Never Enough Time

If I had a little extra time, I liked to wander around the school and drop in and visit with my friends. School was my small town. I’d wander around. I’d chase a few kids to class; kick the smokers out of the boys’ washroom and double-check that nobody was sneaking in an unattended side door.

One of my buddies, a history teacher, is on hall guard. Like many of my friends, he doesn’t read. He’d say, “I do too. I read National Geographic and the Smithsonian. For a while, I even read American Heritage until it got too expensive.” I’d mess with him, “Too expensive, ten bucks, that’s chump change—you’re just too cheap. But, you’re right not to read that junk. Really, I don’t want you reading that crap. All about how wonderful the good old US of A is and look how many heroes we have and really what a great country we are and all of that.” And then I’d take off, before he had a chance to reply,” Oh, you English teachers, you don’t know shit.”

To be fair, he went to the first Earth Day Celebration in Chicago, in 1970, and tried to go every year and take his kids. And when we argued, I say, " OK, I have to give you points for Earth Day."

Back at the English office, I’d ask one of my friends, “James, what are you reading these days? He mumbles, “Student papers. I keep telling you; I don’t have time to read. I haven’t read anything since college. I read enough then and I don’t intend to read anything else now. Maybe, I’ll read something when I retire, but not now. Right now, tell me, how’s the next contract coming?”

But some of the teachers did read.  For some reason they never talked about it much. You could tell when occasionally a new book would slip into someone's classroom. A friend loved to teach 2001 A Space Odyssey, talk about sci-fi and how Arthur C. Clark was really a great philosopher. Another teacher, just as serious, taught This Little Light of Mine by Kay Mills. White or black, she was one of the few teachers who took black lit seriously. Because of her some of us taught not only A Raisin In the Sun, but Purlie Victorious and Day of Absence. But it seemed we never had time, either informally or at meetings, to talk about books. We talked about keeping track of books, buying books, storing books, getting the books back from the students, ordering replacement books, reviewing books, distributing the books, collecting the books and hoarding the books. Some loved anthologies and had their favorites. They wanted more and more of them. They just wanted to teach a particular book to a particular class the rest of their lives and they didn’t think that that was too much to ask.

I ran the bookroom. It was where the broken dreams went to die. There was a half set of an abridged version of the Count of Monte Christo, a tattered well-worn incomplete set of the Autobiography of Malcolm X and a half set of Houghton Mifflin’s Afro-American Literature: Drama, Poetry, Fiction and Nonfiction. Some wanted to build a curriculum based on these fine paperbacks, but the majority wanted their anthologies. The anthologies won. The familiar won over the new. In a way they were right. Who had the time or the inclination to give up their favorites for new preps and the unknown? There was never enough time amidst the confusion and chaos.

There were other reasons why there was no time. Many of the women, and even some men, had to rush home to take care of their own kids, fix supper, and help supervise homework, deliver one kid to violin and drop off another at soccer. Some teachers taught night school or took night classes themselves, taught summer school or took summer school classes. Some had part time businesses—they were house painters or pizza store owners. One worked a second job because he didn’t believe that women should work. If asked, he didn’t hesitate to say he believed for him and his family it was better that he worked two jobs so his wife could be home with the four kids. Others coached or were referees or chaperones. Others stopped at the tavern and not just on Fridays.

Some came early. All they wanted was peace and quiet—no distractions, no interruptions, just time to grade papers, prep, have a cigarette and think and finally to listen to the quiet. Sometimes, they’d hide out in an empty room.

And still others said, “Look, they pay me to come here and teach. They don’t pay me to work nights grading papers or doing mindless lesson plans. I have designed my day so I get it all done between eight and two forty five. If there’s more to do, it just does not get done. Unreasonable??  Not entirely. Another friend said, “You know, when I retired, I got my Sundays back. For thirty-five years, I worked at home every Sunday.” She went on, “I never realized the sacrifice I made. I used to save all my magazines and read them in the summer. It was the only time that I read. Now I can read the New Yorker when it comes and when my friends talk about a story I can say, oh yes I read that story and join the conversation.”

Some did find time to read. For a time Stephen King, John Grisham and Barbara Kingsolver were popular. Some liked Terry McMillan and the Anglophiles were reading John Mortimer for their English fix. Another, the same one who introduced us to Purlie Victorious, wanted us to read, and maybe teach April Sinclair’s Coffee Will Make You Black. Another teacher read and started teaching Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Her students loved it. She’d say, “You have to remember, if the author is black the students will stretch, even if it’s hard they’ll work at it. They want to understand black authors.”

We’re the generation that can do everything and we did it—job, kids, health club, jogging, gardening, gourmet cooking, a night life. We raised our kids, got divorced, cared for aging parents, buried our spouses and some snuck around. We bragged about our own kids without meaning to and sympathized with the parent that couldn’t brag about his teen. But the daily grind got to most of us over time. You could see it in the sag their bodies had by the end of the year. And we were jealous of the ones who looked cool, calm and collected in June. We envied them, but our envy was mixed with bafflement; we asked each other, “How do they do it?” We never learned their secret.  Didn’t they care, didn’t they have a little guilt gnawing away, wasn’t even some of everything just a bit overwhelming?

One friend said, “You know you have to pace yourself, not take everything too seriously. Remember, they’ll be gone and we’ll still be here. We have to take care of ourselves, the school and then the kids. It won’t work without us. We’re important too.” I never did figure out if he was right or not. I guess that was what you call the long view, when you’re in it for the long haul, the duration. The institutional view.

 I still don’t know.

        

It’s really a little city: The coffee shop

A big urban high school is like a little city.

In the good old days, in the morning, the teachers’ lunchroom was the corner coffee shop. Many of us drove 20 to 40 miles, one way, came from two states, dozens of suburban communities, the exurbs and from fiercely segregated Chicago neighborhoods, to get to school. So much for the neighborhood school concept.  So once we got there, we had to catch our breath and unwind. We loved to listen to the folks who drove in from the western suburbs complain about the Eisenhower Effect. Some of us would teasingly say, “Oh, you mean the Congress Expressway?”

At just the right time of day and the right time of year, the sun rising in the eastern sky could be blinding. One particular bright and sunny morning, a woman came in a little late (for coffee not for school) all out of breath; she had just driven through the Eisenhower Effect. She started to complain and was immediately cut off by one of our Miss-Know-It-All, “That’s what the visor is for my dear!” Just as she was about to launch into a long lecture about the sun and the planets, another teacher came in equally out of breath, interrupted everybody and started in about the sun, the back up and the near fender benders, the mess and the parking lot that the highway had just become. That completely shut up our one friend and redeemed our other friend who was about to wilt and everybody lived happily … until the next crisis.

 Plus, we needed to talk to a few adults before we started our day because once the bell sounded, we would be surrounded with students for the rest of the day. And most importantly, we genuinely liked each other. And we wanted to start our day on a high note: Forget about the traffic, forget about the little jerk in yesterday’s third period and for fifteen minutes or so just bask in the warmth and soft light of our camaraderie.

We liked each other in the same intense way a police officer likes and relies on his partner. It was a strange friendship. Often we only saw each for a few minutes in the morning. We seldom saw each other in the summer and once we retired, with a few exceptions, we never saw each other again. (Some of the retirees in our coffee group do meet once a year in September. They call themselves the Alumni Group).

The teachers would begin arriving about an hour before class. Some grabbed a quick cup and went upstairs to work, but a group of about thirty or so with a core group of about 25 regulars would have coffee and even breakfast every morning. Sometimes, ladies in the serving line would have something special for me. It doesn’t take much to be polite and sometimes the rewards for just being polite are wonderful.

If it was cold, wet, grey, ugly and raw outside, the students who were just like us and who had come to school early for a little food and human comfort, would be crammed together outside by the front door. At first,  they couldn’t get in and then they’d be let in and crowded together in the vestibule. Finally they’d be allowed to go and get breakfast and visit with their friends. Our day, in contrast to that of the students, got off to a much better start. And those of us who thought about the contrast and the unintended consequences quickly pushed those thoughts away.

We had all kinds of rules. Some tables: “Don’t bad mouth the students”, at others it was all sports, “the game” and of course at the adjoining table no sports. At our table, the culture lovers got to report on the Lyric, the CSO, the Goodman and eventually Steppenwolf. We talked politics, but not too much. No gossip—too many ears at the adjoining tables—too undignified, so out in the open so to speak. So the gossip was saved for later, the washrooms and the department offices when just the select were around. And then there was lots of gossip.

Those of us who bought the paper every day (and why wouldn’t you, it was only fifty cents) had to watch for the paper thieves. “Let me just check the scores.” And if you weren’t careful you’d never see your paper again. Some “Just want to borrow the crossword.” Say what? We bragged about our own kids (for a while the trip to visit college campuses was an important topic), talked a bit about our part-time jobs. And of course we were all experts on everything. 

There were no gays. There were, of course, but no one would ever mention them.  At one school, where I had worked there was a lesbian couple but they were so cool and everybody liked them so much that nobody ever said anything, period. It was the most strictly enforced taboo of all. Looking back, it was strange; all the teachers would be drinking coffee, looking at the paper, talking about last night’s performance of the Ring Cycle or “the game”. If it was Monday morning, we might be talking about our kids, our wives, our dates and what we did over the weekend. The gays would always join in and talk about their weekend, but they could never mention their dates, their lovers or their trip to Boystown.  If someone had said Boystown, most teachers would deny its existence (their eyes would tell you, you were breaking the taboo. We won’t be able to keep them in the closet if we admit that there is a closet) and some truthfully could claim that they never even heard of Boystown.

 One time, a male teacher was seen outside of school with a female student; he was transferred and his name disappeared from our collective memory. He was never mentioned again. But we could be nasty, petty and vicious. Two men who worked night school ate dinner together, between night school and day school, and the rumormongers spread dirt all over the school about them.

The white teachers sat at the white tables and the black teachers sat at the black tables. There were two black teachers who would have coffee and later in the day lunch with us. And there were two white teachers who would do the same. There was a wonderful teacher that we all loved, but a little spacey, and he would eat at any table with an empty seat and then he gave his full attention to his food. The table might as well have been empty.

And like a small town, not everyone was as friendly as the next guy. There were little groups throughout the building who hid out in little offices with a Mr. Coffee and a mini-fridge. The English department was so big thahalf the department could be downstairs, another third still on their way and still a small loyal band upstairs complaining that nobody understood the English teachers and their difficult task. Once they got to the English floor (their side of town), they stayed there all day.

In the lunchroom, the clock would be ticking away. It was almost time to go. Some folks would leave before the first bell. Maybe they had one last set of papers to record. Some liked to get to their room early, to set the tone, be a good example and all that.  When they outlawed smoking, some had to run out for one last drag before class. Someone had to go check: “Whose raft was it anyway? Did Huck find the raft or Jim? Where did it come from?” It was a minor point, but it was fun to get the students to double check or to reward a close reader.

The warning bell rang and in four minutes it would be another day.

Going out the door: “See you at lunch?”

If it was Friday, “Are you going to Jimmy’s for a pitcher?”