Saturday, September 20, 2014

The Regime

My first administrators were (inordinately?) proud of their German heritage. As I’ve noted elsewhere, stereotypes can cheat both the typer and the typee, but generally do not arise in a vacuum. German culture is not known for its empathetic qualities, and Rich Eichhorst’s and Siegfried Messner’s “all in” embracement of their Germanity (yes, spell-check, I know it’s not a real word) led them to some insensitive, at least, and more likely offensive behaviors. At least one person was offended, for sure.
One or both of these administrators had managed to procure some Nazi memorabilia (Messner’s father had been an unrepentant member of the SS, a fact he related often, without any seeming embarrassment), including some rubber stamps that included the swastika. They got great amusement sending each other notes with those stamps clearly displayed.
I had not yet ventured into the Church of Righteous Indignation, so I mostly thought they were weird and just kind of nodded pleasantly. That I was a new teacher and they were my bosses is the only excuse I can offer. Fortunately, the practice didn’t last that long.
The school secretary* (as they were called then) was Lena Duggan, who had emigrated from England. She put up with their nonsense for a while, then informed them that she had spent too much time unconscious in a London hospital from a Luftwaffe air attack to find their shenanigans one bit amusing, that she was offended, and they needed to knock it off. Thus did the swastika quickly disappear at Hancock. Just as an outgunned Britain held off the more powerful Germany, so did a feisty English ex-pat bring two grown (sort of) men to their senses, if not their knees.

* An aside for current and prospective teachers: the school secretary, or administrative assistant if you need or want more syllables, is, hands down, the most important person in a school. If she (and they have universally been women in my experience) is not your friend, you need to work on that. If you haven’t already discovered, nothing changes when an administrator is out of the building, but everything goes downhill very quickly should the secretary be gone for more than an hour, which is why so many tend to grab lunch at their desks or in a cubby-hole around the corner. Cleaning up the mess created by their absence is just one more task for these school building heroines.

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