These first appeared in March of 2012 and I’ve added a few memories to them . . .
My First Teaching Job
I graduated from Herron School of Art in 1971. Luckily I got a full scholarship or I would never been able to go. There were only 5 of us in art education and only 50 total graduates that year. I got married that August and neither my husband nor I had a job at the time. He had just been laid off from his photo-engraving apprenticeship and I hadn’t landed my first teaching job. Two weeks before school started, I was offered a position with IPS as an elementary art teacher in two schools, School #1 & #3. I was to teach two days at one and three days at the other.
My first day at School #1, the school librarian introduced herself and said “Oh, you’re the new art teacher, they kill the art teacher.” Not knowing what she meant by that, I swallowed hard and tried to forget it (you will see how well that worked out). In that grade school I had no classroom, just a rolling cart that I piled with supplies and rolled from room to room. The junior high rooms were all in one hallway and when the bell rang between classes, the students lined up single file, girls then boys and marched out of the room to the right, staying close to the wall, while the teachers lined up down the middle like guards. I listened for the ankle chains, but they were invisible. What a prison like atmosphere in that problem school! The teachers and the principal had a lot of issues with each other, discipline being number one and this seemed to be their only solution. Well you can imagine, once the students got to their next class without a chance to go to the restroom or get a drink of water, it was nothing but mutiny. I wanted the students to experience the arts — to paint, do pastels, charcoal, and more. But with the tone of the school and the overcrowding (averaging 32 to 37 students) and in 40 minutes a class period, believe me it’s quite a challenge to get anything done.
School #3 was on Rural, right off east Washington Street. I was at that school three days a week and had a nice classroom. Again though, I had too many students in each class and I saw over 1,000 total every week. Unfortunately with that many students, you only remember the really good ones and the really bad ones.
I loved teaching, but it was exhausting coming up with lesson plans that would work quickly and leave time to clean up the classroom. I had students who volunteered to come after school and help me clean up, and in return I gave them leftover art supplies that were bulging from the cabinets. Apparently no previous art teacher had lasted a year and no one used up the supplies. When I was asked to fill out the order form for the coming year, I had a hard time figuring out what we needed — we had too much of everything, but they insisted I spend every dime of that budget or it would be cut the next year (duh — what about saving some taxpayers money?).
I admire any teacher who has survived the rigors of the classroom, lunchroom duty and hallway duty. I was teaching before busing so students lived in the neighborhood and walked to school. Everyone went home for lunch, unless their mother worked and they had permission to stay and have the school lunch. I’ll never forget at School #3 we had a family who had moved so many times and fallen so far behind, that three brothers were backed up in the same 5th grade class. The oldest was turning 15! They were supposed to go home for lunch, but their Mom sent a note pleading with us to just “feed ’em and beat ’em”!
Corporal punishment was allowed back then, and a teacher (with a witness and three forms filled out), was permitted to paddle a problem student. Well needless to say, I had some problem students, so when I took these students to the principal’s office, he handed me the paddle. I ended up paddling 30 boys at School #1 in the first month. I started bringing back the same boys, so I stopped paddling — it was not helping and I felt terrible. I never paddled my own children and they never talked back to me. Violence begates violence.
I had some really rough times— taking a switchblade away from the same 8th grader two days in a row (principal shouldn’t have given it back to him) and getting in a wrestling match with a 12-year-old. We were the same size and I’m not sure who won, but I did get him to stop hitting fellow classmates in the head with a yard stick. I found that I could usually get the out-of-control kid out of the classroom with a good headlock. I also had long fingernails and if I grabbed them in the shoulder blade I could control their every action (kinda like Spock did in Star Trek).
At school #3 my billfold was stolen out of my purse (it was in my desk drawer) at the end of one school day. A group of students had volunteered to help clean up as usual and I suspected which student it was and the principal agreed — it was Ricky! The kicker was the student had taken the 27 cents I had and found the key to my car in the change compartment and had left the billfold in my front seat—nice of him. I had to keep my purse locked up in the principal’s office the rest of the semester.
Recently on the news they’ve been talking about why teachers are absent so many days — I know exactly why. Mental health days, without which you could really lose your cool and hurt someone.
So many kids are not taught to respect their elders at home, and teachers are expected to not only teach them the subject matter, but how to be decent human beings. Believe me, we don’t pay them enough.
At School #1, I remember a Social Studies teacher who was in her last year of teaching standing in the hallway looking through the little slit of a window into her classroom, the same as I was doing and commenting — things have changed so much, I can’t wait to retire.
The music teacher at School #1 was like Maria in “Sound of Music” and was always so upbeat – she had been a nun (I’m serious). Nothing ever spoiled her attitude, until one day she went out to the parking lot and all the tires on her new car were slashed. She never came back to school.
Another incident at School #1 that I will never forget is when I had kept a whole class after school for discipline problems (principal’s order). One of the student’s father came down the hallway looking for his daughter. He was dressed in a suit with a hat on. The principal was in my classroom and he stepped out to address this father. I was there along with the daughter. The father was asking what’s going on and the principal kept repeating over and over — I’ll talk to you when you take your hat off, but not if you don’t take your hat off. I thought they were going to get into a fist fight. The little girl and I both stood there crying. I will never forget that same principal at School #1 ask me the last day of school, if that was someone from my class who had set off the smoke bomb in the hallway the last period — I told him I didn’t know!
School #1 is closed now (you realize I’m talking 50 years ago) and years later School #3 on Rural was remodeled and became Commonwealth apartments. I went to the Open House to see the work done. They had left the classroom doors with the numbers stenciled in the glass above. My classroom had 2 doors so they had divided it in half and taken out the drop ceiling (apparently my classroom had been part of the original gym with 20 ft. ceilings). They made 2 loft apartments that were very cool. Channel 13 was there covering the event and they interviewed me on camera since I had been a teacher there 35 years before. I showed them where my desk had sat next to the door.
I want you to know I believe in public education and both my own kids went to IPS school #57 and had great experiences. Many of the IPS schools have special programs now and my grandchildren go to an IPS which is CFI (Center for Inquiry) and they are getting a very good education.
Next time, my second teaching job…
