Perhaps this is the highest price I paid for being unprepared… Anyway, because this consumed so much of my time and energy, I never had the opportunity to discover the natural talents which all of those motivational speakers during twenty years of sales meetings and motivational sessions assured me I had. That is, a talent other than high sales figures and earning a fat paycheck, which were becoming less and less satisfying with each passing year.”
Beth interrupted. “But you still haven’t told me…”
“…why I became a teacher. I know! I know!” I finished her sentence.
“Well, I continued, I suppose that since they were so certain that I must have a natural talent of some kind, I optimistically kept looking. I realize now that I was really looking for something to give my life meaning. It was a long and fruitless search, let me tell you!”
“So, tell me how it all came to an end.” Beth peered into her purse and began digging through it.
“Well, it all ended with a whimper, not a bang. While a sales is a high paying job, it is also a high stress job. The stress finally led to the development of Meniere’s disease, which is a cluster of symptoms that can be triggered by lots of things. Stress is the trigger in my case. In fact, during my last few months as a pharmaceutical representative, I was having one long unbroken bout of vertigo. The stressful life of pharmaceutical sales just wasn’t worth it anymore.
“But Tom,” Beth interrupted. “I still don’t know why you became a teacher. Are you dodging the question?”
I shrugged. “I felt like I had always had a talent for teaching.”
“Is that why you want to be a teacher? You feel that you have a talent for it?” Beth kept prodding.
“Heck, I don’t really know.” I thought about her question awhile.
“How typical…” Beth sighed.
“Isn’t it though?”
“So, why didn’t you go back to pharmaceutical sales then!” She demanded to know. “What did all your friends say?”
“I couldn’t give a rational explanation to my friends and family as to why a good Reagan Republican like me wasn’t going to return to pharmaceutical sales, but the simple truth was that the loss of my manly income was only a matter of time anyway. I guess job boredom must have been the final straw, which pitched me into a full-blown bout of radicalism. Sooooo…I embraced my mid-life crisis with both arms, grew out my hair, bought a used motorcycle, and went back to college to finish my education classes. I guess that’s why I decided to become a teacher.”
“That seems like a selfish reason to me.”
“Now that I listen to myself, it does to me too.” I replied. “But there is more to it than just that.”
“Like what?” Beth asked.
“It’s hard to explain. But, it seems to me that life is all about growth, and I realized that I needed to make a choice about what I wanted to do with my life before cancer, or a motorcycle wreck, or whatever, sent me into the void. Sophia is calling it a mid-life crisis. I am nearing fifty, and it seems clear that my life is moving irrevocably to a conclusion and that all of the undiscovered country still lies inside me.”
“Poetic…” Beth murmured.
“So I went through the traditional teacher-training pathway and was pushed out through the sphincter when they had enjoyed all of the tuition that they were going to get from me.”
“Now that’s not very poetic…” Beth grimaced.
“Well, I thought it was an apt metaphor, all the same.” I laughed back. “Anyway, one day shortly after I completed that experience, the state sent me a spiffy piece of paper that entitled me to go apply for a teaching position. The pay may not be much, but here I am!”
Beth looked up from her nails again. “But Tom, you still haven’t told me why you want to be a teacher.”
I thought for a while. “I guess I really don’t know.”
She shook her head.
“Gandhi said: “We must become the change that we want to see.” Since I believe this to be true, Kyle’s corollary to Gandhi is: “I must become the teacher that I always wanted to have.” I have come to a place in my life where I knew my best years are behind me, and I needed to do something meaningful with my remaining time before I am dumped in a hole, have a few prayers said over me, and then forgotten. For some reason, I always felt that I would be a good teacher, or at least I knew what a good one could be.”
“So really, you being a teacher is all about you, isn’t it? I mean, the kids are just as much a side issue for you as it is for Sara Getty, aren’t they?”
I didn’t know what to say to that, but I certainly didn’t like the way it sounded.
“Why don’t you go back to pharmaceuticals?” Beth asked as she pulled out her purse and then pulled out a baby blue zippered pouch.
“I already told you. I got sick it.”
“That’s why you left pharmaceuticals. But why don’t you go back now?” She glanced over her reading glasses at me as she pulled out bright red nail polish and an Emory board.
That question took a deal of pondering. “I don’t know. I wanted something more fulfilling I suppose.”
“Is teaching?”
“Is teaching what?”
“Is teaching more fulfilling?” She was filing away and peering fiercely at her nails.
That one took a long time to answer as well. “Part of it is fulfilling.”
Beth changed the subject. “Most teachers begin the profession directly out of college. They are recruited because of their altruism.”
I nodded at that. It sounded true.
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“Within 5 years, over half of them leave the profession to do other things. Sadly, this makes teaching kind of like an extensive “Peace Corps”, making a great argument that teaching isn’t really a profession at all. In a profession, don’t the professionals control their own profession? Don’t they enter it with the intention of prospering?”
B.D. and I exchanged glances.
“When half of teachers are leaving in less than five years, this is more like being a missionary to some poor, third world country. After all, would physicians call medicine a profession if half of them left within the first five years?”
I didn’t know what to say. “Please continue, Beth.”
“In a country as obscenely rich as America, being altruistic gets very old, very quickly, when you can’t even afford the district health insurance. After all, when the kids drive a Lexus, or even a Ford, their teacher might want a new car occasionally too…you know, now that we’re on the subject, being able to afford a house would be nice too.” Beth shrugged. She had said all she wanted to say.
So I finished for her. “So, the other half of those young teachers stay in teaching, until they figure out they can make more money in another profession.”
“You got it! Or, they accrue enough years to retire! Every year I come here and wonder if this will be my last year or not. Many of your senior colleagues are just bailing out the boat as fast as they can, to keep it from sinking under them; a thankless task which they had been doing for years. They don’t worry about success. They just want to make it to the weekend.”
I suddenly imagined Beth Minor and Lisa Daniels, even Sara Getty as they might have looked thirty years ago, standing in the hallway. I could easily imagine them young, beautiful, and eager to teach. I could almost see the years rolling past them as they mutely observed the growing indifference toward public education, schools, teachers, and the students, without knowing what to do about it. I suddenly realized they probably considered quitting teaching back then too, but that would be asking them to give up their calling in life, their purpose for existence. Lacking any voice or power, they had mutely suffered until the pain of their slaughtered illusions had simply dried them up and they had no more dreams, only the hard empty exoskeleton, like the dead bugs in my garage. Now they couldn’t quit because they are too old to do anything else. They were stuck here until retirement age. It hadn’t yet occurred to me that I might also be glimpsing myself in just a few years.
Beth broke into my reverie. “Tom, if teaching isn’t about the kids, why don’t you go back to pharmaceuticals?”
“I don’t know, but I do know that I don’t want to go back.”
“Are you going to remain in teaching then?”
“I don’t really know anymore. I would like to remain, but I wonder if I should.”
She nodded, and began shaking a bottle of nail polish. “Well, do you or don’t you want to be a teacher!” She was pressing me for an answer. I knew that she was trying to tell me something.
“I honestly don’t know anymore.”
“Tom, you have been a teacher for less than a month, and already you’re thinking about quitting. Were you always such of a wimp?”
“I don’t think so…” We made a little eye contact.
“If you did want to remain in teaching, what would be your reason for that?”
“The kids!” That answer was an easy one.
She nodded. “Ok. Now, if you wanted to leave teaching, what would be your reasons for that?”
“Serengeti I. S. D.”
She nodded. Obviously, she had heard the joke before. “Tom, don’t you see how much power you are giving to Sara and her clique when you let them chase you away in less than a month?”
“Ok! Ok! Your point is taken.”
“Is it? The good book says, ‘What came you to the wilderness to see?’
B.D. made me answer. “Oh, that’s easy; the wild asses of Ajah, and Anah: and the asses of Zibeon their father.”
Beth tried to look stern, but ended up snickering. “You do know your bible, don’t you!”
“Are you kidding? I have too much fun quoting it!”
She shook her head as she snickered. “You know you are going to hell when you die, don’t you?”
“Going! Going! Hell, I’m already there!”
She worked on the nails of her left hand, carefully painting a second coat of bright red. “Tom, you know I’m only joking about you going to hell, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I know. The question is…am I joking about this place being hell?”
“Tom, I think you’re missing the forest for the trees. Let me tell you a story.” She said as she began waving her right hand in the air.
“Speak to me.” I leaned back again to listen.
“My best friend since I can remember has always been Shirley Krause. She and I used to teach together, but she quit after only teaching for a few years.” She peered at me over her reading glasses to see if I was listening.
I was.
“She left teaching because she didn’t have a coping mechanism. That is what separates the teachers who last from those who don’t.”
I continued to listen.
“Every year, she had more and more frustration over the way the district screws teachers with the contract. She was unhappy because it never specified what she would be paid from year to year.” She caught my eye. “It never does, if you notice.”
“Well, doesn’t the district publish a pay scale, depending on you ‘level’?”
“Oh, it certainly does, but they never tell you what your level will be for any given year. They peg your level, and your pay to the amount of money the school board votes. Last year, I was a level 28. The year before, I was a level 24. That was the year that they put in Dr. Nedermeyer’s private pool, and gave him a pay boost.” She shrugged as she leaned back and let the window light illuminate her red nails for inspection. Then, she pulled out a magnifying glass and began to inspect them.
“Go figure!”
“So,” I asked. “What’s your level this year?”
“Dunno.” She shrugged again as she peered at her thumbnail. “I haven’t seen my contract yet. I probably won’t for another month.”
“You don’t know what you’re being paid this year?”
“Nope.”
“Why in hell would you put up with that shit?”
Beth looked at me in astonishment. “Now, I know you didn’t just say that in my room.”
“Uhhh…sorry.”
She went back to her nails. “…’s ok.”
“But Beth, how can you put up with not knowing what your pay is going to be? How can they legally do that?”
“Who’s going to stop them?” She shrugged again. “…anyway, to continue my story, that is why Shirley left teaching. She just couldn’t deal with that. She allowed her anger over these things to build until she had to start counseling. During counseling, she decided that she needed to leave. She wasn’t cut out to be a teacher… not because of the work or the kids, but because of her frustration over nitpicky stuff like that.”
“Do you feel that the matter of your pay is ‘nitpicky’? If that’s how you feel, it’s no wonder the school board feels free to take advantage of you!”
“I think you’re missing the point here, Tom. The question is…why did she become a teacher? Don’t the kids figure in to this somewhere?”
I looked over at Beth. “I disagree, Beth. The bigger question is, ‘why should she have to deal with that’!”
“Because it is something over which we have no control.”
“Do you mean that I don’t know what they’ll pay me next year?”
“Well, since you are new, and only a step 2 teacher, this won’t be an issue for you yet. You’ll start learning about this after you go up a few steps.”
“Beth, you are the one who is missing the forest for the trees!”
“How?”
“Why should anyone have that much power over you, and why should you have to put up with it?”
“Well Tom…” She shrugged. “It is bizarre certainly. But, welcome to Schoolville. It’s like no place else on earth.”
I looked at Beth for a moment. She continued.
“Look Tom. You’re used to living in the ‘real world’, and this is Schoolville. No one from the ‘real world’ ever believes us when we tell them what goes on here anyway.” Fetching a deep sigh, she began to put away her file and polish.
“Well Beth, I admire you for teaching here so long.”
Suddenly Beth blurted out angrily. “Thanks! But, in all that time, I have watched one selfish pig-of-a-politician after another shift blame for our slipping-down schools on the other political party, rather than work together to fix them, which, by the way, they mandate should be free and appropriate for all.” She coasted to a stop, needing to draw a breath.
I sat and listened, so she continued. “Well, it’s true, you know. Those same politicians have no trouble passing laws that feel very warm and cozy; they just didn’t have a clue how to make them work.” She shook her head thoughtfully.
She continued. “Their kids are in private school anyway, so the political hacks have no idea of the havoc that these inappropriate laws cause everyone else. Schools are nothing to them. That is why guys like Gage can milk the system, or Sara Getty can run this place as her own private kingdom. It’s the teachers who are the only ones who really understand what’s going on, and we can’t do anything about it.
“Well Beth, tell me why this place exists?”
Beth answered for him. “Places like Wilson High exist, because legally, it must exist.”
“It isn’t for education?”
“I don’t think so.”
“…and anyway, now Shirley’s gone too! You’ll be gone soon yourself, if you don’t quit comparing schoolville to the ‘real world’.
