In college, I took one history course after the other, but in my curiousness I did not formally concentrate in any particular area. So, when the time came to graduate, I really knew my history but had failed to consider focusing on job prospects. I may have been distracted a bit by a burgeoning career in the restaurant business, working my way up to running the kitchen on occasion for one of the top restaurants in my college town. And there I was, opening and closing a restaurant on many days, working incredible hours, but also with student loans to repay. So I went back, and studied all the required courses to be a teacher of social studies. I student-taught in a middle school near the college, and hitched a ride with a pretty girl who was my age but had landed a real paying job at the school, right out of college. We kept each other company, and she soon fell for me. We married five years later, after which I whisked her off her feet once more—all this can be yours—to move under the same roof as my parents.
While she was still my girlfriend, I tried like crazy to get a job near her, out in our college town. I came in second in a job pool that had 80 applicants. In desperation, I applied all over New York State, wearing out the old Beast on hundreds of miles to interviews to no avail, until I got the call to go to Glens Falls, the city across the river where my father taught—not to his high school, but the Catholic school in town. I passed that interview, and bid my future wife a tearful goodbye, hoping that somehow this relationship would last. I had my first real teaching job.
On the third floor at the small but prestigious St. Mary’s Academy with its big windows overlooking the Hudson, I watched the mist rise over the river as I swept my own floors and prepared for my 7th, 8th, and 9th graders to arrive. I conducted my lessons after long nights of preparation and assignment grading, and though these charges could be goofy, they were also fun. At Friday noon Mass I instructed students to kneel properly, butts off pews, and even the rebel agnostics among them grudgingly responded to my admonitions. There was a pride in a steady job and a steady paycheck, but I was making less than I could have brought home had I stuck with the restaurant job. By happenstance, my dad heard of a sudden opening at my alma mater just as the following school year was getting underway, and duly noting the irony, I applied. I got the job in November but had no idea what I was walking into.
*
‘What’s your policy on homework, Mr. Anders?’
I’m leaning over the kid’s desk, hands placed firmly on either side. In suitcoat and tie, I’m making myself into an imposing presence. I’ve just attempted to collect written homework assignments from 25 mostly non-committed sixteen-year-olds, and the results are, shall we say, discouraging. Should I assign the entire class to detention with me after school, or choose one to make an example out of him? I decide on the latter.
Big Lemmy, a tall, long-haired teenager with a black motorcycle jacket, lifts his head up from the desk long enough to answer coolly.
‘Not to do it.’
Clunk.
Lemmy’s head returns to the desktop in a disquieting commentary on my attempt to present myself as the new lord and master.
Lemmy is face down and unresponsive, and I’m left flapping in the proverbial breeze. Best leave him be, though the rest of the class is nearly rioting in an expression of collective admiration over his truthful response.
So how in the world would I make it until June? When I do have the audacity to drop the hammer in the classroom in the next few weeks, I’m notified quite strongly by a young adult that I can consider myself a ‘dead man.’ Besides the pending school disciplinary action, the office suggests strongly that I go to the police station to ‘swear out a complaint’ against the offender.
A what?
And for the first time in my life I’m sitting in a police station, in the first month of my public school teaching career, trying to balance in a wobbly chair with stainless steel ankle-shackles affixed to the legs, listening to the officer clack out his report on a typewriter. They say that teaching has its special rewards.
*
Things aren’t going much more smoothly after Christmas break. It may be time to rethink and reboot, but new teachers don’t have this kind of time. In desperation, I am living day by day. I’m banging out lesson plans, notes, and tests nightly after dinner on the typewriter for hours at a stretch. I try calling parents, but there is no privacy at my house and surely it is a sign of weakness—after all, the old man doesn’t have to call parents.
As I struggle to survive in the spring of this first year, a tight budget year when layoffs are being presented as a distinct possibility, I secretly pray that a pink slip will land in my mailbox to end my misery and I will have an excuse to move on to some other occupation. When the notices do come, I am spared, but a co-worker is not. In a moment of duress, a nuclear bombardment of frustration and raw, naked truth is unloaded by the recipient in my direction—‘It should have been you, you don’t even want to be here!’ I keep my silence, because I’m astonished that my mind has been read—and now I can add guilt to the heap of misery that I think is my life.
I am afraid to ask for help; I would not even know where to start. I did not realize that my private distress showed so much. I don’t complain about the troubles I faced each day in the classroom—surely it is a sign of weakness. In my mind, Mr. Third Teacher was hired to be the answer at the plate, and I feel like I am now facing the third strike. Maybe they will fire me at the end of the year, anyway—problem solved. When the door closes, they say, another will open. I am going to nail this baby shut.
I’m sinking like a stone. I want to just walk away—but after not being laid off, I don’t know what to do. It is night and fog, a tunnel vision day-to-day miserable slog that I feel powerless to escape. So I go on, because I can only put one foot before the other.
*
On schedule, the principal walked into the classroom for my official evaluation later that year. I had the best lesson planned, but somehow it devolved into a train wreck. The ninth graders were flirting with each other, joking, and throwing stuff as I tried to bring order and conduct the lesson. The principal was stone-faced in the back of the room, tapping his pencil on his notebook as hormones raged out of control. Mercifully, the bell rang and he gave me a nod; before darting out he told me to make an appointment with the secretary for the post-observation conference. And away they all went, rushing past me for the door, not a care in the world as they left me to contemplate the complete implosion of my career.
*
Sitting outside the principal’s office waiting for one’s turn to be raked over the coals is not a pleasant experience. The second hand on the clock seems to wind backwards; the hustle and bustle of the comings and goings of students and staff seem to mock me as I wait for the ax to fall, the platform to be opened beneath my feet. The door swings open, and I am summoned forward for the inevitable.
‘Sit down. Tell me how your lesson went.’ The principal, a big guy, goes back behind his imposing desk and sits.
I try to explain my objectives and which of the mandated bullet points regarding the GDP growth of the Indian national economy since World War II I was trying to instill in my hormone-addled charges, though I’m not sure I’m making enough eye contact.
He leans in, interrupting after a short while.
‘You really did not have control, did you?’
Here we are. I shake my head silently, a sickness rising up from my stomach, not really able to talk anymore, anyway. That lump is in the way.
He looks me in the eye for what seems like a really long time. He’s got my number, and now I just want to get it over with.
Busted.
Crashed and burning.
Cooked.
Cashiered.
He looks back to the notes that he scribbled in my room that day, crumples them up, and drops them into his wastepaper basket. He settles back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head, and with a hint of a smile, says seven words:
When you are r
eady, let me know.[*]
*
I breathed out with a bizarre mixture of relief and resignation and survived through that first year’s end. I left town for the summer to go back to work on my advanced degree, still not sure about whether the path I am on is the right direction for me. Sure, there were some kids I hit it off with, I tell myself. But as a new school year approaches, so does that sense of dread I feel every morning as I reach for the Marlboro Lights. A few days before the start of classes I see my computer-generated roster and I can feel my chest constrict with each name as my finger anxiously traces down the page. The same torturers are to be in my classes—again! I steel myself as they walk through the door, but something unexpected happens. The kids are a ‘summer away’ older, and they are genuinely glad to see me.
One of the things I did have going for me in the classroom was that I actually knew a lot about the history that I was supposed to be teaching students. I was a good storyteller; I was enthusiastic, I was passionate. I listened to them. They began to listen to me. Over time, I became their class adviser, orchestrated their prom, and took them on their senior trip. We matured in our own ways, together. I had survived. They spread their wings; I spread mine. Maybe it was time to fly.
*
The months tick by. Springtime arrives again and we wind down the schoolyear by immersing ourselves in the study of the 20th century. I am lecturing energetically about World War II, and I’m getting a response; my enthusiasm seems contagious. In the late eighties, all the students would raise a hand when I would call out for examples of grandparents or other relatives who had served in the war—frequently two hands would go up in the air. Every kid had a personal connection to the most cataclysmic event in the history of mankind—and at that time, many of the soldiers, airmen, Marines, and sailors who came home from the war were still with us.
As the 1990s unfolded, the United States commemorated the US entry into World War II with the 50th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. After that, we had the 50th anniversary of the Normandy landings, which again attracted much interest. The films Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan were released to much fanfare and critical acclaim. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, a work in progress for over a decade, opened its doors on a cold April day in 1993. These events signaled to those who had lived through World War II that it was okay to begin to talk about these things, that maybe people were finally ready to listen.
Building on that momentum, I conjured up a simple survey for students to interview family members, kindling something that every teacher searches for—a tool to motivate and encourage students to want to learn more, for the sake of just learning it. We brought veterans into the school for forums with the student body. Young people who despised school stopped me in the hall to voice appreciation after listening to them. I learned a lot about World War II, but I also learned a lot about teaching.
Shortly after the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, we took it a level further, initiating a dedicated project on the oral history on World War II and starting a website for the testimonies we recorded. My students also began to fan out into the community to listen to and record the stories, forging bonds and bridging generational divides, and bringing happiness and companionship to their elders. These students became collectors of memory, improved their ‘people skills,’ honed their capacity for sustained concentration and analytics, and sharpened their writing chops for college in the process. And besides, it was fun. At some primal level we knew what we were doing was important, but we had no idea what this project would lead to in the years ahead.
Thirty years later, I think back on these moments when I was going to leave teaching before I even really got started. Maybe there is something to be said about persevering and finding one’s way. And maybe, the universe also had other plans.
CHAPTER NINE
A Date with the Cosmos
1989/Hudson Falls, NY
My father jiggles the key into the lock of the back door to his school, and we slip in to the back stairwell leading up to the floor where his office is located. I’m meeting him after school, now in my third year of teaching. The old man is intent on giving me notes or filmstrips or some other teaching materials, which I don’t really want, reminding me of the times in high school when he tried to hand down his old ties or worse, his Haggar slacks— ‘I bought an extra pair, they’ll fit you good.’ While he was the style king in his day as a 30-something teacher in the swinging ‘60s—the first to don a turtleneck in the classroom, the first to sport a beard in the high school—I’ll stick to Mom’s fashion sense, thanks.
We encounter three young teens kicking a crushed milk carton around. As we move in their direction they disregard us, absorbed in this mindless miscreant activity, slapping away with their feet in rhythmic passes. I feel like I am doing the old man a favor by meeting him, but I can’t get past the fact that these knuckleheads seem to be defying the surprise appearance of authority on their stage. I wonder how My Father the Teacher is going to handle this—would they be sent to the office? Reprimanded? Told to pick up the milk carton and exit the building promptly?
With fluidity that hardly breaks his stride, he leaps in the middle and completes a few passes back and forth. I don’t think he even knows these guys, but he does not care. He’s in the moment, for the moment, and enjoys the kids more than the power he could probably lord over them. So here is a lesson, after all, even though we never even observed one another teach in the classroom; no pretensions, no airs, just acceptance, trust-building, respect.[*] Dad retired a few years later after 30 years of teaching, and in a 1992 newspaper story that was written on us as father/son teachers he remarked, ‘Matthew’s very independent….and if you know your subject and you’re fair, it doesn’t make any difference what you teach.’
It was making sense to me that a sense of confidence in the classroom allayed most of the problems that had the potential to arise, and that harnessing my passions with students made all the difference in the world. And so it was that I pursued my passion even outside of the classroom, and set forth on the journey, the manifestations of which would resonate through time like ripples on a pond. I was about to start tossing pebbles.
*
June 2001
My dad passed in the summer of 2000. As we approached the first anniversary, I arrived to pick up my young children from daycare, and struck up a conversation with another dad. Tim Connolly knew of my interest in interviewing World War II veterans, and that we had recently begun publishing the oral history narratives on a class website. He suggested that I come over to his house when school got out for the summer, as his father-in-law, a retired New York State Supreme Court justice and Army veteran, would be in town.
July 26, 2001/Hudson Falls, NY
A pleasant summer afternoon and I am sitting in another living room here in my hometown, talking to a man I have never met before. He is tall and fit, smiling, and has recently turned eighty years old, hands gripping the arms of the rocking chair in his daughter’s living room. He is the picture of health, punctuating the air with his infectious, good-humored laugh and with a twinkle in his eye as he is recounting his Army travails as a combat soldier in the European Theater of Operations. I think I know a bit about World War II, and we have a lively conversation, back and forth, for almost two solid hours. I took the time that afternoon to talk to Judge Carrol Walsh, and somehow the universe tilted just long enough for a crack to be opened across time and space. But it almost did not happen.
*
In 1945, Sergeant Walsh was the tank commander of Tank 13, a Sherman light tank in Dog Company of the 743rd Tank Battalion, an armored unit working in tandem with the famed 30th Infantry Division. He had arrived in France in July 1944, and by the time that the Battle of the Bulge had broken out the following December, he was commanding his own tank and crew of four. That July afternoon 57 years later he told me many stories of pitched battles and close calls, of weeks that alternated
between the extremes of boredom and sheer terror. As he put it,
I [was] twenty-four. I would have been in combat for ten months. That is a long time to survive—to survive ten months was to survive a hundred years! I could not even remember my former life… I was a fugitive from the law of averages, as it was.
It has been a wonderful interview, really more of a freewheeling discussion with a person who feels like an old friend on a subject of mutual passion. As the conversation winds down, I am confident that I have a gold mine of first-person World War II testimony from the combat soldier’s perspective, and I’m almost at the point of packing up the video camera that I have set up; it’s summer after all, and I have other things that I need to do today. Judge Walsh’s daughter, though, has a final question for her father. I sit back, and listen politely for a few moments more. She puts the question to her father:
A Train Near Magdeburg Page 18
