You're Fired!

Before Donald Trump ultimately delivers his own coup de grace (surely some statement so outrageously stupid will finally sink his ship, although current polls and events offer depressing evidence to the contrary, despite his best efforts to live down to my expectations) and fades into (at least) political oblivion, I thought I’d share my story that ties into his (typically despicable) catch phrase. I am going to post it on both my Hancock and personal blog because, well, I can.

The setting: Year 5, which some of you might know as Tenure Year. Although tenure’s protections are vastly overrated, it does mean that administrators must at least follow procedural rules to fire you. (They do NOT need to actually prove their allegations.) Prior to that, it’s a simple, “Buh-Bye.”

I don’t claim that I had achieved anything close to Master Teacher status by this time in my career. In fact, I make no claim to have ever achieved that. But this was an especially tough year.

• A new principal, the late John Gibson, arrived. 

• I was the president of the teachers union and was a constant (and some would argue, perpetually obnoxious) PIA to administration. I was also effective.

• I had the worst class in my entire career (of course, I didn’t know it at the time; I probably DID intuitively know that if many more like that had followed I would have self-terminated, at least as a teacher): Freshman English, a class roster of 28 students, 24 boys and 4 girls, with family names that read like a Who’s Who of Lemay infamy (including a couple of the girls). Average reading level of 12^th percentile, with the highest at the 25^th percentile. 20% were off the chart at the bottom. (I know of only 3 from that group who graduated, although I may have missed 1 or 2.)

• I was naive, believing that I could change the world and them. I kept trying to actually teach instead of just retaining (some semblance of) control. I had yet to learn that you couldn’t actually teach unless you had control; I hadn’t needed to know that the previous four years. So at least I learned something that year.

• I was not a good teacher for those kids. Could someone else have done better? I don’t know, but they could hardly have been worse. (They DID provide me with some of my best stories, though.)

• Relatively new father, with new responsibilities in that area and resultant marital stresses did not help.

Did John Gibson actually have orders to fire me? Can’t prove it one way or another, but he was an ambitious man and knew, at least instinctively, that getting credit for my leaving the Place would be a feather in his cap.

I was struggling. It was no secret. Gibson told an English department colleague concerned about evaluation that it be unfair (his words), for example, to evaluate me based on that one class. (I remember no particular problems with any of my others; neither do I remember even one bona fide evaluation prior that point in my career. One year’s consisted of the principal stepping into my room and throwing me a mini-basketball from Lemay Bank; I successfully reached down and to the left to make the grab and earned praise: “You’re all right!”) Guess which was the ONLY class he sat in on and on which I was evaluated.

That spring, the late Jim (father of Cardinal broadcaster Dan) McLaughlin and I were in the lounge next to my room when the late Don Steckhan, math teacher emeritus, came huffing and puffing up the stairs. (Steckhan was a 5x5 smoker, so that description is pretty literal.) PCs were at least a decade away from common usage; everything was handwritten on paper, and Steckhan had a habit of perusing said papers on the principal’s desk while he was away.

“You need to get down there,” he wheezed. “You're being fired!” Mac (and I? – maybe) immediately headed down, confirmed what Steckhan had seen on the evaluation, and the wheels started turning.

I met with state union reps, lawyers were contacted, strategies discussed (including initial preparation for a lawsuit claiming a violation of my 1^st Amendment rights – did I say I tended to be outspoken and critical?). Most importantly, Mac (the law school graduate) set up a sidebar meeting with Superintendent Brodbeck. As near as I can tell, whether this was a plot or just a rogue operation, Brodbeck was either not in the loop or up for a fight. In any case, he assured Mac, “We don't want to fire the union president.”

They didn’t. When the evaluation conference was finally held (the shortest in my career, except for the year the [different] principal wasn’t speaking to me and just shoved it in my mailbox) the cover sheet, and ONLY the cover sheet, had been changed to read, “Recommended.” This despite, if you believe what was actually written on the evaluation itself, my being the worst teacher in the history of the universe. If I had believed it, I would have fired me. Instead, not even attempting a rebuttal, I took the win, signed the document, and left the office.

And life went on. By the time I finally retired, 29 years later, I think my personnel file had its own file drawer. 

The Way We Were -- Random 70's Notes

Men were required to wear ties. Not a big fan of the tie, but since I had to wear one, I chose, uh, shall we say, quite colorful options. (Ed Kurmann made his own, mostly out of frugality, but was quite proud of his efforts.) I’m thankful that there is limited photographic evidence of my fashion choices, because my ties were designed to complement the rest of my wardrobe.

This was the start of the Peacock Fashion Phase for men, and while I’m going to share the blame with Carolyn who happily encouraged me, I confess to being a willing participant. In retrospect, perhaps I should be thankful for the tie rule; it eliminated the possibility of my ever wearing one of my two “leisure suits” (hey, only one of them was powder blue, paired with white patent shoes on a half-inch heel) to school. Still, I remember the plum double-knit flared pants, the orange brushed corduroys, the chunky-heeled brown shoes, still enough hair to wear at least to my jaw.... Maybe a good memory isn’t always a good thing.

Women could not wear pant suits (not pants) until November 1. That enforced-modesty rule was made prior to the popularity of short skirts, and with a huge influx of young female teachers to the district in the 70’s, the Law of Unintended Consequences played a role. Only the students wore "hot pants," however.

Those rules only lasted a few years. The collection of ties I retained made infrequent appearances until I landed at Schechter, which required ties on Fridays for Shabbat.

1971 was the year that the high school eliminated separate faculty lounges for the men and women. The small room on the third floor of the West Wing became the co-ed smoking lounge and housed the only official faculty bathroom. Poor Jay Zimmerman was never comfortable sharing that space. (There was an unofficial bathroom on the lower floor of the West Wing, next to Jack Hemm’s choir room [part of the former cafeteria prior to the Dome], if you could score a key, which I eventually did some years later. The women started using the one in the nurse’s office.) Despite its smaller space and less than wonderful ventilation (second-hand smoke not having been invented yet), that became the more popular hangout for most of the staff. It was there that Francis Pratt and Don Steckhan passed on their experience to us newbies.