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.