LET’S TAKE A BREAK TODAY
I’d like to take a day off and just “talk” a bit. My older brothers, having served in World War II under horrible circumstances, and my brother Dick, four years older than I and just back from serving in the army in Korea (he was home a week when the US declared war on North Korea, and he enlisted in the navy to avoid going back there—tank maintenance would be on the front lines, and he was having none of it). They convinced my parents that they would have to send me to college because “Jackie” was so delicate he would never survive in the real world without an education. Danny, just one grade ahead of me, had paved the way to Indiana Central College, our church school in Indianapolis, with a full-ride scholarship. The college offered my high school, on the strength of Danny’s work, a similar scholarship to anyone they chose to give it to, but the offer required a certain grade-point average. I was the only graduate with intentions of going there, but I had slipped a tenth of a point below that line when I got a “C” in Latin IV, which I never should have signed up for, as I had little interest in it and had not taken Latin III after a weak class under a different teacher in Latin II, but Diane Pollack persuaded me (charmed, even) to take it so that there would be the required 7 minimum students.
For this reason, even with my working two, sometimes three, jobs, my parents had to chip in $300 a semester, which was a big sacrifice for them.
When I met up with the head of the English department at Southport High School, I didn’t realize I had been sent to war without backup. Mrs. Copsey had three prep periods to oversee the department. There were eight freshman English teachers, and only one other man in the whole department. I alone had bottom level freshman classes—it was the fashion to divide according to skill and achievement. But I had lively, often delightful students in those very large classes—45 students in my largest class; 37 in my smallest.
We were told (ordered, even) to follow a schedule of studies set up by the department chair. I got the same daily assignments as the E (top-level) classes. My students were all failing. Then I got called to the principal’s office and told to make plans suitable to their abilities and to use a bell curve—as many A’s as F’s, as many B’s as D’s and a high percentage of C’s. This curve was to be delivered to the office every grading period. Now every test came from Mrs. Copsey. We were to correct them, but she would put on the grades. Then she would post them on the window outside her classroom, showing that of all the teachers in her department, my students were the worst. Of course, her tests were over materials, including literature, that they hadn’t studied yet.
When report cards came out with final exam grades on them, she could see that my grades were not the grades from the test she had made out. There were even some A’s. So obviously I was a cheat and a liar. She camped out in my room daily, usually 3 classes a day, sitting in the back and muttering, “This’ll never do! This’ll never do!” Then she would stomp out, go to the office and turn on the intercom to listen in. The kids would point to the speaker and freeze up.
I had to pick up and travel, and when I’d get to my next rooom, she’d often be there, so I dared not stay a moment after any class to talk to a student unless the next room was nearby. One day the junior English teacher, an older lady whose room I used, came to talk to me about my situation. She said she had worked for a few years in a teen penal institution, and that they had an odorless chemical they used to control difficult inmates.
Once you had been exposed to it a bit, you couldn’t fail to recognize its use. She had begun to sense it around her desk when she came in after my class. That class left in the middle of the hour to go to the lunchroom; so at lunchtime, she sat in the room at the back corner where she wouldn’t be noticed to see who was “doing the deed.” It was a cleaning lady from another wing of the school building who just “happened” to be Mrs. Copsey’s next door neighbor. When the teacher said,”Can I help you with something?” The lady jumped, startled, and hurried out.
I know this is sounding fantastic and hardly believable. I, too, was doubtful; but I was experiencing afternoon headaches, and for me headaches were rare. The kind teacher went on to say that she repeated her actions the next day, and the person who came in was our department chairman, who got very rattled and said she was looking for Mr. Rhoades (who obviously was gone to the lunchroom to supervise his class). This had taken place a few days before, and I had noticed that the headaches had stopped.
My pay was stopped in January because my teacher’s license hadn’t come through. One required class was only offered every other year, and my counselor had slipped up, so I took a correspondence course the summer after graduation(not something I would recommend for anyone’s honeymoon). It was ridiculously demanding, but I completed it—for example, I once wrote five typewritten pages as the answer to One question on one lesson.
That teacher, at Indiana University, was leaving IU for some reason, and just before I took the final, I got a new teacher who gave me my grade on the basis of a true/false final exam. I got a “B” and had completed the course before school began. But the state department of education hadn’t processed my license yet, so for several months. We lived on Margaret’s pay until the license came through.
With the large check that came suddenly, we made a down payment on a small bungalow in a quiet neighborhood. Then I got the word that my contract would not be renewed, and no wonder. Whenever I went to apply for a job, they had heard from Southport that they wouldn’t recommend me for anything. I finally interviewed at the little town of Carthage where more than half the teachers had been “let go.” I asked the township trustee if he might contact the parent of the only gifted student I had taught. He was on the school board and was probably aware of the hassle I had gone through and the rapport I had with my students when she wasn’t around. I got a job! But they insisted that Margaret resign her job and teach first grade there as well and that we must live in the town of Carthage. The next week I got a draft notice, showed my contract and got a deferment. I was about to learn how loving their students endears a couple of teachers to their community. Happy years were ahead of us.
At Carthage, my senior English class prepared the weekly newspaper column—front page center in the local weekly paper. I directed the junior and senior plays, I was the librarian, I sponsored the pep club (Margaret sponsored the cheerleaders—she had been a cheerleader all through high school and her freshman year in college.) I had the honor society. We chaperoned the senior trip to New York and Washington, DC., and I served as senior class sponsor my second year. My speech class learned to debate and debated with themselves for the public three times; they also did a one-act play for assembly, repeated by request for the Alumni banquet with lots of delight. (I marvel at the amount of success that little group has had in the world. Pam Hunt, for example, has a fantastic resumé that includes a lot of Broadway (she wowed New York with her tap dancing in George M); David Ruby was an executive with Thompson Electrics (RCA); Jeannine Terhune has a much honored show choir and directs high school musicals, I lost track of Jimmy Ellis after his career as trumpeter in the military band—just to name four from a graduating class of about 21. There wasn’t a yearbook, so I started one. I took a group of interested students to make up a board and started Teen Canteen, which opened one night a week on the top, ballroom floor of the community center and got Community Chest funds to support the effort. We attended all ballgames, at home or away, and we were the youth leaders at the Methodist Church.
Margaret was pregnant and couldn’t go on the senior trip our second year, so Pam and Jeannine stayed with her that week. A near neighbor, Helen Patton, was to bring Margaret a fresh arrangement of flowers from her delightful garden every day after the birth of our daughter Lori. Helen was changing schools, and I took her place at Charlottesville High School just down the road a piece to avoid having to be the librarian when I had been promised I’d just do that one year.
My teaching career had become firmly established.
Back at Southport I learned that the only remaining male English teacher, a veteran there of ten years, had taken my place as victim/scapegoat. In a very short time, he would have none of it, and it was soon discovered that the elderly matron who had made my life so miserable (had even told me I would never be a teacher until I learned to scowl) was out of touch with reality and was retired midyear. This, I must admit, was learned through reliable hear-say.
