Edubabble and other Blither

Here I sit on my hotel bed in Port Town after my first day of class-- nice people. It went well. One of the people taking my class has known Jon Bon Jovi for years-- his grandma, it seems, lives or lived here in Port Town. This student says he's an ass.

Yes, it's a small world after all. As I was sitting at the bar after dinner, I noticed a familiar-looking black man leaning on the other side, dressed in chef's whites waiting for a pitcher of water. He and I worked together at the Sgt. London while I attended SNU. He's a large man, but thankfully not a violent man. When I worked as a desk clerk, he lived in one of the rooms uptstairs at the Sgt. London. A woman called wanting his private phone number. I told her it was private, but she proceeded to explain that she was his wife, a bad thing had happened, and she really needed to talk to him. (Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Yes, I was very young and very stupid, and very naive.)

Tony didn't remember this, though. Whew. We simply had a nice "Hi, how the hell are you where the hell have you been over the past 14 years?" conversation.

The bartender here is from a local town that's even smaller and more insular than Dogpatch, and we know some of the same people. He has his master's in political science or policy or something like that. Nice boy.

Cool Student Teacher Chick and I were speaking on my cell phone while I was at the bar. (She also student-taught with a former English teacher of Poli-sci Boy's.) Friday she has her third interview in Big-Time Steel Town School District. It's very exciting, and I can't wait to hear how it goes.

When she called, I was looking through the daily local newspaper, searching for a report of the wilding that occurred last night on the streets of Port Town below my hotel room. Okay, it probably wasn't a wilding in the strictest sense, but the street was blocked off and hundreds or dozens of sinister looking teenagers were running wild, screaming. A canine unit was mustered up as well. I was kind of antsy for today's class anyway and couldn't get to sleep, so I went downstairs to find out what was going on. (Somewhere, deep down, there's a reincarnated Nellie Bly in me, I know it.) A hotel desk clerk (a kindred soul!) stood out on the street, and I joined her. She said kids had fought at a local underage club, and the perps had taken off. There was no mention of this in the paper or on the news, even though there were more police cars involved than exist in the entire Dogpatch force. Go figure.

So, that's how things stand here in Port Town at the moment.

This past weekend Tripper and I attended a wedding of gargantuan proportions, a Big-Mac, Cadillac, Texas of Rust Belt Town weddings. More on that later.

We also partook of Dogpatch Electic's summer picnic-- beer, pig, volleyball, it had it all. The best part, though, was when one of the matriarchs gazed upon my newest niece, all of two weeks old. You see, she was born with what the doctor determined to be the beginning of an extra finger. Yes, you read correctly. You certainly couldn't tell that's what it was-- it looked like a tiny black scab attached with the thinnest dental floss imaginable. Her parents were getting impatient for it to fall off, as the doctor assured them it would, but they couldn't just yank it off themselves. As the old lady held the baby, she glanced down. "What in god's name is this?" she said as she plucked it off, thinking it was some kind of lint or foodstuff that the baby might accidentally swallow. Proud parents were thrilled. Now Baby has her first story.

Dios mio! An authentic Mexican restaurant here in Dogpatch! I am in heaven...and currently eating Tripper's nachos. (He doesn't know the takeout meal included them.) I'll try to save him a few. Can I pass it off as my payment for being such a kind wife as to thoughtfully bring him home a delicious meal???

Now, I know that to people from Scenic Town my restaurant doesn't sound so bueno. You're probably right. To us, however, it's a blessing. It's not Taco Bell. It's not a chain. It's run by real Mexicans! Maybe there are some illegals! At any rate, suffice it to say it's a big deal here in a town where people order qwasadillows from Perkins and think they've eaten Mexican.

Here in Dogpatch I've always been somewhat of a food snob. I've never liked the sauce here when I've gotten pasta. Phooey! Marinara. (Insert condescending food snob face.) Real Italians (translation: those I grew up with in Professor Girl's Rust Belt Town) make traditional meatless sauce that simmers for hours. One time I ordered wedding soup, and it had a cream base. I was quietly disgusted. Tripper says that all Italians think their own wedding soup is the only soup. I tell him he's wrong. My Italians have the right soup: escarole, not spinach; chicken; pastina, not rice; meatballs.

I remember that turbulent time in Rust Belt Town (Professor Girl, may I use that name?) known as the Sauce Wars. My step-father had taken over running his late brother's restaurant. It served the regular Rust Belt Town fare: sauce, lamb dinners, lamb burgers, lamb salad. No mint jelly, thank you. He was thrilled when old Mary Italiano came to work for him. She, you see, had been stolen from another restaurant in town. It was as if he had won the lottery or had gotten the buddy price on a top-of-the-line cell phone. Mary's former employers were not pleased; it was rumored a price had been put on my stepfather's head.

I helped out once or twice at that restaurant, after having gotten experience at the Sgt. London during college. I've also filled in from time to time over the past 13 years at O'Malley's Pub, so I've done my share of waitressing. It's good for me. Waitressing allows me to appreciate the fact that I don't have to rely on tips to pay my bills anymore-- and to remain sympathetic to those who do. It's nice to work a job that you can leave at work when the day is finished. I also get a kick out of waiting on the families of my students. They experience cognitive dissonance, I'm sure, when I appear, hair in a ponytail, apron-clad, and say, "Hello, my name is Chrissy, and I'll be your server today."

Women, I've learned, and I'm no exception, want to be left alone when dining together, and keep the drinks coming. Men, on the other hand, especially older men, want to flirt and joke. Of course, none of these men are funny. Sometimes they know this, sometimes not. Good customers try to clean up the area where their toddler has hurled food and opened packet upon packet of sugar. Bad customers smirk as they leave and half apologetically say, "Oh, we're so sorry, but kids will be kids." Teenagers order burgers and sandwiches, even for the prom, and don't have money to tip. (When I was 22 and paying my rent with my tip money, this bothered me. Now it doesn't. They're kids.)

I had never worked fast food, however, until recently, for a McDonald's school fundraiser-- McTeacher's Night. A school can gather, threaten, or bribe up several teachers to work two-hour shifts on a slow weekday night. The payoff? 20% of the sales. When we arrived, we got presents: a cool one-size-fits-all smock that boasted McTeacher's Night, and a commemorative McDonald's coffee mug to boot. Never mind that upon donning the smock some of my fellow McTeachers resembled Baby Huey in a bib.

At any rate, let me say I worked my ass off. I didn't expect it to be a cake walk, but it was hard. Thankfully, the teenaged workers were kind to us, as I'm sure we were nothing but a big old inconvenience. I started off as a cashier. I demanded this job since I had been a cashier for a few years a the local downtown Rust Belt Town grocery store. That was back before automation, back when you had know what was taxable food, taxable non-food, non-taxable food, and non-taxable non-food. It was hard, man.

So was the McDonald's cash register. Because we were, um, celebrities, the place was packed with cheering and jeering students and their brow-beaten parents, other teachers who were smart enough to say no, and school board and community members. I worked that register for the first hour and stopped when I had had enough of Loud-Mouthed-Gym-Teacher working the crowd (she had given up on the cash register). I couldn't hear the orders over her impromtu orchestration of a cheering section. Perhaps she WAS only trying to smooth things over for the hungry crowd waiting for Extra Value Meals, but I had had enough. I moved, then, to the shake and McFlurry station for awhile, then finally gave up after a half-hour on the condiment apparati-- pretty nifty ketchup and mustard dispensers. I know this may be hard to believe, but I did indeed purchase some McFood when I finished. It tasted pretty good.

I think I'll stick, however, at least for awhile, to my brand new Mexicanesque restaurant.

Yes, there's a respectable number of nachos left.

To Whom it May Concern:

I am a proud graduate of Small Northeast University and am thankful for the fine education I received. It was disturbing, then, to hear of the recent proposed changes in the secondary English program. I've learned that students will no longer be taking young adult literature and that other courses are in danger of being dropped as well. This news shocked, then saddened, and finally angered me.

I do not feel it's in the best interest of the university students or their future students to take children's lit as an alternative to young adult lit. Anyone can see that there's a vast difference between Goodnight Moon and Speak, Give a Mouse a Cookie and You Don't Know Me, Junie B. Jones and Harry Potter. Middle school and high school teachers need to know what's out there in young adult lit-- and it is a huge genre, indeed. Future teachers need to know about the books their students are reading, need to be able to craft meaningful, provocative units around these novels.

As Cool Young Student Teacher, a recent summa cum laude SNU graduate, put it, "YA lit was where it all came together." This course, along with secondary language arts methods, teaches students to do more than simply assign chapters to be read and develop tests. Reading literature with a class, no matter what politicians would have us believe, takes much more than simply coloring in circles, answering short simple questions, and identifying figurative language. Courses like YA lit and secondary methods teach teachers to reach students with literature and language, making them love language and helping them to think critically about our world and their own place in it.

Young adult literature plays an even bigger part as well. I've taught middle school for my entire career. Although I loved all the literature courses I took at SNU-- survey courses, short stories, drama-- I've never once had to teach anything I read for those classes. I have, on the other hand, applied my knowledge of the many novels I read and annotated in my YA class.

At a time when academic rigor is being emphasized and sometimes questioned at all levels of education, it seems tragic that rigor is being removed from the secondary English program at SNU. Let me be clear about this-- students who do not take YA literature are not being prepared to teach English, and I will not have them in my classroom for their block experience or to student teach. I am also the most senior English teacher at my school; I am sure my colleagues, many of whom are former SNU graduates, will agree.

Sincerely,

C. Snow, 1992
Small Northeast Middle School

I remember being a new teacher. It was cool. I was cool. Everyone else in the building was old, at least forty it seemed, burdened with soccer snacks, mortgages, bad knees, and indigestion. This is not to say they weren't fun. Most of them were. They were just older, in some cases jaded, in some cases apathetic, in some cases killjoys. I would never become like them. I haven't. Yet.

I learned early on in my career that youth is relative. On my 25th birthday I sailed into school still slightly smug about my own perceived youth. My boyfriend had just dropped me off, having to take the car in for some treatment or other. Upon crossing the academic threshold I ran into a student, young Juanita Sanchez. Seventh graders still love, love, love to talk to their teachers for the most part, and Juanita was no exception. Hey, Ms. Snow, she said. Was that your son who dropped you off? So much for my own perception. How, I asked, can I possibly have a son who has facial hair, Juanita? Juanita was oblivious to my pique. How was I 'posed to ta know? she shrugged.

This past school year I changed sides. I think I may have been traded. Our school hired 16 new teachers in the aftermath of an exodus caused by a retirement incentive that included health insurance-- these oldsters, you know. My new team consists not of rookies. I am now one of the, ahem, older players, the ones hoping for a pennant before they retire. (In my generation's case, they are the players who hope to be able to retire.) This became apparent to me at our faculty and staff's Back to School social at a local fire hall. I stood there, beer in hand, watching these new people, some of whom could have been my students, gyrate and holler in new-money glee as the D.J. (a new addition to our gatherings) played songs I heard at local clubs. At times it resembled a frat party, a tame frat party to be sure, but a frat party all the same. I knew the times, they were a-changing.

It had been a weird first week of school. It was the first time in my career that my mentor Mrs. Springer wasn't there. (She and her husband used the get-out-of-school-with-benefits card.) I had no one to run to with my usual line: I think I'm getting fired. I had no one to smoke cigarettes with in the boiler room. (We only did that the first few weeks of the first tobacco-verboten school year. We stopped when there was a fire drill while we were puffing.) I was too busy answering questions for the new teachers during that first week, though, to properly wallow in self-pity.

Truthfully, I really enjoy the new teachers' enthusiasm, ideas, style. They've electrified the building. I also really envy them because they have each other-- they go out together, gyrating and hollering in the bars, they occasionally come in hung over together, they're part of the new cool clique.

This past week has been weird, too. Sad, really. Two other mentors of mine passed away, two people who knew me when I was young and cool and stupid and wore hip clothes. Dr. G. was my college advisor, part father figure, part dirty old man who, I think, tried to kiss me once. I dog-sat for him and his wife whenever they vacationed; it was a great gig. Their house was gorgeous. They left a car for me. They told me to have my friends over, which I did several times. They kept a well-stocked liquor cabinet. They had a pool table. They had shelves upon shelves of books. They had real food. They paid well. They didn't mind when I almost burned down their house, leaving them a souvenir pan that they exhibited at parties, permanently scorched in patterns of macaroni. Dr. G. got me my job at the Sgt. London Inn, where I desk-clerked until I advanced to bartending. (A brief cocktail waitress stint didn't last. I spilled the same draft four times.) When I decided I wanted to save the world by doing my student teaching at a youth prison, he adamantly refused to sign off.

MAC, my cooperating teacher, smoked long, cool Mores. Her hair was dyed an unnatural black, and she drank tea all day long, spiked generously with liquid sweetener. When someone on bus duty noticed me cruising out of the parking lot in my Renault Alliance (rather quickly as I had to be at work within the hour) smoking my own Virginia Slim menthol, she promptly informed me the next day that I, too, could join in on the faculty room tobacco fun and was expected to do so. What's a girl to do, right?

I learned that teachers said fuck, and I learned a lot more from her, too. I think of MAC often when I'm observing my own student teachers, who, I must admit, are a hell of a lot better than I was. She knew I'd turn out okay, even though I'd sometimes come into school with a BRILLIANT idea I had to try. She let me try out these brilliant ideas, even though they'd occurred to me on the interstate. Afterwards, she matter-of-factly pointed out what I needed to do to make them work the next time. She made me step up to the plate and take control of the senior classes when they gave me a rough time, which they often did in the first couple of weeks. Chrissy, she said, flicking her More, you've got to step on those fuckers. Now. That was hard. These kids weren't exactly the kids I hung out with when I'd been a senior four years earlier. But it was okay. I did it... after a few missteps that often went something like this:

Miss Snow, have you ever smoked pot?

I don't have to answer that.

We don't have to ask again now, either.

Two of my former student teachers have called me a few times this summer, clamoring for my wisdom about jobs, interviews, and men. (Poor girls! If they only knew...) I've met with them to hash things out and have a few beers. I've loved every minute of it, even though one of them was born the year I was in 8th grade. She and her friend had Madonna dance parties when they were five and Madonna was in her blasphemy stage. She had never seen The Outsiders, although she had read the book, but who hasn't? She's cocky, she's cool, she's beautiful. And she has no idea what she's in for.