On one occasion I was working onstage with student volunteers who just wanted to get out of study hall during my prep period. They were talking to each other about how much one teacher picked on them. When I challenged that statement to defend my colleague, the girls replied, “She hates us. She sits in the dining room and talks about us every day at lunch.”
“I think you have over-active imaginations, “ I countered. “What you say just could not be.”
“Well, it is. Just ask anyone.”
So sometime later I asked one of the teachers who ate at the teachers’ table during that lunch period if she had ever heard the accused teacher talk about those two girls. “Oh,” she offered, “she talks about them every day.”
Teachers! Wake up! You can’t fool them. Even if you are eating in another room, you should not stoop to backbite about your students. If you discuss their problems with another teacher, it should be in private and with the spirit of trying to help someone in need of help. Teenagers have so many problems. Why should having a teacher who dislikes them be one of their biggest ones? They cannot avoid you legally. The system has thrown you together. Treat them as you wish to be treated.
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After my first drama club production, I received a letter of commendation from the superintendent which praised every aspect of the play and used the word “professional” very kindly about Karen Gravely, who was my leading lady. I dislike directing by “parroting”, but at one rehearsal, I fed Karen a line. She became very energized and exclaimed, “Say that line again—I want to say it exactly like that.” Talk about winning ways! I was a bit nervous as I took that envelope with the return address of the office of the superintendent from my mailbox and equally excited when I saw its contents. I slipped down to the library to show the librarian, who was one of the supportive teachers who had rushed backstage after the performance, announcing, “We never had a scene change before.”.
Let me explain that Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker was the farce upon which Hello, Dolly! was based. The scenic demands were much like the musical, but it includes a fourth act that was omitted from the musical—one with a few delightful new characters and a great drunk scene for the innocent Minnie Fay from the hat shop. After the curtain opened for the brightly colored second scene there was a super response from that audience that had watched plays with sets that had remained the same dull color for four years or more.
When the second act ended, all heads in that gymnasium were lowered to the level of the space between the curtain and the stage and heads began to nod as if to say, “They’re changing it again,” perhaps thinking we were going back to the first set. Instead, after intermission we visited the plush set of the Harmonia Gardens Restaurant, where an incredible talent named Vincent Matthews as Horace Vandergelder, joined Karen—two eventual valedictorians. Nearly the entire basketball team was in that show, and they were superb athletes.
The set for that fourth final scene had been made possible by a phone call from one of the elementary principals at a school that had once been one of three high schools (eighteen years before) that were consolidated. He called to inform me that they had on their stage a full set of professionally built scenery that was in their way. It no longer had canvas on any of the pieces, but it was all there—would I be interested? Would I ever! And thus it happened that scene four was able to display an alcove across the back that the audience could see into through painted frames shorn of their fabric.
After the final curtain the applause was prolonged, and six or seven of the faculty members that were truly interested in plays rushed backstage, as much to see me as to see the fine actors who had come to understand farce so well. It was an amazing cast.
Anyway, I showed Mrs. Johnson my letter. Another teacher looked over her shoulder and enthused, “Frame it, Jack. Believe me. No one ever got one before.” (I remind you now that for three years before my arrival, there had been no plays, always cancelled by conflicts or insufficient interest.)
At this moment Mrs. Nay walked up, snatched the letter and reddened as she read.
Her comment, one I heard often in my career, was this: “Well, I never had that much talent to work with,” as she handed the paper back to me.
My reply was not subtle—“I consider it my job to reach the most-talented students and help them develop their talent.” Oh, well. I never got around to framing it. It’s in a file somewhere, as is the one from Bob Albano, principal at GCHS.
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