mr. jones and me

It was Mr. Jones who did it for me. I was in the fifth form at Antrim Grammar School – 16 and full of myself – when I encountered this teacher who introduced me to Chaucer and Thomas Hardy and taught me how to underline in red the most important lines in my Choice of Poets textbook which sits proudly in the bookcase in the den of my home in Phoenix, Arizona. Taught me how to annotate text with comments like, “My thoughts entirely, ” or “How true.” I was one of those students who was notorious for throwing out red herrings which ultimately led to Mr. Jones sharing his musical tastes – Dylan, Springsteen, Jackson Browne.

Mr. Jones, with leather patches on his elbows and a ‘Save the Otter’ badge on the lapel of the tweed jacket he wore every day.

I recall, with some embarrassment, a morning when he was reading from Hardy’s Return of the Native. Eustacia Vye was described as a pre-Raphaelite beauty. I remember how Mr. Jones instructed us to write the definition of pre-Raphaelite in the margin of our novel. Convinced that I shared Eustacia’s facial features, I raised my hand and asked to go to the bathroom. Mr. Jones excused me, and I was gone for a long time. When I finally returned to class, he asked, “Well, are you a pre-Raphaelite beauty?” Busted. Of course I’d spent all that time staring in the mirror wondering if, perchance, there was any way that I could pass for a 1970’s version of Eustacia Vye. While Eustacia came to an untimely end, I’m still here. And, thankfully, so is Mr. Jones, and he’s still teaching.

With great delight, I reconnected with my friend, Ruth, on Facebook. Truth be told, we werent the most academically focused students at Stranmillis College, Belfast in the early 1980s. Shared a love of good music and concerts, good literature, and completely unsuitable men. As has been said by someone smarter than I, “well-behaved women rarely make history.”

Fast forward 25 years, and I learn that the lovely Lucy, daughter of Ruth, had my Mr. Jones for English all through high school. Six years of Mr. Jones with his bang-on explications of The Pardoner’s Tale and the Odes of Keats and, no doubt, a little Wordsworth and Coleridge. Six years of chuckling as he shared the bawdy lines from Shakespeare.

God, if you’re listening, I have 200 Freshman students who need a Mr. Jones.

Can you help me out?

Proposition 8 – the reprise

Tonight I’m thinking about america and my place in it. What happened to the dream I thought would come true?  I recall a crisp Fall morning, when my 10 year old daughter and I walked down to her school, right across the street from Senator McCain’s office.

My little girl spied a ‘Vote No on 102’ sign and asked me if she could have one. Of course she could! Off she went with her little pigtails swinging and a five dollar bill pressed tightly in her palm.  She came back to me, joyous, with the sign held high above her head and the most important question, ‘Mama, why would politicians have anything to say about who you fall in love with?” Indeed, why would they?

I’m sitting in my kitchen in an arizona that may not fully grasp the fact that the very notion of america is unraveling before us. Over twenty years ago, I left Northern Ireland in pursuit of the idea of america. Tonight, I’m thankful I have a little girl whose questions remind me that it’s attainable. Well, at least for those of us who have social security numbers and a path to legitimacy.

only the best will do

i think it was gifted ed guru Roger Taylor who said what’s best for the best is best for the rest with respect to curriculum. Thinking about my newly registered students – predominantly ‘the rest’ – how can I attract the very best teachers?

I recall an interview I experienced many years ago. I’d applied to be an assistant principal in what would be described by those in the field as an inner-city school serving at-risk students. Previously, I had taught gifted students in a small school nestled in an affluent neighborhood. In spite of my instruction, not because of it, I’m pretty sure most of those kids went on to be successful. The children of parents with graduate degrees, they learned those social ropes early in life. Probably what we call ‘soft skills’ today – networking and exchanging pleasantries and business cards and closing deals on golf courses.

Back to my interview … the committee consisted of older men, black and Hispanic. One asked,”Why would you want to come down here?” I’m still shocked by that question. I remember responding, Well gentlemen, why wouldn’t I? Doesn’t the best education always go to the kids who need it the least?”

I still think that’s true.

I got the job.

great expectations

Well now … it’s been 24 years since I took those tentative steps into a classroom in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Armed with Great Expectations and lesson plans and feeling very much like the young woman in Kingsley Amis Take a Girl Like You, I can still hear the click-clack of my high heeled shoes echoing in the hallways. I was only 22, and I was scared to death.  What if the pupils didn’t like me? What if they picked me up and put me in the wastepaper basket (like they had done to a petite biology teacher)? What if the English Department Head came in and observed the lesson that hadn’t been planned? What if I sat in the wrong chair in the staff-room (the one reserved for a knitter, a Miss Pillow if memory serves me right)? What if they made me teach a novel I hadn’t read? I needn’t have worried – expectations were low. The kids were working class protestants in a Belfast that appeared to neither need nor want them, and I was a teacher who was committed not to building a better Belfast for them, but to getting myself out of there, out of the country and off to America. A working class girl myself, expectations weren’t that high for me either – my parents didn’t play golf after all, and I wasn’t the sporting type. We did go to church every Sunday, however, and I’d been sent to elocution lessons when I was a little girl, so I could definitely sound educated and carry on a conversation in the foyer of The Lyric Theater. Somehow, I ‘looked Catholic,’ so I had the added advantage of being able to go to bars and discos on both sides of the divide!  Managed to avoid getting involved in the troubles …’whatever you say, say nothing,’ and managed to extricate myself from an engagement to a bank clerk and off a slippery slope to domesticity in what was a small-minded country with problems that needed big, expansive minds and hearts.

Here I sit, twenty five years on, in America, in Arizona, a state plagued with problems of its own. Not so afraid anymore, older and wiser I hope, I have until August 11th 2009 to get a school up and running, a school for kids for whom society may not have the highest expectations. The kids whose parents, like mine, didn’t go to college, the kids with big dreams and few resources, the kids who mightn’t have the papers they need to be considered ‘legitimate’ in an Arizona that doesn’t seem to embrace immigrants.  Well, at least not the brown ones from south of the border. It’s a different story on March 17th when the green beer’s flowing and everybody’s Irish. I have about 130 students enrolled, and they are so full of hope about the high school adventure ahead of them.  Predominantly Hispanic, their parents accompany them to an interview with me where they talk about what they want for their children – basically a safe school where their children matter. I want a little more – I want to give the education we would expect for Barack and Michele Obama’s children. Great expectations?