Early Teaching

8.

It isn’t quite true what I said earlier, that I had never thought of becoming a teacher. There was a moment when William and I were hanging out in Colorado on a break in our undergraduate programs that he turned me on to Summerhill. The idea was that if you gave students enough freedom and enough choices, they would eventually figure out what they wanted to do and take charge of their own education. This concept resonated with my – and a lot of other peoples’ – sixties’ sensibility.

By the time I entered the credential program at Berkeley, these ideas had spread to the mainstream, with numerous elaborations from Jonathan Kozol, John Holt, Herb Kohl and others. The credential program assigned these texts, yet in our visitations to Berkeley schools, it was clear few teachers were implementing the ideas. The classrooms we observed were pretty traditional.

That winter, I started student teaching with a teacher who was trying to implement some choices in his classroom. But when I found myself in front of the class, a horrific anxiety overcame me, a foreshadowing of my future career as a teacher. How do you “control” a class when you don’t believe in controlling a class?
For one of my seminal evaluations, one of my professors came to the class to videotape a lesson. I had planned what I thought was an innovative approach to cooperative learning, using Cuisennaire rods, these color coded wooden sticks with different lengths representing different numbers, so if you put the blue “2” next to the red “4,” the length matched the green “6.” I grouped the class into 5 groups of 5 and gave them each multiple sets of rods. The idea was for them on their own to figure out the relationships between the rods and explain their findings. The students, however, were more interested in their relationships with each other, and began throwing the rods around the classroom. I froze, clueless as how to deal with the situation. Finally, the professor decided that was enough videotaping and the teacher bailed me out by taking over the class. I was steeped in shame.

A footnote: I got a C in the class that oversaw my student teaching, a bad grade in graduate school. I protested, but got nowhere. However, just then the School of Education decided to reduce competition by eliminating grades and utilizing a Pass/Fail system. The great irony was that on my transcript, the “C” was crossed out and replaced by a “P.” But you could still clearly see the “C.” This is a small example of the ambivalence with which the education establishment treated “progressive” reforms. The school system is expert at implementing changes which in reality change nothing at all.

Because of my weak performance in this more liberal class, in the spring, the dean of the ed school assigned me to a very traditional class with a strict black teacher not averse to using the occasional bop on the head to keep things under control. She was a good teacher though, and I thrived in this environment when discipline wasn’t a factor, even when I took over the class for 3 days. I began to find my sea-legs as a teacher, having the class make crystal sets, read Langston Hughes plays, and debate the merits of the contending positions in the Civil Rights movement between Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. My proudest moment, was when white boy (Berkeley was fairly well integrated at the time) from the hills staunchly defended Malcolm’s commitment to self-defense by any means necessary.

I didn’t realize that this would be the only full realization of my potential as an elementary school teacher. Subsequent events prevented me from ever really having a successful experience in my own elementary class.

I got a teaching job in the San Francisco public schools, McKinley Elementary, across Market Street on Castro. 32 students, 5th grade. I was so nervous that first day, and the first month, and the first semester, I couldn’t think. In the first ten minutes of standing in front of the class, I tried to come on tough. A kid made a funny noise. I sent him to the principal’s office, a gross overreaction. Soon many kids were making funny noises. I couldn’t send them all to the office. Soon enough, I lost control. I was totally conflicted and confused about my role, wanting to offer them freedom in the Kohl-Holt-Kozol tradition, also wanting to please Mr. Susoyeff, a stern, bald-headed Russian, a former military officer in command of the school.

It was a mixed class, but it was the black kids that gave me the most grief. I kept them after school, but then in an effort to bond with them I took them to the Jr. Museum up the hill, rewarding their misbehavior, showing myself as a push-over. I tried to set up an individualized reading program as I’d been taught to do in my credential program but it took weeks for me to meet with students one-on-one, and most of them slipped through the cracks.

The children were out of control. Throwing crayons was the one activity the students were into. There were fights. When I tried to make Eddie Johnson sit down, he came at me with a broken bottle. I had to suspend him, violating my principles. I couldn’t do this job, and on a minute by minute basis, I faced my failure.
Yet Sasha was there for me, rubbing my head with sympathy, offering advice, soothing my frazzled nerves.

One day I was so nervous that I got to school and noticed that I had on two different shoes. Luckily I was early, so I raced home and changed, and returned to school before the bell.

I met an intern at the school, a black man who had been involved in the San Francisco State Strike, Jeremiah Jackson. We became friends; he became my first black friend. We had dinner with him and his wife Bliss, a quiet white woman, powerful in her own way.

“The racism at that school is tough to take,” he said. “You look around in the classrooms and all the black boys are isolated at the back of the class and given busy work. Even in the class I’m working in, the teacher professes to be liberal and all that, it’s the same story, black boys in the back.”

“The teacher across the hall from me?” I said. “In the lunchroom, she talks about shoving the black kid’s heads into the pencil sharpener.”“We got to do something, man.”

I wasn’t eager to take this on, I had enough problems. But I took one of his posters, a picture of Malcolm X, and put it on my bulletin board.

The principal hauled me into the office. “You of all people, Mr. Hitz, should know that we don’t need to encourage rebellion among these people. They get enough of that stuff at home. You need to calm them down, get them to work within the system.”

I took the poster down.

A few days later, I was working late in the classroom. At around 5 PM, after all the other teachers had gone, I started to leave myself. Jeremiah was in the hallway on a ladder, plastering posters all over the walls: Huey P. Newton in his classical chieftain’s chair, the Panthers with guns on the steps of the State Capitol in Sacramento, Geronimo, Malcolm, Pancho Villa.

It was January by now, and my class was more or less functioning. The students and I had gotten used to each other. At the principal’s urging, I established three levels of reading groups, also against my principles, but it seemed to be working.

The principal called me in the office. “We won’t be renewing your contract for the spring, Mr. Hitz.”

“How come? I know it’s taken awhile, but my class in finally under control.”

“Really? I was observing the class the other day and Ollie had his feet up on the desk.”

I called Jeremiah. “The same thing happened to me, man! They’re transferring me to another school.”

I spoke with my Party study group leader, a teacher herself, Ann, an earnest woman, nervous herself. “It’s not because of the discipline. They don’t care about the discipline. All new teachers have those problems. It’s because you’re friends with Jeremiah.”

Jeremiah and I decided to fight. We called a meeting of all the parents we knew at one of the parents’ houses. About 10 parents showed up, along Ann and another Party member. We decided to have a picket line at the school on Monday morning and call a community meeting that evening.

Arriving at school that morning seeing the signs, “Rehire Jackson and Hitz,” brought tears to my eyes. No one had ever fought for me like this. Here were black people fighting for me. And Sasha was with me all the way, at my side, whispering little encouragements.

Over a hundred parents showed up at the meeting that night. The beleaguered principal attempted to field outraged comments from the parents. “You want a class where children throw paper airplanes?” he said, referring to my class.

“We don’t care about that,” one of the parents defended me, “We want teachers who can relate to the students, young teachers like Jackson and Blatz.”

Jeremiah and I were called downtown the next day. “I hear you had fun last night,” the Director of Personnel said.

“That wasn’t fun,” Jeremiah said. ”That was serious.”

The upshot was that Jeremiah got his job back at the school and I didn’t. But the Party had been there for me. I moved closer to their bosom. The experience at McKinley had changed me. I got a glimpse of your potential power, of the power of the working class. Just as important, the experience unleashed a power within myself that enabled me to treat students as an ally to their parents, so in many more cases – not all – I was able to stand up to their nonsense.