Teacher Man

by Frank McCourt

  It's a mistake to arrive early, gives you too much time to think of what you're facing. Where did I get the nerve to think I could handle American teenagers? Ignorance. That's where I got the nerve. It is the Eisenhower era and newspapers report the great unhappiness of American adolescents. These are the "Lost Children of the Lost Children of the Lost Generation." Movies, musicals, books tell us of their unhappiness: Rebel Without a Cause, The Blackboard Jungle, West Side Story, The Catcher in the Rye. They make despairing speeches. Life is meaningless. All adults are phonies. What's the use of living at all? They have nothing to look forward to, not even a war of their own where they can kill natives in distant places and march up ticker-tape Broadway with medals and limps for the girls to admire. No use complaining to their fathers, who just fought a war, or their mothers, who waited while the fathers fought. Fathers say, Oh, shaddup. Don't bodder me. I got a pounda shrapnel up my ass an' I don't have time for you bitchin' an' moanin' wid your belly full an' your closet stuffed with clothes. F'Christ's sakes, when I was your age I was out woikin' in a junkyard before I went on the docks so I could send your sorry ass to school. Go squeeze your goddam pimples an' lemme read my paper.

  There's so much teen unhappiness they form gangs and fight other gangs, not rumbles like the ones you see in movies with star-crossed romances and dramatic music in the background, but mean fights where they grunt and curse one another, where Italians, Blacks, Irish, Puerto Ricans attack with knives, chains, baseball bats in Central Park and Prospect Park and stain the grass with their blood, which is always red no matter where it came from. Then if there's a killing there's public outrage and accusations that if the schools and teachers were doing their jobs these terrible things wouldn't happen. There are patriots who say, If these kids have the time and energy to be fighting one another why can't we just ship them overseas to fight the goddam Communists and settle that problem for once and for all?

  Vocational schools were seen by many as dumping grounds for students ill-equipped for academic high schools. That was snobbery. It didn't matter to the public that thousands of young people wanted to be auto mechanics, beauticians, machinists, electricians, plumbers, carpenters. They didn't want to be bothered with the Reformation, the War of 1812, Walt Whitman, art appreciation, the sex life of the fruit fly.

  But, man, if we have to do it we'll do it. We'll sit in those classes that have nothing to do with our lives. We'll work in our shops where we learn about the real world and we'll try to be nice to the teachers and get outa here in four years. Whew!

  Here they are. The door slams against the shelf that runs along the base of the blackboard, stirs a cloud of chalk dust. Entering a room is a big deal. Why couldn't they simply walk into the room, say, Good morning, and sit? Oh, no. They have to push and jostle. One says, Hey, in a mock threatening way and another one says, Hey, right back. They insult one another, ignore the late bell, take their time sitting. That's cool, baby. Look, there's a new teacher up there and new teachers don't know shit. So? Bell? Teacher? New guy. Who is he? Who cares? They talk to friends across the room, lounge in desks too small for them, stick out their legs, laugh if someone trips. They stare out the window, over my head at the American flag or the pictures taped to the walls by Miss Mudd, now retired, pictures of Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Emily Dickinson and -- how did he get here? -- Ernest Hemingway. It's the Life magazine cover and that picture is everywhere. They gouge their initials on desk tops with penknives, declarations of love with hearts and arrows alongside the long-ago gougings of their fathers and brothers. Some old desks are gouged so deep you can see your knees through holes where hearts and names used to be. Couples sit together, hold hands, whisper and gaze into each other's eyes while three boys against the back closets sing doowop, bass, baritone and high notes, man, snap fingers, tell the world they're just teenagers in love.

  Five times a day they push into the room. Five classes, thirty to thirty-five in each class. Teenagers? In Ireland we saw them in American movies, moody, surly, driving around in cars, and we wondered why they were moody and surly. They had food and clothes and money and still they were mean to their parents. There were no teenagers in Ireland, not in my world. You were a child. You went to school till you were fourteen. If you were mean to your parents they'd give you a good belt in the gob and send you flying across the room. You grew up, got a laboring job, got married, drank your pint on a Friday night, jumped on the wife that same night and kept her pregnant forever. In a few years you emigrated to England to work on the building sites or to enlist in His Majesty's forces and fight for the Empire.

  The problem of the sandwich started when a boy named Petey called out, Anyone wan' a baloney sandwich?

  You kiddin'? Your mom must hate you, givin' you sandwiches like that.

  Petey threw his brown-paper sandwich bag at the critic, Andy, and the class cheered. Fight, fight, they said. Fight, fight. The bag landed on the floor between the blackboard and Andy's front-row desk.

  I came from behind my desk and made the first sound of my teaching career: Hey. Four years of higher education at New York University and all I could think of was Hey.

  I said it again. Hey.

  They ignored me. They were busy promoting the fight that would kill time and divert me from any lesson I might be planning. I moved toward Petey and made my first teacher statement, Stop throwing sandwiches. Petey and the class looked startled. This teacher, new teacher, just stopped a good fight. New teachers are supposed to mind their own business or send for the principal or a dean and everyone knows it's years before they come. Which means you can have a good fight while waiting. Besides, what are you gonna do with a teacher who tells you stop throwing sandwiches when you already threw the sandwich?

  Benny called out from the back of the room. Hey, teach, he awredy threw the sangwidge. No use tellin' him now don't throw the sangwidge. They's the sangwidge there on the floor.

  The class laughed. There's nothing sillier in the world than a teacher telling you don't do it after you already did it. One boy covered his mouth and said, Stoopid, and I knew he was referring to me. I wanted to knock him out of his seat, but that would have been the end of my teaching career. Besides, the hand that covered his mouth was huge, and his desk was too small for his body.

  Someone said, Yo, Benny, you a lawyer, man? and the class laughed again. Yeah, yeah, they said, and waited for my move. What will this new teacher do?

  Professors of education at New York University never lectured on how to handle flying-sandwich situations. They talked about theories and philosophies of education, about moral and ethical imperatives, about the necessity of dealing with the whole child, the gestalt, if you don't mind, the child's felt needs, but never about critical moments in the classroom.

  Should I say, Hey, Petey, get up here and pick up that sandwich, or else? Should I pick it up myself and throw it into the wastepaper basket to show my contempt for people who throw sandwiches while millions starve all over the world?

  They had to recognize I was boss, that I was tough, that I'd take none of their shit.

  The sandwich, in wax paper, lay halfway out of the bag and the aroma told me there was more to this than baloney. I picked it up and slid it from its wrapping. It was not any ordinary sandwich where meat is slapped between slices of tasteless white American bread. This bread was dark and thick, baked by an Italian mother in Brooklyn, bread firm enough to hold slices of a rich baloney, layered with slices of tomato, onions and peppers, drizzled with olive oil and charged with a tongue-dazzling relish.

  I ate the sandwich.

  It was my first act of classroom management. My mouth, clogged with sandwich, attracted the attention of the class. They gawked up at me, thirty-four boys and girls, average age sixteen. I could see the admiration in their eyes, first teacher in their lives to pick up a sandwich from the floor and eat it in full view. Sandwich man. In my boyhood in Ireland we admired one schoolmaster who peeled and ate an apple every day and rewarded good
boys with the long peel. These kids watched the oil dribble down my chin to my two-dollar tie from Klein-on-the-Square.

  Petey said, Yo, teacher, that's my sandwich you et.

  Class told him, Shaddap. Can't you see the teacher is eating?

  I licked my fingers. I said, Yum, made a ball of paper bag and wax paper and flipped it into the trash basket. The class cheered. Wow, they said, and Yo, baby, and M-a-a-a-n. Look at dat. He eats the sandwich. He hits the basket. Wow.

  So this is teaching? Yeah, wow. I felt like a champion. I ate the sandwich. I hit the basket. I felt I could do anything with this class. I thought I had them in the palm of my hand. Fine, except I didn't know what to do next. I was there to teach, and wondered how I should move from a sandwich situation to spelling or grammar or the structure of a paragraph or anything related to the subject I was supposed to teach, English.

  My students smiled till they saw the principal's face framed in the door window. Bushy black eyebrows halfway up his forehead shaped a question. He opened the door and beckoned me out. A word, Mr. McCourt?

  Petey whispered, Hey, mister. Don't worry about the sandwich. I didn't want it anyway.

  The class said, Yeah, yeah, in a way that showed they were on my side if I had trouble with the principal, my first experience of teacher-student solidarity. In the classroom your students might stall and complain but when a principal or any other outsider appeared there was immediate unity, a solid front.

  Out in the hallway, he said, I'm sure you understand, Mr. McCourt, it isn't seemly to have teachers eating their lunch at nine a.m. in their classrooms in the presence of these boys and girls. Your first teacher experience and you choose to begin it by eating a sandwich? Is that proper procedure, young man? It's not our practice here, gives children the wrong idea. You can see the reasoning, eh? Think of the problems we'd have if teachers just dropped everything and began to eat their lunches in class, especially in the morning when it's still breakfast time. We have enough trouble with kids sneaking little nibbles during morning classes and attracting cockroaches and various rodents. Squirrels have been chased from these rooms, and I won't even mention rats. If we're not vigilant these kids, and some teachers, your colleagues, young man, will turn the school into one big cafeteria.

  I wanted to tell him the truth about the sandwich and how well I handled the situation, but if I did it might be the end of my teaching job. I wanted to say, Sir, it was not my lunch. That was the sandwich of a boy who threw it at another boy and I picked it up because I'm new here and this thing happened in my class and there was nothing in the courses at college on sandwiches, the throwing and retrieving of. I know I ate the sandwich but I did it out of desperation or I did it to teach the class a lesson about waste and to show them who was in charge or, Jesus, I ate it because I was hungry and I promise never to do it again for fear I might lose my good job though you must admit the class was quiet. If that's the way to capture the attention of kids in a vocational high school you ought to send out for a pile of baloney sandwiches for the four classes I still have to meet today.

  I said nothing.

  The principal said he was there to help me because, Ha, ha, I looked like I might need a lot of help. I'll admit, he said, you had their full attention. OK, but see if you can do it in a less dramatic way. Try teaching. That's what you're here for, young man. Teaching. Now you have ground to recover. That's all. No eating in class for teacher or student.

  I said, Yes, sir, and he waved me back to the classroom.

  The class said, What'd he say?

  He said I shouldn't eat my lunch in the classroom at nine a.m.

  You wasn't eatin' no lunch.

  I know, but he saw me with the sandwich and told me not to do it again.

  Man, that's unfair.

  Petey said, I'll tell my mom you liked her sandwich. I'll tell her you got in a lot of trouble over her sandwich.

  All right, Petey, but don't tell her you threw it away.

  Naw, naw. She'd kill me. She's from Sicily. They get excited over there in Sicily.

  Tell her it was the most delicious sandwich I ever had in my life, Petey.

  OK.

  Mea culpa.

  Instead of teaching, I told stories.

  Anything to keep them quiet and in their seats.

  They thought I was teaching.

  I thought I was teaching.

  I was learning.

  And you called yourself a teacher?

  I didn't call myself anything. I was more than a teacher. And less. In the high school classroom you are a drill sergeant, a rabbi, a shoulder to cry on, a disciplinarian, a singer, a low-level scholar, a clerk, a referee, a clown, a counselor, a dress-code enforcer, a conductor, an apologist, a philosopher, a collaborator, a tap dancer, a politician, a therapist, a fool, a traffic cop, a priest, a mother - father - brother - sister - uncle - aunt, a bookkeeper, a critic, a psychologist, the last straw.

  In the teachers' cafeteria veterans warned me, Son, tell 'em nothing about yourself. They're kids, goddam it. You're the teacher. You have a right to privacy. You know the game, don't you? The little buggers are diabolical. They are not, repeat not, your natural friends. They can smell it when you're going to teach a real lesson on grammar or something, and they'll head you off at the pass, baby. Watch 'em. Those kids have been at this for years, eleven or twelve, and they have teachers all figured out. They'll know if you're even thinking about grammar or spelling, and they'll raise their little hands and put on that interested expression and ask you what games you played as a kid or who do you like for the goddam World Series. Oh, yeah. And you'll fall for it. Next thing is you're spilling your guts and they go home not knowing one end of a sentence from the other, but telling the moms and dads about your life. Not that they care. They'll get by, but where does that leave you? You can never get back the bits and pieces of your life that stick in their little heads. Your life, man. It's all you have. Tell 'em nothing.

  The advice was wasted. I learned through trial and error and paid a price for it. I had to find my own way of being a man and a teacher and that is what I struggled with for thirty years in and out of the classrooms of New York. My students didn't know there was a man up there escaping a cocoon of Irish history and Catholicism, leaving bits of that cocoon everywhere.

  My life saved my life. On my second day at McKee a boy asks a question that sends me into the past and colors the way I teach for the next thirty years. I am nudged into the past, the materials of my life.

  Joey Santos calls out, Yo, teach....

  You are not to call out. You are to raise your hand.

  Yeah, yeah, said Joey, but...

  They have a way of saying yeah yeah that tells you they're barely tolerating you. In the yeah yeah they're saying, We're trying to be patient, man, giving you a break because you're just a new teacher.

  Joey raises his hand. Yo, teacher man....

  Call me Mr. McCourt.

  Yeah. OK. So, you Scotch or somethin'?

  Joey is the mouth. There's one in every class along with the complainer, the clown, the goody-goody, the beauty queen, the volunteer for everything, the jock, the intellectual, the momma's boy, the mystic, the sissy, the lover, the critic, the jerk, the religious fanatic who sees sin everywhere, the brooding one who sits in the back staring at the desk, the happy one, the saint who finds good in all creatures. It's the job of the mouth to ask questions, anything to keep the teacher from the boring lesson. I may be a new teacher but I'm on to Joey's delaying game. It's universal. I played the same game in Ireland. I was the mouth in my class in Leamy's National School. The master would write an algebra question or an Irish conjugation on the board and the boys would hiss, Ask him a question, McCourt. Get him away from the bloody lesson. Go on, go on.

  I'd say, Sir, did they have algebra in olden times in Ireland?

  Mr. O'Halloran liked me, good boy, neat handwriting, always polite and obedient. He would put the chalk down, and from the way he sat at his des
k and took his time before speaking you could see how happy he was to escape from algebra and Irish syntax. He'd say, Boys, you have every right to be proud of your ancestors. Long before the Greeks, even the Egyptians, your forefathers in this lovely land could capture the rays of the sun in the heart of winter and direct them to dark inner chambers for a few golden moments. They knew the ways of the heavenly bodies and that took them beyond algebra, beyond calculus, beyond, boys, oh, beyond beyond.

  Sometimes, in the warm days of spring, he dozed off in his chair and we sat quietly, forty of us, waiting for him to wake, not even daring to leave the room if he slept past going-home time.

  No. I'm not Scotch. I'm Irish.

  Joey looks sincere. Oh, yeah? What's Irish?

  Irish is whatever comes out of Ireland.

  Like St. Patrick, right?

  Well, no, not exactly. This leads to the telling of the story of St. Patrick, which keeps us away from the b-o-r-i-n-g English lesson, which leads to other questions.

  Hey, mister. Everyone talk English over there in Ireland?

  What kinda sports didja play?

  You all Catlics in Ireland?

  Don't let them take over the classroom. Stand up to them. Show them who's in charge. Be firm or be dead. Take no shit. Tell them, Open your notebooks. Time for the spelling list.