Yes Deer, No Deer, My Deer, Oh Deer

Many apologies for having taken such a long time between posts. Thanks to those of you who have encouraged me to reboot by telling me how much you’ve enjoyed my observations. My original intent was to sort of take a chronological approach, but if I can get back into this, I’ll just kind of make random observations from my 37 years at the Place. 

The confluence of two different bits led to this memory, another in my cultural dissonance with Hancock. Veterans Day (upcoming) makes me think of my father, of course. Although he liked the outdoors and took us on camping vacations (although those may have been motivated as much by frugality as a desire to commune with nature), apparently he had gotten his fill of guns during the war, to the point that they were not a part of our lives and hunting never was on the family radar.

I’ve noted elsewhere my disconnect with guns, so you can see why I was confounded in my first few years at Hancock High School by the annual disappearance of a significant number of (male) students during deer season. Apparently it was a not uncommon Lemay (and elsewhere, no doubt) family tradition to take off a few days or even a week when the season opened. I didn’t get it, but the administration just kind of shrugged their collective shoulders and took a “What you gonna do?” attitude. Maybe there was some subtle discouragement at play of the practice, or a suggestion that weekends would also work for that foray into manhood, because I don’t remember it being any kind of issue as the years wore on. When it actually faded away I don’t recall, but only remember it as an issue for the first maybe 3-5 years. Or maybe I got use to it.

Perhaps it had something to do with attendance being more closely tracked and monitored, rather than the early-years procedure of Mrs. Dougan asking Mr. Messner or Mr. Eichhorst what our attendance was on any particular day, followed by a pause and the shouting of a (clearly) fictional number, e.g., “93%” or whatever. Ah, the good old days.

New Memories Under Construction

Forgive the over-long hiatus. It’s embarrassing to admit just how quickly I forgot how much work is the art of teaching. I’m currently filling in on a maternity leave at Lindbergh High School (where Hancock connections show up almost daily). I will probably have comments about this experience on my other site (Don’t Get Berndt), and will then resume this memoir, as well.

Thanks for your patience.

TBT - Working to Contract, October, 1973

For Throw Back Thursday, an old picture (probable photo credit to the late Curt Kenner, passed on to me by the late Richard Sharp, and that's two too many “lates” for my liking) of me being interviewed by Betsy Bruce (who, incredibly, is still working). It was, for the record, one of the worst interviews of all time, and if any other record exists I hope it never sees the light of day. Just the memory of it is embarrasing enough. I would have had to improve to make it up to awful. Thankfully, it never aired. Before that school year ended, however, I was giving (radio) interviews almost in my sleep for the early morning broadcasts. Key: ignore the actual question and answer what you really wanted the reporter to ask.

This came to mind as I read an article about Marshawn Lynch’s tactic to avoid being fined by the NFL prior to the Super Bowl last weekend. (See: http://theweek.com/articles/536184/subversive-brillianceof-marshawn-lynch ) “Work to Rule” is an old tactic, although at Hancock in 1973 we called it “Work to Contract.” I’ll leave it to others to debate whether it was a reasonable, fair, or even effective tactic, although teachers were definitely frustrated and felt like we had to take a stand.

Among other issues, like frozen salaries, we were protesting the attempted elimination of personal leave. I think there were others, but that was the flash point I remember. Jim McLaughlin and I were selected to meet with a subgroup of school board members to try to work out a compromise. We meet weekly in the evenings for at least a month and finally reached an agreement. However, the school board, I specifically remember Earl Meuhlfarth, Berlina Green and Art Hartman as the prime recalcitrants, and Superintendent Veryl B. Young rejected the agreement, giving momentum to a period of labor strife that lasted for several years.

There were two daily newspapers back then, and a (sympathetic) reporter for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat once told us, “Just call me when you go out on strike. The story is already written, I just need to plug in the dates and new information.” That’s how inevitable such an action seemed.

But that October we were certainly not at that point; the grievances had not yet accumulated and we hadn’t done the necessary planning and political groundwork. So the teachers association (HPCTA) voted to “work to contract,” meaning, like Marshawn Lynch, we would do the minimum required, which meant we would not stay past the listed hours for any “extra, uncompensated, duties.” As you might guess, students were not happy to hear that whatever clubs or extra activities they participated in would disappear until the dispute was resolved.

Politically, that did not include sports teams, of course, because coaches were compensated via extra duty contracts. Although the action would have been even more effective had sports been threatened, we would have lost the coaches’ support, as tenuous as that seemed to be at the time (and, in fairness, would have cost them the minimal money they made for coaching).

Student reaction was swift. They staged a walkout that quicly brought the media to our front steps and pushed me in front of Betsy’s microphone. I have no knowledge that our students were actively encouraged by teachers, but it would take a level of naivete beyond even mine to deny that the seed had at least been planted and, probably, nurtured. Certainly HPCTA was accused of working behind the scenes for such an outcome, with the expected denials. In any case, there we were, making history with the first (to my knowledge) student walk-out in St. Louis.

Things got worse before they got better, but a new school board and superintendent, Roger Brodbeck, slowly reached accomodations, and, eventually, even trust, with the union. That strike story remains unwritten, although there were at least two last-minute agreements in the next couple or three years to avoid that ultimate confrontation, but those are stories for another time.

As evidence that even the teachers were not completely on the same page in terms of what actions to take, I’ll share a final story of how Jim McLaughlin and I split, temporarily, on our own stand. Debbie Weissflug and I had been working to start a Drama Club. Not being a sport, there was no question about us being compensated, of course. But Debbie and I came up with a proposal that kind of made an end-run (another football reference to tie in to the Super Bowl) around “work to contract;” we convined the school board to issue us a contract that would pay us with a cut of the “profits” from whatever play we put on. I’m pretty sure that play was You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Mac argued with me that we were sabotaging the job action and undermining teacher unity. Being trained as a lawyer, however, he recognized that technically we were also following the “letter of the action.” I’ve always loved irony. And I don’t remember getting any money.

Treading Water the First Year

The first year of teaching is, almost literally, sink or swim. Sometimes it feels like you’re doing both at the same time. At least I had yet to start coaching. I really think first year teachers should not have any extra duties (and should, and, in fact, should have a reduced workload), but I get that in some ways it would more of a punishment than a protection. I had never taught English before, although, lucky for me, Professor Bernetta Jackson, in one of the summer classes I took in 1971 to gain certification, ditched her curriculum and worked with me on the teaching of English.

So I’m going to blame/credit her when, in the 82-83 school year, I took a very gifted group of sophomores (Class of '85) and, with their consent, turned French II into the school newspaper. (Try getting away with that today! I contend they benefitted far more than slogging through French grammar that none would ever use again.) In any case, that group eventually won what I consider to be Hancock’s first state championship, an All-Missouri rating for The Growler from MIPA*. The only other St. Louis area school to earn that award in 1985 was the Kirkwood Call, a program which even today represents the gold standard of high school journalism. Kind of like the New England Patriots, except they don’t cheat.

Although in theory I had three sections of freshman English that first year, they were three different preps (differentiation hadn’t been invented yet, but while the jargon didn’t exist, even a rookie knew the kids had different needs). So I was trying to prepare for, and grade papers from, five different classes in a subject area foreign to me. Yes, one of them was French.

You quickly invent coping tactics. My wife helped grade the spelling on vocabulary, but I still felt like I was treading water, trying to stay afloat. I now admit that (at least) one tactic I employed (just once) that year was kind of underhanded. In my defense, I’m reading stories and other content for the first time, just like the kids. One morning I hadn’t had time to read the assigned short story (or essay, or whatever) before class started. I did have time to quickly grab a couple obscure details on which I could quiz the class. Of course no one could answer my questions.

Apparently, according to several formers at class reunions throughout the years, I was a lot more, uh, intense in my first couple decades than I was at the end. I went into Tony Award mode (it was a live performance, after all). I slammed the book on the desk and thundered, “If you people won’t do your homework, this is just a waste of time. Now get your books out and read this story right now!” I always remembered that lesson, and tried to also remember that there are all sorts of (legitimate) reasons kids don’t get their homework done.

Karma is a funny thing. A few years later I was teaching a class in Business Law that I inherited from the late Jim (father of Cardinal broadcaster Dan) McLaughlin. I knew nothing about business or law, but this time was at least staying a chapter ahead of the kids. Unfortunately, in my class was possibly the smartest student I had the privilege to teach (at least in the Top 10). I won’t name him, but his mother, one of the sweetest women ever, worked in the superintendent’s office and was in a walking club that I often saw in my neighborhood. He knew exactly what I was doing, and, almost daily, with a sly grin and twinkling eyes, asked me a question that I couldn’t answer, from 2-3 chapters ahead. After the first time or two, I just smiled back to let him know that I knew that he knew. He took pity on me after a couple weeks.

I did crawl ashore that June of '72, gasping for breath, completely exhausted. I turned down a request to get involved in the teachers association. I spent the next couple months lying in the sun at the apartment complex pool, trying to recharge my batteries, although solar power was still a few years away. I stayed out of the water.

*Missouri Interscholastic Press Association

Purple Dittoes!

I think when they tore down the old building they probably found some of my old purples dittoes from the ‘70s. I was a packrat. Hey, you never know when you might need this. Anybody need some 5.25" floppies? 

But I was reminded of the joys of the ditto machine (see Spirit Duplicator) in a response to my post on the building. In the early '70s Xerox was just a company, not a machine, and we didn’t have one in any case. Want copies? Type on a ditto, which, when run through a machine with an alcohol-based wick, made lovely purple facsimiles of varying quality, although freshly run copies also often went directly to the noses of some students. I doubt there was any long-lasting effect, but hey, it was the '70s and anything was worth a try!

One problem. Well, frequently more than one, especially if you weren’t a great typist (on a manual typewriter my first couple years; gunky white-out was not an option). There was no way to correct a typo. Your options were to start over (and I remember, clearly and painfully, using 10-12 dittoes to type a 5-6+ page supplemental short story, article, essay, play, etc., because books never quite had the piece I wanted, and I was unwilling to settle for the “wrong” story – it was hard enough to get kids to read stuff, and if even I didn’t like it....) or type over the error, leaving purple slashes and scars throughout the page. I could usually tolerate one or two mistakes, but then I would feel the need to retype the whole page.

I do remember a test, however, given to the class that easily wins my prize for “Worst.Class.Ever.” (24 boys, 4 girls, freshman English. We’ll leave the year and other details unmentioned.) In any case, we had spent half of the first quarter doing grammar and parts of speech, with the promise, “We'll get this out of the way and then we can do some stuff that’s more fun.” I gave a test at the end of this segment. I transferred the one kid who passed it to another class and started over.

After another 5 weeks, this time focusing just on nouns and pronouns, came a new test. I’m not sure which is my favorite answer. Fill in the blank: “Proper nouns begin with _____________.” Student answer: “The letter P.” But I think that’s topped by the paragraph containing 20 nouns (or pronouns, or perhaps both), to be underlined. Perhaps the man, who is, in fact, a friend on Facebook, will remember underlining a purple splotch to reach the magic number. He doesn’t have to admit it. He was one of three in the class who would actually graduate.

One more anecdote from that class. Actually, there are many, but most are too painful to repeat. Back in the day we were allowed student aides, and they could actually do some grading. I had assigned some grammar exercise from the book and passed off the papers to my aide. She quickly came back to me and hesitatingly asked, “Mr. Berndt? Did you give me the right key? Because this kid only got 1 of the 20 questions right?” I checked, and, embarrassed, had to apologize because indeed, I had given her the wrong answer key. Sadly for this unlucky student, when she used the right key his score went down.