Schoolville: Chapter 18
There’s battle lines are being drawn.
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.
Young people speaking their minds are getting so much resistance from behind.
Time we stop, hey, what’s that sound, everybody look, what’s going down.
-Stephen Stills
Chapter Eighteen
“So Beth, are you telling me that you don’t ever think of quitting teaching?”
We were sitting in her room after school. It was Friday afternoon, and we were hanging out waiting for our spouses to show up so we could all walk over to the football game together. After all, Wilson High was the reigning state 5A football champs.
She looked at me over her reading glasses, as she worked on her fingernails again. “Oh…sure! But I deal with it, I don’t let that fester into a major problem.”
“What’s your coping mechanism?”
“I talk about it with my husband, or I have a glass of wine. Or…if it’s bad enough, I go to a counselor.”
“Does the counseling help?”
“Sure it does. It really helps me to find new coping strategies.”
B.D. spoke up for the first time all day. “I wonder if other jobs are so stressful that an employee finds it necessary to go to counseling just to be able to cope?”
“Beth, I didn’t sign on to being a slave to the whims of a school board. I signed on to teach. I can’t believe reasonable people put up with this kind of behavior from supervisors.”
Beth thought about this for awhile, and said nothing. I pulled out an apple, and began to munch it noisily.
“Tom, how can the school board help being incompetent? What kind of training do they get? They have to take the superintendent’s word for everything, and he’s the guy they’re overseeing!”
“Yep!”
“But, if you pay too much attention to that, you become disenchanted with teaching, and leave the profession. The day you leave, you leave the kids in the same rotten position that the school board and the superintendent put them in.”
“I like that word.”
“Which word?”
“Disenchanted…it’s perfect for describing how I feel.”
“Why are you really disenchanted, Tom? Is it that you are powerless, or is it because you were misled as to what teaching was really all about?”
I thought that over a while. “Both, I guess.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“What can I do about it, except vent?”
She didn’t say anything, so I continued. “That’s what you said you do, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “But, you know that you were discontent with sales too. Maybe you’re discontent with any job.”
I shrugged. “Maybe I’m discontent with life!”
“Maybe…” She nodded, then paused from her painting and looked at me. “Maybe it was discontent with life that led you into teaching. Maybe you came into teaching for the wrong reasons?”
“What would be the right reasons to come into teaching?”
“The kids.” She shook her head thoughtfully. “I can’t think of anything else.”
“Well, if that’s true, then those idiots down in the administration building aren’t here for the right reasons either.”
“Oh, we all know that! They do too, if you ask them. Tom, are you suggesting you want to be like them, and be here for the wrong reasons?”
I shrugged and munched on my apple. “No wonder teachers don’t get any respect. They don’t demand it. They don’t deserve it!”
“I disagree.” Beth looked over at me.
“Beth?”
“Hmmm?”
“Tell me another schoolville story?”
“What do you want to hear?”
“What is the most absurd thing you have ever seen here? What is that one story that you’d tell people, and know that they’d never believe it?”
Beth thought for a while, then she smiled. “That would have to be Dr. Nedermeyer’s son, Devon.”
“Tell me the story.” I prompted.
“Well, Dr. Nedermeyer is the one who is always coming to faculty meetings and telling us to ‘hold those kids accountable for their work’. He is the one who is always preaching that the kids who don’t turn in their work on time should pay the penalty.”
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“Yeah, I guess he should say that.”
“Well, he doesn’t believe that when it comes to his own kid, just other people’s kids.”
“How so?”
“His son, Devon, didn’t turn in a single homework assignment in his math class last year during the last six week period. Needless to say, he got a D on his report card!” She smiled as her eyes went up. “I’m guessing that he must be good at tests, otherwise, he should have failed.”
“Probably so…” I spoke around a mouthful of apple.
“Anyway, that grade put him on probation for National Honor Society. Dr. Nedermeyer didn’t like that much, so he and Mrs. Nedermeyer both scheduled an appointment with his teacher, Mrs. Alvarez. By the time they got done with her, she had already tendered her resignation.”
“You’re shitting me.”
She raised her left eyebrow as she glared at me.
“Hmmm-hummm. Sorry!”
She dropped the eyebrow. “Katy Alvarez had been a teacher here for almost twenty years. Now she’s over at Heights district.”
I looked over at B.D. He was shaking his head in disgust. I had to say it, so I did.
“Beth?”
“Hmmm?”
“When you don’t stand up to these people, whose fault is it when they use you as a doormat?”
Now it was Beth’s turn to consider. Finally, she replied. “Well, that may be true, but that and fifty cents will buy you a cup of coffee.”
“That’s all you can say?” I bored in deeper.
“Well, if I want to teach, this is what I have to put up with.” She shrugged.
I finished munching the apple.
Beth glanced up. “Now it’s your turn to tell me a story from the real world.”
“HMMMMM…” I lowered the apple core and dropped it in the trash. “What do you want to hear.”
“Something as bad as the one I just told you.” She demanded.
I thought for several moments, but for some reason I couldn’t think of anything. B.D. had an idea though.
“Listen Tom, remember the pit bull joke?” B.D. asked. “You know the one! It used to get you in trouble at business meetings?”
Horton had always hated that joke. She thought it was crude, B.D. thought it was a riot.
“Ok Beth, this joke was an interesting tool we used to use to discover who, in the managerial pool, our next boss was likely to be. Invariably, he or she would be the one who didn’t understand the joke when we told it to them.
“So, you want to see if I get the joke or not?” She smiled.
“You tell me.”
“Let’s hear it then.” She replied.
“Well…One of us sales representatives would engage the management candidate in conversation while the others listened and observed. During the course of the conversation, the representative would eventually smile at the management candidate and ask if they wanted to hear a good joke.
Management candidates, wanting to make a favorable impression, would politely reply; “Sure!”
“What was the question?” Beth interrupted.
“Do you know the difference between a pit bull and a Chihuahua?” I asked.
Beth smiled and glanced at me narrowly. “I have a bad feeling about this…”
“…and well you should!” I replied. “The management candidate would usually answer with some cautious variation of; “What is it?”
Whosever turn it was to tell the joke would then say; “Well, when a pit bull is humping your leg, you let him finish.” Then we would carefully watch the management candidate. The one who didn’t get the joke was invariably going to be our next boss. Of course, the punch line wasn’t in the joke. It was purely in the imagination of those who have one. It was a Chihuahua being drop-kicked over someone’s roof with a boot print clearly outlined on it, or someone running for his life with a pit bull clamped on his ass. Like I said, getting the joke required an imagination. Management candidates never seemed to get the joke. We speculated that this was because they related with the pit bull, while we representatives related with the person whose leg was being humped.
“That’s a terrible joke!” Beth was horrified.
“Well, perhaps so…and perhaps not, but I can’t help but speculate on how much fun I could have with Mrs. Getty if I tried that joke on her, just to see if she got it.”
Then Beth burst out howling.
“What is the matter with you?” I asked, shocked by her sudden turn about.
“Well,” she replied when she finally caught her breath, “Can you imagine the horror on her face at the thought of such unrestrained male behavior, as ‘humping’?”
“Would she know what it is?”
“Possibly…” Beth shook her head as she began clearing off her desk.
