The Last Days

There are only six class sessions left in a teaching job that has shown me in so many ways that the children as our future can be an extremely scary thing. But it's not their fault. As I stood in a hallway, towering over a diminutive girl maybe three quarters of the way to five feet yelling at me and trying to walk away from me as she called her father on the cell and lied to her about the reasons why I wouldn't let her go the bathroom.

The first thing I repeatedly told myself was that this had nothing to do with me. And it didn't. Armed with very few weapons against a parental contingent who is looking for the public schools to fix their failures, it's no wonder why today's teachers just don't last.

When you send someone to the office and they come back ten minutes later because there was no one in there to supervise them, when the obvious psychotic boys who are beyond our help get more attention than the boys and girls who do want to learn, what the fuck do you expect from our future?

In this week alone I've found myself comparing notes with a few members of the school staff, some of whom are surprisingly much like myself, working artists or other groovies who took the job because they knew they could do it. They also hoped to make a difference along the way. But when parental calls do nothing but unite the kids against you in a kind of 'let's turn the volume all the way up and see how much he can take?' I actually found some real use for the sadistic side of my soul that I try to keep away from the public at-large.

After being robbed of their snack by boys who have learned where's its kept before class, I bought some of their favorite junk food from the local beodga and brought it in, limiting them all to one bag of chips and a hug juice each. And when my girls didn't listen to me I told the two baddest most unruly and least deserving boys, the ones who pester them all the time, that they could have all the extras. They said it wasn't fair. They said I couldn't do that. I told them they should have behaved and watched them deflate as they ESL crew sucked down what they felt entitled to. There was a pleasure for that in me, a pleasure that I don't like here in the post-game show.

This whole time I've been saying that this was going to be my last experience as a teacher. But that's not true. Instead I'll say this is my last run at this school. I think I'm better suited to deal with high school kids, as my background allows me to speak their language a lot more clearly. And while my life in this gig has been far from Dangerous Minds or Take the Lead or Freedom Writers or whatever, I saw what I needed to see: That I was more right than I knew about what's coming. This isn't to say that I don't believe in the next generation. It is to say that I believe in an even fewer percentage of them than I did in my own generation. The number of folks that will bring about change seems to keep getting smaller. And as young mothers and fathers aren't going to reverse their training (or lack thereof) in parenthood and start actually engaging their children en masse, I'm not sure of what kind of a future we're going to have.

I make this statement with a grain of salt, particularly as my accomplishment don't feel like they weigh much, even in the face of the retired blue collar landlord whose rent price I can barely meet every month. In an era where everyone wants to see the movie and never read the book (if there is a movie) folks like me who aren't always aiming for the least common denominator and who aren't protected by the shielding of having an Ivy league background are probably going to be as fucked am unlucky cast member on Oz. It's probably why I've decided to take my last shot at the left coast beast that's been whipping my ass for most of the last seven years.

As these final days of class come to a close, I wish I could say that I'm going to give myself a nice long vacation. But the closest I'll come to that if things don't improve is taking a look at the lost passport I had replaced that the lovely lady at the check cashing spot gave to me today with the admission that she'd been waiting for sometime for me to walk back through her doors.

Like the Emo band says "everything thing is cloudy except for the past," and I'm wondering if the right thing to do for my own spirits would have been to cut this cord four months ago. But if it's true that everything happens for a reason, then it is this here and now that I have to deal with, much of which I do not discuss in this space out of respect for the fears, insecurities and egos of others.

Coming out of class today I ran into three boys who were on the verge of pulling the fire alarm, a daily occurence. They backed away when they saw me but when I told the one of them that I knew that he could be viewed as an "accessory" he didn't know what that meant. But one of the other kids knew that what he was doing was a felony. He even spelled the word out for me. And yet he keeps doing it everyday.

Right now I'm wondering if I'm that kid. Have I made a decision to be fucked in doing what I do? And if that the case then why is that everytime I talk about it here I get a host of comments from folks who tell me to keep going, even if they've never even read the books I wrote and only support my words because they're a free entertainment at their place of employ or something to do to pass the time between dinner and bed?

Maybe my Mom was right and my Dad was wrong. Maybe I read something right that was supposed to be wrong. But that's no matter in my role as teacher. If nothing else those little girls will know that they rarely got over on me, and that I tried as hard as I could to get them to learn something. But it wasn't my job to save them. It's never been my job to save anyone but myself. Truly understanding that for the first time in my whole life make it easier for me to move on.

In my nine years here I probably did more than any Average Joe could think about. And if I'm destined to change my name to Joe, at least there's the off-chance that I can take my kids to the library someday and show them who I used to be. And they'll be proud. And they'll tell their classmates and friends around the way. Maybe my wife will asked me one night about what the difference is between the me of then and the one of now she will have never known. I'll tell her that it's nothing important, make love to her like it's the last time and get up for another day at the job, like it's any other. Out.