Frank McCourt - 'Tis

36

Before I leave Mr. Sorola says I should return next day to observe Miss Mudd with her five classes. I’d learn something about procedure. He says half of teaching is procedure and I don’t know what he’s talking about. I don’t know what to make of the smile through the cigarette smoke and I wonder if he’s joking. He pushes my typed program across the desk, three classes of EC, Economic Citizenship, two classes of E4, sophomore English in the fourth term. The top of the program card says, Official Class, PRA, and at the bottom, Building Assignment, School Cafeteria, fifth period. I don’t ask Mr. Sorola what these mean for fear he might think I’m ignorant and change his mind about hiring me.

As I make my way down the hill to the ferry a boy’s voice calls, Mr. McCourt, Mr. McCourt, are you Mr. McCourt?

I am.

Mr. Sorola would like to see you again.

I follow the student up the hill and I know why Mr. Sorola wants to see me again. He has changed his mind. He’s found someone with experience, someone with a grasp of procedure, someone who knows what an official class is. If I don’t get this job I’ll have to start my search again.

Mr. Sorola waits at the front door of the school. He lets his cigarette dangle from his mouth and puts his hand on my shoulder. He says, I have good news for you. The job is opening sooner than we expected. Miss Mudd must have been impressed by you because she decided to leave today. In fact she’s gone, out the back door, and it’s barely noon. So we’re wondering if you can take over tomorrow and then you won’t have to wait till Monday.

But I . . .

Yeah, I know. You’re not ready. That’s okay. We’ll give you some stuff to keep the kids busy till you get the hang of it and I’ll look in from time to time to keep them in line.

He tells me this is my golden opportunity to jump right in and start my teaching career, I’m young, I’ll like the kids, they’ll like me, McKee High School has a hell of a faculty all ready to help and support.

Of course I say yes, I’ll be in tomorrow. It isn’t the teaching job of my dreams but it will have to do since I can’t get anything else. I sit on the Staten Island Ferry thinking of teacher recruiters from suburban high schools at NYU, how they told me I seemed intelligent and enthusiastic but really my accent would be a problem. Oh, they had to admit it was charming, reminded them of that nice Barry Fitzgerald in Going My Way but but but. They said they had high standards of speech in their schools and it wouldn’t be possible to make an exception in my case since the brogue was infectious and what would parents say if their kids came home sounding like Barry Fitzgerald or Maureen O’Hara?

I wanted to work in one of their suburban schools, Long Island, Westchester, where the boys and girls were bright, cheerful, smiling, attentive, their pens poised as I discoursed on Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, the Cavalier Poets, the Metaphysicals. I’d be admired and once the boys and girls had passed my classes their parents would surely invite me to dinner at the finest houses. Young mothers would come to see me about their children and who could tell what might happen when husbands were absent, the men in gray flannel suits, and I trolled the suburbs for lonely wives.

I’ll have to forget the suburbs. I have here on my lap the book that will help me through my first day of teaching, Your World and You, and I flip the pages through a short history of the United States from an economic point of view, chapters on American government, the banking system, how to read the stock market pages, how to open a savings account, how to keep household accounts, how to get loans and mortgages.

At the end of each chapter there are questions of fact and questions for discussion. What caused the stock market crash of 1929? How can this be avoided in future? If you wanted to save money and gain interest would you a) keep it in a glass jar b) invest in the Japanese stock market c) keep it under your mattress d) put it in a savings bank account.

There are suggested activities, with insertions penciled in by a former student. Call a family meeting and discuss your family finances with Dad and Mom. Show them from your study of this book how they might improve their bookkeeping. (Insertion, Don’t be surprised if they beat you up.) Take a tour of the New York Stock Exchange with your class. (They’ll be glad to get out of school for a day.) Think of a product your community might need and start a small company to supply it. (Try Spanish fly.) Write to the Federal Reserve Board and tell them what you think of them. (Tell them leave a little for the rest of us.) Interview a number of people who remember the crash of 1929 and write a one-thousand-word report. (Ask them why they didn’t commit suicide.) Write a story in which you explain the gold standard to a ten-year-old child. (It’ll help him sleep.) Write a report on what it cost to build the Brooklyn Bridge and what it might cost now. Be specific. (Or else.)

The ferry sails by Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty and I’m so worried about Economic Citizenship I don’t even think of the millions who landed here and the ones who were sent back with the bad eyes and the weak chests. I don’t know how I’ll be able to stand before these American teenagers and talk to them about the branches of government and preach the virtues of saving when I owe money everywhere myself. And with the ferry sliding into its slip and the day that’s facing me tomorrow why shouldn’t I treat myself to a few beers at the Bean Pot bar and after those few beers why shouldn’t I take a train to the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village to chat with Paddy and Tom Clancy and listen to them sing in the back room? When I call Mike to tell her the good news about the new job she wants to know where I am and gives me a lecture on the stupidity of staying out drinking beer the night before the most important day of my life and I’d better get my ass home if I know what’s good for me. Sometimes she talks like her grandmother who always tells you what to do with your ass. Get your ass in here. Get your ass out of that bed.

Mike is right but she graduated from high school and she’ll know what to say to her classes when she starts teaching and even though I have a college degree I don’t know what I’m going to say to Miss Mudd’s classes. Should I be Robert Donat in Goodbye, Mr. Chips or Glenn Ford in The Blackboard Jungle ? Should I swagger into the classroom like James Cagney or march in like an Irish schoolmaster with a stick, a strap and a roar? If a student sends a paper airplane zooming at me should I shove my face into his and tell him try that one more time, kid, and you’re in trouble? What am I to do with the ones looking out the window calling to their friends across the yard? If they’re like some of the students in The Blackboard Jungle they’ll be tough and they’ll ignore me and the rest of the class will despise me.

Paddy Clancy leaves his singing in the back room of the White Horse and tells me he wouldn’t be in my shoes for anything. Everyone knows what the high schools in this country are like, that’s right, blackboard jungles. With my college degree why didn’t I become a lawyer or a businessman or something where I could make some money? He knows a few teachers around the Village and they’re getting out of it the first opportunity.

He’s right, too. Everybody is right and I’m too muddled with all the beer in my body to worry anymore. I go to my apartment and fall into bed with all my clothes on and even though I’m worn out with the long day and the beer I can’t sleep. I keep getting up to read chapters of Your World and You, testing myself with questions of fact, imagining what I’m going to say about the stock market, the differences between stocks and bonds, the three branches of government, the recession of this year, the depression of that year, and I might as well get up, go out, and fill myself with coffee to keep me going the rest of the day.