Not with a bang, but a whimper...
That's usually how the school year ends for teachers, I've found. Once the kids are out of the building, it just turns into a gigantic unlovely edifice (oh, yes, there are some beautiful school buildings out there, but I've not taught in any of them yet).
It's nothing but dusty books being reshelved, grimy ick being removed from lockers, and chalk dust being swept out of rooms.
Today, I spent about twenty minutes boxing up the material that actually belongs to me and not to the school, an hour searching for the administrators who needed to sign off on a silly little checkout list, and two hours wandering in disbelief.
I'm really and truly leaving Carver.
The school is losing a lot of very good teachers. I don't know that I may count myself among them, but an awful lot of good people are fleeing. The City's new curriculum is miserable, and shows no signs of improvement. I'll address "How Can We Do This To Our Kids?" another time. This is about me, damnit.
I spent most of the day thinking of August, 2003, when I first wandered into the once-hallowed and now-roach-infested halls of George Washington Carver Vocational and Technical High School. It was my first teaching job. I had a very dim idea, really, of what I was doing. Oh, sure, I knew my BritLit, and I can conjugate verbs twenty ways for Sunday. I'd never stood in front of thirty kids while doing so, though, so I was a bit daunted.
In three years, I'd come to love and hate Carver. I hated what had happened to the once-proud school--really, to the once-proud City of Baltimore. I loved the feeling of family that we had. I loved the whiskey sours in the lounge on the day before Christmas break, and I loved the amazing fried chicken that the school's Tea Room turned out weekly. I hated the fact that my ninth graders didn't know the meaning of the word "noun" (and no, I'm not being facetious), but I loved it when a kid said "I liked that story. It reminds me of my grandma." I really loved when one of the kids in my drama class, after I'd held forth on the movie palaces of Baltimore, came in and told me that her grandmother was ecstatic about my lesson. Grandmother, it seems, remembered going to pictures at the Regent and the Royal, and remembered a time when she wasn't allowed into the Century or the Hippodrome.
You know, for all of my nostalgia for the Baltimore in the days before my own birth, I'm forced to wonder now and then what the city would have meant to me had I not been allowed into certain places. The Hipp is my favorite picture palace, but what if I'd never been allowed into it? How would it have felt if Hochschild's didn't let me try on a bathing suit? Maybe my view of the city would be a little bit different.
But this is not about segregation or movies or stores; it's about me and my last day at Carver. I'm damned glad to be shut of the place, but it will always loom large in my mental book of memories. Apparently, my list of things I loved does outweigh the list of things I hated. It's time for me to move on, but I'm pretty elephantine in my memories. Cheers, and thanks, to Carver High, her students, alumni and faculty, for a great three years.
That's usually how the school year ends for teachers, I've found. Once the kids are out of the building, it just turns into a gigantic unlovely edifice (oh, yes, there are some beautiful school buildings out there, but I've not taught in any of them yet).
It's nothing but dusty books being reshelved, grimy ick being removed from lockers, and chalk dust being swept out of rooms.
Today, I spent about twenty minutes boxing up the material that actually belongs to me and not to the school, an hour searching for the administrators who needed to sign off on a silly little checkout list, and two hours wandering in disbelief.
I'm really and truly leaving Carver.
The school is losing a lot of very good teachers. I don't know that I may count myself among them, but an awful lot of good people are fleeing. The City's new curriculum is miserable, and shows no signs of improvement. I'll address "How Can We Do This To Our Kids?" another time. This is about me, damnit.
I spent most of the day thinking of August, 2003, when I first wandered into the once-hallowed and now-roach-infested halls of George Washington Carver Vocational and Technical High School. It was my first teaching job. I had a very dim idea, really, of what I was doing. Oh, sure, I knew my BritLit, and I can conjugate verbs twenty ways for Sunday. I'd never stood in front of thirty kids while doing so, though, so I was a bit daunted.
In three years, I'd come to love and hate Carver. I hated what had happened to the once-proud school--really, to the once-proud City of Baltimore. I loved the feeling of family that we had. I loved the whiskey sours in the lounge on the day before Christmas break, and I loved the amazing fried chicken that the school's Tea Room turned out weekly. I hated the fact that my ninth graders didn't know the meaning of the word "noun" (and no, I'm not being facetious), but I loved it when a kid said "I liked that story. It reminds me of my grandma." I really loved when one of the kids in my drama class, after I'd held forth on the movie palaces of Baltimore, came in and told me that her grandmother was ecstatic about my lesson. Grandmother, it seems, remembered going to pictures at the Regent and the Royal, and remembered a time when she wasn't allowed into the Century or the Hippodrome.
You know, for all of my nostalgia for the Baltimore in the days before my own birth, I'm forced to wonder now and then what the city would have meant to me had I not been allowed into certain places. The Hipp is my favorite picture palace, but what if I'd never been allowed into it? How would it have felt if Hochschild's didn't let me try on a bathing suit? Maybe my view of the city would be a little bit different.
But this is not about segregation or movies or stores; it's about me and my last day at Carver. I'm damned glad to be shut of the place, but it will always loom large in my mental book of memories. Apparently, my list of things I loved does outweigh the list of things I hated. It's time for me to move on, but I'm pretty elephantine in my memories. Cheers, and thanks, to Carver High, her students, alumni and faculty, for a great three years.
posted by Daniel | 1:14 AM
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