Tag Archives: teaching

Sometimes Losing is Winning

[Friends Seminary. [Photo credit: Google Search.]

I spent New Years Eve, 1990 alone in a bar in Binghamton.The only kiss I got was from the off-duty bartender who had started celebrating early.  He kissed the top of my head and said: “I love you, man,” and then fell backwards onto a table.

I was at the wrong end of a bitter divorce.  Working as a ‘temp’ at IBM in Endicott, NY, I felt I had nowhere else to go but down.

Fate stepped in and made me buy a copy of the Philadelphia Enquirer. (It was a legit paper, not the Enquirer that your thinking of).  I found an agency that placed teachers.  Without losing a moment to think, I circled the ad and sent in my resume.

I was hired after a single interview at Friends Seminary in the lower East Side of Manhattan.  So I packed up and headed to the Big Apple.  A month earlier I was walking in a park in Binghamton.  The local NPR station ran a public service piece.  The host read a list of ten questions.  If you answered yes to five of the ten the advice was to seek professional care ASAP.  Clear signs of sever depression.

I answered yes to eight of the ten.  Was I down or what?

Without boring you with the details, I got a 26th floor studio on W. 92nd Street.  It was perfect.

So, I started teaching again.  This time it was in a Quaker school.  Make no mistake, only a handful of staff and teachers were Quakers.  But, I learned what a unique place it was the first time I attended an Upper School “Meeting for Worship”.  It was not religious at all.  The students just sat quietly and only stood to say what was on their mind when they felt the need.  I heard sad stories and funny incidents.  I learned more about the adolescent mind in the two years at Friends that twenty years in public and private schools.

I was happy there.  I taught my way, but as it turned out, it wasn’t the ‘right’ way.  The head of the middle school didn’t take to my methods and I couldn’t understand her demands of me.

By contract, the Head of School was supposed to observe you teaching once before your two-year probationary period was over. He came into my Astronomy class on the last day and left before the class was over.

The next day, he and the middle school head told me that my contract would not be renewed.

Did I feel cheated?  Yes.  Did I cry on the phone to Mariam when I told her the news? Yes.

I found an agency that pointed me in the direction of The Town School on the upper east side.  I taught a class in front of the science head and others

I got the job and I never looked back.  I spent ten years at Town.  I was asked to join the board of The Association of Teachers in Independent School of New York.

I was even the science department chair a few times.

Sometimes it’s a glove…sometimes it’s a shoe or a coat.  But you always know in the end when the perfect fit happens.

[The Town School.  My best fit. Photo credit: Goodle Search.]

 

 

 

The Old Schoolmaster

SanJuanTeacherStatue

You throw a pebble, a small boulder that you can barely pick up, or a grain of sand into a pool of water.  If there is no wind, you can watch the ripples move out in perfect concentric circles, ever-widening.  The tiny waves keep going until they reach an obstacle and they bounce off into another odd and unexpected angle.

You can never determine the ultimate destiny of the ripples just created by your action.  But, they’re out there somewhere, still displacing another water molecule.

If there is a wind blowing–a wind that changes and causes eddies in the once-calm water, then whatever you started with your pebble is now out of sync with the ripples you hoped for.

It’s a little like being a teacher.  You stand in front of a pool of calm minds and you toss out a pebble of an idea.  How it affects the waters of a child’s brain is out of your control.  Whatever becomes of your comment or question is up to the gods, or the parents, or an uncle or a bully or a future husband or wife of the child.  You can only hope for something humble–like making the child’s world (or future) better by even the smallest degree.

A metaphor: You (as an educator) are like the bed of a vast ocean.  The limitless water is the mind of child multiplied by ten billion.  At the same time, you are the tosser of the pebble, the sower of seeds, and the wind that changes every day in a young person’s life.

It’s a heady feeling…all this power over a mind.  They sit and pretend they don’t hear you, they draw goofy pictures of you as a fool.  They roll their eyes and pass notes.  They flirt with each other and wait for the bell to end the class.

But, they’re listening…maybe with half-an-ear, but they’re listening.

They pretend they don’t like you and that they fear you, but they also revere you.  Most often, they spend more time with you than with their parents.

It’s a heady feeling…all this power over a mind.  But it’s also scary as hell and unsettling as a ghost story.

In a small public park in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, hidden by many buildings, is a statue of a teacher.  I don’t read Spanish, so I couldn’t tell if it was to honor a certain person or educators in general.

I saw this statue and saw myself.  Not that I deserve a monument–God forbid!  But, on the figures shoulders and arms were children.  He/she was the foundation of those lives.

But, I’ve held thousands of young people on my shoulders in 33 years of living in a cloud of chalk-dust.

I don’t want a statue.  I just want to know that a pebble I tossed in 1973, is still causing a small waves in someone’s life.  I didn’t want to change the world, but only wanted a young mind to think again about something and begin to ask their own questions.

I wonder.  Is there one 57 year-old man or woman, someone I taught at a 15-year-old at the start of my career, sitting somewhere and remembering me and my pebbles?

 

 

 

The Social History of a Man’s Tie Rack

 BagOfTies

Many of you, my faithful readers and fans, probably assume that I just write a blog and then go off and mow the lawn, fish, read, paint, take Pilates, go to a movie, make a big bowl of popcorn, cook a stack of buttermilk flapjacks, attend a men’s support group, catalogue my moth collection, peruse the internet for Icelandic porn, swiffer the kitchen or polish my Bolivian coin collection.   I’m sure that you think I don’t give a second thought to anything I’ve written and sent out on my WordPress blog platform.

“What does he care,” you say among yourselves.  “He’s said what he wanted to say.  His last few were a bit goofy, but he’s at least trying to please.”

I will have you know, right here and now, that I DO care what my readers think.  In fact, I lose hours of sleep, lying there wondering whether or not The Redheaded Riter liked my latest post, or what Skinnywench thought of it, or what Angie, Lenny, Diane, Madeline, Jim, Donna or Linda had to say about it. [I’m even FB friends with Heidi Fleiss, but she never once wrote anything to me].

But, I do know from reading the comments made in that little box at the end of the post that most of my fans are basically saying the same thing: “You know, he’s written some pretty strange stuff, a lot of it is sad and full of regret and melancholy, loss and rejection.  He writes a lot about his childhood girlfriend, Mary Alice.  She’s probably pretty sick of hearing about obscure stuff that happened 60 years ago.  Yes, he has shared his innermost feelings and worries.  I mean I don’t even know what my wife thinks about Purgatory, but I know what Pat worries about all the time.  But, with all this angst and nostalgia, he’s never, never written about the one thing that we most care about.  He’s never said one thing about his neckties.”

Now, normally, I would consider revealing information about my neckties as a no-no, something like telling someone what your jock strap size happens to be.  Neckties are to be worn only for short periods of time during certain hours of the day…like sock garters.  But, since I am now retired, I feel quite free to tell you a little about how I came about having such an extensive necktie collection…and how they helped me gain a particular sort of fame in the world I lived in…the private schools of the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

It began when I first walked into a classroom at the outset of my teaching career.  It was February, 1973.  I was lured out of grad school at S.U.N.Y. Binghamton by the offer of a full-time teaching job in Pennsylvania.  I had enough credits in education to qualify for a provisional certificate.  I had a young daughter and I needed the job.

My first day in the classroom, I was very self-conscious so I wore a thick sweater or vest and almost always a tie.  My first ties were borrowed from my father.  He purchased them from some store in Endicott, NY in the 1940’s.  Kids pointed and made muffled comments, but I didn’t care.

Then I made my first visit to Ireland.  It was “wool heaven” so I bought a few knitted ties and a few woolen numbers that sported strange Irish tartans.  I was pleased with the “professorial” look I worked at putting together.  Tweed jackets with patches on the elbows and woolen ties (with corduroys, of course…all earth tones).  The one item I never wore (and still won’t) were tasselled loafers.

I was cool and I was very “academic.”

Flash forward to the early 1990’s.  I had moved from public to private schools and I had landed a job at a Quaker school in New York City.  It was a very low-key kind of place.  Students called you by your first name.  When I first heard “Hey, Pat, what does this question mean?” I was in a state of shock.

But, something happened on the way to an assembly…something that was said by a student that changed my life (necktie wise).  He didn’t mean to be rude or to hurt my feelings.  He simply looked at my knit tie (that was square at the bottom) and said: “Who cut your tie off?”

SquareTie

That did it.  I put away my old wool and knit ties (remember, I was still self-conscious) and started buying silk ties on the street.  I would get three for $10.00.  I looked for interesting designs…I found them.  Then, it became like an obsession…like an addiction.  It started with cool designs, but that was just a gateway to strange colors and even more bizarre patterns.  I bought then on 23rd Street.  I purchased them on 34th Street.  On Amsterdam Avenue.  In booths near Central Park.  Street Fairs.  Guys with push-carts. Anywhere, anytime.  I would meet guys named Moose or Cal or Tat who had the latest “imports” from China, Korea, Brazil or even, yes, even Paraguay.  Yes, I bought ties made in Paraguay.

At the last school I taught in, I was the 6th grade home room teacher as well as the science guy for 5th and 6th grade.  I began to gain a reputation.

Once, at the end of home room period, one girl said: “I like your tie, Mr. Egan.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Another girl said: “Well, Mr. Egan has always been rather creative with his ties.”

I was the King of the Neckties among the male faculty.  One history teacher from the 7th and 8th grade wing, tried to find ties like mine, but his efforts came to naught.  He tried to usurp me and he failed.  Too bad, I liked the guy.  But there can be only one King in the small world of a small private school.

I had a Halloween tie I thought was spooky, until the school cancelled that holiday due to parents complaints.  I had a nice snowman tie, but Christmas became confused with other holidays and I gave up wearing it.  I had an Einstein tie that I always wore to the Science Fair Night that I directed.  I left it in the taxi on the way home.  I told my classes the next day and three days later, I had four new Einstein ties given to me.  The parents went online to get me a new one.  As you look at the photos of ties below, find the one of the Empire State Building.  My colleague told me the first time I wore it that it was too phallic.  I stopped wearing it.

 TiesOnRailing

 

I don’t wear my ties anymore, except for weddings and funerals.  I tried to pass them onto my son, who works mostly without ties.  He said thanks, but he had no room in his closet.  I caught him rolling his eyes at his girlfriend after he checked my collection.

I remember, when I was a teenager, my brother and I would find my father’s ties (that he bought in the 1930’s) and we would make fun of how weird they were.

So, now my son was doing the same thing.

Is this some kind of “Circle of Life” thing?

If you see anything that interests you, email me…we can work something out.

 

 

Pushing Chalk: Recollections on a Classroom Life

Hey, teacher leave them kids alone.

-Pink Floyd “Another Brick in the Wall” 1979

“What is a rock?”

I actually asked this question of my Earth & Space Science class of ninth graders.  It was probably my third year of teaching.  I was in a public school near Wilkes-Barre, PA.  There were thirty kids in my class which was being held in an annex of the actual school where I worked.  The back wall of the room echoed my voice back to me.  I was fingering a piece of chalk.  As I stood waiting for a response, a thought came to me.  Did I realize just how goofy and stupid I just sounded?  Did these ninth graders really care what a rock was?  Did it matter in any way to them?  Did it matter at all?

The year was probably 1975.  The school district, as well as the whole Susquehanna valley had gone through a terrible flood in 1972, and they were still suffering from flooded buildings and lack of classroom space.  It was no surprise I was hold my class in an annex…where the walls echoed.

I only had one lesson plan to prepare because I taught the very same thing, five times a day, to classes of thirty or so students.

That was my first teaching job.  I had been working on my Master of Arts in Teaching in S.U.N.Y. Binghamton when I got a tip on a full-time teaching job in Pennsylvania.  I had accumulated enough credits to be provisionally certified in that state.  I left the classroom of Binghamton on a Friday and on Monday, I stood on the other side of the desk.  Now, S.U.N.Y. Binghamton, (now Binghamton University) had a great program with their MAT in Earth Science.  But, even though I student taught, was video-taped and critiqued, they never prepared you to stand in front of thirty ninth graders, alone, and learn classroom management skills in about three minutes.  Because, if you didn’t get the students when the starting gun went off, you would never have them.

I learned quick.

There was a few fellow teachers there that taught me something about education and how they valued it.  One teacher had just completed his Masters for permanent certification.  I recall him saying that he was NEVER going to take another class again in his life.  I thought this was a strange thing for a professional educator to say.  It spoke more to his basic philosophy of the value of education than anything I heard since.

I shared a study hall (about 80 students) with another “experienced” teacher.  We would sit at the dining hall table where he would watch the kids and I would work on the N.Y.Times crossword puzzle.  One day, early in September, he told me he was going to give me some valuable advice on how to avoid discipline problems.

“Watch this,” he said.

He had seen a kid whispering to another somewhere across the room.  John (not his real name) went straight for the kid and hauled him into the hall where he proceeded to yell at the student until the kid began to cry.  He then brought the offender back to his seat and returned to sitting beside me.

“If you pick out a kid, like I just did, take him into the hall and shout until he cries, you’ll never have a discipline problem.”

John’s teaching style was rooted in the minimalist category.  He would put a film on the projector.  Turn it on and then head to the nearest phone to talk to his wife about how things were going at the furniture store they owned.

I learned a lot from John.

My years in that school did harden me for problematic issues.  I was attacked in the hallway by a ninth grader who already had a police record.  One of my former students was murdered by his father (or so the story goes), who took the kid and hung him from a tree in the back yard.  Another of my former students used to rely on a crooked doctor to supply him with drugs.  One afternoon, the boy went for his dose and the doctor refused.  So, naturally, the kid bludgeoned the doctor to death.

By the late 1970’s, I’d had enough of that school and all the emotional baggage that came with it.  I left and took a job in Connecticut.  I never even emptied my file cabinet.

I put in two years at a public school in Fairfield County.  The attitude of teachers, parents and students was an even 180 degrees from what I had come from.  I loved the job.  Everyone was so “into” their profession and the students were more than pleasant to teach.  unfortunately, the district had a strict policy of “last hired, first fired”.  I had taken the job as a one year replacement and, due to a tragic accident, it had turned into a two-year job.  Then they closed a school and the older teachers bumped the younger ones.

I went job seeking.

Then another tip paid off.  A private all-girls school in Stamford was in need of a science teacher.  I interviewed.  I inked the contract and entered the realm of the independent schools.  I never looked back.

Here, I had freedom.  No lesson plans to file.  No discipline problems.  The trade-off was in salary.  I would have made much more in the public sector, but I chose the job that gave me freedom and respect.

Now, to make a long story short, I ended my career teaching in the private schools of Manhattan.  My first job was at the Quaker school in the East Village.  Wow.  I rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous.  I would see Susan Sarandon waiting in the hall with her stroller.  One Sunday night, I watched her give out an Oscar.  On Tuesday, I held the door for her.  I even met Raffi, the Mick Jagger of the kindergarten set.

After two years at the Friends school, I moved up to the upper east side to a small school that went from N/K to 8th grade.  We fed the really famous schools like Dalton, Trinity and Horace Mann.  Our auctions and fundraisers were held in such venues as the Hard Rock Cafe, Copacabana, Hotel St. Pierre and the Russian Tea Room.  I was at this school on 9/11.  A parent of one of my students (a former Secret Service agent) passed me in the hall and told me that a few minutes earlier, a plane had gone into the Trade Center.  Later, I went down to the front desk to see whose parents were arriving, and I would get the child from whatever class he or she was in at that time.   One of my students was getting books from her locker as I waited to take her to her waiting father.

“Mr. Egan,” she asked. “is this like Pearl Harbor?”

Several days later, one 8th grade boy asked if he could speak to the upper school assembly (we had one every Friday).  I sat with my class as he went up to the small stage holding something folded.  He stood, alone in front of all the grade 5 to 8 students, and held out an American flag.  He wanted to offer it to the school to fly from our flag pole.  His voice broke and he had to halt his speech.  The room was silent.  The tears rolled down my cheeks.  He found the strength to finish by telling us that the flag had once covered his grandfather’s casket.  His grandfather was a WWII veteran.

I was proud that I risen to hold onto a great position in one of the toughest educational environments in the country.  When I retired in 2005, our tuition was close to that of Yale, (and our selection process for our kindergarten was even tougher than Yale).

Was I a good teacher?  Only the students, some of whom hold PhD degrees, can say.  But I never tired of the fascinating position I held.  I had kids from grade 4 to 12, the ground zero of raging hormones.  Yet, from out of the chaos of emotion they carried in their young brains, I saw eager anticipation for the future.  They looked forward to a life of choices and they were anxious to get on with it.  As I aged, my memories began collecting in my minds vault.  The kids, however, wore their energy and curiosity in their eyes, in their smiles and in their giggles, however silly it all seemed to them at the time.

So, I had gone from a nervous rookie who had to learn the ropes of teaching in a few minutes, to teaching and being an advisor to sixth graders.  The educational world had changed a lot.  My first class averages in 1973 were done with a slide-rule.  When I retired, I was teaching PowerPoint.

My last day in the classroom wasn’t spent pushing chalk.

I simply snapped the cap onto the felt dry-erase marker.

Here are a few selections of my photo memories:

Image

One of my students from Corfe Hills School in England.  I was an exchange teacher to Dorset in 1984-85.

Image

One of my home room class photos in John Jay Park.  The East River is in the background.

Image

Another sixth grade home room.  All these kids are now professionals in the fields they chose.  Look closely into their eyes.