What To Be When I Grow Up

What Will I Be When I Grow Up?

Me after shaving my beard

It was 1975. In 1975 Microsoft starts, or rather is trademarked, New York City is bankrupt, Spain's General Francisco Franco dies and a new late night comedy show “Saturday Night Live” debuts with a running gag about Franco's death. Gerald Ford is president, Saigon falls to the North Vietnamese, and Jimmy Hoffa disappears. It's the year of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham join Fleetwood Mac and The Captain and Tennille's “Love Will Keep Us Together” will be Billboard's number one song of the year. Me, I'm living in Eugene, Oregon with my girlfriend Cyndi while attending the University there. The kind of music I'm mostly listening to is Reggae, Blues, singer/songwriter and something called Progressive or Outlaw Country.

I was in college with a plan to major in education and become a teacher. I liked working with kids and had discovered that I worked best with kids between the grades of 4^th and 8^th grades. I had always struggled with figuring out just what I wanted to do when I grew up. This was the first time that I had any sort of clear idea. It would turn out to be the only time in my life when I did and it didn't last long.

I was still at Laurel Hill and while working with the kids in the classroom I noticed that many of the kids did not seem to like going to gym class, especially the boys who I knew liked to play sports. I thought this was odd. I had always liked gym class because I liked to play sports. I asked Angie, the class teacher, about it. She said she noticed the same and was also curious as to why that was. She asked if I had noticed anything on the days I took the class to gym. I hadn't. She said she hadn't either but felt there was something off. Angie asked me if I would be willing to take the kids to gym and stay for the whole session to see if I could pick up on anything. I agreed. Later that day I saw a couple of the boys after school. I asked them about gym class and they rolled their eyes. The gym teacher was a woman. The classes were co-ed. I started asking questions. They said they didn't mind having the class with the girls and the gender of the teacher was not mentioned but they finally told me that they didn't like her. When I asked why they told me that during the games they played she would often help out on one side, the side that had the people she liked, according to them. They said she'd make sure that side won even if she had to cheat or change the rules to do it. I was skeptical thinking she was maybe just very strict with the rules and they didn't like it. I also thought maybe it really did have something to do with her being a woman. I appreciated them sharing with me and I planned to go to the next gym class. I intended to be completely neutral or as neutral as I could even though this was the same gym teacher who had so thoughtfully left up that trampoline my first night on the job in the after school program. The next day I took everyone to gym class and stayed for the whole class. The activities were not really of a team nature and I didn't see much other than she did seem to be sharper with some of the kids, especially some of the boys, but nothing out of line. Perhaps they had given her problems in the past. I decided to go to another gym class the following week. It was raining (hello, it's Eugene Oregon) that day. She divided the class up into two groups for an indoor kick ball game. Everything seemed fine at first but then the gym teacher decided she would pitch. She played more aggressively for one of the teams even taking away plays from some of the kids. It reminded me of some baseball teams I played on where a kid would run over to field in front of a kid who he thought was not very good. We used to them “ball hogs”. She played more passively for the other team. She also started pitching noticeably tougher to one if the teams again aiding the team she had aided in the field. It certainly looked like she was clearly favoring one of the teams. I reported this to Angie. Angie asked me to go with her to report what I had observed to the principal. I reminded her that the principal and I were not exactly best buds but she felt it would be better if I went too since I had witnessed it. She and the principal often did not see eye to eye either and she felt he would dismiss it if she reported it alone and second hand. So I went. He listened and then thanked us for letting him know. He said he would have a talk with the gym teacher. I think he probably did but I'm not sure much changed. Angie followed up with him a few days later and he told her he thought I over reacted like she often did. He said no one else had lodged any complaints including the parents. I never saw the gym teacher interfere with any of the games again while I was around so maybe she mended her ways or maybe she was wise to me...

One of the boys in Angie's class got into trouble with the principal and then acted rather surly to him upon being caught. The principal's punishment was to remove him from Angie's class and place him in another class with a different teacher. He certainly deserved some repercussion but this seemed a little harsh to me. I felt this would tend to make the situation worse as this kid was currently going through some tough stuff at home. He was pretty well behaved in Angie's class. He had initially been a problem for her and had also been one of my problem kids in the after school program. But now that we knew each other better he had become one of my more favorite kids. He was not a fan of the principal and was not above acting up in front of him but he did have a very good relationship with Angie. He was very upset when he found out that he was going to be removed from Angie's class. Both Angie and I lobbied for moving the kid back to her classroom – arguing that he was comfortable and doing well there and that moving him now would set him back especially given the situation he had at home. That night someone marked up the door to the building that lead to the classrooms. The thoughts expressed contained a couple words of the four letter variety. I figured it must have been him retaliating for what he saw as an unfair punishment. I caught him after class and talked with him for awhile and he ended up confessing it was him. Fortunately it was a Friday. He agreed to meet me early Saturday morning to help clean up the door. The principal of course was very upset. He called me in a couple of times to ask me about it. He never did figure out who actually did it and was quite perplexed about how that door got cleaned up so quickly. The boy never did get back into Angie's class and he struggled for a while in his new class. The damaged door case was never solved or maybe it was just let go.

At the after school program I was settled in. Everything was going smoothly and I pretty much knew everyone involved especially the kids. A few kids would often come into my office to talk when I was there. One day a couple of kids walked in and after stumbling around a bit asked me if I smoked pot. This was in the mid-70's. I had been worried that someday some of the kids might ask me this since I had gotten so friendly with many of them. I was a college student and just about everyone I knew smoked pot. I was not about to tell them that but I also did not want to have to lie to them. So I turned and gave them a hard stare and asked sharply “Do I look like someone who smokes pot?” Of course I did. I had long hair, a beard and was probably wearing jeans, a flannel shirt and maybe a leather vest, but because the tone of my voice sounded agitated and they had really never heard me respond that way before, they immediately replied no and scurried out of the office. It was spur of the moment but it worked. I felt like I dodged a bullet and they must have spread the word as no one at the school ever asked me that again.

The teachers mostly seemed to get along fine with each other but the school was divided. Some of the teachers supported the principal, others tended to be continually at odds with him. I, of course, was in the latter group, and I was also one of the more outspoken members. In spite of this the teachers were supportive of me. It was easier for me to speak up since I was not putting my livelihood in jeopardy. The principal was interested in moving up in administration and as such he was adverse to doing anything that could possibly bring any negative attention to the school. His priority was keeping the kids safe and under control (good goals) but he focused on minimal outside, particularly parental, complaints. It seemed to me that the teaching and helping the kids was not as high on his agenda.

I wasn't even a teacher and here I was banging heads with the principal and making myself quite unpopular with him. There seemed to be quite a lot of politics in this one little elementary school and I seemed to be a little too outspoken for my own good. I was starting to worry about just how long I would actually last as a teacher before I was fired and began to question whether education was indeed the right profession for me.

I worked with Angie in the classroom for the entire school year. I loved working with the kids but by the end of that year I concluded that I should think about doing something other than teaching. I stayed on as the Assistant Director of Continuing Education Program for another year. It was a great job and I enjoyed it, especially the kids. After the end of the second year I was informed that the school was making some changes and it was time for both them and me to move on. I couldn't blame them, two years of me was probably more than enough. Looking back two years also seemed to be about the amount of time it took most my girlfriends to realize they'd had enough of me as well.