Change of Plans

My first few years of teaching were like a dream.  I was already in my thirties and just starting my career.  But my very first job was exactly the one I wanted.  It was literally my dream job.  I was working at the high school I had graduated from; I was working with an old friend and mentor and I was teaching the subjects I loved.  It was perfect.  I was blessed because most people have to work years to be able to teach what they want where they want.  I remember going to work in the mornings filled with giddy excitement as I walked into my perfect classroom, at my perfect school and began planning my perfect classes.  If I had been a character in a movie everyone would have been cringing because the audience knows this kind of perfection can’t last very long.  I was like the Fool card in a tarot deck, blissfully stumbling my way toward a cliff.

The students were the best.  I loved watching them file into the classroom – talking, laughing, listening to music – all the things teenagers do.  It made me feel young.  I would laugh and tease, try and remember names, and do my best to educate and maybe even entertain a little.  The thing is there were a lot of students that I loved, students who were loud and full of personality, students who were quiet and inquisitive, students who were funny and animated.  But this story isn’t about them.  But this wasn’t an ordinary story.  And the girl in this story, who I will call Katrina, was no ordinary girl.  Her life was filled with sadness and pain.  She was the antithesis of everything I was at the time.  Everything about my life was amazing and everything about her life was horrific.  To be honest, I barely noticed her.  Neither of us knew we were headed toward a cliff of our own.  The plans we had for our individual lives weren’t going to work out.

I am a bit outspoken.  I believe that when you notice something you don’t think is right you should say something.  Unfortunately, I was always saying something to the administration about how things could be different.  I was a bit too loud and a bit too outspoken.  I was new and full of ideas.  I wanted to change all kinds of things.  Ask my wife – I can be annoying sometimes.  I guess I required a bit too much maintenance; I drew a bit too much attention to myself with my outspokenness.  No high school administration needs that kind of headache no matter how popular the teacher is.  Unfortunately I had no clue.  I just kept stumbling along, talking my fool head off, speaking up whenever something came to mind.  Soon enough, I wasn’t just a squeaky wheel, someone to be tuned out – I was annoying.  Rather than looking at the things I thought should be fixed, my administration was looking at me.  At the end of my second year teaching, I was informed my contract would not be renewed.  I was being let go.

For a teacher going into the third year teaching, at least in my district, this is a big deal.  It’s the last year before you gain tenure.  So not having my contract renewed was potentially something I wouldn’t be able to recover from.  I was devastated.  I thought everything was great and right beneath the surface was this discontent with the way I did my job.  Once the students and faculty found out I was leaving there was an uproar.  Most everybody wanted me to stay.  There were rumors of a “bigger” reason for m firing, something no one could talk about, but there really wasn’t.  There was no big conspiracy.  Nothing I would be embarrassed to tell my mom about.  It was just my personality and an administration doing their job – finding those they considered to be the best teachers for their high school.  I still disagree with the decision.  I still feel like I never got a chance to change the things they disliked about me.  The point is, in the end I was not going to have my dream job come the following year.  I was a social studies teacher, who didn’t know anything about coaching, in a sea of social studies teachers.  Finding a job would be tough.  Maybe impossible.  And if I thought my life was hard, I had no real clue.

Katrina’s life was in serious turmoil.  She had come to class maybe a half dozen times.  She was loud and funny and cute but she rarely came.  She was one of “those” girls.  You know the girls that are in trouble, or cause trouble, or trouble follows her.  She made a bit of a nuisance of herself when she did come to class.  I never really got a chance to know her – mostly because she just never came.  Little did I know what was going on with her.

Katrina’s life was complicated beyond anything I was experiencing.  As I wondered whether or not I would have a job next year, Katrina battled for her safety and sanity.  She was 15 when she came to my class.  She had been 12 when, the man I’ll call Jake entered her life.  Katrina’s mom met Jake right after he got out of prison.  Katrina asked her mom what Jake had been in for and her mom replied “He tried to run over his wife while his kids were in the backseat.  But he’s different now.”  He wasn’t different.  Beatings started soon thereafter.  Often when Katrina would come home she would find her mom passed out on the bathroom floor or even in her own food.  Katrina watched a daily cycle unfold in the small trailer they lived in.  Her mom would get up, start drinking, get beaten for some minor infraction, drink some more and get beaten again, until the day finally ended only to start again the next day.  Her mom’s face and body always had several bruises of differing ages.  Katrina watched all of this day after day after day – watching the drug and alcohol abuse and the beatings.  Until the day Jake turned on her.

Her mom told Katrina to take the garbage out.  In a moment of thoughtlessness, she slipped and she gave her attitude.  She talked back.  Gave her mom her upraised chin, defiant eyes and angry words instead of obedience.  After years watching her mom get beat, Katrina was tired of it.  Jake grabbed her.  He grabbed her by the shoulders and slammed her against the thin walls of the trailer.  He shook her and slammed her against the wall until she agreed to take the garbage out.  But that wasn’t the breaking point for Katrina.  If mom could take it, she could take it.  It was when Katrina expected her mom to stand up for her that it all came undone.  She looked to her mom and she got nothing.  Her mom told Katrina that she deserved it.  She had it coming.  Jake was right.  It was at that moment that Katrina knew she was through with her mother, with Jake, and with the tiny tin can trailer.

So at 15, Katrina chose homelessness over being beaten and not having anyone stand up for her.  She tried to find a place for her and her mom to live.  But her mom wouldn’t follow.  She always went back to Jake.  And the only people who would let Katrina crash at their house were folks who did drugs and drank a lot of alcohol.  She was already used to that from her mom’s trailer.  So she joined in.  She crashed from place to place, hang out, did drugs sometimes, drank and worked at a pizza place to earn money.  Once in a while she came to school.  Just once in a while.  She kept looking for a home though.  Never really gave up trying to find a place for her and her mom.  While she looked for a home, I looked for another job.  I tried to find another school to teach at.  Our lives weren’t turning out the way either of us had planned.

I applied to a lot of schools.  I gave a lot of interviews.  Nothing stuck.  I panicked.  I wasn’t panicked I wouldn’t have a job – I could always go back to interpreting – I was panicked I wasn’t going to have a job as a teacher.  My dream seemed to be ending.  Then I got a call from a little school in my district I had never heard of.  A concept school where all the kids were in state’s custody.  I was a bit nervous about a school like that, but honestly, I was desperate, so I went in for the interview.  This interview changed everything.  I found a school with my same values.  Many of the teachers had the same values I did.  Students before anything else.  Small classes and direct attention to creating relationships.  I was sold.  And they offered me a job.

I have to be honest; I still wasn’t convinced about my place there.  I still wasn’t sold on my dream going down the drain.  I felt like I was settling.  I had wanted my first school and now I had to go to a school for gangsters and hard core kids – kids who didn’t even want to be in school.  So I sat in that first faculty meeting unsure of myself or my place there.  I didn’t know if I could do any good there.  What would I do or say to these kids?  How would I handle them?  Could I handle them?  I sat there going over policies and procedures as some of the councilors were doing intakes for the new students.

Many students that come to our school don’t want to be there.  They don’t want to be in any school.  Period.  Especially one where all the kids are troublemakers.  In the next room, one of the councilors was doing an intake for a highly upset young lady.  She wanted nothing to do with a school filled with gangsters and drug users.  She wasn’t like them.  She was better than that.  She had better things to do.  She sat on the floor in the counselor’s office, back to the corner, and told him in no uncertain terms that there was no way THIS school could have teachers like they had in her old school.  The counselor patiently asked her about her old teachers and she launched into a passionate telling of a teacher she used to have.  Someone she loved to listen to.  Someone who’s class she loved to attend.  Someone who loved what they taught.  Someone who cared about the students.  Someone like Mr. McKell.

The counselor, having a flair for the dramatic, stood up and quietly excused himself and came into the faculty meeting and asked me to follow him.  I quietly got up and followed him down the hall, not knowing where we were going or what we were doing.  We came into his office and there she was, Katrina, from my old school.  The girl who never showed up.  She looked at me, then at the counselor, and with tears in her bewildered eyes she quietly said, “What are you doing here?”

I looked at her and I finally got a sense of what I would be doing.  I realized this is where I was needed.  There were kids at this school who needed me.  Needed what I had to offer.  I was the right person for this job, right now.  I looked at her and with tears in my own eyes I smiled and said, “I’m here for you, dude.”  We both knew we would be all right.  We were both going to make it.  Together we would figure out this new school.  Together we could support each other through our changing dreams.

And we did.  For the next two years, we figured stuff out.  She took several classes from me and I always saw her in the hall.  She sobered up.  Found a good, solid home.  No more drugs; no more booze; no more beatings.  She became a leader at school.  Kids look to her as an example.  She graduates this year and I have mixed feelings.  I hate to see her go.  I like having her around.  But I can’t wait to see what she becomes.  She’s figured out her life.  She knows where she stands and what she stands for.  She’s cleaned herself up and so has her mom.  They’re both headed in a good direction.  As am I.  My life is back on track.  I’ve found a strength and confidence in teaching at this new school that I never could have found at my old one.  I am a better teacher because I work here.  We both know where we’re going.  This school gave us that chance.  We both looked after each other during a tough time in our lives.  A time where plans weren’t going as expected.  I hope she checks in with me from time to time.  I will think of her and hope the best for her – as I do with all my students.  I can’t wait to see what she makes of herself.