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From The Calvin Coolidge Clarion

 

Calvin Coolidge

CLARION

 

September

INTERESTING INTERVIEWS:

Miss Sylvia Barrett, the new English teacher, is not only everybody's choice "Audrey Hepburn" of Calvin Coolidge but is also a very attractive young woman of whom we are so very proud. The interview found her to be 5 feet 4 inches in her stocking feet, with brown hair and blue-gray eyes and very pleasant to talk to. She received her B.A. degree with Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude (It's Greek to us!) and her M.A. (Miss America?) with highest honors. (Boy! What a record!)

 

Listed among her favorites are Chaucer the poet (That's Greek to us too!) and reading books. She is also partial to painting in her spare time (Don't go up and pose for her, boys!) and bicycling (built for two?), whipped cream (Oh, those calories!) and swimming (Yummm!); and she likes to visit different places like everyone else. She visited some places in Mexico last summer (Halba Espanol?). She feels that teaching here will be a real challenge to her.

Glad to have you at Coolidge, Miss "Audrey" Barrett, and hope you stay awhile.

 


A MESSAGE FROM OUR PRINCIPAL:

Your education has been planned and geared to arm and prepare you to function as mature and thinking citizens capable of shouldering the burdens and responsibilities which a thriving democracy imposes. It is through you and others like you that the forward march of democracy, spurred and fortified by a thorough and well-rounded education, will move on to greater triumphs and victories. We have no doubt that our aims and efforts in this direction will bear fruit and achieve the goals and objectives set forth, for in the miniature democracy of our school you are proving yourselves worthy and deserving of our trust and expectations.

Very sincerely yours,

Maxwell E. Clarke, Principal

 

COMPLIMENTS OF VANITY CORSET CO.

 

 

THE CORNER COFFEE SHOPPE:

"WHERE FRIEND MEETS FRIEND"

 

 

HOW TO AVOID Freshman Folly——

 

 


sophomore slump——

 

junior jitters——

 

senior sorrows:

 

 

JOIN YOUR G.O.!!! GET YOUR G.O. BUTTONS WHILE THEY LAST !!! GO, GO, G.O.!

 


SCHOOL SPIRIT, ANYONE?

COME AND ROOT FOR YOUR TEAM

SCHEDULED BASKETBALL GAMES:

 

SEPT. CALVIN COOLIDGE VS. MANHATTAN MUNICIPAL

OCT. CALVIN COOLIDGE VS. (?) UNSCHEDULED

NOV. CALVIN COOLIDGE VS. (?) UNSCHEDULED

DEC. (?)

 

 

Dr. Maxwell E. Clarke

James J. McHAbe

Mary Lewis

SylVia Barrett

Ella FrIedenberg

Paul BarriNger

 

Beatrice SchaChter

Charlotte WOlf

Frederick LoOmis

Henrietta PastorfieLd

Marcus ManheIm

SaDie Finch

Frances EGan

Samuel BEster

 

 

FACULTY FLASHES

 

The teacher the girls would like to be on a desert island most with: MR. PAUL ("POET") BARRINGER

 

The teacher readiest with unselfish helps: MRS. BEATRICE ("MOM") SCHACHTER



 

The teacher who makes lessons most like games: MISS HENRIETTA ("PAL") PASTORFIELD

 


Most absentminded teacher: MR. MARCUS ("H2O") MANHEIM

 

Most glamorous teacher: MISS SYLVIA BARRETT

 

 

THE CALVIN COOLIDGE CLARION is "The Voice of Your School." Please subscribe and solicit ads to keep it "talking"!

 

 

We wish to express our gratitude to Miss Mary Lewis, Faculty Advisor to The Clarion, who so unstintingly gave of herself to us.

 


Those Who Can’t

 

Sept. 25

 

Dear Ellen,

It's FTG (Friday Thank God), which means I need not set the alarm for 6:30 tomorrow morning; I can wash a blouse, think a thought, write a letter.

Congratulations on the baby's new tooth. Soon there is bound to be another tooth and another and another, and before you know it, little Suzie will start going to school, and her troubles will just begin. Though I hope that by the time she gets into the public high school system, things will be different. At least, they keep promising that things will be different. I'm told that since the recent strike threats, negotiations with the United Federation of Teachers, and greater public interest, we are enjoying "improved conditions." But in the two weeks that I've been here, conditions seem greatly unimproved.

You ask what I am teaching. Hard to say. Professor Winters advised teaching "not the subject but the whole child." The English Syllabus urges "individualization and enrichment"—which means giving individual attention to each student to bring out the best in him and enlarge his scope beyond the prescribed work. Bester says to "motivate and distribute" books —that is, to get students ready and eager to read. All this is easier said than done. In fact, all this is plain impossible.

Many of our kids—though physically mature—can't read beyond 4th or 5th grade level. Their background consists of the simplest comics and thrillers. They've

 


been exposed to some ten years of schooling, yet they don't know what a sentence is.

The books we are required to teach frequently have nothing to do with anything except the fact that they have always been taught, or that there is an oversupply of them, or that some committee or other was asked to come up with some titles.

For example: I've distributed Shakespeare's Julius Caesar to my 5th term class of "slow non-readers." (Question: How would "fast non-readers" read?) This is in lieu of The Mill on the Floss. I am supposed to teach Romeo and Juliet OR A Tale of Two Cities (strange bedfellows!) to my "low-normal" class, and Essays Old and New to my "special-slows." So far, however, I've been unable to give out any books because of problems having to do with Purloined Book Receipts, Book Labels without Glue, Inaccurate Inventory of Book Room, and Traffic Conditions on the Stairs.

I have let it be a challenge to me: I've been trying to teach without books. There was one heady moment when I was able to excite the class by an idea: I had put on the blackboard Browning's "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" and we got involved in a spirited discussion of aspiration vs. reality. Is it wise, I asked, to aim higher than one's capacity? Does it not doom one to failure? No, no, some said, that's ambition and progress? No, no, others cried, that's frustration and defeat! What about hope? What about despair?—You've got to be practical!—You've got to have a dream! They said this in their own words, you understand, startled into discovery. To the young, clichés seem freshly minted. Hitch your wagon to a star! Shoemaker, stick to your last! And when the dismissal bell rang, they paid me the highest compliment: they groaned! They crowded in the doorway, chirping like agitated sparrows, pecking at the seeds I had strewn—when who should materialize but Admiral Ass.

"What is the meaning of this noise?"

"It's the sound of thinking, Mr. McHabe," I said.

 


In my letter-box that afternoon was a note from him, with copies to my principal and chairman (and—who knows?—perhaps a sealed indictment dispatched to the Board?) which read (sic):

 

"I have observed that in your class the class entering your room is held up because the pupils exiting from your room are exiting in a disorganized fashion, blocking the doorway unnecessarily and talking. An orderly flow of traffic is the responsibility of the teacher whose class is exiting from the room."

 

The cardinal sin, strange as it may seem in an institution of learning, is talking. There are others, of course—sins, I mean, and I seem to have committed a good number. Yesterday I was playing my record of Gielgud reading Shakespeare. I had brought my own phonograph to school (no one could find the Requisition Forms for "Audio-Visual Aids"—that's the name for the school record player) and I had succeeded, I thought, in establishing a mood. I mean, I got them to be quiet, when—enter Admiral Ass, in full regalia, epaulettes quivering with indignation. He snapped his fingers for me to stop the phonograph, waited for the turntable to stop turning, and pronounced:

"There will be a series of three bells rung three times indicating Emergency Shelter Drill. Playing records does not encourage the orderly evacuation of the class."

I mention McHabe because he has crystallized into The Enemy.

But there are other difficulties. There are floaters floating in during class (these are peripatetic, or unanchored teachers) to rummage through my desk drawers for a forgotten Delaney Book. (I have no idea why it's call that. Perhaps because it was invented by a Mr. Delaney. It's a seating-plan book, with cards with kids' names stuck into slots.)

There are questionnaires to be filled out in the

 


middle of a lesson, such as: "Are there any defective electrical outlets in your home?"

There is money to be collected for publications, organizations, milk, G.O. (the General Organization), basketball tickets, and "Voluntary Contributions to the Custodial Staff." The latter is some kind of tacit appeasement of Mr. Grayson, who lives in the basement, if he exists at all; he is the mystery man of Calvin Coolidge.

There is the drilling on the street below that makes the windows vibrate; the Orchestra tuning up down the hall; the campaigners (this is the election season) bursting into the room to blazon on my sole blackboard in curlicued yellow chalk:

 

HARRY KAGAN WINS RESPECT

IF YOU WILL HIM FOR PRES. ELECT!

and

GLORIA EHRLICH IS PRETTY AND NICE

VOTE FOR GLORIA FOR VICE!

 

And the shelter area drills, which usually come at the most interesting point in the lesson. Bells clanging frantically, we all spill out into the gym, where we stand silent and safe between parallel bars, careful not to lean on horses, excused, for the moment, from destruction.

Sometimes the lesson is interrupted by life: the girl who, during grammar drill, rushed out of the room to look for her lost $8.70 for the gas and electric bill, crying: "My mother will kill me, for sure!" And for sure, she might. The boy who apologized for not doing his homework because he had to go to get married. "I got this girl into trouble all right, and we're Catholics, but the thing is, I don't like her."

Chaos, waste, cries for help—strident, yet unheard. Or am I romanticizing? That's what Paul says; he only shrugs and makes up funny verses about everyone. That's Paul Barringer—a writer who teaches English on one foot, as it were, just waiting to be published. He's very attractive: a tan crew cut; a white smile with

 


lots of teeth; one eyebrow higher than the other. All the girls are in love with him.

There are a few good, hard-working, patient people like Bea—a childless widow—"Mother Schachter and her cherubs," as the kids say, who manage to teach against insuperable odds; a few brilliantly endowed teachers who—unknown and unsung—work their magic in the classroom; a few who truly love young people. The rest, it seems to me, have either given up, or are taking it out on the kids. "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach." Like most sayings, this is only half true. Those who can, teach; those who can't—the bitter, the misguided, the failures from other fields—find in the school system an excuse or a refuge.

There is Mary Lewis, bowed and cowed, who labors through the halls as overloaded as a pack mule, thriving on discomfort and overwork, compulsively following all directions from supervisors, a willing martyr to the system. She's an old-timer who parses sentences and gives out zeros to kids who chew gum.

There is Henrietta Pastorfield, a hearty spinster who is "married to the school," who woos the kids by entertaining them, convinced that lessons must be fun, knowledge sugar-coated, and that teacher should be pal.

There is Fred Loomis, a math teacher stuck with two out-of-license English classes, who hates kids with a pure and simple hatred. "At the age of 15," he said to me, "they should all be kicked out of school and the girls sterilized so they don't produce others like themselves." These were his words. And he comes in contact with some 200 children a day.

The school nurse, Frances Egan, wears white space shoes and is mad for nutrition; Mrs. Wolf, the librarian, cannot bear to see a book removed from its shelf; and Miss Ella Friedenberg, an ambitious typing teacher promoted to Guidance Counselor, swoops upon the kids and impales them with questions about masturbation. She has evolved a PPP (Pupil Personality Profile) into which she fits each youngster, branding him with pseudo-Freudian phrases. She has most

 


of the teachers bamboozled, and some of the kids terrorized.

My other colleagues I know just by sight: Desk Despots, Blackboard Barons, Classroom Caesars and Lords of the Loose-Leaf, Paul calls them. He has the gift of words. Lyrics are his forte; he composed an amusing song about our principal: "Hark, hark, the Clarke/ At heaven's gate . . . something—something," I forget. He wrote a verse about me too: rhymed me with "14 carat." Very attractive man.

McHabe, of course, is the kind of petty tyrant who flourishes best in the school system, the army, or a totalitarian state. To me he personifies all that is picayune, mean and degrading to the human spirit. I've had a head-on clash with him over one of my boys, Joe Ferone, whom he had accused of theft—unjustifiably, as it turned out; and he has alluded darkly to the danger of my getting a U (Unsatisfactory) end-term rating.

I don't know why I am championing Ferone, who is the most difficult discipline problem in the school, except, perhaps, that I dimly sense in him a rebelliousness, like mine, against the same things. When he is in school, which isn't often, he is rude and contemptuous; hands in pockets, toothpick in mouth, rocking insolently on his heels, he seems to be watching me for some sign.

Most of the time, I am still struggling to establish communication. It is difficult, and I don't know whom to turn to. Dr. Clarke? I don't think he is aware of anything that is going on in his school. All I know about him is that he has a carpet in his office and a private john on the fourth floor landing. Most of the time he secludes himself in one or the other; when he does emerge, he is fond of explaining that education is derived from "e duco," or leading out of. He is also partial to such paired pearls as: aims and goals; guide and inspire; help and encourage; and new horizons and broader vistas; they drop from him like so many cultured cuff links.

And Dr. Bester, my immediate supervisor, Chair-

 


man of the English Department, I can't figure out at all. He is a dour, desiccated little man, remote and prissy. Like most chairmen, he teaches only one class of Seniors; the most experienced teachers are frequently promoted right out of the classroom! Kids respect him; teachers dislike him—possibly because he is given to popping up, unexpectedly, to observe them. "The ghost walks" is the grapevine signal for his visits. Bea told me he started out as a great teacher, but he's been soured by the trivia-in-triplicate which his administrative duties impose. I hope he doesn't come to observe me until I get my bearings. I'm still floundering, particularly in my SS class of "reluctant learners." (Under-achievers, non-academic-minded, slow, disadvantaged, sub-paced, non-college-oriented, underprivileged, non-linguistic, intellectually deprived, and laggers—so far, I've counted more than ten different euphemisms for "dumb kids"!)

But I am busiest outside of my teaching classes. Do you know any other business or profession where highly-skilled specialists are required to tally numbers, alphabetize cards, put notices into mailboxes, and patrol the lunchroom?

What a long letter this has turned into! I've quite lost touch with the mainstream, you see, isolated in 304, while bells ring, students come and go, and my wastebasket runneth over.

Write, write! And tell me of the even tenor of your days. If things get too rough here, I might ask you to move over.

Love,

Syl

 

P. S. Did you know that in New York City high school teachers devote approximately 100 hours a year to homeroom chores? This makes a grand total of over 500,000 hours that they spend on clerical work. That's official school time only; the number of extracurricular hours spent on lesson plans, records, marking papers, and so on is not estimated.

S.

 



Date: 2016-01-03; view: 1042


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