Take Me To School

In so many ways school was the ‘other man’ in my marriage and other aspects of my life. At times, it consumed every ounce of my physical and emotional energy. Usually, I gave it willingly. Even at the end of a regular day, whatever that is, I was tired. Part of that is simply the fact that I was up and moving, usually on my feet for the better part of eight hours; part of it was that during those eight hours I was interacting with both small and large humans who demanded my attention. Maintaining a professional persona during most of those hours takes its toll as well, and as I have mentioned, I was always thinking. Thinking about how to deliver the material, about whether I could be heard by everyone, about whether the kids were paying attention. Thinking about the best way to assess the learning I hoped was taking place, about which materials to use, about how to address a behavior problem, about how to utilize the aides that were sometimes in my room. Thinking about the lists of things I had to do before I left and after I left. Thinking about lunch. All things both sublime and mundane sucked at my core every day. I have heard that teachers make at least 3,000 decisions each day and based on my experience that is not a stretch. It was a life I chose and embraced, but it rarely ended at 3:00 PM and usually it didn’t end on Friday. All that thinking? You get to take it home with you. Even when there is no paperwork to do, you still think about it. This has been a recurring theme in these pages, and I’m sure it must seem obvious by now. Some of us are gluttons for punishment and throw ourselves into the co-curricular and extracurricular activities. It’s true that for most of them there is extra pay, but most of us did things for which there was no pay. To be sure, that is not a practice I would recommend. My father was a labor relations specialist on the side of management. When I told him once, early in my career, that I thought labor unions might no longer be relevant, he looked at me incredulously. When he stopped laughing, he told me something I never forgot: it is the job of your employer to get as much out of you as possible for as little money as possible. That about sums it up. They got a lot out of me and couldn’t even come close to paying me for what my services were really worth. I’m not being cocky or arrogant; that is true for anyone who would have taken on these extra jobs and given 100%. Fortunately, some of the rewards were intrinsic and no amount of money really could have matched the satisfaction I got from the little extras. As with most situations there is good news and bad news. Let’s start with the bad news. I really hated cafeteria duty. Fortunately, I only had to do it one year—my last one—and I chose to do it. That makes a difference, for our contract stated that if one volunteered it was a paid duty. The time on that duty was taken out of our unassigned time, so that entire year I had to gobble my lunch in fifteen minutes. I consoled myself every day with the knowledge that it would pay for the new landscaping in front of my house and raise my final average salary, ensuring that I would get a miniscule amount extra every month in my pension for the rest of my life. Good thing, too, since it is sometimes what kept me from crying. The entire middle school—grades six, seven, and eight—all ate together that year with hardly a chair to spare. The first fifteen minutes were tolerable because the students were either in line or stuffing food in their mouths. It was the last twelve minutes or so that the noise level became unbearable and that, being pre-adolescents, their natural impulse was to run around or table-hop. Controlling these impulses became my raison d’être. Couple that with the fact that the other cafeteria monitors and I were not always on the same page, and it was easy for the kids to believe that my broom was parked somewhere nearby. Even cafeteria duty had an upside, though, beyond the extra pay. During the time they were busy eating I would walk around and talk to the kids. It’s amazing what you overhear as you wander around the room and you can see who the loners are, which kids are friends, and even who has eating disorders in the making. I got to hear tales of their weekend plans and see who had the most expensive smartphones and other devices. One boy threw away his iPhone by accident when he emptied his tray, and then refused to go through the garbage to look for it. (The cafeteria ladies offered him gloves.) The next day he came to school with a new phone. That explained a lot about why he behaved like a little lord in class. The other good thing about that duty was that I got to know the sixth graders a little bit. I knew the seventh and eighth graders already but had only seen the youngest middle schoolers in the hallway. The next year when I would start subbing those sixth graders never gave me a problem. I knew some of their names and, well, remember that broom? They had already seen my dark side.