By Butch Freedman
I entered teaching through the side door, but I stayed in for a career. It wasn’t my first choice of occupations, that would have been making a living as a writer. But, like most writers, I soon discovered that the pay was basically non-existent, especially for a kid straight out of college, whose major writing credit was a short story in the college literary magazine. Like many wannabe writers I had to find a gig that would pay the rent and put pop-tarts in the toaster. So, I took a job as a teacher in the Philadelphia School District. I figured I could always write in my free time. I figured wrong. Teaching took all of my energy and then some. But, the pay-off was that I discovered that I liked doing it, liked working with kids. And was reasonably good at it. If you define good as being able to maintain your sanity in the face of massive interference from administrators whose only objective was to keep the lid on. Early on, one of the veteran teachers passed on this bit of advice as we sat smoking in the teachers’ lounge (which was a thing then — the smoking.) He’d been at this same school for 25 years, he told me, and said, “Listen, kid, the only way to get along here is to not give a shit.”
“What do you mean?” I thought it was some sort of joke; I almost laughed.
“These kids are never gonna learn. At least not very much. Our job is to just pass them through. They keep quiet, and we go home and relax.” He stubbed out his smoke and got up to leave. “Just give ’em busy work.”
So much for idealism. That didn’t appear to exist — at least not at that school, one that was mostly made up of minority kids. It was evident that the major concern among teachers and administrators was to keep the students “in check,” to keep them quiet. Given that attitude, I wasn’t surprised to discover that many of these high school students could barely read or write, but were still going to graduate. They had learned how to play the game. Foolishly perhaps, I chose not to go along. Innocent as I was, I decided to actually try to teach, to somehow persuade the students in my classrooms, overcrowded as they were, that they had something to say about their own education and that, they, despite how they had been bullied into thinking they were incapable of learning, were as bright and as eager as anybody else of their age.
Of course the administration was not pleased with my noisy classroom, or with the student newspaper we began to write and mimeograph and distribute. The principal, Dr. Jacobi, soon called me on to the carpet and told me that what I was doing constituted mutinous behavior, if not outright rebellion. I didn’t disagree. I wanted there to be a revolution in that school. It was needed. The students deserved better, I told that weaselly old man. They deserve to have a voice, to be heard. He looked at me like I was deranged, shook his head. “We’ll have to see about all this,” Jacobi said. And soon began the process of having me removed from his school.
Turned out that firing my skinny butt was somewhat harder than Mr. Principal thought, especially when the school district hired a new superintendent, the former dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education — a progressive educator who was determined to change the culture. Somehow the new superintendent heard about my situation and called me into his new office for a chat. I was pretty damn nervous, but figured I had nothing to lose as I sat across from this formidable, but friendly looking man. ‘Heard you’ve been having some problems,” he began. “Yeah, sort of,” I stumbled.
“Well, I think maybe we can do something about that. Have you ever thought about graduate school?”
“Not really,” I said.
“I think we need more forward-thinking teachers, ” he said. “like you.”
I looked around, wondering if there was someone else in the room.
So, to make a longish story shortish, I didn’t get fired and the next school year found myself enrolled in the graduate school program at Harvard. I was a bit surprised that I had been accepted, but having a recommendation from the ex-dean, didn’t hurt I suppose. I even was awarded tuition money, though I had to take a job washing dishes at a French restaurant to pay my rent. I didn’t mind. I felt like I had finally found my tribe. It was the beginning of a new way to see the world. And I took full advantage of it. Education was almost better than writing, I now believed. Almost. Many more years of teaching, writing, and discovery were to follow.