The Clam Before the Strom

I was staring listlessly into a stream of envelopes when it happened. Sealing and post marking the mail had become so routine over the last three years that I sometimes tuned out the world around me until the din of the machine came to a stop. There was a dull, vibrating tone coming from the pocket of my jacket. I pulled out my Motorola Razr to examine the message. It was from a friend of mine, a teacher at a place called the Unity School. 

"My school is hiring a drama/art teacher. Do you want me to give them your number?" 

The sixteen months leading up to this day could be summarized as follows, wake up, go to work, listen to a lecture from my boss about how my talents are being wasted here in the mailroom, play final fantasy for a few hours while the window is slow, get off work, go to the computer lab nearby and apply for every education related job I could find. Repeat 525 times. 

If there's a record for faster typing on a numerical keypad, I'm pretty sure I gave it a run for it's money as my thumb raced across the keypad to send my approval. I thought of all the resumes, cover letters, applications I labored over...and here is a job, materializing out of thin air, as if by divine intervention. As the shock began to fade, reality renewed its lease on my thoughts as I remembered how many other people have vouched for me in hopes of getting me a job in the past. Somebody's recommendation is a very nice thing, but I've seen first hand, too many times, that it can only do so much. 

Deciding it would be far more useful to concentrate on the work I've already been hired to do, I start to load up the mail van for the last mail run that stands between me and a lengthy Christmas vacation. The snow is already caked onto the windows when I finish loading the last of the paper orders in. As I pull myself into the driver's seat, my phone goes off yet again. I don't recognize the number, maybe the Copy Center is calling about the other six boxes I purposely left to sit until next year...

Instead, a woman named Tracy greeted me on the other end. She wasted no time in cutting to the chase. She told me she had got my number from an employee at her school who said I was very artistic and had some experience in education and theatre. She said that the school very recently lost its Drama and Art teachers and she was hoping to hire someone to replace them both. She seemed undeterred by my confession that while I have worked with kids for years, that I have no true "in classroom" teaching experience, nor any degree in Education. She proceeded to gush about how getting to take the place of these two teachers will be a dream job. Almost in the same breath, her voice dropped an octave and took on a foreboding. It's going to be a hard job, she says. You're going to be overwhelmed. Trial by fire. For the first few months, she wouldn't be surprised if I do nothing but wake up, teach, and then plan my lessons and curriculum until the late hours of the morning. And more than anything, she stressed how the   successful applicant would be organized. Everything in its place. She told the tragic tale of how the former art teacher huffed off in a fury, taking even the last can of who-hash. I reassured her that I personally rate my bedroom as a 9.5 in terms of how organized it is ( I did this because she asked me to) and that I would have that room in shape in no time flat if offered the job. Thus would begin our primary means of communicating for the next six months, lying to one another. Before hanging up, she asked if it were possible for me to meet up with her, after ruling out Virginia as an option, we settled on meeting at the school itself. Five days from now, on December 28th. 

As I hung up, a mixture of elation, confusion, disbelief, and fear swept over me. What had even just happened? This morning I had zero prospects, zero contacts, and zero hope. Now I have, even if not specifically labeled as such, an interview in five days! My phone lights up again as I'm about to put it back in my pocket. Another text from my friend. 

"Just so you know, the principal is a little crazy..."

The shcool before the school

Last summer, Katie and I attended a 60-hour, lecture-intensive training course to delineate strategies for teaching children with dyslexia. My sister was nearing the end of her undergraduate program in speech pathology; amid the steep competition for the Master’s programs, Kate was feeling rather apprehensive about the next two years, and thus sought to expand her resume with some teaching classes. Boredom as much as Kate’s pleading suckered me into the class. A year from completing my Masters, I was still jobless and seeking employment among the various private schools and libraries of Maryland.

The class was taught at Kevin’s old middle school, Unity Middle, by a Miss Marsha, who lectured us for six grueling hours each day about techniques to improve multi-sensory learning. Only Marsha seemed to ignore the irony. The rest of us learned to fall asleep with our eyes open.

Nonetheless, our teacher’s intentions were pure enough. When our younger brother was born, he developed an early ear infection that marred much of his speech and learning skills as he grew. At ten, only my brother, Shannon, really understood his garbled questions and took to translating his younger brother for the rest of the family. Several years and schools later, doctors diagnosed him with dyslexia. My parents found Unity Middle, which specialized in teaching learning disabled children, helping Kevin to not only speak better but to read, write, and cope with the challenges of high school.

Too many schools, Marsha explained, teach solely through lecture and readings, but never allow their students to touch, taste, hear or experience the lessons first-hand. For dyslexic children, the inclusion of multiple senses could re-build these missing neuronal pathways. This new philosophy made sense; Katie and I had seen what this (common-sense?) approach had achieved for our brother. But what Katie saw as a godsend for the learning disabled, I foresaw as the future of the teaching industry. After all why couldn’t any child – dyslexic or not – benefit from hands-on, multi-sensory teaching? When did education, the study of the world, become nothing more than homework, lecture, and readings . . . in short a drag?

Still, Marsha chose to relay this information through hour-long lectures and lengthy commentaries concerning the pitfalls of the modern educational system. Moreover, she loved to gossip: politicians, teachers, schools, scientists. She had a gripe with nearly everybody, who undervalued or neglected dyslexic children, and shortly my afternoons had devolved into a three-hour soap opera – minus the evil twin – with another four hours spent reading from notes. Perhaps, being the only guy in the class (my nickname was “The Man”), I felt more agitated than the others, but by day two, the class could not end quickly enough.

By the third day, I began imagining myself in a comic book – my default daydream when I feel my brain dying: heroes in flamboyant costumes crashed through walls, decimating the classroom and freeing its comatose students. One morning, the Hulk lifted Ms. Marsha by her chair and hurled her into the upper stratosphere. Silence reigned for a few precious seconds before my senses recoiled, and I realized that she had only paused to take a drink.

The class proved just as eclectic as our teacher. As mentioned prior, I found myself outnumbered, surrounded by women, nearly all teachers with varying degrees of professionalism. A few such as Liz and Ellen worked full-time as tutors at Unity while others home-schooled. Jess had worked as an intern over the last semester, and surviving her undergrad, sought employment as a literature teacher. Another – whom I shall call ‘Tracy’ – heralded from a private pseudo-religious school downtown, which emphasized positive reinforcement and hugging to boost self-esteem.

As she explained it: “Every Friday, we halt afternoon classes for Praise Circles. All the teachers gather around one child at a time. We join hands, sing songs, and offer compliments, hug and channel our positive thoughts or aura toward the child. Every student gets a turn, a chance to feel loved, and I’ve felt a lot of the bad energy, the negative self-destructive feelings from some of our more undisciplined children disappear entirely.”

Honestly, forced ritualistic hugging and singing alone recalled images of cult-like communes; channeling cosmic juju only reinforced my conviction that the woman and her school were totally nuts. I kept waiting for the punch line, while my sister warred with her need to giggle.

Katie, meanwhile, felt determined to find my soul mate. Little sisters all play matchmaker at some point in their lives, and Katie felt certain that the future Mrs. Murph lie in wait somewhere in the classroom.

• “Oh so you like to read, huh? You hear that Murph? She likes books too!”

• “You like Jurassic Park? Murph used to obsess over dinosaurs. When we were little, he’d stomp around the house, growling and roaring like uh . . . a T. Rex. He even tucked away all his fingers but two on each hand . . .”

I should mention by way of an apology to all involved that I’m a bit of a pariah in my own home. Thus, it is a sad fact that any young lady, who shares even a marginal interest in comics, dinosaurs, fantasy, video games, books, writing, or puzzles, is instantly nominated as a potential mate. As Sean brilliantly put it once, “Murph, I think we all know that there can’t be another creature like you on the entire planet. Ergo, it’s best that you keep your expectations for marital happiness relatively low.

These excursions into the desperation of my love life, however, procured me my first teaching job. At least in part. Katie divulged the story of our lives quickly, prompting discussions of my past work with malaria and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

At the start of the second week, Ms. Liz – the head of tutoring at Unity – and Ms. Marsha relayed to Dr. T, Unity Middle’s principal, that I was a former biochem major looking for a teaching position and that I tutored my siblings, many of whom were diagnosed as dyslexics. This of course procured me an interview, where I learned that the school’s current science teacher would shortly be transferred to a position in the administration offices. The school would hire me as a full-time employee, teaching science, social studies, and a course known as study skills.

Now, I readily accepted science and social studies – high school and college had planted a provincial but persistent devotion to histories of all kinds, non-fictional and fictional alike – however, I had some modest concerns about these study skills classes. These, more so than either science or history, seemed the most essential to all future academic development. Perhaps I had over-analyzed the situation, worrying myself for no good reason, but the task at the time appeared overwhelming.

Afterwards, I was allowed to give the matter some thought and return with a reply later the next morning. That night between my mother and younger sister’s reaction, you would have thought I had drowned a kitten:

• “ . . . in all my years, Murph, I have never found reason to be disappointed in you. Never. Until this night . . .”

• “. . . Murph, in this economy, you can’t afford to be picky or honest. If they want you to teach heart surgery to ten-year-olds, then you say ‘Okay! Where can I plug in my saw?’ . . .”

• “ . . . Study skills is teaching ten-year-olds how to take notes and tests. You have a chemistry degree and a Masters in libraries and organizing stuff. Hon, I think you’re more than qualified to show eighth grades how to highlight textbooks . . .”

Once again I believe my family had mistaken genuine concern for fear or cowardice, anxiety over my first job in years. Honestly, that was not the case. Imagine completing your first course in human anatomy and then being asked to perform open heart surgery. It’s like that.

Marsha frequently reminded us that good-intentions among kind-hearted but ignorant teachers often instilled more harm than good. Was it enough to simply practice copying notes from a chalkboard or should there be some multisensory component to it all? Should we begin our classes sniffing highlighters and chewing Staples’ best three-line rule? Mentioning these minor concerns to my future employer somehow seemed pertinent.

Still after much consideration and even greater parental pressure, I arrived to class the following morning ready and willing to teach science, history, study skills and . . . yes even heart surgery if anyone should ask. If any other questions or concerns came to mind, Mom suggested that I should ‘suck it up’ until after my first paycheck.

The school seemed eager to hire another male teacher, which I understand is something of a rarity in middle school education. Most of the student population was predominately male so Dr. T and the other teachers believed another male role model would compliment the school perfectly. Being the least ‘athletic’ of my siblings, I had my doubts, and prayed a few of the kids enjoyed video games, Batman, and Lego sets (little did I know then!).

Melissa the former science/social studies teacher dumped three large binders, full of lesson plans, into my arms and showed me to my classrooms. Melissa reminded me a lot of my sister-in-law, Tiffany: stern, organized, but very kind with a blunt sarcastic humor. I liked her instantly. After giving me the grand tour of classrooms and lab, Melissa informed me that study skills was actually incorporated into science and social studies class, thus double periods for middle school students, a full hour and a half for eighth, seventh and sixth graders each day.

“I suggest you start with science the first half of the year. The boys usually enjoy the experiments a lot, and as a new teacher, you can accrue some respect before diving into history. That’s when it gets hard as you’ll have to figure out what to do in place of the experiments. If you get stuck, crafts and videos have worked well in the past to fill in the time. Otherwise, that’s about it, any questions?” she asked.

I shook my head, unsure whether my eyes revealed any cowardice or uncertainty. Of course, my mind rattled with questions, but no one could really help me with that. I needed to stand before a room full of children and figure it all out. Frankly, I felt terrified with the responsibilities so casually tossed my way. I should mention that half the time, my siblings openly admit to ignoring 90% of what I attempted to tutor them. I desperately craved an iced tea and long afternoon at the bookstore.

Still I can’t say that I wasn’t a little excited as well. Experiments and projects began bubbling in my head. I would have a chance, an opportunity to really astound and amaze these kids, to show them some honest-to-goodness magic. And I would need every one if I was going to keep three classes of eight hyperactive pre-teens occupied for an hour and a half.

School began the following week: September 7^th 2011.